su25t mission woes

[waterboy31]

I am having some trouble surviving the first campaign mission in the su25t. I am very new so i am looking for any advice or tips i can get. I continually get hit with SAMs without getting any indication of a radar lock or missile launch. I believe this means the missiles are infrared and not radar guided? If this is case whats the best way to avoid them? should i be continually dispensing flares as i make a run in on target? thanks for any and all advice. oh and i almost forgot....all of the writing and gauges in the cockpit are really blurry. is their anyway to fix this? ive tried changing the cockpit resolution settings but it doesnt seem to help. the hud is crystal clear everything else seems fine except the writing and what not.

Edited December 21, 2015 by waterboy31

[DblAAssassin]

Did you turn on your RWR? I believe the default to turn it on is RSHIFT+R. It is possible they are infrared missles, but I don't believe they are in the first mission of the campaign if I remember correctly.

 

Also, if you have't done the training missions I highly recommend them before you dive into the campaign.

 

Good luck and good flying,

C. D. Baird

 

p.s. if you are more of a video guy like me here is an

that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the SU-25T.

[number3]

Dispensing flares will help. Also, did you turn on your IR Jammer? LSHIFT+E I believe that is the key command.

[waterboy31]

Did you turn on your RWR? I believe the default to turn it on is RSHIFT+R. It is possible they are infrared missles, but I don't believe they are in the first mission of the campaign if I remember correctly.

 

Also, if you have't done the training missions I highly recommend them before you dive into the campaign.

 

Good luck and good flying,

C. D. Baird

 

p.s. if you are more of a video guy like me here is an

that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the SU-25T.

I have done all of the training missions ( some more than once!!) I have not been turning on the RWR , i thought it was on already. that could be the problem! i will check those videos out as well. thanks for the tips

[waterboy31]

Dispensing flares will help. Also, did you turn on your IR Jammer? LSHIFT+E I believe that is the key command.

I feel as if i have only turned on the radar jammer though to be honest im not sure. i will make sure it gets turned on next time i go out. thanks.

[Ultra]

RWR is automatically on, the control C.D. Baird mentioned is probably for changing the RWR to 'priority threats only' mode essentially.

 

It's difficult to deal with the IR SAMs in general. Staying as high up as you reasonably can find your targets helps. Also, yes it is common practice to dispense flares during attack runs as a precaution, as long as you can spare them. As mentioned, don't forget to turn on your IR 'jammer'. It's pretty much just a large infrared lamp in the back of the plane, but it's saved my a** many times.

[Night]

Yeah IR SAMs can be a pain. I would agree that the most important part is to stay up high. This has several advantages.

 

1. Many IR SAMs don't have a long enough range to target high altitude aircraft.

 

2. SAMs that are fired at you will produce a visible exhaust trail which is easy to see. I am always on constant lookout for these.

 

3. Since you are at a higher altitude, there is more physical distance between you and the launch location. This means the SAM will not have as much kinetic energy by the time it reaches your location. You can shake it off much easier when it is low on KE. You also have more time to react.

 

In the real world, most pilots that get shot down never even knew it was coming, statistically speaking.

[esb77]

Read your mission briefings and look at the map in the briefing very carefully!

 

 

There are triggered units that pop up out of "nowhere" but the majority of enemy air defenses will have a rough location on your briefing map.

 

It makes life so much easier. You can do things like just fly to your target on a route that completely avoids 75% or more of the air defenses. Or if you insist on taking foolish risks, it at least suggests where you should start popping flares in self defense.

 

It also helps if you decide to clear the air defenses before going in for your attack run. The MANPADS are really hard to see, so knowing their general area is a gigantic help in finding them so that a Vikhr can be dropped on their heads.

 

If you do your own SEAD, make sure you positively identify every unit in a group before getting within 8 km or so, or else fly a pass at 7 to 8 km to bait a SAM launch that's long range (and therefore easier to avoid), and then swing back around and kill whatever is parked or standing where the smoke trail started.

 

 

It helps a lot to learn the shape of the various IR SAM units, being able to pick the SAM carrier out of a column of APCs is really useful.

 

 

Use terrain, IR SAMs can't see through hills and mountains any better than radar guided ones can.

 

 

For the Su-25T flying above the engagement range is pretty useless most of the time. The weapons available in DCS generally won't hit reliably if you're that high up. It also makes you and easy and obvious target for medium and long range air defenses.

 

Generous preemptive flaring, and throttling down the engines are both pretty effective in DCS when it come to spoofing IR SAMs, as long as you also maneuver.

 

 

The fundamentals are planning and observation though. Used properly, they can be so effective that you don't even need any countermeasures. The other nice thing about planning and avoiding the SAMs is that you don't waste munitions that you could be using for your primary mission.

 

 

That said, for the default campaign, unless it has changed significantly, it's not a bad idea to have 90-100% of your countermeasures loadout be flares. Most missions don't have enough serious radar threats for chaff to be of much use.

[Goldham]

Also if you are flying the su-25t campaign there is a user edited version that fixes some bugs and problems with it, alot of the time updates can break the missions in the campaign.

[waterboy31]

Also if you are flying the su-25t campaign there is a user edited version that fixes some bugs and problems with it, alot of the time updates can break the missions in the campaign.

where might i find these user edited campaigns?

[Randolf]

That campaing is somewhat lazily designed. Most of the time the briefing is one sentence short and there is no intel whatsoever about the locations of enemy sams. You can cheat with f10 or mission editor but that might make things too easy. Personally I use f10 with the fog of war setting. That way you don't see all enemy locations, but you aren't entirely without intel either.

 

One annoying thing is that your wing man is very stupid. He can see the enemy targets from 100km away, but you can't really send him to attack them on his own because he can't prioritize threats properly. He will probably try to do a rocket attack against the radar sams that protect the enemy air field (how is it even possible to create AI as dumb as this is beyond me). I feel that he stays alive much better if you give him one target at a time using the "attack my target" -command.

 

An useful thing to know is that some of the missiles can hit targets from much greater distance if you override the launch authorization. Once you have pressed the "override launch authorization" -key, turn laser on and just point the targeting screen to the location you want to shoot at. Then shoot the missile and it will try to follow your laser. The S25-L and Kh-25ML missiles can often hit targets from 10km+ so they are pretty good against enemy SAMs. However, I don't know if this behavior is realistic because Encyclopedia says that the range of S25-L is only 3 kilometers...

Edited December 23, 2015 by Randolf

[MadDog-IC]

where might i find these user edited campaigns?

 

A shameless advert to the files ;-)

 

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/?arrFilter_pf

 

Enter in UPloaded BY: Maddog-IC

 

Merry Christmas, Ian.

Su25 Campaign GOW Changelog.txt

Edited December 23, 2015 by MadDog-IC

[tintifaxl]

Wasn't this campaign made for the Black Shark in the first place? I too find it ridiciously hard.

 

Maybe ED should think about making a (short) SU-25T campaign that is more catered to people who playtest the free version to get a feel for the sim. Georgian Oilwar surely scares them off ...

[Randolf]

Wasn't this campaign made for the Black Shark in the first place? I too find it ridiciously hard.

 

Maybe ED should think about making a (short) SU-25T campaign that is more catered to people who playtest the free version to get a feel for the sim. Georgian Oilwar surely scares them off ...

 

It is indeed much easier with the shark because you can just sit at 10km, scan and snipe targets with vihkrs. It is also easier to find the threats because Shark wingman can datalink them to you. Su25t however is completely hopeless when it comes to searching targets.

 

@MadDog-IC: thanks, I just downloaded the fixed missions. The orange smoke in the first mission is now actually visible.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Randolf