rossmum

Don't forget the AGS-17 to go along with it :D

They were landing all around me, I was expecting to die at any moment - no idea how I didn't. I don't know how powerful the FFARs on the F-5 are but I do know that the ARAK on the Viggen will one-hit even a tank, so as soon as I spotted one of those circling overhead I really slammed my foot on the gas pedal :lol: You guys had really good coordination that mission, left me wishing I'd gone for Pashkovsky first. I think it was only me and one other guy on main comms for red, I assumed the other Mi-8 was going north... you know what they say about assuming... :doh: I was originally going to take Gelendzhik, decided to divert for Novo once that got captured, and then Novo flipped as I was halfway across the bay.

F-14s as bombers will be interesting! Time to work on intercepts. Had an awesome game of hide-and-seek at Novorossiysk yesterday :D More excuses to use CA assets are always welcome as well. While CA isn't very polished and is missing some absolutely critical features, it brings a whole new array of challenges with it and variety is, as they say, the spice of life. Just give us stabilised guns on the things that should have them please ED...

Can't believe I didn't see this earlier. Gorgeous work, and one of the top items on my DCS wishlist...

I've now encountered a Viggen flying with no wings, no canards - I asked him if they were still visible on his screen to see if it was some kind of strange server desynch, but he said they were missing for him as well but that it didn't handle as bad as it looked. He was able to continue manoeuvring with me in a low-speed dogfight for several minutes before I bugged out with no ammo and low fuel, and his aircraft was handling in a manner that suggested it was virtually unaffected. He was a fuselage with a tail fin and two gouts of flame coming from where the wing roots used to be. This has been an issue for quite a long time (I stupidly assumed it would've been reported long ago so didn't report it myself) but that was probably the worst case of it I've seen. It reminds me of problems the MiG-21 had in early 2018, where it would visibly be missing a lift or control surface but still exhibit normal or only slightly degraded flight performance. For my own part I've been able to RTB and land while missing one or both canards, while missing the outer wing panels and canard on one side, and destroy overshooting aircraft with one wing gone - including missiles firing off the now-missing wing stations.

Yeah, the moonlight glint is visible from very far away. It applies to both aircraft and ground units, becomes visible somewhere ~100km out and then disppears as the units pop in to LOD1 or LOD0 (essentially when you get very close or zoom right in on them). Far as I can tell it's basically a rework of the markers system, and also somewhat similar to scaling in other sims, it's just visible from a little further than it should be and is a bit bright. If they toned it down a bit, made it only apply to units not in contact with the ground, and then applied a similar toned-down effect in daylight we might finally have decent spotting in DCS :D I'll probably be on tomorrow, hopefully I'll get a chance to try the mission out!

Proximity fuzing is definitely a thing, although it appears inconsistent because the fuzing is calculated on the firer's side and is also affected by desync (this is why sometimes you see missiles pass through your cockpit without going off). I'm not sure what the prox fuze is set at for R-3/R-13 family missiles, but it looks like it was within that range. This is also important to remember when you're trying to engage something a teammate is already on - a few months ago I had all my wing control surfaces blown out because a teammate tried to lob an R-60 over my shoulder, and it prox fuzed about 5-10 metres off my left wingtip.

Outer is hundreds of metres, inner is thousands of metres (kilometres). If you read the inner needle on the outer scale you get a pretty close estimate of your alt in tens of thousands of feet, which is a handy little coincidence if you're dealing with players flying NATO stuff over comms. I don't believe it was intentional as neither the USSR nor any of its close allies used imperial at all, but it also holds true for the MiG-23 and 29 as they use the same instrument. The MiG-19's has a different scale and so this trick doesn't work there.

My experience of this has been almost completely independent of ping. It's not as noticeable on this server, but if you head onto the circus known as GS you'll see it all over the place, and most of the warping aircraft aren't high-ping - then when you disconnect/reconnect or restart your game, the guys who were previously warping all over are no longer doing it, and a different set of players are. I've also seen a player who lives in the same corner of the world as me, on a server also in the same country, warping all over. Reconnecting fixed it... but then someone else began warping instead. As with most DCS issues, Occam's razor doesn't seem to apply, unless we're talking the really clear-cut cases where someone is warping by miles at a time. There are one or two players I've seen consistently lagging on other servers, but again - no high pings involved. It only became a major issue around 2.5.6 release (and was reported far and wide on other servers, originally affecting BVR engagements as well but now mostly limited to WVR) and it's quite distinct from actual laggy players, who can be seen phasing in and out of existence and rubber banding by several miles a pop. The people affected by this only jump about a hundred metres at a time or less, just enough to make combat excruciatingly hard, and eventually the effect settles. DCS will also cause teleporting (of a severe kind, way more obvious than what's been happening lately) if someone's PC freezes or if they're tabbing in and out of the game. I have a vague suspicion it might have something to do with whatever band-aid fix they applied to stop people sliding around carrier decks, but I have no way of testing it and it's pretty much based on the fact that it became a problem in the same patch where SC code was first introduced into the game.

