Exorcet

Going only by the video posted above, at sea level and clean, the F-16 should at least equal to the DCS aircraft currently ahead of it. What you say is true about A, though the C is no slouch and does have more thrust. In fact as far as I know, I think the Blk 30 C's are generally considered the best anecdotally.

It will depend on how deep you want to go. You can give a few groups a route that has them push toward each other, then copy and paste them, and you'll pretty quickly have a large battle. But the two sides will just be charging at each other until one side is dead (or gets stuck where the other side can't see them). A step up from that is to give the group multiple waypoints and then use the go to waypoint command to dynamically make them advance and retreat. The AI isn't going to do this intelligently, but it can increase their survival rate and prolong fighting. This isn't something I've spent much time on as I usually limit my ground units to smaller numbers. You can have large battles, but your PC hardware will have to be factored in.

This is absolutely true, but the process is a bit tedious and without a detection trigger, you can't truly tie SAM behavior to sensors without scripting. I know the IADS module fell through, but some simple solutions for improved SAM behavior would help a lot. Things like a waypoint/triggered action to make SAM's flash on/off, an option to have them turn off in response to attacks automatically, and an option to link a SAM to EWR or AWACS and use radar for "attack only" like planes.

Thanks for the confirmation. The F-16 model is quite good. This is not a massive error, and my flying wasn't perfect, so if it's deemed to be within tolerances I can understand.

The disperse under fire is a very important option for ground units, I'd recommend considering how to set it for every ground group placed on the map. Luckily you don't have to check and uncheck it every time you place a group. I like to place a few groups down when building a mission, set their settings, and then copy and paste them as needed to save some time. DML's spawning tools can probably do something similar.

A campaign built around exploring anti stealth tactics could be fun. I've had an idea for this using the F-117, but have not been able to devote time to creating the missions. AI F-35's wouldn't just have to serve as adversaries though, they could be interesting as allies as well. Fly with them deep into enemy territory and make use of their SA to survive beyond the range of friendly AWACS. Or you act as a supporting missile truck to offset their reduced weapons capacity when flying in a LO configuration. While there are a lot of AI assets that DCS could benefit from, I don't think the F-35 is that wild of a choice to add.

That is an ammunition explosion. Certain buildings will detonate that way, I believe all the ammunition warehouses in the static object list. I don't think you can generate that explosion arbitrarily, but you can place a warehouse nearby and force it to blow up.

This is still labeled as "PM Evidence" so I wanted to follow up. Do you need more source information?

Aiming and SA is a massive AI issue. Their awareness of things around is seemingly tied directly to object position. If they want to focus or attack something, they know exactly where to look. I would like to see some uncertainty added to this. For example if you fly into an enemy's blind spot the enemy should stop tracking your true position and instead track your last know position + velocity, but there should be random error added on that that increases with time, for example. The AI also needs to have react time. If you shoot a missile at it, flares shouldn't be deployed immediately. There should be a fixed human reaction speed delay (sub 1 second) and then an additional delay based on awareness or having to search the sky visually for a missile. This can get complicated very fast. For example when it comes to reactions, real pilots don't always wait for something to happen. They may try to anticipate an event, which could allow them to react to something much faster than they should. A universal AI delay might actually make them too sluggish in some situations because of this. Still, I think such a system can be setup in a reasonable way, but it might take a couple of iterations.

Very casual testing but: -AIM-9X appears to have high flare resistance when used by the AI. It was better than R-73 against straight and level player F-16. Flare used on reaction. -AI flare effectiveness may be better than player. AI was able to spoof the 9X multiple times in a row. This never happened when the AI fired on a player aircraft. AI uses preemptive flares sometimes. But I need to go back and make my testing more consistent since I was flying straight and level in mil power for the AI. The AI I was shooting at was maneuvering. I'll also note that the current state of AI has it deploy a large amount of flares rapidly unlike the very slow use of flares that it used to use. I wonder if this high amount of flares is the issue. Using a large number of flares is fine, but the AI might be using them more rapidly than their planes should be able to. In the F-16 for instance I can't match the rate of flare use that I typically see by the AI.

Those are questions for cfrag, who fortunately has joined the thread. You can tell units what to do with triggers. Specifically give them triggered actions and then use "AI Task Push" in the trigger menu. You may want to post your mission, then someone here can look at it and give more specific advice. Or I could try to make a sample mission later to show the process.

Troops on buildings should work. The ME just places the unit on the highest point under their position. So if infantry is placed on a building, it should end up on top of that building. This might only work for the prebuilt buildings on the map and not for ones you add. I'm less sure about that.

