Exorcet

Antiship for the B-52 should only have 1 payload option which is AGM-84's. You can add extra AGM-84 under the wings. I'd be careful with default settings. They will get the AI to act but sometimes in unpredictable ways. Nearby doesn't sound good for an antiship mission. If there are small boats close to the airbase that's a mission better served by lighter CAS aircraft. Also many naval ships have very powerful missile systems because they need heavy defense to be worth the cost of building. B-52's should not come within 50 miles of enemy ships. Here is what a flight plan might look like: Notice the distances. B-52's main defense against ships is to never get close. The AGM-84 allows them to attack from miles away. The situation where bombers take off from a base and try to attack ships nearby isn't realistic and that's the problem with the situation you set up. Realistically the bombers would attack from a distance and use a mass missile salvo to overwhelm the ships: Here is the attack from the plan above, this is as close as the bombers ever get and notice they fire a lot of missiles. The mission is attached. AntishipB52.miz

The Encyclopedia information needs an update and consistency overhaul. Though in the case of the S-300 25 nm seems about the max distance for a non closing target. Missile range is variable, so a single number can't covey performance very well.

Yes, install a new DCS version in a different location and you'll be able to choose which to launch. Previously OB and Stable had different names which made keeping track of which was which easy. I haven't updated to the new unified DCS yet, so I'd back up the current Saved Games DCS folder you have now before installing the second one just to be safe. C:\Users\<USER>\Saved Games\DCS\Config Contains settings for DCS The folder \Input specifically has the controls for modules. Copy this folder to the same location in the new install Saved Games to bring your controls over. I believe there is also an option in DCS to save your inputs as a file and then load them. You can try that too. If you make a backup of each (old and new) DCS Saved Games folder before copying files you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

The DCS manual covers task types I suggest picking the task you need, deleting the default waypoint action and replacing it with some kind of Search Then Engage or Search Then Engage in Zone action. 1. SEAD for focusing in SAM/AAA, CAS for ground targets in general including SAM/AAA. With Search Then Engage you have a list of target checkboxes that you can use to exclude certain targets like ships. 2. Antiship, although CAS has some antiship options through Search Then Engage. 3. This is always mission dependent. CBU-105 is great for groups of armored vehicles or short ranged air defenses. However it also reduces range and performance and doesn't have the reach to fight long range SAM's nor the concentrated fire power to defeated hardened targets (maybe, DCS damage modeling may let it excel at roles it shouldn't). AGM-88, AGM-65, Mk80/JDAM/Paveway are all common AG weapons for these planes. Additionally jammers and avionics pods are available when needed. 4. This is again mission dependent. Both planes carry AIM-9 L/M/X and AIM-120 B/C. The F-18 can also carry AIM-7/M/MH/P. AIM-120C is the longest range and best use against the highest threats. AIM-120B is slightly worse than the 120C but might be more available depending on timeframe or situation. Missions against lower threats may use 120B's to save C's for tougher fights. The AIM-9 is a short range IR missile. Use it when dogfights are expected, or perhaps when low capability air targets are present. It's common to mix both types, with more 120's carried, as if one kind of missile fails the other can be used. Both planes also have a gun with different types of ammo that can be swapped depending on mission. 5. The F-16 is not an antiship aircraft. It can attack ships with AGM-65 and dumb/laser bombs, but the Air Force would use B-52's instead. The F-18 has AGM-65's and bombs in addition to AGM-84 Harpoon antiship missiles. Harpoon is overkill for very small ships but needed for large warships. To set the planes up in the ME they need a route with waypoints and tasks at the waypoints to follow. Search Then Engage and Search Then Engage in Zone allow you to configure their attack settings provided the correct Task is set when adding the plane to the map. The DCS documentation explains in more detail.

ED offers miles as a reward to buyers. And your past payments to ED were for the modules you received. Why should ED owe more than that?

I agree. FF planes usually aren't that complex control wise, but there are exceptions. At the end of the day the designers don't want pilots to be looking down, they want them to be looking out of cockpit to fly and fight. That's the entire point of HOTAS. FF allows you to push keys as FC3 does but also lets you find a switch and click it in the cockpit which is an advantage when it's not clear what key a command is bound to. I think the true advantage of FC is that it standardizes controls across multiple planes. That's harder to do with FF. There is no "lock on" button, there is TMS up short or Sensor Select down long. Buying the entire pack gives you multiple aircraft that you can jump between with consistent controls and that's how I would sell it to people that are trying to decide between it and FF. Controls are about compromise and that will also be the case in a simulator. The ideal controls would be a 1:1 replica cockpit but that's not always practical. I try to replicate the real controls as much as possible, though I don't think that adding a switch to HOTAS controls defeats the point of FF. Some switches are going to be easy to reach in reality. The multilayered switches like the protected gear levels in the MiG-21 and Mirage F1 are difficult to replicate correctly as buttons. In those cases I think combining the commands to lift the guard and the lever at the same time only makes sense because for the real pilot it would be a very simple motion. It's a subjective area that people will approach differently. Anyway, I don't see a need for camps. FF and FC can coexist and they bring benefits to each other. People have more options now and that's good.

