PoorOldSpike

Just to confim there's NO bug..:) I just ran another bunch of tests, this time on the Syria DLC map, and can confirm that the ZU-23 gun family plus the Shilka DO fire at night with and without cloud cover (screenshot below near Tyre on the coast) Notes- In the Syria DLC we only get 3 Russian AAA guns, namely- ZU-23 emplacement (2-man crew) ZU-23 closed (2-man crew) ZU-23 on Ural truck (1-man crew) I ran the tests multiple times, sometimes all three guns fired, and sometimes none or only 1 or 2 fired. The truck-mounted gun seemed to fire less often than the others, presumably because it only had one bloke manning it. The dear old Shilka fired every time bless its reliable little cotton socks..:) I gave the Hornet 1000 ASL altitude for his run-in, but he climbed higher on his own initiative as he passed over the guns, so perhaps some guns were better than others at tracking him as he went up which would explain why some seemed to fire more often than others. Other things to note- I made all the units "Excellent' skill rating, and the Hornet "Ace". The time setting was 0:0:0 (midnight).

It's 11pm here in Plymouth UK mate and I'm dead on my feet and about to hit the sack. My tests above were on the Persian Gulf map but tomorrow I'll run them again on the Syria map to see what happens and let you know. I've been told that the Syria map is a WIP open-beta thing which might still have some bugs that haven't been ironed out yet. PS- How do i send mission files to you, by email or what?..:)

It's not a bug, I just ran these tests which confirm all six guns of the ZU-23 family and the Shilka will fire at night but ONLY if there's no thick cloud cover. The gun family are- ZU-23 closed ZU-23 emplacement ZU-23 insurgent ZU-23 insurgent closed ZU-23 insurgent on Ural 375 ZU-23 on Ural 375 Test 1: NOON, no clouds. I simply flew a Hornet over them at 1000ft and they all opened up on him as we'd expect- Test 2: MIDNIGHT, no clouds. They all fired again because there was enough ambient light around from starlight and town lights etc for them to see the Hornet- Test 3: MIDNIGHT, THICK CLOUD COVER. The Hornet overflies the guns but they never fired a shot because it was pitch black and presumably they had no night optics. The Shilka DID fire because its gun is radar-guided Let me know if I've overlooked anything, send your comments, feedback and death threats etc on a postcard..:)

In the top pic I've tasked the AI Su-25T to bomb that Perry destroyer (circled) along the arrowed flight path, but as soon as he sees the AA Chaparral he chickens out and begins popping flares like crazy and banks away towards the DP and never comes back even though the Chap hasn't even fired, cluck cluck.. So in this next test below I assigned 'Invisible' to the Chaparral and this time the SU-25 ran straight in and clobbered the ship just fine because he couldn't see the Chap, hehe.. BUT, he never popped any flares at all throughout the entire attack and almost got this missile up his jacksie! So my question is- Can we make an AI plane do straight-in bomb runs like that AND pop flares for self-protection while he's doing it?

I've been asking around help forums for years to try to solve it without success. For example I've got a whole bunch of games sitting in my library that are totally unplayable because I'd need to hold a magnifying glass up to the screen to read the ingame text. For the record I play DCS in 1280 x 720 because that reso gives a comfortably readable screen; i've tried higher resos but they either shrink everything or distort the whole image..:)

I've tried native 1920x1080 in the past but all the text is shrunk and unreadable like looking down the wrong end of a telescope!

Nah, I watched a few youtube vids of World of Tanks but it didn't grab me at all because it seemed too mad and hectic, whereas I prefer games that require careful planning; in fact I tell my noob recruits in other games- "Fight with your brain first and your weapons second" I played the Combat Mission series by email for 10 years, then gravitated to Armed Assault multiplayer for more years and dabbled in other games in between like Panzer Corps, Order of Battle, Flight Sim X etc. PS- as I confessed earlier, I'm a total PC dummy and absolutely hate computers, I only know how to do a few mouse clicks and button presses to make my little men, tanks and planes run around shooting their guns. For example here's my NVidia resolution screen, I use the highlighted one and it seems okay, but as a matter of interest why are the top five in their own 'Ultra' class separate from the 'PC' class? What does 'Ultra' mean anyway?

Well I'm old alright (72), one of the "rock legend generation" but still manage to whup kids half my age in the online wargame jungle, and have also been writing tutorial shit for years. BTW, I'm a mod over at the Mission4Today forum, my photo galleries have had 8 million views so far:music_whistling: Here's one of the first wargaming trophies I won, a 6" silver job, it sits on its own small table in my living room carefully positioned so that its the first thing guests see when they arrive, and I can keep steering the conversation towards it during the course of the evening- Below: Hallelujah! Syria seems to be working for me now (touch wood), here's a screenie of me patrolling the shores of the sea of Galilee..:)-

Thanks, i've downloaded 4 hours of OB so far, so I might as well let the download continue for the remaining 7 hours overnight and see if I can get Syria working tomorrow..:)

The OB download has still got 7 hours to go but there seems to be no way I can stop it at Steam or I would..:)

Thanks, if and when I finally get Syria working, I shall uninstall it like a hot potato at the first sign of bugs and try to get a Steam refund, then re-install the dear old base game and my other DLC's like F/A-18 Hornet, Persian Gulf etc. Incidentally the advertising for Syria never seemed to mention the fact that I'd have to install OB to make it work, grrr. PS- Syria cost me 32 GB pounds (40 US dollars) which seems a lot for just a map anyway.

