Cold War 1947 - 1991

[Tavo89]

3 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:

 

It's an invasion. A little wonder enemy fighters were just off shore waiting for you to take off! That means they did their job by oppressing Red fighters so Blue strikers can do their thing.

 

EDIT:

Post here, please.

 

 

Oh ok I understand, it was very exciting, I was able to shoot down an F-15 and a Harrier, I also damaged two F-14s, all with the Mig-21.

 

It felt like I was on an Ace Combat mission haha.

[Alpenwolf]

2 hours ago, Tavo89 said:

 

Oh ok I understand, it was very exciting, I was able to shoot down an F-15 and a Harrier, I also damaged two F-14s, all with the Mig-21.

 

It felt like I was on an Ace Combat mission haha.

 

Glad you had fun!

[Ian Boys UK]

CAS mission 

Still no ATGM in Yunga slot 2 Hind

 

[Alpenwolf]

36 minutes ago, Ian Boys UK said:

CAS mission 

Still no ATGM in Yunga slot 2 Hind

 

 

There are. I see them. They were last time and they're still there. Can't tell you why it's not working!

[Ian Boys UK]

Yak-52's at Al Ain not available. 

 

[Conker4]

Can we get more airframes and weapons for the helicopter mission, I ran out of gazelle L's after just about an hour and a half. Not like I was throwing them away getting multiple kills per helicopter but non the less ran out of airframes and was low on rockets after a relatively short amount of time. Maybe 3-5x the amount would be good, the same for the rockets. Another alternative would be just making the airframes and weapons unlimited for this unique mission.

 

Edited September 12, 2021 by Conker4

[Alpenwolf]

3 hours ago, Conker4 said:

Can we get more airframes and weapons for the helicopter mission, I ran out of gazelle L's after just about an hour and a half. Not like I was throwing them away getting multiple kills per helicopter but non the less ran out of airframes and was low on rockets after a relatively short amount of time. Maybe 3-5x the amount would be good, the same for the rockets. Another alternative would be just making the airframes and weapons unlimited for this unique mission.

 

 

 

I'll add more for sure. There will be other changes too.

[Alpenwolf]

Close Air Support - Round 2:

 

- Red had 11 x T-72's left towards the end.

- Blue had 4 x Merkava's towards the end (Blue had 12 more Merkava's at mission's start).

- Red still had a few APC's alive.

- Blue lost all APC's.

- A total of 3 x Mi-8's left by the end of the mission.

- A total of 10 x SA342M's and 10 UH-1's left by the end of the mission. All 6 x SA342L's were lost.

- Red captured the Blue western FARP.

- Blue captured it back and lost it again to Red.

- Also, Blue captured the Red western and eastern FARP's.

- Result: Officially, a draw, even though Blue had 3 FARP's towards the end and Red 1 FARP only.

 

* 1 x Mi-24 scored an air-to-air kill against 1 x SA342M with an AT-6 missile.

* 1 x SA342M scored an air-to-air kill against 1 x Mi-24 with a TOW missile.

* Multiple air-to-air kills on both sides, mainly for Red.

 

-> There will be some changes for sure (depends on when the next patch is going to be and what gifts it brings along with it).

-> The mission will go online again in 2 or maybe 3 weeks.

-> Next time, the event will start 1 or 2 hours earlier.

[rossmum]

2AM start let's gooooooo

[Alpenwolf]

6 hours ago, rossmum said:

2AM start let's gooooooo

 

What do you mean? I was aiming for 1700 zulu next time (maybe 1630), instead of 1800. That's 2 am for you? I thought you were in Europe?

