rossmum
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Posts posted by rossmum
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The effect triggers specifically at 30 degree flap deflection, which is 5 degrees past the takeoff setting. If you're using a throttle without an AB detent, you can try landing without SPS (just remember to stay fast - the difference in flight characteristics in full landing config without it is significant) or flip the burner cutoff switch, which if I recall right inhibits the nozzle opening behaviour rather than just ignition like the SPS does.
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The script is still (at least when I tested it) reading ground speed, not airspeed. It means the Viggen can't get past about 1.3ish at any altitude, it should be around 1.7ish up high (I haven't seen a firm number, renhanxue probably has it though) as going past 2 with fixed intakes is generally not going to happen. In other news, the DM still seems a little inconsistent, but needs further testing. From what I've seen and heard it's at least better than it was before, but I still had to chase down a guy missing a wing and burning to finish him off. I don't know if he was just barely able to run as long as he kept his speed up (F-5, 21 can manage similar sometimes) or if he simply chose not to manoeuvre.
IMO the number of high-drag bombs for the Viggen needs increasing across the board. They're both a lot of fun to use, and also your best weapon against area targets like FARPs or the factory on Open Range. The last two times I've played the latter on blue, we ran out several hours before mission end.
Echoing Johny's request for more Mi-24 slots here, as well. One more helicopter, maybe. I agree it's mostly hype driving it right now, but once the hype dies down I plan on regularly flying it and ideally doing so in a pair. Having four slots on larger/longer missions would give us the ability to focus on more than one target at a time, or even having three would give us two on attack duty and one as an escort for the transport helicopters.
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19 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:
Server News:
Operation Open Range:
- Removed all Su-25T's.
- Instead of 8 x Su-25's, it's now 14 (used to be 8 x Su-25's and 8 x Su-25T's).
- Added 10 x Mi-24's.
- The 6 x Ka-50's remain.
- Instead of 12 x SA342M's it's now 20.
- Instead of 4 x AJS37 slots it's now 6 (number of the available AJS37's remain the same).
- Added a road base for the AJS37's -> Waypoint-4. It's closer to the bullseye by ca. 95 km (ca. 60 miles).
- 1 x Avenger, infantries and other armoured units at the road base.
- Briefing adjusted.
The road base should be a good addition, turnaround times when there were only one or two Viggens trying to hit the factory or lake were a pain. Should ramp up the tempo without making things too hard for red. Cheers.
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If there are no junctions you can literally just reverse, or do a 3-point turn. The only real challenge with road basing is making sure you stay on the road (narrow ones especially), and avoiding trees/streetlamps on approach. Despite the generally bumpy ground handling, the 21 can roadbase pretty competently too, you can stop it in ~500m if you really want to. You do need a turnaround point or wide road for it though.
The problems I had with Ossetia a few hours ago:
- None of the objectives had been completed by the time I joined, and there was I think one other Viggen working at the same time as me.
- I don't know where our fighters were. I occasionally merged with F-5s, but judging by comms, our guys were not keen on flying over the mountains with MiG-29s crawling in the valleys. I don't know if the F-14 really offsets the 29 in this environment, at least not until the 29's IRST is substantially more realistic. The safest bet for them would be to fly high in lookdown, but without a good human RIO, that isn't going to work well against small targets in the mountains.
- With so few attackers, and I'm not sure if the other guy was on comms but they were very cluttered anyway, it's not too hard to intercept a lone intruder with no fighter cover. Red seemed to have their side of the mountains completely locked down. I only made it to the pumping station a handful of times and landed a single rocket strike on target, every other time I died to SHORAD or fighters. Attacking the targets covered by the Kub sites was pointless as I couldn't even get to the "safer" ones.
I feel like the bigger fighters are a bit overkill on this one, it might work better without them.
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Have to agree with Kirk. I've lost a 21 airframe before because I had to make an emergency landing and time pressure left me guessing which of the two identical stretches of road was the base. I rolled to a stop about 5km along the same road, and with no engine, couldn't just taxi the remaining distance to refuel and then fly home.
