EtherealN

I am however willing to bet that you did not fly above this area in June 1944. ;) This was flooding initiated by the germans on-purpose, as a defensive fortification, not storm flooding. How differnetly this would look is however a good question (anyone able to find a color photograph? There were some pretty good color photographic films even back then, so perhaps we can get lucky?).

This is explained in the quickstart guide: Start > All Programs > Eagle Dynamics > DCS World > Documentation Basically, a serial number is the serial number you use for registration. This is used along with a hardware code (identifying your compunter) towards getting an activation code. When doing normal activation, you don't have to care, it is all done automatically. It is only relevant if you require offline activation.

That has already been covered in this thread. ;) Change warhead explosive power in warhead.lua Be prepared for strange things to happen in other situations though, it is very easy to end up having to choose between errors when you do that. (For example, bump up the yield of a rocket such that it kills a dude at range X, and you might suddenly find that the HE rocket suddenly oneshots the Nimitz... Etc. :P ) Also, note that you should ensure you can revert your changes easily, since other servers that do not have your edits will flag you as a cheater. Also, no-one has said it is "impossible to fix". What we have said is that to get fragmentation modeling is not possible under current engine limitations, so besides the warhead.lua hacks already discussed there's nothing to be done right now that does not entail quite a lot of work. (As others have mentioned also, the big deal isn't just the weapons; another big deal is that unit damage models do not have the necessary granularity - you can't puncture tyres or take out drivers, for example. And that one there really is no fix for - most certainly nothing that you can "tweak yourself". That starts looking at a rather large intervention in the game engine, plus of course a couple hundred units to re-do damage model graphics as well as related damage logic... That said, it might happen sometime - would be a worthy addition to CA, and it is even possible that a coder somewhere has the groundwork planned, I don't know - but it most definitely is not something you can "tweak" yourself. Might as well "tweak" the Flanker FM into an AFM... :P

I think he meant that it is "alreasdy possible" on the in-development Su-27 AFM, not the current SFM.

While I agree that that would certainly be better in some ways, I think you'll find that such always-online solutions aren't exactly popular and tend to come with a whole slew of problems. (Latest example I 'enjoyed' was when Rockstar's "Social Club" had an outage that prevented users from playing Max Payne 3 - for 10 days...) As mentioned, the last activation, when used, is automatically returned to your key after 30 days.

"ships worldwide" ...at $13.75 extra. Can also be purchased from: The Fighter Collection: http://fighter-collection.com/cft/ Eagle Dynamics: http://www.lockon.co.uk

We use StarForce Proactive AAA. This means that if you ever use your last activation, it is automatically given back to you 30 days later. Use the one returned, and the same thing happens again. As long as you don't change computers more than once amonth, you have effectively infinite activations.

I should add perhaps: an SFM (understood as a table-based flight model) actually can theoretically have the same fidelity in exptreme flight modes as can an AFM; but in practice this is not practical, since there would have to be hardcoded data entered into the "table" for every single conceivable flight mode, damage etcetera etcetera. Better to have X amount of programmers developing and AFM for a year than to have 10X scripters creating a MASSIVE table for every possible flight regime.

Well, SFM gets general performance right. It gets your speeds, turn rates etcetera. No problem there. In a normal fight, you don't actually need more than that. (Though as a player it might "feel" as a bit like you're flying "on rails" since dynamic effects are missing.) AFM however does a better job at the edges of the envelope; compare for example with stalls; AFM will give more correct stalls, spins and other departures than would the SFM. (But in both cases, if you depart during BFM, you are boned no matter what flight model is used. The opponent has to be a retard* to not kill you from there.) There are some other possible issues in transonic regime and so on, but they are not things that will happen in a "dogfight". The biggest thing with "AFM" is that it's better at handling the minutia of landing, departures, edge-of-envelope etcetera and giving the correct "response". (Those are things where an SFM "table-model" just cannot have the granularity to handle it at the same level of detail.) Another area is damages; things like when parts of your aircraft are shot off; this is very hard for an SFM to predict correctly, but an AFM can do it dynamically. But of course, if you have parts of your plane removed while in a dogfight... you're still probably dead. :P In my opinion, AFM really is best when you do something like having to land a wounded plane. An SFM might not be able to discern the difference correctly, whereas the AFM will calculate your aerodynamics anyway and include the damage and associated loss of lift, increased assymetric drag etcetera etcetera. But as far as being able to rate correctly in a dogfight? That is actually easier to get "right" in an SFM, since then you can practically hardcode it to brute-force it into being right. (That is, to corespond with available documentation; obviously, the documentation might be wrong as well... but them's the breaks, and when working from pilot instruction manuals, test data, etcetera one would assume the documents are indeed right.) *Assuming trained as a real pilot. Simulation spare time pilots are of course a different matter; they might simply not know what to do in the situation, which would not necessarily be a fault in their intellectual faculties but simply a deficiency in the amount of time they have available for practicing, or a deficiency in the tutors they've had available.

Hopefully it won't be too long until it's all rendered moot by the arrival of Su-27 AFM. :)

That's not a feature. It was uncommented for a reason. :) You are then using an outdated script, not intended for this this product. Don't judge it by that accident of some coder forgetting to completely remove it. :P Can do what, exactly? In my experience, if the Su-27 pilot allows me to work my energy advantage, he is a sitting duck. Similarly, if I allow his temptations to turn with him, he makes me his *****. This is correct. If you could perhaps elucidate on the specific error your have perceived?

Depends really. I haven't played it in some 5 years or so now - we used it back in flight school.

