PoorOldSpike

I've played 5000 multiplayer hours in another popular game like DCS and it's standard procedure to switch off your engine when stationary so that the enemy won't see your hot vehicle on IR, and so he won't hear you if he's searching for you in a wood or in a town. The enemy can't kill you if he can't see or hear you..:)

When I was buzzing around the 3D world taking screenshots I could clearly hear the engines of my Abrams and the static Russian vehicles, that's all the proof I personally needed to conclude that engines can't be turned off in DCS. Other people have said the same thing too, so I think we can all congratulate ourselves on answering the OP's question, and now retire for tea and medals..:) PS- i've been a game developer/playtester/tutorial writer with various game companies for the past 18 years but have never worked for DCS, otherwise its bugs, glitches and anomalies etc would never have got past me..;)

There, you said "from what I remember" which proves my point about the value of tests, because if you ran a few tests yourself you'd have solid evidence instead of having to rely on your memory..;)

I know, but I was responding to Razo who said it seems the AI can turn off its engines. That's why I ran the test and found that the AI didn't switch off their engines, see my screenshot two posts above this one. That's why I'm a test nut because tests cut right through all the guesses and hunches and speculations and outdated earlier game versions tutorials and vids, because my tests are brandnew and bang up to date..:)

i just ran this test with an Abrams gunners IR view, I placed those Russian vehicles in the editor without any move orders, but even though they're static, their engines must be idling because they're glowing white-hot-

I just ran this test to try to switch off the engines of those 3 stationary vehicles after getting in them, but couldn't find a way to do it! I searched the key listings for an 'Engine off' key but there doesn't seem to be one. So the engines keep running and make the vehs glow white-hot like sitting ducks in the IR view below, crazy!

In the Armed Assault game, vehicles show up clearly on infra-red if their engines are running (or have been running), so it's vital to switch off engines as soon as possible so that the vehicle will cool down and become almost invisible on IR. I don't know if that also applies to Combined Arms?

More hands-on test results-

WARHEAD WEIGHT I might do some tests in the future, but for now the warhead weights as listed in the Encyclopaedia are a good guide to what damage they can inflict, and from observation I know bigger ships can absorb most damage. These are the warhead weights as given in the Encyclopaedia, Red=Russian, Blue USA, Orange=China Sandbox (1000 kg) Shipwreck (750 kg) Moskit (320 kg) Harpoon (225 kg) YJ-62 (210 kg) YJ-83 (190 kg) I just ran 2 short tests; in this one I subjected a Pyotr Velikiy cruiser to a saturation attack by Harpoons, it's already taken 12 hits and its health bar has dropped into the red- Below: and after another 2 Harpoon hits, the ship vanishes from the map and begins to sink. Therefore we can conclude 14 Harpoon AGM-84S hits will usually sink a cruiser- I then set up a Russian vs Russian test and hit the Pyotr Velikiy with a Sandbox saturation attack and it sank so fast after just 4 hits that i didn't have time to do screenshots! Not surprising really, because the Sandbox's massive 1000 kg warhead is the biggest ship-launched antiship warhead in the game..:) PS: Noob tip- Saturation attacks have always been my favourite tactic in all the wargames i've been playing for the past 40 years, whether land, sea or air, as I never waste my time pussy-footing around. One of my favourite sayings is- "Never fear to use insanely overwhelming firepower, let the fear be your enemies"..:)

And speaking of missiles "radar reflections", I noticed in my tests that ships off to one side of an incoming missiles axis of approach seemed to be able to lock onto the missile better because they could see more of the missiles shape from the side, or did I imagine it? Here's a typical screenshot; Chinese YJ-83's are coming in from the left down the blue arrows and are hitting the Russian Neustrashimy on the right which is burning. The ship in the middle (yellow circle) is firing its Gatling at the missiles, but the ship on the left (yellow box) is firing its lethal Tor SAMs, possibly because it's locked onto the missiles larger side-aspect view-

Below- A look at their names in the 3D game (American) AGM-84S Harpoon (Russian) P-700 (SS-N-19 Shipwreck) (Russian) P-500 (SS-N-12 Sandbox) (Russian) Kh-41 Moskit (ASM-MMS) (Chinese) YJ-83 (Chinese) YJ-82

A LOOK AT THE ANTISHIP MISSILE SPECS The names of Anti-ship missiles in the Encyclopaedia sometimes don't match with the actual in-game 3D names, so for clarification here are their Encyc entries. There's 1 American ASM (Harpoon), 3 Russian (Shipwreck,Sandbox and Moskit) and 2 Chinese (YJ-83 and YJ-82) AMERICAN- there are 4 Harpoon versions in the game, 2 are land attack versions and the 2 below are anti-ship. However the in-game 3D Harpoon is the AGM-84S version which isn't in the Encyc. (I've yellow-boxed warhead weights for interests sake) RUSSIAN The P-700 is the Shipwreck The P-500 is the Sandbox The KH-41 is called the 'Sunburn' in the Encyc, but called the 'Moskit' in the 3D game. CHINESE

