MBot

Arg, my shipment left Belarus on the 9th. I hoped I would receive it until today. Now I am leaving for 3 weeks of vacations with no one left home to accept the parcel.

I don't know the specifics of this campaign, but lately the 1L13 EW radar stopped working in DCS. This might be the reason why you don't see any red air in this campaign. It certainly breaks all my own campaigns, as without early warning, red won't launch any interceptors.

Thank you for the link to the document Ramsay. I still have difficulties believing the utility of the search button logic, as its operation will completely suppress the display of threats to the aircraft (which is against the primary function of the RWR to warn about immediate threats). Perhaps it isn't such a big deal in the real aircraft as you would still hear the continuous threat audio (which is missing in DCS). What is almost certainly wrong in DCS is the definition of search radars. Right now a MiG-21 radar is classified as search radar and a MiG-21 that has locked you up is classified as fire control radar. That has the insane consequences that you have to fumble with the Search RWR button in a dogfight in order to check for MiGs! I agree with Beamscanner that it would be most logical to limit this mode to pure search radars (displayed with "S") and to display ALL radars regardless of their operating mode in the normal mode. That NAVAIR has some interesting language, such as "Emitter of cannon flab systems". FlaB is the Swiss term for "Flugabwehr" which means "air defense". Strange that the US Navy did not adjust this.

The answer is two folded. One one hand, the Shilka was developed to defend ground units against exactly this type of attack. So if the attack is single-ship with an observable approach, this outcome is to be expected. On the other hand, DCS often offers few clutter to mask an approach. Also the Shilka in DCS is not affected in any way by jammers or chaff, which might offer some degree of protection. That conclusion is questionable. Desert Storm was a special situation where the global military might of the United States, built up and designed to fight WWIII, was concentrated on just Iraq. Whether such safe altitudes could be established against a peer opponent is debatable. The losses of the Tornados also have to be put in context. The RAF would have cheered in joy if the Desert Storm loss rates could be repeated over Germany in a war against the Warsaw Pact.

Do not expect anything soon. My work on DCS is very much on low burner since a couple of months. I just tried to give it another go and have seen wonderful new bugs such as SA-6 not engaging and EW radars not detecting aircraft. It seems DCS is in a shape worse than ever. I see no point in spending much effort on content in this situation.

I assume you are referring to ground units. Its not currently possible, but in fact I have already implemented it for the next version.

The mission needs to run a couple of seconds to apply the correct scoring, which is necessary for correct campaign transition. Since this is a 1991 campaign, AIM-120 have been removed from the airbase. Not sure what you are referring to. The F10 map? If it doesn't work, then it's a DCS thing.

Yes, that is what the documents says. The question is, what kind of document that is. It doesn't look like an actual manual (use of !). In fact it rather looks like the internal design document written by Belsimtek themselve. It remains that the current RWR logic is extremely weird and hardly believable. The RWR shows a scanning MiG-21 only in search mode, and a MiG-21 that has locked you up only with search mode deselected. If you are in search mode and notice a MiG-21 spike that goes away, you have to manually deselect the search mode to determine weather he has just locked you up or just disappeared! That is simply beyond any logic.

We would appreciate some developer feedback on this.

It has been over a year now. Any news on this problem?

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I would like to add my support for getting this right for both the F-5 and F-4 later.

The missions are very performance heavy in principle, but with an appropriate system and/or appropriate graphics settings it should be playable (I'm playing it in VR). I did have a bad experience with DCS 2.1 though and have basically stopped playing DCS until v2.x is getting ironed out again.

Thank you for the update Cobra. Fingers crossed that ED will fix it soon.

I agree. I just played the Viggen again and noticed this is still a problem. We won't be able to use the Maverick in VR effectively until the display is properly focused.

Somehow when the stick was announced and when I pre-ordered, I was under the impression that the center mount has a lot more throw. Isn't that the case anymore? That backward-bent extension is what I was looking forward to.

Thank you, this is greatly appreciated! Hearing that people play it and have fun is the biggest compliment to receive.

