LanceCriminal86

I reported almost the same thing as a bug a while back, never got hydraulics back following a repair.

After the week I've had I'm hunting me a bottle of Glengoyne 15 year.

@Victory205 Well you cant leave us at that and not tell us what kind of scotch... Also, Im fine with the late 90s A model, as the squadron Im most interested in painting, replicating, and flying only ever had the A models and their last flight was 1998 before transitioning to the lame ass hornet in 1999.

I just doublechecked, that should be the correct LUA entry: {"HB_F14_EXT_DROPTANKS", 0 ,"HB_F14_EXT_DROPTANK",false}; Can you get snipping tool and post a screenshot of your livery folder with the drop tank filename visible? Double-double check your filename is HB_F14_EXT_DROPTANK.dds in the livery folder, and make sure you actually saved your DDS. I use BC7 compression, have not had issues.

I was thinking perhaps you guys needed to do it that way to get around some hard-coded restrictions, maybe to get the animated elevators working or something so I didn't assume it was an oversight. Again, thank you for bringing these to DCS. I've become much more interested in the French side of naval aviation, and seeing as France are the only other ones anymore doing real CATOBAR operations (not ski jumps or VSTOL) it gives us neat opportunities to have scenarios with US and French naval aircraft flying together. We actually have a tradition of "cross decking" where French pilots come land on our carriers, and we go and land on theirs. But, in the past I think it was only Hornets and other light attack or fighters that could due to Clem/Foch/CdG lower launch and catapult limits. Even with the recent upgrades that allow us to cross-deck Super Hornets the Tomcat still would have been too heavy.

You don't even have to watch that far, first 20 seconds you can see details pop in and out. May have to do with settings to be fair, but same mechanics.

In my mission editor it shows up with the "CC" icon instead of the CV/Carrier icon, and ICLS didn't seem to be operational, even though I had it set to channel 1 in the mission editor and linked to the ship. On the flipside, the Clemenceau that's out there does show up as a Carrier, but he hadn't added working arrestor cables at the version I have. ICLS was working on that mod. The reason I mention that, is that when attempting to land a Tomcat on the Clemenceau, obviously I don't trap, but Jester the RIO stays with me. Attempt to land on the CdG, and at the last minute Jester ejects because apparently in his eyes, he thinks we are landing on a cruiser or something. I've tried a few different approaches as far as speed, AOA, decent rate, etc. I have to disable him to get him to stay in the jet. I know you guys probably had no intentions of having a 60k+ pound jet on your mod, but if it has a deck and wires naturally I had to try! I also saw that the CdG took a percent of damage when I landed. Oh, and when I tried to turn the jet around to park, as I went over the elevator that's just to the rear of the island, my rear landing gear "fell through" the elevator and broke the jet. Hard to see here but around the yellow/black caution striping is where it fell through.

It is, you have to resize your altered textures and paste them on the appropriate slots. They should be 512x512, if you use a grid snap then they should be pretty easy to accurately place.

Is there a reason the CdG is classed as a Cruiser and not a Carrier?

We could use a replenishment ship, so why not do the fastest one that ever was? Served from Vietnam all the way through 2004, she was faster than any other US east or west coast replenishment ship and had battleship engines and screws, and could maintain 30+ knots. I remember her being in Jane's US Navy Fighters '97, it would be neat to see the old girl in DCS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sacramento_(AOE-1)

There's also an extra NACA duct on the right side of the aircraft that doesn't belong there. It should only be on the left side behind the main gear along the nacelle.

I believe a British firm made some Frigates for Iran before the revolution, 3/4 of which are still around. Those could be useful on the PG map.

I see the CdG hiding back there!

Can't wait to see what other ships you decide to do. WW2, Korea, 80s-90s USN, some Iranian stuff to sink, any of that would be a welcome addition. Maybe someday, the JFK will doable up to near Supercarrier features.

Well hell, it looks like some of them into the 80s still didn't have TCS pods. Here's VF-11 from apparently 1981, and right after it on the guy's Flickr gallery were some VF-101 from 1982 with again no TCS. VF-11 F-14A Tomcat BuNo 159025, AC-106 by G. Verver, on Flickr

Here's the VX-4 bird in question with the same type of non-TCS setup as an Iranian Tomcat: VX-4 Grumman F-14A Tomcat 159828 by Wing attack Plan R, on Flickr Seeing as a number of the really early Tomcats had the same setup it could be a way for those wanting to do mid 70s Tomcat things, but as already said, probably not coming.

