Noctrach

I guarantee it's not jamming as I see it happening all the time when I'm flying Tomcat singleplayer without a jammer. 8 out of 10 AIM-120 shots can be evaded with a lazy turn because they just seem to miscalculate the intercept and actually just fly straight past me with plenty energy to spare.

3 seconds normal, 1 second with ACM up.

Do bear in mind that for the longest time of Tomcat employment, the threats were relatively short range (R-24R, R-27R, R-40R) where even a sub-25 mile shot with an active missile would gain you a massive advantage. By the end of its lifetime the decision was made to shift the F-14 out of the air to air role and into ground attack/FAC(A) by making the decision to go LANTIRN rather than AMRAAM. I think historically speaking, the kind of shot min-maxing we do in the sim would be a lot less applicable.

The graphs being that close is actually pretty crazy. Damn.

I was testing exactly these scenarios against Su-27s/MiG-29s flying at 30k that would go into a 50 degree crank at around 50-55 miles. Launched from 75 miles (Mach 0.9, 45,000 feet), the targets had to do some pretty aggressive manoeuvring to not get hit. With a split-S defence, missiles generally made it inside 3 miles. Remember, this is after the missile correcting for a significant heading change. 60 miles is a good shooting range to balance missile lethality and target spacing for follow-up manoeuvres. Mind you, these are long range shots so by definitions the probability of a hit isn't too high against an aware target, but this is identical to firing an AMRAAM/SD-10 at 40-or-so miles. Even if the missiles do not directly impact, they grant you a huge range advantage and will force the targets to react. MiG-29 and Su-27/33 have vastly inferior A2A capabilities to the Jeff, so Tomcats have a pretty significant advantage. You should never be engaging multiples as a single ship, but against MiG-29s you're not entirely defenceless either.

Maybe a bit off-topic but there's some solid guidance magic in that tacview I guess "missile spam diversion" is a pretty good defensive tactic. With respect to the Phoenix shots though, being higher > being faster. I've seen the new Phoenix get some pretty crazy mileage fired from 38,000+ at mach 0.9. It's not really worth wasting fuel trying to go supersonic right now imo. Not until transonic drag is tweaked anyhow. Climb as high as you can as fast as you can, lob your missiles, descend back down to denser air for defensive flying and radar lock. You still have the longest stick by a fair margin, but it won't match SD-10/AIM-120Cs in the sub-40 mile domain. 2v4 against 4th gens is gonna be a rough day at the office if you let them get inside that distance. I feel as a fighter, the Tomcat now doesn't really like the in-between-y altitudes. You are either very high for shots with very long reach, or you are very low where the range collapses and your 20+s burn time and/or sparrows can do decent work. Below 30,000 feet is a good altitude for the radar picture, not so much for shooting.

(Also, fix for STT ghost tracks when? With the new A this would really be useful...)

The claim was the AMRAAM could not match these shots, I simply demonstrated it can. Nearly 1:1, in fact. I don't see anyone claiming it can't hit low targets. Only that the AI is dumb enough to continue cranking into an active missile. I have no other stake in this argument.

The parameters are every so slightly worse because I didn't realise my throttle wasn't in gate, but a quick test shows that the AIM-120C arrives on target just as well as the Phoenix. The fact the missiles hit in those shots is, as @Callsign JoNay said, mostly because of the AI's poor manoeuvring. This is absolutely near the limit of the AIM-120s battery life but still equally achievable (TOF is 1:30, identical to the Phoenix). Had I fired at slightly higher mach, it would've fared slightly better. There's probably tactics to devise to make the Phoenix effective, but I will say I'm desperately waiting for the FM patch that allows us to cross transonic speed in timely manner, because as it is firing from these high altitudes and speeds is challenging at the best of times. AIM-120-C5-High-Low-DCS.zip.acmi

Want to chime in that I can control pilot DLC (and his flares as a result) as well as certain Jester menu commands from the RIO seat during a multiplayer session. Problem seems to affect only buttons that have a pilot bind but not a RIO bind on the same controller, in this case pilot DLC bound to thumb button of my joystick but nothing bound to the same switch in the RIO pit.

