nomdeplume

Just had this a few times as well. Hadn't seen it before because I normally restart the game between sessions due to the external sounds bug. Saved the track but the issue does not occur when replayed. Got in the habit of opening the controls indicator (RCtlr+Enter) before hitting Fly so the controls were displayed right at the start, and can confirm that the game sees the stick centred even when this happens. So: doesn't appear to be controls related, and doesn't get saved in the track. This testing was with the -M version, no external stores, 20% fuel load, air start.

Are you actually using DCS World? Previously, each aircraft was its own separate game, which you downloaded and installed separately, so if you wanted to fly an A-10 you'd run DCS A-10C, a Ka-50 you'd run DCS Black Shark 2, etc. Some time ago they merged them into a single game called DCS World, which comes with the Su-25T and TF-51D modules for free (as well as the Black Sea map), and other modules can be purchased and installed within the game (like DLC). You can download DCS World from here: http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/world/ There are currently three versions. 2.0 early access is for the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) map. This must be purchased separately. Unless you've purchased that map, you don't want this. 1.5 is the release version, and probably what most people want to run. It includes the Black Sea map as well as the Su-25T and TF-51D as mentioned above. 1.5 early access is also known as the "open beta" and is the same as above, but tends to receive updates a bit sooner than the release version. Can potentially break more often, but quite a few people (including myself) only run this in lieu of the release version.

You can also use the nosewheel steering button to open the comms menu, as this button functions as a secondary/alternative mic switch in the F-5 once you're off the ground.

Maximum lock range should depend on the target as type well, since they each have their own RCS value which should affect the maximum detection range of that target, and therefore the maximum lock range.

As in an option to have the auto-hover always bring your aircraft into a hover regardless of your current parameters?

Yeah, there seems to be conflicting information in the manual and I'm not entirely sure how the system works. On page 202 of the PDF, you have this: The is carried out until the fuel is completely depleted is what I seem to experience most of the time with LEFT LOW auto-balance. The automatic shut-off seems to work reliably with RIGHT LOW. After that, setting it to LEFT LOW also causes it to automatically stop. So my impression is that LEFT LOW will not stop on its own, but RIGHT LOW will, and neither will start if the tanks are already within the balance range.

The orbit speed (if you're using an orbit task) definitely sets their pre-contact speed, like it does for all other aircraft. Are you sure you're specifying this as ground speed? The tanker-specific behaviour doesn't appear to come into play until you've requested rejoin.

Not that I've experienced. You might want to try disabling force feedback support in the options menu, I think I've seen some references to this messing up trim for various aircraft. As for up/down, they currently are described as 'Elevator Trimmer Switch - PUSH(DESCEND)' and 'Elevator Trimmer Switch - PULL(CLIMB)'. I don't recall any problems when I set them up. In any event, "up" and "down" are weird descriptors for trim. Normally pushing the button up = "nose down" trim, to match pushing the stick forward.

Liveries are limited to specific countries (part of the config file that forms part of the livery), so you might need to change the country of the aircraft. France is probably a good place to start.

Yes, only slave Magic seeker to radar target. There would be very few times when slaving the radar to the Magic seeker would be useful. If you have the target in front of you within Magic range, use the close-combat radar modes to quickly lock it.

For AI JTAC just using the mission editor functionality, check out this thread: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=138196&page=2 You can also look around the mission builders corner for scripts that provide lasing. I use my own script but CTLD apparently also has some auto-lasing scripting built-in. (e.g. look at this post.)

If you're using static weather, you need to set the cloud density to above 7 or 8 to get the option for thunderstorms. Posting a screenshot of your weather settings would allow people to help a lot more than just guessing what you might have done...

Not that I can think of. You can only stop the SAM from shooting at anyone, or make particular units invisible to all AI. I think destroying the missiles in-flight would be doable. I read a mention of a "smoky SAMs" script people were using for training purposes, which I assume deletes or explodes the missile before impact so you can practice evasion. Can't find it, but I imagine it uses an event handler to detect when a surface-to-air missile is spawned into the world and then schedules a timer to remove it after an appropriate amount of time. Main problem is that it will still cause the battery to use up its missiles trying to shoot at the "jammed" targets which will also result in it not being able to engage anything that's not protected.