They've said in other posts that I don't believe they were planning on fully doing a separate Iran visual model, that it would probably end up with the bullet fairing. Hence my offering of bribery for grownup beverages and probably tylenol to make up for the headache involved in setting that up. The B and probably A need to have a minor tweak to make them accurate anyways, so I figured why not ask again. What I'm alluding to is that various parts can be tied to custom arguments, such as the Phoenix pylons or eventually the fuel tank pylons as an animation. Thus, you can assign different external model bits to the animation ranges allowing you to trade out parts by simply defining another value. The C-101 uses this to an extreme degree, but the Hornet and a few others use it to change the pilot helmet version between JHMCS, bungee visor, and no visor. In practice for the Tomcat, it could be used to do things like add/remove various antennas to help represent older and newer RWR, GPS, radios, the TCS as mentioned, fuel and phoenix pylons, bomb racks, some of the ECM gear that was carried with TARPS pods, helmet swapping between HGU-33 and HGU-55 (maybe even the -68 if their model guy has nothing better to do since they were also used), it could be used to add/remove the yaw string in front of the canopy, all kinds of stuff. Hell, maybe even a huffer could be added like the Community A-4, having the ladders extend when shut down and the canopy is open, stuff like that. BUT, with everything Heatblur is probably trying to prioritize both between fixing bugs, getting the new features out the door that have been held up by the DCS engine flux, and new stuff we're anticipating like the "A" and Forrestal, the A-6, the one time promised AI plane for the Viggen owners (Drakken?), so I figure a heavy rework of the model to add more use of custom animation arguments is unlikely. But if it were to happen, it would offer quite a bit of flexibility to the folks making skins like myself, and could at least help populate an AI F-14D for those doing GWOT era scenarios where Ds were flying alongside Hornets in the Gulf. An AI D model shouldn't have any real hitches adding JDAMs and some of the other weapons not supported by our B and A models from the late 90s.

What's the best way to bribe your modeler into doing the non-TCS model of the "A"? I think VX-4 even had one bird with the Iran style having only the light bump and no TCS housing. Have you guys considered using custom animation arguments tied to the TCS to allow switching of the TCS model? Then it could just be a line in the livery LUA to select which TCS to use, the full TCS, TCS with bullet fairing, the "nub", or, maybe even sneak the -D TCS in there to at least allow for an AI usable -D model.

If we're bored and don't want to wait and have photoshop, what needs to be done to the normals to fix them? Open and re-save with channels flipped or what?

We could use a lot of things. Actual focus between ED and 3rd parties on specific eras or conflicts, actual terrains to fly Korean War jets in, an engine with believable clouds and weather, and spotting, the list goes on. Korea era jets should be perfectly doable from a mod perspective, just a few problems: ED has withheld the code or capability to integrate said aircraft from using essential things like the radio, or properly being able to use Carriers. The A-4 mod still doesn't have radio and has to use a temporary flight model in order to launch off of a carrier.

Parts are absolutely difficult to source, our State Department has seen to that (to the point even Americans don't get to enjoy Tomcats anymore). The other thing here is the Iranian Tomcats are probably lighter than our current B model, possibly by a decent margin. Lighter plane should mean easier to hold the nose right? Last thought, are we trying to do Eagle stuff in Tomcats again?

The challenge with the Bs at this point is limited references for many skins to be truly "accurate". Trying to go through B model squadrons found a lot of gaps on photos of each BuNO/MODEX across VF-211, VF-24, and VF-74. I haven't even gotten to VF-11, VF-32, or VF-103. Heatblur likes to ensure their skins are as correct as possible, down to the stencils. Another thing is timeframe. For Heatblur, they're not really covering the GWOT period B model, which I believe included JDAM capability, so the skins Isoko has done technically don't fit the included B model. In that regard, theoretically neither do the VF-24 and VF-211 ones because they only had them for a couple of years around I think 89-92? There's also the test squadrons, like VX-4, VX-9, VX-30, the NAWC Weapons Division, and Weapons Test Squadron at Pt Mugu. Those cover a few Bs but those were not deployed/line birds. Certainly usable for fun on Vegas if you want to pretend it's Fallon. Really the big thing right now is size. Adding full MODEX options to cover a single squadron means anywhere from 8-12 or so skins, which take up space using the BC7 compression Heatblur is using. While dynamic MODEX would work for most folks, it would mean using blank BuNOs and MODEX that may not reflect how squadrons did their numbering. I get this is not a deal breaker for some, but it's one of the known holdups from HB using the dynamic MODEX right now. At this point, the folks wanting more default skins should hold until dynamic MODEX happens, that way you can have maybe 3 skins per squadron. A CAG bird, CO color bird, and line skin with dynamic MODEX setup. That's going to be the most efficient for multiplayer servers. Most squadrons doing RP would supply and support a custom skinpack of individual MODEX and pilots for their squadron so no real issue there, it sounds like this is more a concern for those who like to be on Hoggit or elsewhere and have more options. I mean the other option is, get a Adobe CC subscription and take a whack at it. There's a whole ton of us on Discord doing this skinning stuff, the Tomcat certainly has a learning curve but it can be a really fun hobby just painting jets.

I too have seen some references to Mil power catshots for As, and I'm wondering if the increasing weight of the A models maybe had to do with it? It may also have to do with the weight at launch and the loadout of the jet.

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3309482/ YaeSakura has been hammering lots of early squadrons and test squadrons lately.

I don't believe the pylon is there, no. The pod is, but no pylon.