So far all the examples I've seen of missiles lofting detrimentally were missiles fired outside of kinetically achievable parameters, usually with manually assisted loft. I do hope the 21 mile flat loft cut-off becomes a bit more nuanced in the future, as right now it hurts low altitude shots more than it helps. Then again, as others have said in this thread, Below 20-25,000 feet you want to refrain from taking shots with a TTI exceeding missile burn time anyway.

Could you tell me how you set this up? I've been unable to recreate the AI defending any shots outside of 10 miles. I could imagine AI behaviour being different for missiles that are classified as FOX 1 in the game files, but I've not been able to reproduce this even with Sparrows,

I've seen the "loft" also described as "main beam avoidance manoeuvre" but have been somewhat unable to figure out what the requirements for it are. I'm curious to what extent this would apply even at closer range.

Correct, AI is still coded to always begin their defense at a hard threshold. This is 10 nmi for Ace (hardcoded "detection" boundary for all objects) and slightly lower for lower difficulties. As you correctly assert, this means that target size switch does not affect AI engagements, and STT is equally potent to TWS as the AI does not respond to the STT launch, only the missile breaching their 10 nmi perimeter. To OP: When it comes to multi-target engagements, personally I have found TWS very unreliable when tracking 2 or more bandits. Generally advise against firing more than a single phoenix at a time if the scenario allows it. The ever-valid advice for multi-fighter engagements: Get a wingman. As per 4. there is a of touch weirdness going on with the AWG-9 where some shots will not go active even if the track holds true, but I've not been able to reproduce it consistently so might be a multiplayer thing.

The tech to make things interesting have all been in the sim forever. The mission bias is just geared towards optimizing the blufor full fidelity experience that folks have paid 80 bucks for. AIM-120B vs R-27ER is a pretty fair fight (not in a sterile 1v1 obviously, but then nothing in air combat works that way). They also roughly coexist in the same time frame. R-77 vs AIM-120B is a great fight even in 1v1. R-77 vs AIM-120C-5 not so much. If online mission makers weren't so insistent on putting AIM-120C-5s on everything, the online space would look very very different. (Heck, people might even have to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different weapons platforms) Problem with wanting new stuff like R-77-1 (2015) or R-77M (prototype tech) is that it would have to contend with AIM-120Ds and Meteors (which we might have to contend with regardless). Neither of which are fights that could in any way be described as "interactive", "engaging" or "fair". You're just getting clapped from ranges that make a high altitude Phoenix blush.

The thing is, people have made these kinds of video series. For instance the air warfare group have made an incredibly series of BFM videos. Anything more detailed than this would go into the kind of somewhat classified territory that subject matter experts would start sweating a little. There's no such series specifically for the F-14. That is because it's a jet like the others and there's nothing really fundamentally different to BFM-ing in the F-14. One-circle -> radius, two-circle -> rate. With pilots of equal skill, it will lose most of the time to a F/A-18, F-16, Mirage 2000 or Su-27. That's not because it's a bad dogfighter, but it's an old plane that is very difficult to fly to the limits of the envelope. You can get someone decently competent at dogfighting in a Hornet in a week or so, but they still won't be nearly as effective after a month in the F-14. There's 20 years of technological advancement you're up against, one of which is fly-by-wire. Even if HB were to remove the pylons and remodel the plane, nothing would effectively change. Maybe you get half a degree of turn rate, but that Hornet or Mirage pilot is still gonna live on the edge of FBW max performance while the Tomcat pilot is sweating to keep the jet from spinning out. There are some specifically-F-14-things that you need to be aware of, then there's some stuff you can read from the real flight manuals, then there's some stuff you can figure out through practice. Use rudder for turns near and above 15 units of AoA Corner speed is between about 300 and 350 You can do an incredibly tight radius fight at around 190-220 knots (especially with some flaps) You can pull still pull off a loop at around 200-250 knots depending on altitude. The rest of it is knowing the matchups and identifying cues. When can you out-power a hornet/mirage? When can you threaten a viper? The reason why so few good videos exist is because it's a very difficult subject to break down and even the best classified textbooks will not have the answers on how to win a fight.

My point is that some governments choose to declassify their docs after some time by combing out all the classified bits and some docs just end up in the wild for miscellaneous reasons. In the latter case, a government isn't going to put in the effort for proper declassification because we want it modeled in a videogame. Would seem to me like there's two possible options for developers with regards to aircraft documentation in the public domain: It has been sufficiently declassified, so yes, it has been combed like that, go nuts. It has not been declassified and is possibly not worth risking criminal charges over. Bear in mind that a huge component in modeling these airplanes is SME input. Even if you have the docs, if they're not declassified or if you having access to them raises some eyebrows, nobody is going to want to talk to you.