No, but he brought up "scirpting" for a non-combat maneuver. It doesn't really have any impact on actual combat, nor the question of whether Su-27 performance in FC3 SFM is correct. As an example; making a dynamic model that allows a cobra is "easy" - you can do that any amount of ways. But that doesn't mean that your rates are correct, your transonic behaviour is correct, etcetera etcetera. It means nothing other than that you are able to do a cobra. However, in the context of a dynamic model that gets other performance data right, if it _also_ does the cobra right, then it can serve as an additional verification towards the idea that "yeah, we probably got it right". Most specifically it can be interesting for things like edge-of-envelope, stalls, spins and other forms of departure. But you will note that the person I responded to mentioned the Cobra script at the same time as positing that the Flanker's performance was "too outstanding". Thus why I understood them to be connected in his opinion.

:D Yeah, it's a discussion that comes up every couple months. People having watched too much Top Gun think that slowing yourself down is ever a good idea in BFM... :D

I am arguing that the situation is that one thing is incorrect, and this can be fixed. But through "fixing" that, we make something else that is currently correct turn incorrect. Sum of incorrectness remains the same. The only difference will be who will complain. My own experience is that rockets work very well. There are issues, but they are a potent weapon. Remember that rockets are an area-effect weapon; they are like artillery. Not a sniper weapon. You should salvo them. (Indeed, that is what the RuAF does.) Also note that there is no damage model "for rockets". You are talking about changing the damage model of several hundred vehicles, and making this change to them will be universal - not just for the rockets. So now your rockets might be correct, but a bunch of other weapons will have gotten wrong instead.

There is no Cobra script in FC3. Nor was there in FC2. Also, as an aside, the "cobra" is worthless is combat. Nor is it unique to the Flanker. Other aircraft, including the double-delta J-35, did them even before the Flanker. The Cobra is only spoken of because it looks cool at airshows. Su-27 performance conforms to official pilot documentation. How do you mean it is "too outstanding"? Are you attempting to fight a turning fighter (Su-27) in your energy fighter (F-15) through turning? If so, you deserve to be eaten alive. ;)

*spits coffee all over keyboard* ;) Implementing a completely new damage system "quite quickly"? ;) Trust me, ED wants this too. It's just more complicated than it seems.

It's the Bonkers Flight Model. You invoke it when your opponent gets on your six and you don't understand how that happened.

Yeah, but that's a complete rewrite of ground unit code. See you in a few years. :) It is definitely desirable, especially if we get to see more advancement with CA etcetera, but it is harder than might seem.

The problem is: how to quantify said damage? How to figure out how 50HP of damage from a bomb is different from 50HP of damage from a GAU-8? And after that, when introducing desirable things like a "mission kill" (say, tank is immobolized), we are then looking at having to rework AI to adjust for broken formations etcetera. These are things that tend to cascade where "solving" one issue causes another. Much better to "attack" them all in a concerted manner when the time is right and the gains great enough to merit the effort. I'm quite certain that we'll see these things eventually. It's just a question of when computers will be strong enough in combination with engine capability upgrades and other development considerations regarding time, money etcetera. I'd personally prefer to see this "on hold" until that time when a proper solution is viable to be developed rather than hacks that alternate errors in various directions.

I'll add an example of being wrong in the "other direction": Damage to crew and vehicle effectiveness depends on many factors: was the vehicle buttoned up? Was the pressure wave able to cause damage to crew or sensitive systems? There are cases where having hatches open is better than being buttoned up, and the opposite. Similarly, I have heard accounts of "tankers" that had copper jets from RPGs pass through their hearing aids: the warhead hit the tank, the copper jet shot into and out of the tank, via the crewman's hearing aids (close call!), and the damage to the tanks combat worthiness was nil. Similarly, depending on many factors, a pressure wave may traverse the tank profile without causing great damage simply through aerodynamics; but might have taken out some sensors and other things reducing the combat effectiveness of the vehicle. And what of situations where a blast or other damage might immobilize the vehicle, but still allow the vehicle to continue combat - albeit as a glorified pillbox? At present there is no way to deal with that. Errors will go both ways. Be very careful with watching random youtube vids etc and thinking that what they display is what always happens. The details are always much more nebulous.

Others have already explained this in this thread, I feel: First, there is no such thing as "splash damage". See the posts by GG. It is a game concept with little relation to reality. Second, adjusting blast damage to accurately reflect one situation including fragmentation etcetera will inevitably mean that it will be equally incorrect in other situations. And as far as selecting how to be incorrect, it is better to be incorrect in a way that may later be adjusted when engine limitations are lifted to make it correct in all factors.

That's not my point though. In DCS, HP does is not only like this: IF unitX hitPoints <= 0 THEN unitX == DEAD It does of course do this also. This is the point where you get the smoke and explosion, and then a pretty dead tank (or whatever). DCS also looks at a unit's health to decide on it's accuracy of fires, ability to detect threats, and so on. The difference is that you do not have a visual que for this. The tank you damaged will simply not be as good at shooting straight anymore, nor at detecting threats, reloading munitions, etcetera. We can compare with a popular RTS: Starcraft 2. In this, a basic infantryman has 45 Hitpoints and shoots for 6 damage. (I think it was, been a bit since I played actively.) In that game, if he takes a bullet to the head for 6 damage, he now has 39 hitpoints; nothing else is changed. Another bullet - 33 HP, nothing else changed. Etcetera etcetera. There is no difference in his ability to hurt you when he is at 45HP and 1HP. NOT SO IN DCS. When his HP reduces, he loses proficiency at detecting enemies, aiming at said enemies, etcetera. That is what I mean when I say that there are things happening that are not graphically evident to you, the player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_fighter_maneuvers

Why? You seem to be under the misapprehension that AFM is somehow more correct in combat performance. This is not necessarily the case; SFM in FC3 conforms very very closely to the available documentation for these aircraft. You should not expect an "AFM" aircraft to have an automatic advantage nor disadvantage in BFM. What AFMs bring to the table is different.