This also happens with BK 90s. Seems any of the Viggen's guided weapons despawn after the aircraft is destroyed.

Ping isn't the issue. The problem is inherent to DCS netcode and totally independent of either ping or connection quality. As you close with some players they will begin warping around, and if you reconnect you'll see different players warp instead. The server (or another player) might see two players perfectly fine, but the two players might see each other warping. I don't know what's causing it, but it seems to have come with 2.5.6 and hasn't been fully solved, nor can it be avoided.

NIGHT TIME IS THE RIGHT TIME :D Can't wait to fly it. The 21's new cockpit lighting and the burner plumes... awesome.

The 21's engine most commonly dies around 1350km/h. Sometimes less, very rarely more. There used to be a way around this by manually manipulating the cone (too minmax for my tastes, like the ARU 'tricks') but as far as I know and according to testing based on my own curiosity, that no longer works. 1300 is your 'safe' limit, 1350 is your fudge factor. Beyond that, goodbye engine. The Viggen can be pushed 200km/h beyond this with a drop tank and 6 AAMs without any switch foolery, but I suspect there are some manual overrides you can throw to get even more speed out of it, as only a few people seem able to consistently pass M 1.4. As for G limits... any 21 who's still got a tank on during combat probably has bigger issues. One of my issues with the 21 is that the airframe doesn't actually break when subjected to violent over-G situations (which really mostly come about as a result of ARU manipulation - with the ARU in operation it's possible to scrape up around 11-12G for a split second, but almost every F-5 defensive break from a missile sits in the same range). I don't think this gets abused much, though, as only a few people really seem to mess with the ARU and even then you're risking GLOC and killing the engine, and dumping all your speed to do so. MiGs might make a single high-G turn through the merge but after that point, simply lack the available speed or control authority to pass 7-8G, winding down steadily as speed bleeds off. The Viggen is in the same boat there except that a sustained pull above 9G seems to rip the wings fairly consistently. Now this is conjecture, but as the limit is 8G I think this is too aggressive of a limit - while the crew chief would not be happy with you, a single and brief 9G event causing catastrophic structural failure on an 8G aircraft is... odd. The other thing I'm really not too sure about is the way that any time something clearly broken or at least questionable is pointed out, the question is immediately turned around onto the team not adopting interdictors as fighters, complaining if they run out of missiles to do so while the actual fighters with missiles that should be equal or better (on paper) sit gathering dust...

