rossmum

It's an issue with the suspension, not burst tyres. They clip through the ground sometimes, IIRC it was part of an attempt to make the aircraft not get stuck on grass in DCS when the real thing is happily able to take off and land from the same IRL. It'll probably need some tweaking back and forth to figure out.

I've only faced the 29 a few times, in one or two it was unaware of me and in the most recent they either sprinted away when threatened, or I got jumped by two and simply failed to defeat a second or third missile because I bit off more than I could chew. They're pretty scary but they can be killed, you just need to try and waste their R-27s and then either get too close for the R-60 to turn, or too far for it to reach. It is a lot more limited in range than most people realise, especially chasing a pursuing target. On the other hand, the radar is easier to deal with, and the close combat modes are very good.

Fine with this. Earlier 14 with older weapons and MiG-23MLA (make sure not to use the Iraqi SPO-15/ASO-2 mods, no matter how much people beg!) will come eventually and can replace the 14A-135-GR and MiG-29A. Tomcats seem to fare a lot worse than you'd expect (even more so if I'm flying it!) so I don't think it really affects the gameplay negatively at all.

Did a quick test in the instant action free flight mission. Radar seemed even more temperamental than usual, wouldn't pick up hot targets especially at low altitude. Climbing a little and looking for cold targets, it seemed to be working normally. I'll have to do some more testing later, it definitely feels like it's not seeing things it should.

Works fine for me.

If you guys don't absolutely require the latest video drivers to live (and some of you with newer cards or NASA rigs or who play newer games might - that's fine), all I'm gonna say is I'm still sitting here with no issues at all. 442.16 is known to work. I'm on 438.something. If you're a real MiGhead and don't have anything really requiring you to be up to date, just roll back for the duration. Obviously it's far from ideal, but it works, and at this point that's my main concern.

Re: NVG mods... kinda wish they didn't pass IC, most of the fun from night flying in these old birds comes from being blind as a bat and relying on instruments and radar. Of course, there will always be minmaxing with people cranking up their gamma and the like, and 90% of the server is highly allergic to climbing above treetop level, but... a man can dream.

Historical consistency is something we can't really achieve yet with what we're given in DCS. I have a pet list of things I'd like to see go away but ultimately it'll be a while before anything like that is really viable. The air to air situation is more even than that, I think - the AIM-9P outranges the R-60 considerably in the rear quarter and is a near-guaranteed one hit kill on anything. The R-60 feels slightly less like a wet lettuce than it used to, but sometimes you do still need two or even three to drop particularly sturdy targets and shots from certain aspects have a habit of passing the target before detonating, inflicting bad but survivable damage. The fact the F-5 only gets two missiles is a definite disadvantage, but to be honest anyone carrying six R-60s is probably not someone you need to watch out for so much as someone carrying two or six. The biggest problem blue pilots have with AAMs is not knowing what their acceptable launch parameters are and yeeting their 9Ps away in hopeless shots with close to zero chance of connecting, many of which would be dicey even for the R-60. 90 degree crossing shots on close targets, 50 degree stern shots at half the range the missile needs to turn, etc... for red there tend to be less misses due to bad aspect and more due to bad range. It's not uncommon to see 3 or 4 R-60s all pissed away on a retreating target, which easily outruns all of them but which wouldn't outrun a 9P. If we had older Sidewinders for Blue - 9Ds or so - I'd be in favour of removing the 60s again. As it stands our other missiles are either slight better than a 9B or somewhat worse than a 9P, can't be uncaged for leading shots, and the larger missiles are heavy and draggy enough that the original 21 loadout of two only is strongly recommended. As for blue with 70s hardware vs red with 80s/90s - outside of the specific case of the Su-25T, Ka-50, and the one or two Tors, this isn't a thing really. Our F-5 is a 1980s Swiss aircraft with a considerably better RWR than would have been encountered in the 1970s, far in excess of anything red has access to even on their most modern aircraft. Tanks are a mess, as both teams have somewhat period correct tanks for the mid to late 80s but the damage and armour values are extremely lopsided, and there are things present in CA that weren't there on the real vehicles (e.g. thermals on the BMP, T-72BV) and then features missing which shouldn't be (stabilised guns on... almost everything). Blue have some units from right on the cusp of the 90s but in some cases it was because it's all they really have - like the Avenger being taken to replace the utterly useless Chaparral. For mid-range SAMs there's not really anything that can be done; there was a historical imbalance as it was, let alone what we do/don't have access to in DCS. As long as the bulk of red's air defence is still Shilkas, Strelas, the occasional Osa, and Kub sites, I don't really see a problem. I personally want the Ka-50 off the server but until the Mi-24 is out, it won't fix the situation so much as tip the odds the other way for helicopters. There is also the issue that it and the Su-25T are needed in some missions, particularly Behind Enemy Lines, to try and account for the massive superiority of blue's armour and the A-10, which would otherwise outclass the base-model Su-25 enormously just by virtue of having TV-guided weapons alone. The Viggen is a whole other bucket of issues, but at least in the air to ground role it has that horrid little collimator sight to make life more difficult. The Harrier gives blue a small, fast, and relatively hardy short-range SEAD platform (we have no SEAD capability whatsoever, unless the 25T is in a mission) that can also pack Mavericks, and god forbid one somehow find itself some 9Ms to bring to the party. Unless we take the approach of nixing all specialist aircraft and having a server purely of MiGs vs F-5s we are going to have problems somewhere, IMO the server is fairly reasonable with who gets what and as we get more appropriate units, things can be tweaked to bring more consistency, though we'll always have to deal with some anachronisms in terms of upgraded avionics or such on period-correct aircraft. Tors were addressed by Alpen - there are very few in any of the live missions and most of them are in places players should not even be. In any case, it's a mid-1980s system. Overall I think the available units achieve a reasonable amount of asymmetrical balance. There are some specific problems, but overall I don't think it's fair to claim red has any major advantage at the end of the day and I would actually say there are a few missions where they have to make a much larger effort than blue if they intend to win. Behind Enemy Lines is the poster child for that. The only effective way I can think of neutralising blue's air superiority over Hatay involves pulling fighters away to do it, or requires a (period-correct and very pivotal) aircraft we don't have in the sim yet. Matroshka is absolutely correct in saying that Mi-8s have much bigger problems than the Hueys on that mission, because unless blue's fighter jocks are asleep at the wheel it is trivial for them to maintain air superiority over that entire valley. The closest red transports can really get without unacceptable risk is the far ridgeline.