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11 hours ago, NELLUS said:
I’m also for removing precision weapons, but only if short range Sam’s like the Avenger, SA13, SA9 etc. would be removed.
Keeping a single Manpad around to guard the the air, together with few light to medium armoured vehicles could work well for rocket and bomb strikes.
Would be great if there were more large target objects, just like on the Mountain Cries and Open Range missions.
I have seen flyers attack Farps on both sides, but is it really worth it?The hilo pads will still be able to launch helicopters and run ctld ops, right?
You could bump the SHORAD down to Chaparral (which it used to be, for blue) and Strela (as opposed to Strela-10). Both are pretty crap, rear aspect, more likely to hit their own aircraft than what they're shooting at. They're pretty easy to defeat but will still catch people who blunder into them without paying attention.
Attacking FARPs is mostly something do to try inconvenience the helicopters, I think. I seem to recall you could destroy the fuel/ammo point at the FARP like you can with airfield fuel/ammo dumps, but I don't know if that's a thing with Alpen's nice new custom-built ones.
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9 hours ago, Sideburns said:
So just to clarify on this point, perhaps for people who have seen the AJ37 Viggen has seven* hardpoints, and also respectfully challenge the "not relying on self defence" suggestion:
- The outermost two wing pylons on the AJ37 were wired for the Rb28 Falcon only. Given that this weapon was not taken forward by the Swedish air force for the AJ37, due to poor weapon performance, the outer two AJ37 wing pylons were unused but physically present. This is why why they appear empty on some diagrams for AJ37, or don't appear at all, until the AJS-37 upgrade. The AJS37 upgrade enabled all six weapons pylons to carry Rb24/24j/74 if desired.**
- The AJ37 "smart" weapon carriage appears to have been a function of computer weapon handling capacity and wiring, hence some diagrams indicating two Rb24 or Rb75 only in specific locations.
- It appears from Swedish air force documentation, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8bCDRcq9BVeY0gycWRrMXVIdTA/view?resourcekey=0-oFS9Xlxr5xkcifaQ000kBA page 8,that permitted weapon loadouts changed over time (perhaps the air force figured out they could split the wiring for weapons between nearby pylons) and asymmetric loadouts were feasible. I would recommend considering these if you want some more flexibility in self defence (i.e. single Rb24/24j and/or countermeasure pod) at the expense of a little imbalance of the airframe. i.e. CM pod, Rb75, X-tank, Rb24j, Rb75 is quite a flexible loadout for contested airspace anti armour while being period correct. Conversely four Rb75 (AJ37 computer can only handle two at a time) with two Rb24/24j (outer wing pylons Rb28 only) would not be correct for an AJ37.
- As per documentation, and the designation of the Viggen, the AJ37 was a strike fighter with an airspace defence / fighter role if required. Gunpod, CM pod, dual Rb24j and an X-tank is a valid AJ37 loadout.
- Speed and extending from a bad situation still very much a valid tactic for the AJ37 being as it is among the fastest fighters at low level. Remember to eject stores to have the full 1400kph available currently.
- As always pairing up and flying sensible formations providing mutual support will make you much more effective and survivable in any airframe.
Finally if we are discussing period correct airframes and weapons focus should the discussion now focus be on the Su25t, Ka-50 and Vikhr missile (prototypes, limited availability for combat or not available in this timeframe) and also the MiG21 being able to deploy the Grom (this has been questioned, limited evidence to suggest it should be capable). Will we also see similar restrictions or removal for these systems? . At the moment it seems blufor have been quite restricted whereas redfor get minimal restrictions. Appreciate Ka-50 soon to go due to Mi-24, but that should be with similar considerations towards period correct weapons.
* Sources also indicate an additional two wing pylons could be configured for a total of nine! But this was so rarely used it is not worth considering for DCS. Limited information on what these could carry but I would assume it is additional dumb weapons i.e. rockets and bombs.