TIP- in our self-created scenarios if a unit with a long reload time expends all its ammo it becomes useless, so we can make new units of the same type arrive at intervals by giving them an 'activation' time in the editor, say every 5 minutes. That way, a fresh unit of the same type will arrive throughout the scenario at say 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes so you're guaranteed to always have at least one fresh unit on the map, think of them as newly-arriving 'reinforcements'..:)

Below: a typical test setup, I launch a barrage of Anti-ship missiles at a target vessel, in this example a Lincoln carrier- BELOW: Some action screenshots from the tests- Russian Shipwreck vs Burke 3 Chinese vessels engage an incoming Harpoon with their 9M317 SAMs- Tico fires its SM-2 SAMs and Gatling against incoming Chinese YJ-83's. Note the SM-2 self-destruct airburst because its lost the lock on the missile- A Russian Pyotr Velikiy engages a Chinese YJ-62 missile with Tor SAMs and Gatlings- Russian Moskits get through this Burkes defences- A Tico engages a Chinese YJ-62 with SM-2 SAMs and Gatling-

I just finished these tests to find out what ships can do to each other. (Example- if you've got a Ticonderoga that's under attack by incoming Russian antiship missiles (Shipwreck/Sandbox/Moskit) there's no problem because the Tico has got green dots which indicate its SM-2 SAMs and Gatlings will engage all the missiles. However, if a Chinese Destroyer 052B or a Frigate 054A launch their deadly YJ-83 missiles, they're red-dotted to indicate the Tico's SM-2's will have a much harder job locking onto them and firing.) Post any comments, opinions, views, questions and thinly-veiled death threats etc in this thread..:) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Below: some anti-ship missile launches from the tests- Tico launches a Harpoon Russian Pyotr Veliky launches a Shipwreck Moskva launches Sandbox Molniya launches Moskit Chinese Type 052B Destroyer launches YJ-83 Chinese Type 052C launches YJ-62

Thanks, that jogged my memory because I recall with some units (can't remember which) a message comes up when they're out of ammo saying they have to be manually re-armed with Left-Ctrl-R, and then a countdown clock appears after we hit the combo.

I ran a few brief tests about a year ago (but I never posted them in the forum) and found- 1- Some units never rearm, even if they're within the radius of an ammo truck. 2- Some units rearm at the same speed regardless of whether they're in the radius of an ammo truck or not. 3- Some units have very long reload times even if there's an ammo truck nearby, for example the Vulcan AAA vehicle took 23 mins to reload with an ammo truck nearby. Sorry i can't remember all the units I tested, so the best bet is for people to set up small tests in the editor to test the specific units they're interested in..:) PS- and let's never forget that if DCS updates and/or tweaks the game from time to time, all our tests (and tutorials and videos) might become out of date and invalid. That's why hands-on testing is the best way to go so that our tests are guaranteed to be bang up to date..:)

I don't know what videos are available but i rarely watch them anyway because they might be out of date and might refer only to older versions of the game. I prefer "hands on" testing, for example my screenshots above are from tests I did yesterday, so they're absolutely up to date and brand spanking new..:)

I don't know about doors but I know how to see in the dark and switch weapons, look- 1- The gunners day view 3- The gunners night view- 4- Key 'N' for gunners night vision (you can turn the brightness up or down with Rt-Ctr-N and Rt-Alt-N) 5- Rt-Sh-N for infra-red vision To change ammo and weapons hit key 'E' to cycle through main gun AP and HE, and MG (the readout is at bottom right of the screen in all the pics but it's faint and hard to see)

Yes, here's a thread about it..:) Scroll to my Oct 23 2020 post headed "SUB TORPEDOES TESTS" for a walkthrough of which keys to press to make the tin fishes go.

Have just edited extra range and weapon data into my earlier Weapons Layouts pretty pics like this one- (PS- my next series of tests will analyse ships air defense systems against incoming anti-ship missiles)..

More exciting news- i've edited some Chinese Weapon Layouts ino my earlier Chinese post.

News- i've edited some 'Weapons Layout' screenshots for US vessels into my thread starter post.

I've put in 5000 hours on Armed Assault and the situation there is exactly the same, there are a load of bugs and glitches that should have been fixed years ago, but devs seem more interested in churning out DLC's on a "quantity rather than quality" basis.

The 3 warships have SAMs and anti-ship missiles but the Dock has none. The warships and Dock all have Gatlings which fired at up to a couple of miles. CHINESE WEAPON LAYOUTS Note: the AI automatically launches SAMs at extreme range but rarely gets a hit because the missiles usually lose their lock and are wasted. However when they launch at closer ranges (if they've still got any missiles left), the hit chance increases) The SAM tests are against incoming Hornets, results may differ against other aircraft types and sizes, eg larger/smaller.