And yet, there are a lot of modules with major bugs that have been around for even longer. Third parties have more limited resources to work with and ED cooperation is necessary for some issues that lie with either the core game, or some aspect of the core game interacting poorly with driver updates, as this appears to be. I am quite sure that if they were capable of fixing it themselves, it would've already happened by now.

I do, and I can tell you straight up that the only thing the T-72 has going for it against the Abrams is the ATGM (which you have a very limited number of, and generally requires you to stay still while guiding it). The Abrams can tank multiple hits even to the sides, let alone the front, while the T-72 will generally die to a single hit from the Abrams. Likewise, the Bradley is apparently made of Reaganite instead of aluminium and in an exchange of fire with a BMP (say, if the BMP is out of ATGMs, or if the Bradley surprises it at close range), the Bradley will almost always win - which I am at a loss to understand, other than being yet another example of why ground unit damage models are probably the most neglected aspect of the game. Tors are only present in a small handful of missions. In those, they're either covering airfields/FARPs, or they're on the other side of red's main airfield as a kind of backstop to prevent people doing a wide flank around said airfield and just popping people as they take off. Red undoubtedly has the better helicopter for anti-tank/ground work. You could make an argument we have an advantage in slinging as well (of course I say 'we' because I prefer to play red, but I play both sides depending on team balance) because of the Mi-8's better speed. However, the Su-25T is only available in a handful of missions. In others, we're back to the Su-25, which is inferior in capabilities to the A-10A and in some respects, even the Viggen, while also far more prone to interception than the latter is.