Should work with attack group for drones. Cruise Missiles only with Search Then Engage I think. AI is not good at it.

Making new planes takes more work. Using the existing planes only makes sense. They were already in development for MAC, they didn't want to waste the work, so they converted them into FC2024 modules. F-5A, etc would have meant throwing out and wasting previous work and then starting over and having to wait years(?) for results. Also with FC being simplified, the F-5E might as well be a F-5A in the same way that while the F-15 is technically a C, the simplified modeling makes it good enough as an A stand in when AMRAAM's are restricted. Not quite as good an example admittedly since avionics are simpler in the FC and the bigger difference will come from the engines and airframe, but it's easier to blur variant lines with FC modules than with FF ones.

That DCS lacks credits and XP is good. This is part of why DCS is better than other games. Credits and XP are just a bandaid to hide that your game isn't fun to play. If a game is good you play it out of enjoyment. Grinding is not fun, it's a waste of development resources, and it often leads to overpriced content. DCS is fine as it is. This is nothing about moving with the times. It's about destroying what DCS is and make it a generic and dull product. If you want daily missions, DCS can do better than something like assigning a random and what I'd consider predicable and meaningless objective to fulfill day after day. DCS will have a DC at some point to give you actual missions to do. Today it has the ME and online servers which are dynamic. If anything I'd want games in general to move toward the way DCS does things. It's so much better. From reading you post it does seem that you like having a to do list in games. I guess DCS could include some guidance for players unsure of what to do, though none of that requires XP and the like. It's because ED is aiming for a certain level of fidelity, and because the Russian government is trigger happy. Growling Sidewinder's Su-47 has nothing to do with the topic. It doesn't change the fact that a realistic MiG or Su is risky for ED to model and that the documentation needed to model it in detail may not exist. You may have found some documentation, but that doesn't mean you've found enough to model a plane. I do think that DCS, as a simulator, has room for less than perfectly modeled aircraft. FC does fit with that idea and now that ED has reversed their previous stance and are considering more FC planes, maybe it will open the door to aircraft that can't be simulated as FF. It's an insane price. The problem with microtransactions is that they inflate the price of items by immense amounts. Just consider how many skins are in a given module, which you pay around $60 for. If you divide the number of skins by the price you get a price per skin. Let's say it's 20 skins. $60/20 is $3. However this would mean that the entire cost of the module is skins. Not flight model, not system model, not 3D model, etc. $3 a skin is ridiculous and standing video game marketing practice is to hide that ridiculous price behind a low transaction cost to make people unaware of how much they are spending. Effectively undoing the free user files system and making things worse for everyone. I disagree. Nothing should be about encouraging people to spend money. A good product makes money by being worth buying. Also if people don't want to play something then they don't need encouragement. They need to find something that interests them. Encouragement typically takes the form of unfun forced content or hoops to jump through before you can actually enjoy anything. My encouragement to play DCS comes heavily from the fact that it leaves what to do up to me. There is nothing to indicate that what you're saying will work. Your example also works just as well with the current system where people just buy the planes. Let's not forget DCS has free trials anyway so people can already play for free. ED will probably never run out of planes. Not unless they can greatly increase the rate of module releases. For most aircraft we have one version, out of the dozens on offer. Players want multiple versions or versions with additional capabilities. ED has catered to this demand with module upgrades like FC3 (upgrade to FC2), BS2 and BS3, and A-10C II. The same can be done for other modules. DCS offers infinite content through the ME, and the DC is under development. While its current state might not be very attractive to some I don't see overpriced video game marketing as any kind of solution. The foundation for a great experience is already in DCS. It just needs more development, not to be replaced by price gouging system that just makes the sim harder to enjoy.

I share the sentiment. I prefer FF in part because it's easier than FC3, but everyone has different workflows that work for them. One thing I can say about FC3 is that if you like to jump between aircraft often it's nice to be able to use the exact same controls across many planes. In my opinion that's the biggest thing that FC3 offers.

