D-Scythe

And here I was thinking we were all on the same team.

No, it's not.

Try Mi-28/N. The Mi-24 is old.

Sure, I can agree with that. But that's not a relevent point in the discussion of whether ECM blinking is an exploit or not. That's just calling out other people for their crap. Keep in mind, I'm not calling anyone anything. As I said before, I'm mostly neutral - but I do believe people who blink their jammers is doing the act of exploiting what ED overlooked.

I love LOMAC, but BVR...eh, it's kinda a mess.

I'm a neutral party, just repeating what others have said. Nothing. But how is this proof to support your position? How does this support your point that blinking is not an exploit?

That's different. ECM blinking may be a technique, but it's automated - the pilot has no control over it. Realistically, all the pilot does is switch the ECM switch "ON," and the TEWS takes care of the rest. Flare deployment is manual; chaff can be both manual and auto. Sure, releasing 10 flares in the blink of an eye is sorta gay, but in this case, the "that's-an-exploit!" camp can say nothing, because you really do manually deploy flares. In LOMAC, the various jamming techniques employed when you turn your jammer on is ALREADY "simulated" - that is, ED intended that you just turn your jammer on and that's it. More accurately, the current ECM model wasn't designed to ACTUALLY simulate any REAL ECM techniques - it simplifies the whole ECM vs. ECCM battle into the very BASIC model we have now. Thus, in this manner, LOMAC's simplified ECM model takes into account the various ECM techniques, by NOT taking the various ECM vs. ECCM techniques into account. It's sorta a paradox. Thus, by manually blinking your ECM jammer, your "exploiting" LOMAC's ECM vs. ECCM system. The model just can't handle it, because from the outset, it wasn't DESIGNED to handle ACTUAL jamming techniques - the whole system is a COMPROMISE. Think about it - with regards to the ECM vs. ECCM debate, if you manually blink your jammer, how do you manually counter this? There is NO manual ECCM, because it doesn't exist in the current system. By turning on your jammer really quickly on and off, and denying shot opportunities within 12 nm, you ARE abusing what ED intended to do. That's a fact. Nobody "manually" blinks their ECM IRL - realistically, the pilot just switches the jammer switch on and that's it, the computer takes over. ED intended to model this, but they missed the fact that blinking denies lock opportunities. Thus, to macro blinking to your star-sticks, you are "exploiting" what ED "overlooked." That's the counter-argument.

No, speed is still very important in BVR. Offensively, you want to be going as high and as fast as possible at Fox to give your missiles the greatest smash possible. Defensively, it gives you the option to easily disengage and extract yourself from a potentially unfavourable situation. There are only a handful of ways to shrink the enemy's weapons employment envelope. Being fast is one of them - if you can't be stealthy, be fast. Iraqi MiG-25s were ridiculously hard targets to shoot down because they were just so fast.

Probably not the easiest thing to say, on any given day.

Since we're already making stuff up, I'm going to venture out and say that this "angry" pilot was flying the Su-35. The Russians sent their planes to help the U.S. test out their stealth technology.

Well, the F-15E can already supercruise (without CFTs) when fitted with the F100-PW-229 engines. The F-15A/C would be a completely different aircraft if re-engined - it's thrust-to-weight ratio would be comparable if not superior to any current or projected next-generation fighter aircraft. Well, the good thing about reducing the fleet to 183 aircraft is that the remaining 400 can be used as spare parts whenever a wing is needed. However, there are no spares for a new TEWS suite - it would be awesome if some contemporary EW equipment (either from the later F-16s or the F/A-18E/F) could be fitted into the Eagles. Parts and cost has a lot to do with it - there are plenty of spare F100 engines left over as the legacy fighter fleet gets slowly replaced.

Just out of curiosity...will these new F-15s get the F100-PW-220 or -229 engines? I heard somewhere they were getting re-engined, or something.

Really? Hmm, I always thought the Lakenheath F-15Cs were pretty new - would have thought that most of them would be slated for upgrade as part of the 178 "golden" F-15s slated to supplement the F-22 force.