Thanks guys, so are you saying that the only way I can get the Syria map to work is to download and play OB which is just a WIP and possibly buggy? For two pins I'd stop the OB download right now (it's still got another 9 hours to go) but I can't find a "cancel download" button at Steam so presumably it's going to go on overwriting my dear old standard DCS installation and there's zilch i can do about it except pout and sulk like crazy (sniffle) (PS- every game i've bought from Steam over the years has usually had massive download times, longest was 14 hours for X-Plane, so nowadays i only buy from Steam if the games are not easily available elsewhere.)

Thanks, i've got myself in a bit of a mess, I followed your instructions to get openbeta okay, but then discovered Steam had accidentally deleted Syria from my Library and refunded me! So I've bought it again and it's back in my library. I clicked on DCS (openbeta) in my library list to open the game but i've got to wait 11 hours for it to download, does that sound right to you? What the heck does "openbeta" mean anyway, is it a completely different version of DCS? After the 11 hour download will there be two versions on my system, the standard version and the openbeta version? Sorry but I'm just a grunt wargamer/simmer and PC dummy..:)

Hi, I bought the DLC Syria map this morning on Steam and although it's showing as "installed" in my Steam library, I can't find it when I start the game (sniffle), only my Caucasus and Persian Gulf maps are there. Have I done something wrong or is it a known issue or what?

Thanks guys, incidentally I often roll a dice in the editor to see what units and locations it gives us, it's great fun because it means we get a brandnew unpredictable battle each time we crank up CA. We can either save the scen for replaying or discard it and build a new one next time. I only play smallish battles anyway, so setting one up at the whim of the dice only takes 20 minutes and it's great fun..:) "I have set my life upon a cast, and will stand the hazard of the die"- Richard III at Battle of Bosworth

Yeah I've only had CA a few weeks so am still just a noob and have barely scratched the surface..:) PS- have any of you guys got the DCS CA Georgian Campaign? What do you think of it? Does it contain extra units that are not found in the standard CA?

Yes there are a zillion options and things to click on and if you forget to click just one vital essential it scuppers the whole scenario as I found out to my cost..:)

1- Bin there, dun that using the CAS option to pinpoint tanks (below), but when I entered the tank to check for damage, I was surprised to find I could fire the gun and the MG and drive it around just fine because I suppose the planes 30mms must have splattered off the thick front armour- 2- Got a bit of a mystery- Yesterday I made him fire his 30mms at buildings and ships using the 'Ground Attack' option (below), but today in a new test I can't make him fire the 30's nor the pods!!! I should have saved the old successful test as a template duh, back to the drawing board (sniffle)..

Thanks mate, don't ask me how but I've somehow muddled through by trial and error; taking early retirement at 60 yrs of age a few years ago was the best thing I ever did because now I've got all the time in the world do do tests and things like this without work interrupting me..:) 1- The SU-25T AI pilot opens up with his cannon pods against my Abrams- (He also shot up Humvees and trucks and stuff in other tests and blew them up) 2- The russki pilot yells "Eat this Jack!" I'll analyse how I got the pilot to do it, then post some screenshots later showing which buttons and things we have to select in the editor to kickstart him into action. (PS- for the record his cannon shells did no severe damage to the Abrams as far as I could tell, and the tank was firing back with its roof-mounted 50 cal, but the plane got clean away)

Look, in the editor I tasked the enemy SU-25T pilot to fire his cannons at my Hummer but he simply banks away even though I gave him two gun pods under the wings, huh you try to be nice (sniffle).. When I give him bombs, cluster bombs and rockets, he happily uses them, but he won't use cannons, what am I doing wrong? PS- and what the heck's that on the centre line, it looks like a twin cannon but it doesn't show up on the payload screen, weird..

Thanks, and i've also discovered that if we place a US 'Transport M818' truck near units that have depleted ther ammo, the truck will resupply them with ammo. For example the Stinger Manpad replenishes in 4 minutes but other units might take much longer such as the Vulcan AA at 25 minutes! PS- I mentioned earlier that i've played 5000 hours in Armed Assault III over the past few years, most of them in multiplayer, and for the record I'm liking Combined Arms just as much, if not more..:) CA units have a much more realistic "feel" to them because you can sense their weight and inertia etc, whereas AA3 units seem more "lightweight" and insubstantial. Even the CA terrain has a nice solid chunky feel to it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my reading of real world Tomahawk cruise missiles is that they don't lock onto specific targets but simply fly to whatever pre-launch coordinates have been fed into them, then either airburst when they reach the spot, or dive onto it.

Yeah, I was looking to see if they'd have new-fangled "soft launch" AT's that could be fired from buildings..:) PS- New question for everybody- I set 'Unlimited ammo' on the mission customisation screen below but my units still run out of ammo and the 'Depleted' message comes up, why is that?

Okay I ran some tests and the results are- Pic 1- None of the five American 'Fortification' class units in the screenshots fired at the T-55, the tank simply blew them away with his main gun and MG (that's his green tracer), so obviously the Forts don't contain AT missiles. Pic 2- The forts DID fire at the BTR-80 with their small arms/MG's bless their little cotton socks (that's their red tracer) and cut him to shreds. He fired back a few times with his MG before they trashed him. Pic 3 (below)- The Forts did fire at the Russki infantry. Pic 4 (bottom)- I then turned the Forts 180 degrees to see if they'd fire at infantry behind them, they did but the Bunkers 1 and 2 could only fire when the infantry came into the oblique line of sight of their slits. SUMMARY- Tanks will have Forts for breakfast because they don't have AT weapons. Forts can kill APC's with their small arms/MG's. And Forts can easily chew up infantry. Note- sometimes 2 or 3 tracer streams came out of each Forts slits and windows, so there must have been more than 1 weapon in there, except for the small Watchtower which only produced one stream.

Wow I thought somebody was vaping..:)