Haha. I/we wish! Polychop actually planned to implement something like this for the Gazelle, but ended up cancelling the feature because they couldn't get it to perform well enough. It's a shame as it's information the engine should already have (since it has render the viewport, provide distance to terrain for laser rangefinding etc.) but it's just something we don't have any access to. Would be really helpful though for a lot of mission types.

RWR panel seems to be described fairly well on page 184 of the manual (186 of the PDF). Travel pods increase aircraft weight and drag. Not any real use in-game except for simulating deployment flights and similar (arrival at a new airbase). I think they're usually filled with the bits and pieces used for prepping aircraft for flight, e.g. all those flags they stick everywhere and remove before the flight. GBU-12s are perfectly functional though might take a bit of practice/experimentation to get high altitude deliveries right. They're not any more useful than a Mk-82 unless you have something lasing the target though (F-5 cannot self-designate), so unless you're into mission building you'll only use them if you're playing a mission designed for them. For online play an A-10C or player-controlled ground unit can do it, otherwise the mission needs to be specifically scripted to provide a JTAC or lasing support.

You can see range circles on the map. My usual technique when visualising is to place down only the launcher (often in a distance location) so you can clearly see its range circle, and then drag it to the area you're setting up the SAM. The radars also get range circles but obviously the actually engagement range of an SA-3 is much much shorter than the search radar's maximum range. Also - most of the DCS SAMs are capable of firing with only the tracking radar, if it's pointing in the right direction. That is, they'll track and engage targets that fly into the tracking radar's cone even without a search radar. The search radar will prevent the system from re-cueing the tracking radar. I'm not sure about the SA-3 specifically; but generally, the best way to render a SAM a non-threat is to destroy the tracking radar, which is required for missile guidance.

Depends - if your AI WP 2 is a landing WP (at a FARP or airbase) then landing is forever. If you're using a "Perform Task - Landing" then it can take off from that. But only when the Landing task is finished. You can either use a duration - there's an "On land" thing where you can enter the amount of time it spends on land - or the usual stop conditions. Since it's a "Perform task" type of foreground task, it won't process the next waypoint commands until it has finished. So the switch waypoint won't be run until the task is ended.

I experienced this with an AI Mi-8 as well. Only had the one missile though, spent the other three on two Su-25s. Not reading too much in to it, but definitely had good tone. OTOH, they've already updated the missiles quite a bit (all-aspect etc.) so I'm not sure there's much value in performing extensive testing of the ones we currently have.

My best guess: the commander is always keeping track of their current position on their (paper) maps as they fly around. When they spot an enemy unit or group, the pilot takes whatever defensive action is required, and then the commander works out (on the map) where the enemy they spotted is and pass it up the chain. So they'd use whatever coordinate system is annotated on their maps. Given they're an Army asset I guess it could reasonably be either? I don't know what French ground forces prefer to use. The NADIR gives the Gazelle's current position in L/L and the sight gives bearing and distance (in metres), but I don't think those are particularly easy to combine directly. They might be able to mess around with the polar coordinate system to input an offset, but that doesn't appear to be what that input mode is designed for, and regardless it's unlikely to be any easier than just looking at the map that the commander probably has open all the time. I think the sight is probably mainly used for either performing 'recon at a distance' of particular locations that are suspected to contain enemy forces, or to check out a town prior to ground forces entering it, or something like that. I don't know if they'd directly work with fixed-winged aircraft, but if they did I think the sight would be useful for providing direct observation from a safe distance, to provide visual talk-ons and/or BDA reports, and report on enemy reactions to air attacks, aim corrections, and that kind of thing.

Pretty sure the leader of a ground/naval group is always the first active unit in the group. So if you kill unit #1, #2 will become leader, etc. So you can just get the list of all units and select the first one. <code>group:getUnits()[1]</code> or similar. For robustness, you'd want to make sure the group actually still has at least one unit before doing that.

Tried enabling the "User Curve" checkbox? (It could definitely be made easier, though!)

Just add it as a client as usual. It'll show the two positions in the slot list in multiplayer. Would be a bit silly if you had to specify whether a helo could be multi-crewed or not...

No, PID should not be any different to normal search. They'll see you as a 'spike' on their RWR but not get a lock warning. I'm not sure. Possibly. The first post of this thread does list NCTR as an upcoming feature still to be implemented, so I guess so. Don't know any details about it though or its limitations.

One thing to note is that paths are in 2D with x and y coordinates; which correspond to x and z 3D coordinates. For 3D coordinates, y is altitude.

Discussed in the bugs section, here: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=172289