Exorcet

Try posting the mission, it makes debugging easier. What time are you changing? If you change the WP0 time that will change spawn behavior. You can place units to the map and have them start later by using the "Uncontrolled" checkbox and giving them a start command.

Jester is the F-14 AI. However if you're going to play online he can be replaced by a player. Jester is not an expert RIO. He can do the basics, but don't rely on him to solve complex problems. Heatblur (the F-14 developers) have put a lot of work into Jester and continue to make improvements, but a human RIO is better. If you do fly with Jester you will want to make sure to learn his limitations and bind some of the commands you can give to him to your controls so you can help him when he needs assistance. DCS has squadrons. I don't fly online very much, but this section of the forum has squad recruitment posts. DCS does have some online events, but as someone who plays mostly offline, I wouldn't be able to give the most detail.

It would still provide increased fuel capacity, which comes with some benefits. Increased loiter for long missions and less tankers needed for a given mission size for example.

This is truly an impressive update to start the year with. I don't think anyone can be disappointed with this plan for DCS. Hopefully all goes well and to schedule, best of luck to the developers and thanks for the hard work.

I don't think it's too early to float ideas to ED, as long as they actually respond to them and some discussion emerges. I really wish they took that approach with the BVR AI, many good ideas were brought up before its release, but none of them were really integrated into the AI revamp.

Smart weapons were designed for a reason, the other side's technology isn't going to stand still. You don't have to limit JDAM strikes to MG armed buildings or SA-3 sites. Fight tougher opponents and suddenly employing smart weapons is just as exciting as using dumb bombs. The airframe also becomes more relevant. The speed to loft bombs and avoid missiles means a F-16 can approaching things different than a A-10. Though on the other hand, there is nothing wrong with missions using older weapons. In a real war with peer opponents, smart weapons might get depleted over time, forcing the use of dumb weapons in their place. It's a simple idea, but general enough to be used in a wide range of DCS missions.

From what I've seen on the forum, FC3 is still getting significant updates. Just look at the F-15's radar. The R-27 is also the missile getting the most attention from ED after the AIM-120, and the only planes to carry it are from FC3.

In case I don't get to it tomorrow, from my testing: Don't use carpet bombing for attacking a small target or target point, this by design uses the formation of the bombers to determine the increase the spread of bombs. Use a regular bombing task, set weapon to bombs, release all, and make sure "group attack" is checked. Make sure the bombing waypoint is a few miles from the target (20 or so miles).

If you are having trouble with a mission, please post it. It makes debugging much easier. I added a flight of 4 B-52 to the map and they dropped all their bombs in a single pass.

Also true, but we're in a simulator. We can fix the odds if we want. It's not necessary to simulate the common conditions. Everyone has different interests, which is why I made a point of bringing up a customizable experience. A slider lets everyone get the experience they want. Also, connecting with my first point about how realism may not lead to where one expects, even if DCS had long repair times, that doesn't mean a player would have to spend them stuck in the cockpit. In fact in real life the pilot wouldn't be in the plane while repairs are on going. We could simply take out another plane and leave the repair time as a strategic element of the game that effects things outside of player participation. I'd also like more visuals for ground crew. As it stands, the unrealistic ghost crew that serves your plane can be problematic. If you don't see any equipment around your plane, it's quite easy to forget you have external power connected and taxi off without requesting a disconnect. These are functional as well as immersive changes.

Rearm and refuel doesn't always take hours. Quite a few planes boast being able to perform the task in minutes. In anycase, I think a sim should have the option to model everything realistically, even if few might use it. Put a slider somewhere to set reload time so that it can go from 1x speed to 10x speed, or whatever is needed. Also, real life is a really mixed bag. In topics like this people like to argue that reality always goes a certain way, and that it's boring, but that's not really true. Just for example contrast this: With this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lachhiman_Gurung The wiki story sounds like a video doesn't it? But it's actually the true to life story. Of course, the situation I quoted isn't unrealistic either, I just want to point out that that even in an extremely realistic environment, it can be hard to predict what will happen.

A huge yes to this. A very long requested feature that would be very powerful. Moving triggers are borderline unusable when limited to unit level only.

The C is already underpowered for BVR fights, bring on the A. Being worse is a selling point, it means it's different. Capability is relative anyway. In period correct servers, it's still going to be one of the top planes. It will certainly outperform MiG-21's and Mirage F1's.

Is there any possibility of having an AI A-7D included with the A-7E module? This is just for the sake of slight historical accuracy, as A-7D's were used by the Air Force and would make more sense as land based units. The two versions should be fairly similar, I think the D may be a little lighter. If adding a second AI version is too much, then perhaps the inclusion of Air Force liveries and the ability to disable folding wings (it seems like I was mistaken and the D retains folding wings) would suffice? Of course I would not say no to a flyable A-7D either, but I'd assume this is out of scope for now.

Great to see multicore coming along. I really want to see how this impacts performance. Also, while I know it was long, long shot, I was eagerly hoping to see a teaser for FF F-15C. Maybe next year.

While this should be among standard wingmen commands, we currently have two ways of doing this. One is through scripting, where you can display any plane's fuel state at any time. The other is a recently added trigger that activates when a plane reaches a specified fuel state.

AI does have radar. It's why many mission makers really want detection triggers in addition to X in zone triggers. X in zone is all seeing, while AI radars are limited by RCS, beaming, terrain, etc.

It depends on the mission, but minutes are just fractions of hours anyway. 15 minutes = 0.25 hours, etc. Also, the previously mentioned FPAS MFD page will tell you how much fuel you'll have when you arrive at a waypoint, so you can just bring it up instead of trying to work it out yourself. I've found that it's fairly accurate.

Like anything, AWACS have evolved over time. Having period correct or nation correct AWACS could mean having different levels of radar performance. EC-121's for example had less range than E-3's and also were worse at dealing with targets over land. We also need weaknesses like that modeled along with modeling the actual command and control elements of AWACS.

The Hornet has a MFD fuel page, you don't need to calculate anything at all. And why is fuel/min better than fuel/hr? You can just convert by 60 if you need the other.

Sounds like a horrible restriction any time you're flying a realistic mission, which could span hours and hundreds of miles. Let people Esc whenever, just make it such that if they do it while airborne, the plane doesn't despawn, so it can still be shotdown. Or count leaving the slot as a loss.

I have no use for the condition option under groups. With triggers, it's simple: Mission Start : Flag set random value Once : Time More than X : If Flag > X, spawn group. The second line can probably be mission start too, but I usually delay spawns to keep mission impact low.

Thanks for the update, this is really good news. Although one thing that I've been wondering about is if we'll have access to the strategic AI outside of the DC? For example, it would be interesting if I could make a single mission in the existing ME, manually setup my side, but then assign units to the enemy side and leave the AI to decide how to use them. Is this a possibility? Or will the AI remain part of the DC only? If it's possible to separate them I'd really encourage ED to look into it.

Leave and go home. That's the only realistic option here. A S-300 with backup should be pretty much invincible to a single plane by design. Best bet if you want to try anyway is probably JDAM since they can't be shot down. Use the F-16's acceleration to lob them as far as possible and also to outrun missiles fired on you by getting into cover. Although note that the F-16 will hit its max speed at low altitude very quickly. There is no penalty in DCS for exceeding this speed, but in real life you wouldn't want to go over it.

Not a solution to your problem, but a suggestion; I have no idea how DCS's backup system works. By the time it was made I had already been making my own backups because of a similar problem. The save button might as well not exist for me, I always save as in the ME until finished, then go back and delete the old versions.