Blue's biggest asset in Behind Enemy Lines is Hatay being available from the start. All you need is a handful of F-5s basing out of there and you can at very least force red to use valuable slots to bring MiGs in to try create a diversion, at best totally deny them the airspace. My average sortie time on that mission when flying the F-5 must be scarcely over two minutes, you get airborne, fire your two missiles, then straight back to land. There's no real incentive to stay airborne longer and try for guns, nor do you need to waste time going all the way back to Incirlik, nor do you even need to worry about fuel except maybe on every third or fourth turn-around. I've flown the mission a couple of times, usually on blue though due to red being stacked when I join. On my first time flying as red in a Su-25T, blue must've been undermanned or just uncoordinated, as Hatay was already close to being captured when I joined. We had me plus a Ka-50 plus tanks to work with and it went reasonably well, we captured the airfield. Minakh was held only because blue were piecemealing tanks in one at a time, probably being driven directly, and I was just loitering overhead and waiting for the rooster tails to appear. We had perhaps a single Shilka left on the airfield (it may even have gone neutral a few times, I don't recall exactly) and had I failed to spot one of those Leclercs we would've lost it. Thankfully whoever was controlling them wasn't aware just how easy it was to spot the rooster tails from the air and they didn't think to just send a stack of units in simultaneously. Even if they'd come in as a group, I doubt I could've stopped them. If they'd come in from different directions simultaneously, it would've been over. Eventually the server emptied out and so we ended with what I guess qualifies as a red victory. I don't generally fly any ground attack at all when I'm on blue for this mission, but I've done slinging and CAP/wild weasel duty. Blue's FARP is reasonably well protected and has a nice, safe route through the mountains to a good overwatch site for SAMs or artillery/tanks, but blue also has to make more trips with a slower helicopter to actually utilise it, which is fine. Viggens and A-10s I can't really comment on, but I would imagine they have a reasonably good time on the mission as they can loiter behind or over the mountains until needed and then zip across the valley. I don't know if bringing the Gazelle up in comparison to the Ka-50 makes much sense, as blue ground forces in this mission don't actually need much help knocking out red's tanks to begin with, and A-10s usually take care of whatever's left. From the F-5 side, it is trivially easy to establish total air superiority over the entire valley, particularly in conjunction with Avengers to clean up low-flying MiGs without warning, and a Hawk or two to discourage swooping MiG-19s. As bad as the Hawk is, if you don't attempt to defend it, it will still kill you and thus requires action. Meanwhile, AI Strelas will attempt to gain a radar lock before firing, which lights up our RWR like a Christmas tree, we can mentally map out red's entire air defence network based on our RWR, and finding EWRs and sniping them off is easy due to both the better RWR and the impostor spotting issues (single glowing white pixel on top of a hill? There's only one thing that's going to be). F-5s can just zoom around the valley spotting and gunning any Strelas that go active, and any incoming aircraft are fairly easily intercepted. The only time I saw red make any headway on my blue runs was if they sent 3-4+ aircraft in at once, and even then they had a hard time. This is also not factoring in that as far as I can tell, the average blue player rarely (if ever) turns their radar on and doesn't realise how absolutely goddamn amazing the F-5's radar is, to the point where it's arguably too easy to sort contacts out of ground clutter and the fact weight-on-wheels isn't modelled meant I was aquiring and locking targets while on my takeoff roll the other day. For red counterparts, really the closest I can think of is Phone Booth, but I don't really know if I'd even consider that an equivalent - it usually turns into a draw because we mount an impenetrable defence over Beslan while not really being able to project enough power to recapture Nalchik. One of my favourite missions, actually. Good balance of insane furball action over the involved airfields, or longer, more thought-out flights as you try and sneak ground units into place to capture the other field.

Modern systems are what blow out development time and budget on DCS modules (just look at the Hornet or Viper). There's enough different stuff in there that you wouldn't necessarily need to make a full-fledged MF and then add the upgrades, but at the same time you're making a whole new cockpit, totally reworking various systems, adding systems that aren't there, etc. I think a lot of people would like a LanceR but with M3 being the size they are and having other projects, I'd rather see an F-13, PF, or PFM if we were to get another MiG-21 variant - it'd probably be much quicker and cheaper to develop, and flesh out earlier periods of the Cold War (particularly Vietnam, for an F-13 or PF).

Blue have SEAD of sorts, more than we do in missions without the 25T (Harrier with Sidearm). In fact, the past few times I've been on the server, I've noticed pairs of Harriers very effectively clearing Kub sites using them. Obviously the 25T is capable of killing SAMs from further out, though.

