L4key

OK, a)Humble opinion - I agree, hence the ironic inclusion of it next to the word 'sermon' - ie. I've yet to hear a humble sermon. And b) I'm not saying anyones having a go I'm just pointing out the flipside as I see it. Sorry didn't mean it to sound as defensive as it did! :doh:

Right all you 'professionals' who don't like this article. I have to admit I don't agree with a lot of the detail but in terms of proving you don't have to be a qualified military pilot or have years of you life unfilled to learn it all it's a great help. To explain: I am relatively normal, my job and family mean that I don't get a massive amount of time on this sim and to be fair, even if I did I'd probably still only give it max hour a day say four/five days a week. That said I love sims, I'm not a 'game mode' fan at all - I like the immersive experience and hate things that are too simple (HAWX etc). Realism is very important, and I love learning something from scratch etc, reading manuals etc. BUT - Had BS forced me to run a manual start up, learn the full functions of ABRIS and Datalink, to name just three things in order to complete a campaign - it'd have gone in the box on the shelf and never played. That's my loss maybe I know but I reckon thats the same for a lot of people. Had I not found Para's tutorial I doubt I'd have been able to invest the time to learn all that as the tutorials suggest you should. Call me unwilling to learn or part of the 'instant gratification generation' but I'm quite happy to read manuals and study tutorials... to a point. I think BS has it down perfectly to attract a broad enough base of people willing to learn but wanting fun and the sim nuts who will be pissing into a CH Peebottle XS during missions because heck - it's all about the realism. You're never going to keep everyone happy but ED has to balance it for commercial reasons. This is still the most specialised PC sim ever I reckon but for some it still won't be enough, and on the other hand, thank god it doesn't attract your average 'computer gamer' who thinks shoot em ups such as COD are realistic! You may think people like me dilute the experience but if we were disenfranchised because the sim was too complicated and tough to learn then I can't see flight sims being developed ever because they won't attract enough people. End of sermon, it's my humble opinion!

You've never tried this beast, obviously... :lol:

Agree with Nemesis though will learn it one day for sake of comlpleteness but you don't need it to get into combat sooner (same with data link IMHO) Check out the training mission 'How to fly and blow stuff up' or something. I'm someone will post a link I always recommend it but never know where to find it :cry:

-1 :megalol: (not really)

You chaps could buy some of our lovely 1990 spec Typhoons... :lol:

...and Terry Taliban are appealing on human rights grounds! That'll be the same Taliban that cut off the hands of dissenting voters and stone women. :doh: Don't get me wrong I'm a little on the fence and undecided when it comes to the war itself but some things really are BS.

Have you heard some of the people who post on here? :smilewink: Leaving rep un-restricted would lead to everyone giving/getting rep all the time and it would lose its integrity. You may use the rep system well but others may not if it was completely unrestricted. To create a set of rules around it to completely guarantee reps integrity would be very difficult or would have to be manually monitored, what this site does is create just a few rules to try and ensure rep isn't spammed or just tossed around. Those rules do sometimes cause frustration but IMHO it's a better system in balance than a free for all.

Loads of people slag off the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro but I love it! Plenty of buttons, ergonomic, throttle slider and twists, and cheap. Perhaps it's because I'm used to it and don't know better but I'd have no trouble recommending it from a simple point of view.

Don't know about the rudder on keys, whereas I would say a FFB is not absolutely necessary, I reckon a twisty stick is the minimum, so much of your control goes through the rudder, more so by miles than any fixed wing sim I've played. I bet pedals and FFB are really good but I have a plenty immersive time with the £20 Logitech Extreme 3D. Keys for rudder would do my head in - Invest in the twisty stick as a minimum IMHO.

If when you trim you are doing so when twisting the stick only then it'll only trim the rudder, the pitch and roll (x & y) should remain where they were trimmed previously. Have you tried looking at the rt ctrl + enter (control guide as nemesis said) screen? This always helps me, my rudder is sometimes trimmed a way over for normal flight which is not neccessary when I enter a hover. More often than not if it's around center on the control guide I ain't yawing in a hover, that has to be the problem if the heading AP is set.