The Viggen being 'fast' at low altitude is relative. Remember we're dealing with 60s and 70s tech here; 'fast' means slightly supersonic at low level, and the technology and materials science of the day only went so far. The Viggen per Swedish AF documentation is limited to 1,350km/h IAS - this is 50km/h higher than a MiG-21 and on par with a MiG-23. I'm still not sure what the specific limiting factor is, but put it this way: VNE is there for a reason, and exceeding it should be something done only in absolute desperation and would usually result in either a lot of maintenance, or a written-off airframe upon returning to base. DCS doesn't simulate VNE very well and so for instance in the MiG-21, we have engine flameouts, in the Mirage your wings inexplicably fall off, etc. In the Viggen there's nothing. We're not just talking short bursts of speed but rather sustained sprints at M 1.3 or even 1.4 - a few months ago one was spotted doing 1.45 (!!!) on the deck. Ultimately the difference in speed right now is 2-300km/h higher than it should reasonably be, which allows Viggens to engage and disengage at will and simply outrun any threat in the server, even the MiG-29. Most of the 'fast' reputation the Viggen has is from the combination of low supersonic flight combined with good avionics and very well-trained pilots running one-pass interdiction sorties - the aircraft might only be barely supersonic, but if it comes in skimming the trees and makes a single pass on the target before egressing at speed, that's your 'fast' right there, nothing on the ground has time to react and intercepts are difficult even if you can match his speed. I seem to recall HB saying in the past that sustained overspeeding would cause damage to the aircraft, but it's just not there. Maybe (like the MiG's problems over the past few years) it's just something that's there in the code, but no longer works properly after successive patches to the base game. It doesn't really matter what's causing it though - the aircraft is doing things it shouldn't be, and people of course look at the speed, the missiles, and the fact the thing looks so cool and choose it, an interdictor, over the F-5, an actual fighter. I know this well - I was that person earlier this year while waiting for the MiG to get fixed :joystick: There are some problems here, and one of which was why I originally suggested the R-60 be removed from rear aspect weapon sets months ago. The DCS R-60 is not rear aspect. It is limited all-aspect, but the all-aspect bit is still there - if you can get a relatively minimal nose offset on the merge and fire as soon as you get tone, the missile has just enough room to turn and smack the guy in the nose. Obviously this doesn't work against more experienced pilots who know it's coming, even a fairly sedate evasive manoeuvre will be enough at such a short range, but most people on the server don't read this thread and a lot of them aren't familiar with their own missiles much less anyone else's (hence the ongoing problems of MiG pilots trying to fire head-on R-13s, and F-5 pilots expecting their 9P5s to turn like R-60s and firing them way too close in a dogfight). If two blues get swatted in the merge for every one who knows to evade the expected R-60 hipshot, you guys are going to lose air superiority pretty fast and it's not going to be particularly fun for anybody. On the other hand, the R-3R is dramatically underestimated in DCS but I don't think it is good enough to warrant removal by any measure. We'll deal with the fixed beam trick in a minute, but for now, its proper employment: very few people fly high enough to see, let alone lock, on the RP-22. Those who do regularly end up being screened by cloud, or they dive into ground clutter as soon as they're locked... or they're Mirages, and we need any help we can get against them. The missile doesn't have the best Pk even off an in-parameter shot and it can quickly run out of energy and hit a brick wall for snap-up shots, which constitute a large portion of shots we're able to make with them. The ideal R-3R target is a guy sitting above 10,000ft, flying directly at us, who either has his RWR off or isn't paying attention to it, and thinks dumping flares, going to flight idle, and making a gentle aileron roll is going to save him. In almost all cases, those missiles hit. Manoeuvring targets are a bit more difficult as the R-3R loses energy very quickly once the motor burns out. I hit maybe half the shots I take on them. Normally I fire one when the gates are half the max range indication, then fire another at a quarter - by this point I can usually clearly see the guy. There are other factors, including the fact that it is in fact possible to notch the MiG's radar as it is not a pure pulse set. It can't filter out ground clutter but the weather filter does interfere with low-speed target tracking. Now for the fixed beam. As I've noted, I'm pretty sure this isn't something the radar should be able to do - not only does it make Groms trivial to use compared to the real thing, but it also behaves like a very shoddy boresight mode. You still have to catch the target aircraft against the sky to be sure you've locked him and not the ground beyond him. It's not immediately apparent if you've successfully got the right target or not. The fixed beam is quite narrow and it can be difficult to do this against a distant or hot aspect (small surface area) target, and if you're both at low level and closing at a high rate you're basically wasting time trying to manipulate the lock button and point the nose while he's setting up for his first turn. I almost wonder if it wouldn't just be easier having R-3R/R-3S (once the latter is fixed!) vs RB 24 vs GAR-8, but then you run into other problems - no missiles for the A-10 or Su-25, and probably a lot of people freaking out about why their missiles wouldn't hit. I'm not sure if that's the right way to go, but given the mismatch between missiles between teams swinging dramatically red or blue based on time period and the inconsistency in performance between HB missiles and ED missiles, it might be interesting to try out at some point.