The white dot is the impostor. Basically when the aircraft gets far enough away, the visual model derenders and is replaced by that dot (hence 'impostor'). This is why, if you have a good monitor of non-insane size and run, say, 1080p, you can spot aircraft against the sky from over 50km away (which is just insane). Compare this to other sims, where the LOD models get chunkier in silhouette in order to account for worse visual acuity on a screen than with a human eye. The impostor also applies to ground units, which means you can spot things like EWRs from insane distances. The only 'weakness' here is that as you get close, the impostor is replaced by the visual model and thus becomes actually difficult to spot again. Seems ED managed to switch the moonlight glint impostor with the old daylight one, or something. Really they just need to abandon the entire system and use what literally every other combat sim on the market does, but I doubt it'll happen. It's a fair amount of work and in a game where the majority of the playerbase are (allegedly) playing singleplayer exclusively, it doesn't matter if "BVR" doesn't actually exist in any true sense. As for SAMs... this is the problem you run into. The Soviets invested a lot of time and money into highly mobile, closely integrated air defence systems while NATO (and particularly the US) essentially twiddled their thumbs. Even fixed-position systems like the S-75 and S-125 could be packed up and moved quite quickly, and most of the mobile systems were capable of independent operation. Several were amphibious. Almost all systems had some redundant method of target tracking in case of heavy ECM or other problems. Meanwhle, the Hawk is... kinda gash, let's be honest, and this is even comparing to how poorly DCS models missile tracking in general (if the S-75 behaved realistically, blue players would have a very rude awakening). Blue's main mid-range cover in the server is the Hawk. It's a kinda-sorta-not-really mobile system made of a bunch of rental trailers with Jimmy's electronics class homework taped to them and requires a command post and two or three different radars to work. This is why it takes so many trips to set one up - good luck engaging a target with no height-finding radar, or with all your radars but no command post. Now compare this to red's situation: we have the Kub. The Kub is a... divisional (? I always forget) level SAM to cover army units on the march. The search and track radars are condensed into a single vehicle. The whole thing is meant to move with the tanks and set up and fire on short notice. It only takes 2 trips because there are only two major elements in DCS, the launchers and the radar. We're already missing a significant number of support assets for SAMs (on the topic of red SAMs alone, things like command posts, IFF, the datalink back to the local PVO command structure, etc.) and so this only exacerbates things. My suggestion would be to substitute the Kub out for the S-125, but this means more missiles per battery, more range (by something on the order of 10km) and better ceiling (by almost double, depending on variant). This might already be too much compared to the caveman tech blue have to rely on, but depending how CTLD works things out it might at least require as many parts as the Hawk, if not one or two more (should be EWR, FCR, height finder, launchers, command truck). This is one of those 'asymmetrical balance' moments I guess. If CTLD allows less trips to place a Hawk then that's a start, but from my own experience at least, I am a lot more scared of Kub sites than Hawk sites, to say nothing of the fact that if DCS did EW worth a damn, the MiG-21's SPS-141 should completely jam out the Hawk's FCR anyway. Unfortunately I couldn't play very long today because Syria was attempting to murder my PC, but it was a fun run. The insane pace of CAP sorties on Behind Enemy Lines is incredibly fun, and it makes for great practice landing the F-5 since your flights sometimes only last a minute before both missiles are gone and you need to take the opportunity to rearm before the next wave comes. I swear, though, some of you blues really need to chill out with those Sidewinders! So many are wasted by waiting too long and firing too close, or not uncaging and giving the missile a little help with a leading shot. Worth note as well that the much-maligned F-5 radar is actually the eyes of God on this server, as with a little practice you can spot and pick out contacts even in ground clutter and have an almost foolproof 10nm (!) auto-acq close combat mode. I wouldn't worry about "giving away your position", you guys should see the excuse for an RWR we have to work with :lol:

Calling the 21's visibility bad, wash your mouth out young man. Better rear vis than the F-5 by far, just get used to the MiG dance to keep track of people as they pass behind the canopy bow :lol:

Bear in mind that it is highly likely the Mi-24 will be able to defend itself against air attack- I expect it to get R-60s when it arrives. They certainly carried them enough operationally that the module will be incomplete without them. As for comms - I often miss things directed at me when the fight gets hairy, and English is my first language! I try to use what Russian I know when talking to Russian speaking players but even remembering numbers gets hard under stress )

According to US reports, the noise level in the cockpit is not bad, and to be honest most aircraft in DCS exaggerate things like engine/AB noise and especially switch sounds to account for the lack of physical feedback. IMO the current volume is fine and you can still hear when the AB cuts in or out even with the "hear like in helmet" option on.