** Carriage on the outer pylon was initially frowned upon by Saab engineers due to the increase weight of later Sidewinders impacting fatigue life of the wing. Eventually the air force and Saab came to an agreement on fatigue life expectations and the carriage was permitted (note this is a long term, over many years fatigue life issue, not the wing snaps immediately if outer pylon used issue).
RP-22 physically can't support Grom, which is part of why it was never used on the bis (the other part being that it was honestly a pretty crap weapon). In any case, the Grom kind of serves as a decoy to stop people using the ridiculously effective S-24, which is in most respects a better weapon in DCS (and honestly probably was IRL too, but in DCS it hits like the fist of an angry god). The Grom also seems a bit too potent, I know for at least a while the BF meta was to use them to oneshot command bunkers, as if they were concrete-piercing bombs. There are a whole bevy of issues ranging from CCIP existing for bombs (it shouldn't), CCIP being too accurate (it should be working off the slant range unit in much the same manner as the Viggen or Hind, not the radar or the invisible, always-on laser the module uses), to the obvious presence of weapons the aircraft shouldn't have. I'm fairly sure the RP-22 couldn't support the RS-2US either, but its presence kinda sorta simulates an MF, as the RP-21 on that variant couldn't support the R-3R so the beamers were its only option for radar missiles. I'm throwing together a spreadsheet of stuff that's either known to be wrong or needs further testing, and the 21 has a lot of problems, some of which are at least offset by the other modules sharing them. The biggest issues for air to air stuff are the lack of radar warning and that the jet seems to be too manoeuvrable at extreme low speeds, but where it's really kinda broken is air to ground.
As for the hardpoints - you're right, my brain turned "only 4 wired for used weapons" into "only 4". IMO they're functionally the same thing though for an AJ, which would be period correct.
Again, I'm totally for removal of the Ka-50 and Su-25T along with the Vikhr, and always have been. I'd actually like to see less precision weapons in general, for both sides, so the helicopter guys don't spend 90 mins slinging a unit somewhere only to have it effortlessly deleted by one guy.
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It might be worth getting in the habit of not relying on self-defence anyway (I know, the Viggens have kind of had to do so recently with the 24). Considering the AJ had four weapons pylons, not six, that means any attempt at a period-appropriate Viggen leaves you with two missiles and two other stores, or no missiles for a full load. The AAMs went on the inner pylons only, and if carrying Mavs, it seems (thanks to the manual Sideburns linked) that for whatever reason, one was always on an inner while the other was usually on an outer. Speed and low flight can still help (just less, with the speed restriction) but the main thing is going to be coordination with other flights and actual CAP from fighters. On Open Range the other day, we had F-5s flying with heavy air-to-ground loadouts, no F-14s unlocked, and Viggens being left unescorted to fly strikes alone or at best in pairs. I got to my target on most sorties but rarely got back from it, as red had near total air superiority thanks to our de facto lack of fighters.
My suggestion for the F-5 guys, at least those who read this thread (maybe GCIs can "gently suggest" over SRS for those who don't) is that they do not fly air-to-ground sorties unless we have enough fighters to provide some kind of challenge to the enemy over the front. At the same time, the Viggens will be more effective flying in at least pairs, not only to give them some safety in numbers but also to work over a target quicker. 2-4 Viggens carpet bombing a ground installation in a single pass is a hell of a lot more effective than a single rusty MiG pilot flying like 8 sorties against the same target because he can only half-remember how to set up for a nav bombing high-drag run
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I think this might be specific to the English cockpit? Using a custom livery derived from the Russian one and my reflections are nowhere near as severe. Worth testing maybe.Disregard, it's still there, just not noticing it as much during live gameplay.