I can tell you right now we use airbrakes to dump speed. That's what they're for. That's why they're called airbrakes. Use of flaps is normal at low speed and I have seen it done during multiple IRL demos of the aircraft. The mechanism driving the flaps is, to the best of my knowledge, resistant to damage when deployed in flight - the airflow simply pushes them back up against the wings when reaching higher speeds. This is not uncommon on Soviet fighters of the era and was also commonly seen with their fighters in WWII. The biggest problem here is that if the flaps are pushed up past a certain point the microswitches controlling the BLC system trip even though you still have some flap deflection. I have tested the MiG flaps at various speeds ingame, and they are indeed modelled as floating flaps. Above about 450km/h they will be mostly retracted and if you go much faster than that they're forced back against the wing. By 600km/h (near maximum permissible gear extension speed), flap position reads 0-1% on the F2 telemetry and the flaps are visibly flush with the wing. By the way - I don't remember seeing a prohibition or limit on flap extension speed in the pilot's operating handbook, though there are extensive limits listed for the gear extension, landing weight, etc. and a flap extension restriction for specific, mostly air-to-ground, loadouts with a specific amount fuel remaining. For the reasons outlined above, "using the flaps to slow down from high speed" is not a thing that exists. At those speeds the flaps are pinned against the wing by air pressure and will not extend no matter how hard you want them to, and regardless of whether you even try to set them to their landing position. I'm not sure how the Viggen's flap system works mechanically, and the thing is - dropping the gear to get the canard flaps down is an unconventional tactic but somewhat understandable within the context of the game, since it lacks a ground safety. Obviously if you're in a situation where this seems like a good move, you're in trouble already. The biggest actual problem I have with this is seeing people claim not to do it when several people have witnessed them doing exactly that - and in the first instance I saw it done months and months ago (by someone who doesn't post here) it didn't work because it was badly timed. The attitude they reveal is the real problem, not the flaps...

Should do. I'm on 436.something because I rarely remember to update, no issues here.

High in reference to R-3R means "above ground clutter", which isn't that high in the grand scheme of things, about 3,000ft over flat land or 10,000 over mountains. Like I said you can cheese the radar modes if you really want in order to boresight someone (as long as there isn't terrain behind them). I'm about 90% sure the RP-22 shouldn't be able to do that, though. I'd like to get my hands on a copy of the manual some day. When you do get a firm lock on somebody, the R-3R is a boatload of fun because most people make little to no effort to evade it, thinking every missile is a heater.

R-3R is a heavily underappreciated missile, but we need to see them on radar for it to work. Very few people will venture up high enough, more typically they either stay on the deck where the missile can't touch them (because the radar can't see them), or they'll approach high and dive at the last moment. It is occasionally possible (well, fairly regularly over flat terrain) to use fixed beam to boresight lock the target in a dogfight and then R-3R it, but to be quite honest it's not entirely reliable and I'm also reasonably sure it shouldn't be a thing. Fixed beam mode is only ever mentioned in the context of slant ranging for A/G (on the RP-22; on the RP-21 it's used for the Grom too, which of course the RP-22 can't guide in real life) and being able to switch from the fixed beam to locked mode seems sketchy, either against a fixed point on the ground or an aerial target. The MiG is surprisingly good at low speed as well but takes some finesse. The Viggen's main enemy there is the risk of compressor stalling and sinking, or even flaming the engine out totally. Going vertical once the Viggen's burnt its energy helps but isn't always an option if it catches you low and slow.

Thanks for being a role model of maturity :)

I have done plenty of things that are nowhere near reality. Probably half my time on the server has been spent either making another belly landing because I forgot to calculate my fuel, or landing on an enemy airfield for entertainment purposes. Again, the goalposts are moved - I pointed out that we are being told to 'fly more like reality' if we want to win, by people who then turn around and say 'it's just a game' any time the same standard is applied to them. There's a difference between expecting people to fly like pilots who have been qualified through a fighter school, and noticing a distinct pattern of trying to gain any advantage possible through using DCS' at times poor or non-existent simulation of limitations, especially between different third party modules. The MiG-21 basically can't be structurally damaged by abusive flying, but it can lose its engine or stall abruptly. The MiG-19 will tear itself apart if you try and make a high-speed roll, or abuse the ARU system. The Viggen will rip its wings in an abrupt high-G turn, and compressor stalls at high AoA, but is capable of passing its VNE easily with no consequences amongst other things. I don't think anyone expects DCS to be fully realistic, but some of us expect not to have to deal with bad faith arguments and double standards. ---- EDIT - I'd like to just reiterate again, by the way, that several of the problems with things not being simulated/being bugged/etc. on red aircraft were brought up by red players, and fixed because red players asked for them to be :)

Not to mention that most of the hardcore MiG guys are only carrying two missiles anyway. Weight/drag penalties for a second pair of fullsize R-3/R-13 aren't worth it for two extra missiles when most fights end up in gun range anyway - or if you do carry the extras, it's worth even jettisoning them. Even before the rear aspect change I switched to a loadout of two or four R-60M when expecting dogfights rather than straightforward intercepts. MiGs carrying four missiles (six is only for APU-60-II launch rails, which as the name suggests only carry the R-60/R-60M...) are not what you need to worry about, MiGs carrying two or none are.