As much as a more advanced spawn system makes sense, the fixed slot system we have now isn't really out of place. Going to the other extreme where a player can slot anything anywhere could break missions. Just to use the example you provided, what is a IRIAF Tomcat doing on a carrier? In any case have some curated form of advanced aircraft slot selection would be a very nice addition to have and it's relevant to any expansion of FC aircraft since it would be a shame to have to place separate slots for FC and FF versions of planes if a mission builder wants both.

Those aren't FC aircraft, they are part of the DCS core, so any FC related news isn't relevant to them. ED does plan on more model improvements but expect that to take time, as the bombers and S-3 did.

As someone with a complete preference for FF, while I won't be purchasing FC versions of existing planes the aircraft are still fairly good simulations. From the cockpit of an opposing fighter FC planes are hard to tell apart from FF ones and even simplified as they are, they are more complex than the AI. If they bring more players in, it's a win for everyone.

That would be incredibly silly. Personally I'm not all that interested in simplified versions of FC planes but I am curious to know if the existing FC aircraft will receive any changes. Kola being available already is unexpected but welcome.

You want to avoid the default tasks. Those are only good for simple situations, like making an AI attack something for testing purposes. DCS does need some AI improvements, but you don't have to test every last thing. You will have to learn some of DCS's quirks but when you do, you can make simple attack runs that work 98% of the time in just a few seconds. You also don't have to script a mission to the point where you know everything that happens. When I said the Search Then Engage was more predictable I meant it makes the AI stick to a task rather than randomly flying all over the place. Also keep in mind that real combat missions are scripted to an extent. Actual pilots plan how they attack and how they will defend against being attacked. That's what you're setting up with AI waypoint actions. Even if DCS improves there really isn't any way around giving the AI the needed context it needs to approach its mission. If you share your mission file I and others can look at it and try to help you figure out how to set the AI to get what you want.

Were you using the default SEAD task? I delete the default ones and use Search Then Engage usually. Gives more predictable behavior. I don't recall seeing my SEAD flights going in for gun kills in recent missions.

I believe the XMIM-115 of the Roland also suffers from this issue.

FC3 won't be going anywhere. They should perform very closely. I also wouldn't say that the FF one has to be more difficult as FF comes with more capability and having the cockpit controls is an advantage. Though depending on additional limitations, there may be more challenges depending on what is being done.

I know there will be jokes made, but it's a really good question. I'm sure a lot of people just look at DCS as a place to blow stuff up, but with the flight modeling and systems modeling being so good it also has a lot of potential as a flight game without combat. We will have to wait and see what the DC will ultimately end up being but if it's really good it should offer the ability to generate non combat missions as well as combat ones. Or perhaps more low intensity stuff where something like a Yak could fit in and not be totally overwhelmed by cutting edge SAM's, etc. If the DC is only able to provide straight forward strike or CAP missions that users can then edit further, it will have done its job and that's fine. I'm holding out for the possibility that it can do more and maybe even orchestrate things like communication between AI units and players (imagine if it was smart enough to automatically create F10 radio options for example). Maybe those things are out of a scope, but if ED can figure out how to include them it would solidify the DC as the core of DCS content for all modules.

I know preferences vary from person to person, but the ME gives you unlimited content in DCS. I haven't actually played any of the official content for any module because of the ME and I never consider what content is available for a given module because of that. The ME will take some time to learn, but making small missions is pretty simple. DCS also gives you tool to randomize missions so that even if you make them, you don't necessarily know what will happen when you fly them. In the longer term ED is working on a Dynamic Campaign to produce content automatically. There is a very very simple version of this already available in the Fast Mission Generator.

Just wanted to bump this again as it has been a long standing issue and I've never been able to get clarification on if it's intended or if it's a bug. Either way reverting to the old system where the plane jumped from followed its route would be useful in a lot of situations, especially when wingmen don't quite do their jobs.

If you're bombing vehicles, CAS is the task to use. Then you can tell the AI to find and attach vehicles on its own with Search Then Engage (in Zone). It won't use JDAM's for this though since they can't track moving targets. Disperse under fire off should stop the vehicles from moving.

Start is a triggered action for the group, under Commands. You won't find it under the trigger menu, unless it was added on a unit, then it shows as an option for AI Task Push. DCS works as it does because uncontrolled was added some time after late activation (which is the same as changing the start time). It is also useful to have the start command tied to triggers and not WP0 time because then you can make AI start in reaction to events, like an enemy attack of unknown time.

The issue might be more complicated then. If someone from ED sees this they may ask for a log from your last session with stuttering. You can find the logs in the Saved Games folder, C:\...\Saved Games\DCS\Logs I don't know if this will help, but having it here might save a tiny bit of time.

It's more than maps. I don't have stutters anywhere. What is your PC? Do you use mods? How large are your missions? If you're using a HDD instead of a SSD, that might be hurting you.