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21 yeet burner is what, 3 mins use, 30 seconds, then clear to use again? You're running down engine hours as you do it, but my understanding is the immediate limit is thermal. Don't think it's modelled (or honestly, any engine temp issues at all). I would love for DCS to model effective attrition loss through people flogging airframes and the maintenance guys having to tear them down for inspection, but it doesn't and probably never will, especially since most players seem to prefer reslotting over even waiting a whopping 3 minutes for a good-as-new repair. 3 mins continuous in E-burner seems unlikely anyway as unless you're just standing on your tail the whole time, you're either coming out of AB to avoid overspeeding the engine, coming out of AB to avoid overshooting, or coming out of AB to avoid bamboozling the ARU into letting you rip your wings. It should be modelled for sure but I don't think it would significantly change the situation, most people already throttle back enough to cool it or don't use it in the first place. I think it'd be another one of the things (like the SPS/AB inhibiting behaviour) that people think is actually a bug because it's so uncommon and they don't understand how they caused it.
RIP Zach though.
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13 hours ago, Sideburns said:
I mean, if we had an actual cold war Ka-50 or Vikhr missile... you get the point, this argument is bit of a slippery slope.
It isn't if I've been advocating removal of both Ka-50 and Su-25T for quite a long time now.
e/ Hadn't seen that chart, but you're right - so the actual limit is number of Rb 75 (no more than 2) coupled with an apparent need for at least one of them to be on a fuselage pylon. Wonder how come, the pylons must've been wired for them but you would think in that case, SAAB would add another loadout setting for 2 75/2 24. Maybe they just ran out of memory and had to prioritise.
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Could you (I couldn't script my way out of a wet paper bag) set it so that sustaining a speed beyond X below Y altitude (or better yet, just sustaining above Z IAS regardless of altitude) will cause the aircraft to be destroyed, rather than an instant killswitch if they pass the desired speed? That way you have a warning when it passes the speed, maybe with a nice appropriately "oh no my plane's structure isn't happy" sound file attached to get their attention, but it only pops them when they continue doing it for more than say 10-15 seconds?
As for limiting the Viggen's loadout... I mean, if we had an actual Cold War Viggen rather than a 90s upgrade package, you would have the choice of two AAM OR two Mavericks. Not both. None of the wing pylons were capable of carrying those weapons on the AJ 37, only the fuselage pylons were. There are some other changes too (no DTC, no TERNAV since that runs off the DTC memory, Viggen only carries like 28K of ferrite core memory internally) but that would be the biggest change on gameplay - Mav Viggens would only be able to sling two per sortie and have no self-defence weaponry available at all. It's fun to use as a missile truck and we've all done it, but the actual version that fits the server time period absolutely was not suitable for it at all.
2 hours ago, Get_Lo said:Soon we will have enough Mi-24s flying about for the Mavericks to be considered a valid air to air missile lmao
You must've missed the wave of "clever" Viggen pilots lobbing air-to-air Mavs back when it was a wake-homing torpedo that would literally follow you home and kill you, with infinite seeker FoV and infinite energy. Funnily enough, most of them still managed to end up teamkilling by doing it
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The Rb 24 is just an AIM-9B, and the R-3S is not a straight copy but rather a copy of the airframe and "brains" but with a Soviet indigenous seeker and motor, both better than the original article. I haven't tested the 24 but if it behaves like the 9B, it will not begin turning until the motor burns out - you need about 1-1.5km of spacing or it will just go ballistic and miss the target. The fact it won't turn until the motor burns out makes it look like it's gone dud off the rail, but sure enough, you can see the tiny dot manoeuvring afterwards.
Also not sure if it's modelled, but the AIM-9B had to be held on target for a fairly substantial amount of time before it would have a genuinely solid lock. Like, 8 seconds or so. I'm not sure if the various flavours of R-3S we have are the same or if each dev has their own, and I'm also not sure if it's performing as intended or not. It should absolutely be better than the 9B, but it is substantially better ingame (at least on the 19, and previously on the 21) so I dunno. Research time I guess.
