Exorcet

It doesn't have to be the Hornet. If we're not limiting AA to BVR, then the Harrier is pretty capable against the right adversaries for an attack plane.

The Harrier has bit less range, but is typically used closer to the front lines, which makes up for its short legs. It also has a built in FLIR and the ability to project FLIR info on the HUD, which aids in the night attack capability it was designed for. The Harrier is also the only aircraft in DCS with Sidearm missiles which are nice against shorter ranged SAM's because they're not as heavy and draggy as larger HARM's. Another interesting weapon is the APKWS guided rocket which allows for a very large kill count against vehicles and soft targets. Overall I'd classify it as a better CAS platform and probably a better module if you like shorter rather than longer flights. As a VTOL aircraft it can also operate from unique locations and is carrier capable. The Hornet is infinitely better at air to air, can carry larger SEAD weapons, has more standoff capability, and is better for longer flights. It's a newer module than the Harrier and is still being fine tuned both in flight model and avionics, though at this point it is pretty close to where it should be and shouldn't go through huge changes. My biggest gripe with it right now is that it has overly harsh radar lookdown penalties that make it unreasonably difficult to fight BVR without being coaltitude from your target. However ED has said they will look into this in the short term.

You don't really have to be, just fly higher. It also helps to target a certain speed. Use Max AB for acceleration and then use a lower AB setting for supersonic cruise when you reach your desired speed.

It doesn't require scripting, just the use of some ME tools. I think the only outstanding issue here is that "follow" is coalition locked, other wise doing what you want isn't that hard. To each their own. I'd much rather deal with the air units that actually do things rather than completely static ground units. In my opinion until SAM's at the very least do more than sit around with their radar on forever waiting to die, they'll never be as interesting as fighting DCS's air AI.

Civilian planes would certainly be a useful addition. Hopefully they would also come with improvements to the neutral coalition, which last I checked AWACS would always declare enemy. That's less than ideal with airliners flying around. Having these planes would also be a nice realistic way to fill out and visually distinguish civil airports when flying around.

FYI, most laptops will allow you to change how the Fn key works. It seems like your laptop is defaulted to Fn key always on with Function buttons, which I find extremely annoying. How you change settings varies from laptop to laptop, so if you want to fix the Fn behavior so you don't have to press it do an internet search for how to switch Fn key functionality with your laptop. As for quieting the engines, there is an option called something like "sound as if wearing helmet" this will make most ambient noise a lot quieter.

DCS doesn't have auto backups, so I'm assuming the backups you mentioned are ones you made? If that's so feel free to delete them.

It shouldn't cause a problem to rearm.

ATFLIR is carrier rated, used by the USN. LITENING is not carrier rated, used by USMC, and for roleplaying as a Spanish Hornet. LITENING was added first because it was already in the sim. ATFLIR would be considered the main pod for our Hornet.

FC3 can teach you about flying, air to air radar, air refueling, BVR tactics, WVR tactics, dumb bomb/rocket employment, flight profiles, and probably a few other things. Despite the simplifications these things aren't far off from full modules. What FC3 lacks are accurate radios, high fidelity datalink, AG radar, smart weapons, targeting pods, and emergency procedures. Consider the A-10C too, it's quite modern and complex, though not a high speed fighter. It's even slower than the AV-8. If you stick with it, you'll eventually learn the Hornet. Then you can move on to another plane that is more challenging to fly. DCS can take some time to learn, but proficiency in more than one module isn't impossible. It depends really. The F-16 will teach you a lot about US weapons and tactics. It also shares its flight stick with the A-10. However the F-16, as an Air Force plane, uses boom refueling as opposed to basket refueling on the F-18 for example. There will be some things that will carry over to other planes and some that won't. Even if the F-16 might be easier, because not everything carries over, you are probably best off just training on your favorite plane(s). The reasoning is similar to trainers basically. I can't give a specific timeframe for learning a module. I started DCS a decade ago and even then I had previous experience with its predecessor, LOMAC. However I do remember my skills gradually increasing with practice. When you can remember how most of the systems work, you should be ready for missions. It doesn't mean you will succeed, but you should try just to get the experience. I suggest learning one type of mission at a time (CAP, SEAD, Antiship, etc). This way you can learn in smaller chunks, and your missions are going to only focus on one or two goals anyway. It's extremely unlikely that you will need to use every system on the plane in a single mission.