I thought my fan club were the blue players who ask GCI if every MiG they see in front of them is me, and obsess over me to the point they open the stream to see if I was the one they killed? The wheels were out before you levelled off to land. It was clearly visible a circle or two before you made a landing attempt - as for being out of fuel, you had the speed to simply leave after striking the airfield. Instead you stuck around to try and strafe us as we took off, you nailed the second MiG as he got off the ground and then came for me. Naturally given the choice between staying on the ground and getting strafed and scrambling to make at least some attempt at surviving, I took the latter. I wouldn't have actually brought that fight up, except for the hilarious assertion that it must only be "other players" doing it. The usual, just like asking for "more strikers", but making sure they're the premier blue MiG-killing platform rather than more A-10s or helicopters ;) But is it, really? I went to test this offline afterwards, because I wanted to see if lowering the gear did actually do anything. It turns out that it does, because I was able to reproduce this exact same situation several times. The wider circle is pulling as much as I could and only backing off the stick slightly when compressor stalls happened, to avoid flameout. Combat/dogfight loadout. With or without the draggy AKAN pods, the result was the same: the tighter circle - much tighter - is with the wheels down. Suddenly the Viggen becomes a radius fighter. The turn rate only increases by about a degree or two per second, but at that speed and with the MiG on the edge of a stall and well below his own best rate, that is enough. The Viggen has no ground safety, so having the gear down won't prevent firing weapons - either missiles or guns, though obviously even an RB 74 won't make a turn that tight so it'd need to be guns. The classical counter to this would surely be for the MiG to unload, accelerate, and try to attain his best turn rate at a higher speed... and yet, extending is a great way to get hit by a missile and also very hard to do when you've found yourself immediately in tight circles before even having time to accelerate after takeoff.

You might want to ask Nellus about that, unless some mysterious bug caused his wheels to be very visibly down at the moment he finally began out-rating me, while the fight was being watched by about 40 people :) It's not advice, it's condescending. Nor was I complaining about the Viggen being better in turn rate (I only brought it up to point out the ridiculousness of the "advice", and the Viggen can't sustain such a turn for long, especially when it enters the fight willingly with no fuel). My own flying has been pretty sloppy for a few weeks now, but that's on me. When flown well the 21 can hold with or out-turn a Viggen... until it drops its canard flaps by lowering the gear. I know this from being both aircraft in this scenario, though I didn't lower my gear when I was in the Viggen, on the server. I noticed the effect it had by watching others do it, and tested it offline to confirm. Dropping the gear is a clever ploy but it doesn't universally work (someone else tried it against me a few months ago but didn't really 'do anything' with it) and it takes a lot of precision to get the best possible performance without killing the Viggen's engine. Like I said, and without a shred of irony - it isn't easy to do, and that's why it's usually a desperation move. I was pointing out how ridiculous it is to tell us that we need to learn to use our planes how they were meant to be used, while then responding to any criticism (or even simple acknowledgement of something being done, without direct criticism) with "it's only a game, don't play if you don't like it". The same attitude, time and time again. We ask for a change that helps blue, like our missiles being restricted? Nobody says a word. Blue asks for a change that helps them? Fine. Blue asks for a change and we take issue with it? We're whining. We ask for something that helps ourselves? We're whining. At this point even asking for the changes we requested in the first place to be reversed is somehow 'whining'. This is supposed to be a server people come on to have fun, and yes, to try and win on - but not a PR stunt.

But isn't that what we just got told we should do? What we were told is stopping us from winning (even though we still do, or the mission ends in a neutral state when the server finally empties out)? Or are we continuing this thing where it only applies to certain people and not others?

Incidentally, when it comes to learning to use one's plane properly - I'm guessing that would include not egressing from a strike run despite being below bingo fuel, waiting for a fighter to scramble, then dropping undercarriage to force the canard flaps down (while narrowly avoiding compressor stalling too hard and killing the engine, which takes some pretty serious precision actually) in order to outrate and outradius someone in a circle fight that was neutral up to that point? It was certainly fun, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that's how SAAB intended their plane to be used... so seems a bit funny to try write everything off as red not knowing how to properly employ their planes, surely?