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14 hours ago, m4ti140 said:
I don't think it's even possible to join the server without the mod if IC is on.
It is. AO and Mugga run aerobatics servers with boatloads of mods on and you can join without all of them regardless of IC, the technique Dirt Merchant posted presumably works just as well for other mods as it does for the Skyhawk.
Alpen - are the SAM sites live/covered by anything else, out of curiosity? The one time I flew a strike against them on Swedish Delivery I ballsed up my weapons management (2ikea4me) and ended up having to take them out with dumb-fired Sidewinders. I don't think I ever took ground fire during the whole attack run, not sure if that was intended behaviour or not.
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Ideally, the mod would become a full module (it easily has the quality to do so IMO) but the creators have taken the stance that they want it to remain not only free, but also open to the community without any locked/encrypted files. I get why they've taken that stance, but by doing so it kind of dooms the mod to become a plaything for smaller organised MP or SP - which is a real shame, but it is what it is. It was made by members of a primarily PvE community after all, and seems most widely adopted by the SP community who make much more scripted and study-level missions for it than we have here.
1 hour ago, Dirt_Merchant said:Good points! You're so smart and insightful!
Smart and insightful enough not to resort to attitude, I guess.
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Because they're going to join the server and play it how they want to play it, whether or not that's enjoyable for the rest of us. Again, this is a public server, not some insular community run for a squadron made up of 40-somethings who all get together to play co-op PvE after work. You have to account for the playerbase you have, not the one you want, because as long as the server remains public, the one you want will only ever make up part of your actual server.
To elaborate, though, on the A-4 specifically for Dirt Merchant, here's what will happen:
- People will join the server without the mod installed, or with it installed incorrectly (as most of the DCS community struggle to even install liveries without explicit instructions). Those people will see Su-27s flying around. At best, they will complain in chat that they have to fight Su-27s with older planes, or complain that they can't see the slots and want to fly it themselves.
- More likely, the F-5s will shoot the "Su-27s", because they can't IFF and rely on visual ID. Teamkill. The MiG-19s and the large number of radar-incompetent MiG-21 players will fail to destroy enemy aircraft or complain about being "teamkilled" by those "Su-27s", because they can't or didn't IFF them to see they're hostile. The 19 is VID only and a worrying amount of 21 players either don't use their radar or don't know how to IFF with it.
- Someone will have the wrong version of the mod, and be able to handily out-fly everything else on the entire server because the SFM was, to put it frankly, a UFO. Best case this is just annoying, worst case is that the person doing it is doing so intentionally as some kind of minmaxing strategy (because this is PvP and competitive people exist). This will cause constant headaches back and forth as nobody enjoys getting farmed for kills by something you have no answer to, and whoever is doing the farming is usually having a fun time annoying everyone else.
- Any bugs introduced with updates to the mod may affect server stability and will be much harder to troubleshoot, as there are a lot less people to find bugs with the A-4 than there are with the official modules.
There is a very, very, very, very good reason why the only servers that run mods are part of relatively insular (or PvE, or both) communities where almost all players are in some common Discord or Facebook group or whatever. It is an absolute nightmare for the server owner to deal with and magnifies the problems that already come with core game patches.
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I'm overly dug in because of previous experience. Assuming that even half of the players on the server ever read this thread or particularly care to preserve the intended gameplay is a mistake.
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35 minutes ago, CORMAC ogaruu said:
Also players who don't regularly update SRS face the exact same issues. How ia that logistically different?
Sent from my SM-A715F using TapatalkSRS updates are usually backwards-compatible, and when they aren't, it's usually pretty easy to figure out the problem. Not so if someone has forgotten to update the A-4 - they might not even realise, much less anyone else. In a PvP environment, that leads to potential problems.