AI planes can actually have many routes at once thanks to switch waypoint. The trick is to plant an alternative route (or 12) between waypoints on the main route. Force the AI to skip the alt route with a switch waypoint on the previous waypoint, but have a triggered switched waypoint to activate the new route. Not only can you divert bombers like this, but you can make tankers and AWACS retreat from enemy fighters. The current problem is that the mission maker needs to add these to the mission. They could be default AI behaviors, and I think they should be in the future.

I am a bit confused on your thoughts between Flaming Cliffs and full DCS modules. While FC is simplified, the concepts are similar from one to the other. Firstly, when it comes to modern planes you want to operate mainly with HOTAS (Hands on Throttle and Stick). In other words the important stuff is where your hands are 95% of the time. In this way, despite FC being simple, it's a good stand in for DCS. Where DCS and FC tend to split in my opinion is MFD's. These are powerful tools for the pilot but add many buttons for flight simmers without MFD button boxes. My solution as one of those simmers is to map the most used MFD keys to keyboard (you can HOTAS too, but I like to be realistic somewhat, so I don't map non HOTAS to HOTAS). The other area where DCS and FC differ is that DCS models each plane's control logic instead of presenting bindings designed for keyboard and PC controllers, but this shouldn't be that big of a problem. To answer your questions: 1 - In general older means simpler, but at some point you're going to move away from modern jets with missiles, which is what it seems like you want from your plane choice. 2 - Trainers are used in real life because they are cheaper and don't allow new pilots to fly in extreme ways that may put them at risk. In a simulator, you should train in the plane you want to fly. 3 - The F-18 isn't very difficult to outperform. It may be able to do a lot of things, but it is not the best at every role. The F-16 is a better air to air and SEAD focused light fighter, and I'd also say it has much more intuitive controls. The A-10 is better at CAS. The F-15 is more of an air superiority aircraft than the Hornet. The Tomcat is a better bomber interceptor. You can find success in many other planes. If the missions/campaigns you're referring to are the ones built for the Hornet though, then know that subbing another plane into those missions may or may not work. It's technically possible in the ME, but some missions use advanced scripts that might break with a plane change, or may have editing protection.

Yeah, hopefully all of these are parts of the code to revisit eventually. For the AI hopefully sooner than later since ED has recently made some changes to it. I can't be sure if my ideas are fully compatible with the AI as it is now, as you stated depending on how it's coded we might run into problems by trying to change how they can access sim information. I just took my best guess based on experience with DCS.

I think point 1 is just as big an issue, at least when combined with chaff. Missile are of course not infallible, but chaff doesn't have any of its real life drawbacks in DCS. These drawbacks should also inform 3, because employing chaff correctly requires flying a certain way. As for 3, it's not just about knowing that the missile is incoming or not, but what information the AI uses to react. Right now it seems like the AI uses the exact position and speed of a missile to react to it. That's not right. There is no way for the pilot to have this information. One way to create a sense of incomplete information is to change AI reaction to being based on launch condition instead of missile information. The AI would have scripted responses for long range missile shots, medium range shots, and close in shots. Maybe for close in shots they could even just use exact missile data if they can acquire the missile visually (smoke trail). Another method for making the AI more human like in awareness is to give it exact data, then add some error to it. Also limit the sampling rate. For example, right now the AI probably reads the position of a missile every simulation timestep, ie continuously. This could be changed to have the AI only take this information every 10 seconds and then on top of this add a random error to the true values. With this change the AI will inherently become imperfect. Higher AI skills might have higher polling rates and smaller errors, but they would always be there. ED might even be able to replace or supplement the current difficulty levels with direct tuning of the errors and polling rate. This would allow mass testing by players to determine what values provide a good experience.