That is correct. The campaign is design to the principle that every aircraft exists on the map at any time. So in addition to the 6 aircraft of the strike, the other 6 aircraft are just sitting on the ramp with no mission assigned (and could potentially be destroyed by an enemy airstrike). That sometimes multiple aircraft are spawned on the same ramp spot is unfortunate, but that seems to be an issue of DCS. There are ways to play around with the number of aircraft in missions. You can split your unit in two, one is active and the other inactive. Then you set up a campaign trigger that the inactive can resupply the active unit. This way you will never have more aircraft then with unit 1 spawned in your mission, while unit 2 will replace losses of unit 1. This might also require adjustments of the sortie rate in the aircraft's loadout, to make sure that sufficient aircraft are taskable to satisfy the number of aircraft needed for the targets. The whole thing is a balancing act and requires considerable effort and testing, but also allows for very fine tuning of your campaign experience. Unless the campaign is in debug mode, enemy flights (as well as allied flights not in your own package) are set to be hidden.

The mission duration variable determines in what time frame ETAs will be assigned. Note that this applies to full-AI packages only. Any package with player participation will have the ETA synchronized to the player spawning at mission start. You can tighten up mission duration if you want, but for immersion I would suggest to allow the opportunity for the player meeting outbound packages when he returns from a mission. This can have multiple reasons. Do the P-51D have an eligible escort loadout with sufficient range? The cruise speed of the escort loadout must be equal or higher then the cruise speed of any supported flight. Is there even a potential enemy fighter threat (enemy bases hosting units with CAP or intercept tasks, with sufficient range to cover the target to be attacked, with ready aircraft)? Escorts wont be assigned if there is no enemy fighter threat or if the strike package can completely avoid any fighter threat with an appropriate routing.

Are 250-250 MHZ frequencies that your aircraft supports? I specifically implemented the min-max values to force the campaign to assign frequencies that match the player's aircraft, as otherwise DCS throws an error.

I did a few tests of the U22 jammer pod and thought I would share the results. The test setup was as follows: AI Viggen approaching naval based Osa SAM system at 500ft and 420 KTAS. AI set to not evade and had all chaff removed. I did only consider the first SAM shot at maximum range. Follow up shots at closer ranges resulted in considerably increased SAM effectiveness. Test 1: No jammer. First SAM launch at 6.5 NM. 10 hits out of 10 first SAM launches. Test 2: U22 jammer, AI set to jam when locked up. First launch at 6.5 NM. 7 hits out of 10 first SAM launches. Test 3: U22 jammer, AI set to always jam. First launch at 6.2 NM. 8 hits out of 10 first SAM launches. Test 4: Aircraft with no jammer, followed by aircraft with U22 jammer following 1.5 NM behind. Jamming aircraft set invisible to ensure engagement of lead aircraft. First launch at 6.6 NM. 6 hits out of 10 first SAM launches. Test 5: 4 aircraft with U22 jammer in close formation, set to always jam. First launch at 6.6 NM. 10 hits out of 20 first launches. The number of tests is too low to produce precise probabilities, but I think we can see some interesting trends: Jamming on radar lock does not reduce launch range compared to no jammer. Always jamming does reduce launch range, though only very slightly. Oddly, multiple aircraft jamming simultaneously seem to increase launch range compared to no jamming. More significantly, jamming causes about 25% of the missiles to miss even non-maneuvering targets. Aircraft without a jammer apparently also profit from the protection of nearby jamming aircraft. Jammer escorts actually work. I am not sure if multiple aircraft close together decreases SAM hit rate, or if the improved protection (50%) is due to the increased range (for whatever reason the launch range is increased in this setup). I am not sure how far-reaching tactical implications this has, as these numbers only represent the first SAM salvo. At closer range the protection from jamming seems to fall off rapidly. And even for the first shot, I am not sure how much you can depend on a 25% chance of not getting killed provided by an escort jammer. Still, an interesting subject. Viggen_ECM.miz

Has there been any news lately on the correct collimation of the Maverick sight in VR?

I noted that at certain ambient temperatures, the ground idle RPM oscillates quite noticeably. In the mission attached, at an outside temperature of 30°C, the ground idle RPM oscillates between 51% and 52% about every other second. It might seem minor but from the engine sound is actually very apparent. Is this an expected behaviour of the engine? Viggen_RPM.miz

Targets/objectives other than intercepts do not require radius, because they are specific (a specific target or a specific CAP station). Radius only applies to intercepts in the targetlist, because this indeed defines the zone around the airbase that stand-by intercept sorties are launched during the mission.

In Desert Tiger 76 there are also radio problems in MP. I don't know why, since running the same missions in SP the radio works ok.