If I didn't have good reason to expect endless headaches from adding the mod, I'd be all for it - but it's a bit deeper than "people should read the briefings in a study sim". This is a PvP server, maybe half or even less of the people on it "study" anything. I occasionally skim the flight manuals if I need to check up on something and I read the briefings on missions I'm not already familiar with, but plenty of people do even less than that. When even in the A-4 discord there were people who required the mod's developers to walk them through the process of updating it to the correct version, after several hours of them not realising they still had the SFM version during the EFM test (which would be an absolute disaster in PvP as the SFM version had UFO-like handling qualities and an extremely simplified damage model), I think you're being unrealistically optimistic about how well the mod would work on this server.
With PvP servers in particular, you can't cater to the best-case scenario and just trust everyone to stick to it. There will be people who need warning labels on chainsaws, and there will be people who will intentionally try to use things to create an unfair advantage. You have to account for both.
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I should note that I absolutely love the mod and have been itching to fly it in MP, I just think we shouldn't rush into adding it. Maybe a single mission at first to test the waters, see how it goes. At any rate you're going to need to signpost the hell out of it, maybe "now with Community A-4E mod" in the server name and then a huge "HEY GO DOWNLOAD THE A-4E MOD'S LATEST VERSION HERE IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT" at the top of the briefing/periodically posted into chat. We might all be regulars and might know what's going on, but it's pretty obvious from the daily "why can't I spawn my Tomcat" questions in chat that the average DCS player is allergic to reading anything on the briefing screen and doesn't follow this thread.
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33 minutes ago, CORMAC ogaruu said:
Alpen, to my eyes, this looks really easy to implement.
The problem isn't allowing people to join without it, the problem is what happens when they do. Players without the mod will see a Su-27 (possibly without textures), a much larger aircraft with much larger hitboxes, performing like a Skyhawk. Players who don't regularly update the mod may have issues getting features to work, or there may be bugs or missing features that have since been fixed in newer versions (particularly FM and DM related) which could turn out to give an unfair advantage. I don't know if integrity checks will trigger on modified files for an external mod, but that could also lead to issues if people figure out how to modify the files (it's an open-sourced community mod...) and give themselves things they shouldn't have.
We also then have the very likely situation that the combination of small size, excellent agility, and four Sidewinders will result in yet another purpose-built strike aircraft being turned into the new meta fighter. It might've served that role in various militaries, but if the point of the server is to focus on MiGs vs F-5s (and later F-8s and F1s), it could shift the gameplay quite abruptly.
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Less, I think. As in lowered "hitpoints" of components. That'd be my guess, anyway.
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1 hour ago, NELLUS said:
Two Towns is one of my favourite missions, but there is still a major FPS drop right around the bullseye. I wonder if it is the smoke or the ground troops that have the highest performance impact.
It got to the stage that a dogfight was unplayable, with stutters that made me run for the hills.Whatever the cause is, it's in Kareli. Agara is fine, but as soon as you look towards the middle of Kareli (especially from the north) it chugs, even my new PC struggles with it but my old one would just lock up.
I don't know what it is but it's only been noticeable to me for maybe 6-12 months. Before that, the mission ran fine even on the old PC, which was pretty close to the minimum for DCS.
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Worth note that the flap auto-retraction happens in stages at a certain speed, but as currently modelled, the flaps are blown back up proportional to airspeed - so that also affects the margin of error a bit.
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I've heard people report this (and other bizarre issues I've never been able to reproduce) for a while. I do wonder if there's some way the files can get a bit hokey without fully breaking the module, and without reaching the point where the repair tool spots the error. So far it's either this or the RSBN channels going skynet, and I've never experienced either.
Does the MiG-19P have fly-by-wire?
in MiG-19 Farmer B
Posted
They adjust the lever arm between the stick and the actual booster system IIRC. And yes, the F-15 is much more complicated - same as the F-5, there is a cross-linkage between the roll and yaw channels so that the aircraft will mostly (but not completely) take care of balancing turns for you and you have the stability augmentation modes. Not so in the 19 or DCS 21. Not sure if the actual 21bis has any stab augs or not, I've heard it brought up but it's outside my wheelhouse.