This is the Ticonderoga Aegis cruiser; it's specialty is anti-aircraft warfare. It is first and foremost a SAM ship, and arguably the most capable and powerful anti-aircraft platform in the world. The thing was conceived to obliterate anything flying in the air. So yeah, it should have absolutely no problem fending off waves of enemy fighters, no less a single fighter approaching at 10 m ASL. Hell, there are cruise missiles that are harder targets.

Too bad flying at 10 m also protects you from the radar missiles of the fighters too. Meaning that the only way to "save" the ship is to blast it with a heater. Which is stupid. A single striker shouldn't cause that much of a problem. You can use that logic and apply it to any exploit/issue in the game. "Hey, if you can maddog ETs BVR, then do it, since LOMAC doesn't have WSM yet." "If you can blink your ECM a gazillion times a second, do it. LOMAC doesn't model ECM realistically anyway." etc.

No, you won't. You have plenty of time to kill it with almost any A/G ordnance you can think of - CIWS is a very short range weapon, useless against aircraft unless they make the mistake of overflying the ship.

Nobody's asking for a perfect representation of real life - you'll need a Tray to run that sim. But Lock On should be coded in a way to force players to use realistic tactics rather than these artificial ones. You don't need a perfect sim to do that. If someone decides to fly below 10 m, punish them by coding random damage that "simulates" ingestion of foreign objects into the engines, etc. You don't have to code for every single pebble on the ground and bird in the air. Or better yet, just let radar missiles track aircraft down to zero - in the end, it's more realistic that way anyway, because the newest missiles track the target's doppler signature. And even a truck going at 70 mph would generate enough doppler for the F-15 to detect with its radar. Then practice on your own time. Fly for the virtual Thunderbirds or Blue Angels. For those that want to play realistically, nothing is a bigger buzz-kill than having that one guy come in at 10 m to take out that friendly Ticonderoga cruiser when in reality anything within 20 nm of that ship would be dead upon detection. Since when has competition been an acceptable replacement for realism? Hell, if that's the case, I wonder why doesn't everyone just play Counter Strike? Or Battlefield 2? Lock On is a *simulation*. If you cannot use tactics from the textbook, then you're playing a game, not a sim. What? Nobody has ever "hacked" the great Jane's sims: LB2, F-15 and F/A-18.

Well, technically, this isn't completely unrealistic. If you're not doing anything to help your AI wingman re-form, then he has to use AB to catch up. If you're both on full military thrust, there's no way he can catch up. In any case, there are bigger things to deal with with regards to AI. I wish re-formation was the only problem.

Actually, the key is to form up with them, rather than waiting for them to form up with you. Turn towards your wingman, then roll one or two miles in front of him so he's sitting on your six, and cut speed back to 600 kmph. He won't even need to use AB to reform.

Not the avionics - the AI FM. The aircraft themselves are gonna "fly" more like the SFM birds, but the AI pilots (e.g. behavior) are still the same.

Well, it depends on tactics of course. Needless to say, most pilots will dance circles around your AMRAAMs - look-down shoot-down currently doesn't...how should I put this...exist in a realistic manner. Targets get lost in the doppler notch very easily, and your missiles don't gain as much energy from the high altitude launch as they should.

Fixed-wing AI improvements are not on the feature list for LOBS. That might change by the time of LOBS's release, as there are people on the team who feel that this should be given much attention. However, given the scope of the LOBS add-on currently, I can say that personally, I think the chance of any significant change to the fixed wing AI to make them behave better than previous iterations of LOMAC are slim to nil.

Come on guys, don't you know that ANYTHING can track stealth aircraft? Stealth is only incorporated into the B-2, F-117, F22/35 to make them look technologically superior - it doesn't actually work. The destruction of the SA-3 is the ultimate proof of that. Who cares about other factors that might've lead to the shoot down? Bottom line, stealth doesn't work.

Outstanding logic Socrates!

Realistically, you shouldn't be able to sink a Ticonderoga or any other SAM ship unless you work as a team. Right now, Ticos are sitting ducks.