Finally found a way to make a picture that actually shows the issue. There's a seam running down the line of the F-14A canopy as per the latest F-14 update. It's visible against the sun or against clouds. It deforms visuals in a way similar to a screen tear, but it's consistently present in the same location and moves with the jet.

You misunderstand, we're not talking about the datalink implementation. The documents containing the details for radar, weapons, FM etc. also happen to contain sensitive DL information and are therefore restricted from the public. So there is no data available on those other system as chances are painfully small that any government would have someone go comb the entire set of docs to strip out every bit of sensitive info just so we can get the rest of it modeled in a videogame ^^

It's impossible to capture with a screenshot but since last patch there's a seam running down the line of the F-14A cockpit which deforms/warps the view when you move the camera. It looks like a screen tear which is what caught my attention initially, but it's exactly down the centreline of the canopy.

You have no idea how happy this makes me Ground handling is a dream right now

@BIGNEWY@NineLine I am curious however how it's possible that flying at 50,000 feet over sea causes enough of a drop in signal to noise ratio for a target flying at 40,000 feet to reduce detection range by 25%, while simultaneously still having the TWS range and azimuth resolution to perfectly discriminate an F-16 flying close formation in the radar shadow of a B52. My follow-up question would be why the same exact values apply for 50,000 -> 1000 feet over land (contact within mainlobe clutter) as for 50,000 -> 40,000 feet over sea (contact well outside mainlobe clutter). Things like this make it seem like the DCS AN/APG-68v5 radar simulation isn't actually taking into account any kind of mainlobe clutter or doppler binning, but rather looking for game-objects within flat, hardcoded parameters. OddlyAccurateRangeResolution.trk

Hi, The GBU-31 2000 lbs JDAM currently has an effective explosive radius for both air-burst and ground impact well below known data. The Mk-84 is generally estimated to have a lethal radius of >300 metres (1000 feet) vs up to ~80m for a Mk-82. However, in the sim this difference is nowhere close.The Mk-84-based bombs are incapable of damaging unarmoured targets like an Ural 375 beyond about 80m. As it stands this makes the 2000 lbs bombs nearly pointless for use in DCS, as you can cause far greater destruction by rippling 4x GBU-38, with better versatility, at a significantly lower cost in weight and drag. That said, GBU-38s themselves do not fare much better, being ineffective against infantry or unarmoured targets outside of 50-60 metres. Tested with Ural-375 at ~200ft spacing and AK-47 infantry at ~150 ft spacing. Air-burst result are identical to ground impact. GBU-38 after-effects Ural at impact point destroyed, Infantry destroyed up to 150 feet/45m, no other damages. GBU-31 after-effects Infantry killed up to ~400 feet, Urals mostly unharmed beyond 160 feet Naturally, the infantry aspect is partially down to the very simple damage model. Still, the current sim version of an air-burst Mk-84 in DCS has a lower damage radius against unarmoured targets, than the lethal fragmentation radius of a real world Mk-82. The difference in effectiveness is excessive and should be considered a bug. WeakJDAMAir.trk WeakJDAMGround.trk WeakJDAMComparisonGBU31.trk WeakJDAMComparisonGBU38.trk

Idk where folks get this idea from, it was always gonna be the B version followed by an (one, singular) A version, the store page hasn't changed since EA release https://store.heatblur.com/products/test-product Over time that got divided into an early A and a later A (different RWR), then later they added the Iranian version (A minus TCS) as a bonus after many requests. Seems like a massive game of telephone going on around these parts.

Dear Heatblur, In response to this thread, you mentioned you wanted to make Jester smarter rather than giving pilots more micromanagement tools. Currently, Jester is still sorely lacking in his capability to deal with somewhat more complicated scenarios, e.g. azimuth or depth split There is still no way to designate a specific TWS contact as target, as such a Tomcat with Jester is incapable of sorting targets in TWS. The fine altitude control is still very cumbersome to use without VoiceAttack or similar external tools. The coarse altitude control is still unusable. I'm curious if we could get something of a status update on the timeline for his update/rework.