I don't know if there's a single place, we're scattered across a couple of Discords. As for the above post: unwilling and unable are not the same thing. Without assistance from ED any fix will take a while to happen and it's possible the radar will need to be reworked entirely until the actual cause of the problem is found and addressed. Whatever it is, it's clearly related to ground clutter and something that has changed in video drivers. Devs can't just magic fixes out of their backsides, especially third party devs who have only as much access to the nuts and bolts of DCS as ED gives them. On top of that M3 are one of the smaller teams.

Worth note that SRS still has days where it decides to randomly crash or not recognise controls, or not play nice with a particular module. Repeatedly over the past month or so I've started having issues again where it simply refuses to recognise my PTT and I don't realise it until I'm in the middle of a fight and trying to respond to someone, at which point tabbing out to restart it is not viable. The radio also frequently goes down with battle damage. Like Tolovaj I have chat minimised, and although I tab it open now and then I do miss things. I totally get the frustration of people not being on comms... when I tried my hand at GCI the other day I had maybe half the team on comms and only a few would reply back. Often when I find myself in trouble, GCI tries to direct help my way only to find none of them are on comms. With that said, I think kicking should be reserved for people who are wasting very limited airframes (MiG-29s, F-14s) or clearly attacking their own team's units or airbases. We need more people moving into the Cold War side of DCS and IMO that goal is more important than having one or two bad experiences where nobody's coordinating - because they probably will be soon. It took me a while before I finally figured out my original SRS issue and was able to use it on the server, but now I don't fly without it. Once people start playing regularly, they'll get into the habit.

Adding WWII units would mean people have to buy the WWII asset pack to play on the server, which will severely limit the number of players able to join. I'd like to see more T-55 vs M60 fights, but I don't think the M60 is compatible with Combined Arms :(

I thought negative drag was an issue on specific aircraft, not the entire game, but I don't know if that fully explains it. I've seen people doing 1580-1610 with some air to air missiles still onboard. I was kind of hoping renhanxue would turn up at some point with this kind of stuff, because it does add more detail to what the limitations were and from that, pushing through for a sprint seems reasonable. On the other hand, being able to maintain an average speed of over 1600 (which I've now seen several times) across most of a sortie is still exceeding what Saab expected to be able to do with a stripped-down, hotted-up aircraft - so maybe the overall drag modelling needs some adjusting. It's worth note that I know a few of the faster Viggen rocket riders I've seen have a habit of flipping some of the switches along the right wall of the cockpit, at least one of which regulates fuel flow IIRC. I'm not sure how much that factors into it as well, but I'd imagine it does. Ultimately the problem is that (as Skysurfer says) it's a game, and people in games will minmax things. You don't need to worry about whether the jet is going to be flyable in 5 years, you don't even need to care if it's flyable in 5 hours, but it makes it pretty easy to just capitalise on that and make life miserable for other people in MP whose jets might not have limitations that can be at least temporarily overlooked.

Right - which is realistic for this aircraft, at low speeds. At higher speeds there should be buffet, but 'higher' in this context means quite a bit higher than most people would be pulling that kind of AoA.

It hasn't been updated to use the new texture maps yet. Most old liveries display like this, until their creator modifies them to fit the new maps.

It matters when other modules simulate structural/engine failure when oversped but the Viggen does not, for those of us who play multiplayer. If the charts all say 1350km/h, and a pilot has now said 1350km/h, then I'd expect that limitation to exist for a reason since the engineers aren't going to set it just for funsies. As for why we're comparing the 16 to the Viggen (and no, I think you'll find most of us aren't), aren't you the one who brought up the F-16 in the first place?

"Recommended limit" in the context of an aircraft means "it will probably do something highly unpleasant if you exceed this". While it has the excess thrust to reach that speed, I highly doubt it could maintain it safely - even a short burst is reasonable IMO but I've seen Viggens maintaining 1,600km/h IAS for entire sorties in MP. When the MiG-21 loses its engine if it overspeeds, the MiG-19 can't reach that speed except in a power dive and then loses stability and breaks apart, and even the MiG-29 can't keep up... something is wrong. I don't buy that the Viggen has some special attribute that allows it to blaze through its never-exceed speed without consequence, to a speed that no other aircraft of its era is capable of. Are we really sure Swedish materials science was that advanced compared to the two superpowers? Not that its engine would notice, being repurposed out of an airliner... IMO the impression that the "Viggen is really fast at low level" is not an expression of speed, it is an expression of good pilot training and a good autopilot/stability control system allowing it to actually reach its never-exceed speed in reasonable safety at altitudes that other jets could not.