It sounds like most of what you want can be done with triggers. DML should work as well but I have no experience with it. Flying to a location can be checked with a trigger zone and a flag (ie Once unit in zone, Flag 1 is on). A little more advanced method is to write a short flag activation script at a particular waypoint, but you want to be careful about failure conditions. Example if the player misses the waypoint, the flag won't trigger. I like to combine different checks to make sure at least one succeeds. Though for what you want a simple trigger zone should be more than enough. You can check that the hostiles are destroy with Group dead/damaged triggers. Here the failure mode for the trigger is more complex. Do you want to require all the enemies to be destroyed? If you do, how easy is that? You probably don't want the mission to hang just because one hidden infantry is alive somewhere. Using Group Alive less than x% would give you some leeway. Smoke can be triggered on a trigger zone or unit Returning to base would be another unit in trigger zone

It might be a flare issue. I've had the thought pop up in my head that something is wrong with counter measure performance before, specifically for IR missiles. To really confirm it some testing would be needed. Another issue that might be a factor is that the AI will tend to see a missile launch from a wide range of angles, react to it instantly, and be ready to dump a lot of flares always. I've resorted to avoiding using AIM-9's unless the flight time is very short because they seem so likely to fly toward flares. It can't rule out that it's selective memory since I haven't recorded the success rate, but my experience deviates from what I would expect enough to make me suspicious.

DCS isn't a modern air combat sim. It's a flight simulation sandbox, though ED has kept the standards high for aircraft fidelity. Sufficient information on the F-35 is simply not available, and it would probably require new modeling techniques to simulate the technology it brings like stealth or AESA radar. It might be OK as an AI aircraft, but as a player aircraft it would at the very least be extremely challenging to model with the fidelity of the F-16 or other teen fighters.

I got a chance to look at the ME and there is no thickness setting for clouds, so I'm going to assume that the parameter is a hold over from the old cloud system:

I'm not 100% sure that it's broken, but it might have only applied to the old cloud settings. I can't check right now, but does the current weather tab have a thickness setting for clouds? If it doesn't then the thickness parameter probably doesn't apply to weather at the moment. As far as reporting the bug, there isn't much you can do beyond creating a thread and waiting for one of the moderators to read it. It can take some time.

The F-16 has a very clear click sound when you hit the AB detent and this can be very useful depending on your HOTAS or controls setup. Would it be possible to add an option to enable something similar to the Hornet?

I'm not actually very deep into DCS Lua scripting, from what I've seen you're generally using more complex scripts than I am more often and across a wider range of applications. I haven't looked into weather at all unfortunately. All I can think of besides the value or its reporting being bugged is that the thickness is somehow a depreciated parameter because of updates to the weather system. Is the value present in the miz file and does it change as expected? The hoggitwiki weather page was last updated 2 years before the volumetric clouds and weather update to DCS.

Yes those all look like issues with how these events are being handled internally in the sim, but as just another DCS user I can't do anything about it other than try to offer a workaround. Hopefully the issue is seen by ED and addressed. I can't say for sure but since the mission debrief log records all the event info in a mission, it shouldn't be very hard to pull unit info that belongs to a destroyed unit. The information has to be recorded somewhere if the debrief log contains it.

I don't have experience with trying to create a player manager, but if the event handler ends up pointing to a non existent unit you might try checking for a change in the existence of the unit. So if unit1 existed previously but searching for it later during an event check returns nil, count that as leaving. I'm not sure if you're doing this already. It will make things more cumbersome, but unless some kind of memory is added to the event handler to keep it from referring to destroyed objects it might be the only way to record leave events.

Wingmen used to wait for the player to start up before they did their own start up. I'd like to see that return. I don't know why the change was made.

That's enough. DCS is already a niche with subniches. Some people only fly helicopters, or modern jets, of WWII props. Features don't need universal support and I feel like that if they try to there is a risk of making it bland. Your implementation took away choice from the sound of it and that is what looks like the biggest issue with it to me. I don't see it as a reflection of the downed pilot concept in general. I do appreciate this and I wish ED would try to encourage this a little more. Understandably they don't want to have to read through thousands of wishlist posts, but I think back and forth discussion and deep exploration of ideas is a lot better than skimming the title or first post only.

It's not clear what you're responding to. Is it the menu or the preplanning in the ME? I don't see either as workarounds. Having to direct 20 flights at once doesn't make sense when you're trying to fly your own mission, so I'm not suggesting it. While DCS AI does need improvements, it can do basic things already, some of which are the things you've asked for above. I'm just trying to understand the request and give advice.

The AI isn't useless and some of what you want can be done now. One method is to give the AI preplanned tasks in the ME and then order them to follow those tasks with the F10 wingman F6/7 options. The interface does need improvement though. From basic things like an option to control second element directly to more choices and detail to pass to wingmen. I personally do not like wheels, including the Jester wheel. I've made my own thread on the subject: There is support for this change, though differing opinions on how to do it. It seems like we might need both a flatscreen and VR menu at least.