I am in wonderous awe of anyone who can play this sim without labels being turned on! If you're a beginner it definitely helps to turn the labels on.

Thought that might be the case about other things affecting the score, thanks GGT. Better up my game huh. Anyway - thanks for the answers everyone, super sim & forum as usual.

Ahh, makes sense - who am I to doubt the ED ballistics model!! Thanks. Those Bradley's are in trouble later! Can anyone help me with the suceeding more in missions bit?

I put a load of HE into them the other night to no avail. AP is normally always rubbish when I use it - I know there's been some threads about it but I can't remember the upshot. I would assume AP would be the way to go against partially armoured targets but it never seems to work that way, I always use it after my HE gets used up.

I don't really do mission building so I suspect that is why I don't know the answer to this but can anyone explain the parameters around success and failure on missions in campaigns? I'm talking about the missions which are not 'single objective' specific - ie take out that unit or recon but the ones that are 'destroy suspected positions' etc around certain points. Sometimes I take out loads and loads of units to be stuck on 10% whereas sometimes I only get a couple and I'm at 100%. It's doing my head in a little because the other day wingie and I polished off a good 25 or so tanks and bradleys etc only for me to fly over the adjacent hill only 1 km from where they all were and be knocked out by a Linebacker that was hiding behind the brow. I was still on 0% success but at the exact waypoint the briefing had told me to do my thing. Had I hit the Linebacker first and cleared all the units in that 'area' would it have jumped to 100%? Is the mission scoring progressive ie 10% per primary target or does it only trigger 100% when you kill all in a certain radius, or part of one group? Or either? How would I know which is which from the briefing? Also - I don't seem to be able to knock out Bradleys with cannon, either grade, they aren't like Abrahams tanks are they? One Vik sure lights em up... Sorry if this is Noobish, but it's better than all the pant wetting over what ED'll do next... Whatever it is, they'll do it, chill out and enough of the speculation, its becoming boring! IMHO of course...;)

I sometimes use the reset button in flight as I get into a never ending battle where I can't get control properly, wildly overtrimming one way then the other - normally after a hard evasive manouver where I've forgotten to hold the trim down. It's never sheared my rotors (yet!) but you do have to anticipate a wild pitch up normally. After resetting I can get back in stable flight asap. Trim reset is also useful when you don't re-centre and the controls freeze. I do it only very occasionally now but having the trim reset mapped on the joystick next to the trim helps. Great tip btw Kurtz about landing. Never thought of that but it's so obvious now you mention it! :doh:

But then if your looking behind you, ie at your engines - how do you see your monitor to look at them?? ED could just say it was a feature but you'd never know!! :megalol: I don't have TiR BTW... :cry:

Ahhh! I wondered why my wingie would never attack a manpad I had lased! I thought he was just being a pussy. (Well, more than I was being a wimp by asking him to do it - stripes and all that!) :thumbup:

You live near a base with F-16's on it... All sounds a bit 'Iron Eagle' to me! L4key's jealous! ;)

Ed Rasimus, pilot in F105 & f4's in Vietnam: 'When Thunder Rolled' & 'Palace Cobra' Best WW2 book for me is 'Duel of Eagles' by Pete Townsend. Old now and has a lot of history but the definitive story of the Battle of Britain. Reading a really good cold war book about the overflights of the USSR in the 50's & 60's - It's called 'By any means Necessary'. Already mentioned but 'Chickenhawk' the best chopper book ever by some distance I reckon. Yes better than Apache. If you can look em'up do so, I certainly will look at some of the others on here. Good idea!

Got to have more patience fella... otherwise it's HAWX for you! You'll get it, just practise. It's such an acheivement when you acomplish even the most basic of steps. Trust me, give it some serious effort for one week and I promise I'll eat Joey's hat if you still feel the same.

Well F me! :doh:

...Issues of hitting their counter rotating twin rotor they don't have? Arf! Probably not! Really, Itkovian, that was worse than one of my questions! :lol:

In my experience anything too 'jerky' with the collective high. Try yanking the stick fully back and right at 250 kmh! Does it for me every time. :joystick: <-- what he's doing!