Not to mention we have people asking for 2 seat versions of single seaters as it is. There is hardly a module no one would buy, I'd think. I'd certainly still want a C if we ended up with a D somehow.

Maybe with scripting. If you're using triggers, you'll either have to use something like detecting a SHOT event in the zone, or detect damage to the unit you want suppressed.

It's already in the GUI. When you set a modifier you can set it as press or switch, not sure if those are the terms actually used, but it's there.

DCS doesn't really have native GCI, servers usually get by just using the F10 map and voice communication. Your best bet might be to find one of the servers set up for GCI and see if the group that runs it is recruiting or maybe offers training. There might also be a couple of youtube videos on the subject.

I know the ring isn't optimal range, but I was thinking if two rings were about the same size the missiles should perform similarly. If the Patriot is smaller in DCS though, I'm not even remembering the size correctly.

While on the subject of Patriot, does the missile not underperform in DCS? If I remember it has the same range ring as the SA-10, but the missile bleeds speed very quickly and generally doesn't do much better than medium range SAM's. Was this part of the fix, another bug, or is this accurate according to ED?

I was testing the Land, refuel, rearm waypoint in the latest OB. A couple of issues: The AI won't refuel if starting with a small amount of fuel. I originally set AWACS to orbit for 8 hours, but only gave it 20% fuel. I wanted the AI to land and refuel before doing the long orbit. This lead to the AI landing, shutting down, taking no fuel, and then despawning. After changing the AI initial fuel state to 100 and orbit end time to 10 minutes, refuel would happen on the ground. But upon taking off the AI would just fly in circles around WP0 and never actually begin its orbit, which was at WP1. Track attached. Also a side note, why does Refuel/arm need us to add a waypoint change command, shouldn't this be inherent in the task? RefuelRearmbug.trk

The F-15's air to air focus shouldn't impact its viability DCS. It's pretty much exactly like the F-14 and should have exactly as much appeal. This is besides the fact that the F-15 can carry AG weapons, including LGB's. And air to air fighter is also no less interesting single player than it is in MP. Remember that back when FC3 was the only way to even fly fighters in DCS, the F-15 was no less popular when it came to single player missions. As someone that players SP only, I find AA AI more interesting than ground AI anyway. Air AI is dynamic by nature, while ground forces are basically static unless scripted to be otherwise. As far as E vs C, they don't have to worry about competing with each other any more than the Hornet and Viper do.

They are similar enough and different enough that the order doesn't matter. As both are US fighters the same general ideas apply to controls and they have very similar weapons options. They're both light fighters with weaker radars. Specific HOTAS logic is different, and I'd say that F-16 is better here with less steps needed to setup systems in general. Both are fly by wire, but the Hornet's is a little more hand holding, however the twin tails on the F-18 allow for a lot more high AoA performance. Conversely the F-16 is much much faster than the F-18. Flying each in combat is slightly different because of this. The last major difference is that the F-18 is carrier capable while the F-16 is not. If you're interested in naval aviation, lean toward the Hornet to learn carrier operations and drogue refueling. If you prefer air force, go with the F-16 and practice land operation and boom refueling.

I fly everything that I buy, but my seat time is not evenly divided. I don't mind having less used modules, but I won't buy something if I don't intend to use it at all. I prefer fixed wing, but DCS's helicopter flight models are so good that I bought the Ka-50, UH-1, and Mi-8. It's great that DCS has such a large library but the downside is that it's becoming harder to make use of everything. I'd like to get the Apache and Hind for example, I have some fond memories of flying them in a few PS1 games, but I barely have the time to make missions for the Ka-50.

I didn't have issues getting them to bomb rigs on the sea. My mission is attached. Harrier Attack.miz