[ustio]

32 minutes ago, Alpenwolf said:

 

What do you mean? I was aiming for 1700 zulu next time (maybe 1630), instead of 1800. That's 2 am for you? I thought you were in Europe?

do you have any plans in the future so that us that lives in SEA and AUS region can play not so late?
 

doesn't have to be very early 14.00z or 15.00z is fine

 

cheers

Edited September 13, 2021 by ustio

[Alpenwolf]

Just now, ustio said:

do you have any plans in the future so that us that lives in SEA and AUS region can play not late?
 

doesn't have to be very early 14.00z or 15.00z is fine

 

cheers

 

 

Basically, and only on weekends and holidays, this should be possible. I've never tried it so I might just give it a shot one time.

For those in Europe, Africa and the western parts of Asia, events should be doable if they kick off around 1600 zulu (at the earliest) or 1900 zulu (at the latest). At least for most players, I guess. And if its on a weekend then probably we could go 1500 or maybe even 1400 zulu at the earliest. The hardcore players will always have time, but many have family obligations, maybe work to do, etc. Hard to tell if it's going to work, but I again, I could give it a shot.

 

It's like, either we have North and South Americans flying with us or Australians and their neighbours

[Alpenwolf]

F-16C Related Question:

 

There are 3 x F-16C's to which users have access to as I see that in the mission editor:

 

F-16C bl.50

F-16C bl.52d

F-16CM bl.50

 

Apart from the bl. number, would you rather have the CM over the C?

The mission I'm working on, F-16C's will be tasked with destroying the taxiways of a certain airbase with heavy bombs, so that MiG's at that airbase can't taxi and obviously, take off any more.

The other objective will be hunting scud launchers - obviously, behind enemy lines - with AGM-65's.

Hunting the scud launchers would require the F-16's to fly ca. 300 km in and of course 300 km out, after they've hopefully succeeded. That's a lot of fuel!!! Especially, if you want to sneak in while flying low to remain undetected. The Harriers would be too slow and don't carry as many Mavericks. The F-15E is not here yet. The F-18C is tasked with SEAD and later on CAP. The F-14A is Red, so on Tomcats for Blue.

 

So, the question is, C or CM? And would it be possible to cover such a distance and strike for a couple of minutes? Keep in mind that the first ca. 150 km could be flown at a high altitude, before the F-16's enter Iranian airspace and fly low.

Edited September 13, 2021 by Alpenwolf

[ustio]

16 minutes ago, Alpenwolf said:

F-16C Related Question:

 

There are 3 x F-16C's to which users have access to as I see that in the mission editor:

 

F-16C bl.50

F-16C bl.52d

F-16CM bl.50

 

Apart from the bl. number, would you rather have the CM over the C?

The mission I'm working on, F-16C's will be tasked with destroying the taxiways of a certain airbase with heavy bombs, so that MiG's at that airbase can't taxi and obviously, take off any more.

The other objective will be hunting scud launchers - obviously, behind enemy lines - with AGM-65's.

Hunting the scud launchers would require the F-16's to fly ca. 300 km in and of course 300 km out, after they've hopefully succeeded. That's a lot of fuel!!! Especially, if you want to sneak in while flying low to remain undetected. The Harriers would be too slow and don't carry as many Mavericks. The F-15E is not here yet. The F-18C is tasked with SEAD and later on CAP. The F-14A is Red, so on Tomcats for Blue.

 

So, the question is, C or CM? And would it be possible to cover such a distance and strike for a couple of minutes? Keep in mind that the first ca. 150 km could be flown at a high altitude, before the F-16's enter Iranian airspace and fly low.

 

the one that the player can use is F-16CM bl.50. the rest is AI model. unless you are planning for the F-16 to be an AI

 

300 miles range its not that much of a problem if you are carrying bags

Edited September 13, 2021 by ustio

[Alpenwolf]

10 minutes ago, ustio said:

the one that the player can use is F-16CM bl.50. the rest is AI model. unless you are planning for the F-16 to be an AI

 

300 miles range its not that much of a problem if you are carrying bags

 

 

300 km in, 300 km out = 600 km (ca. 370 miles)

I guess, the extra 70 miles shouldn't be a problem, you're saying.

 

Thanks for replying.

[rossmum]

1 hour ago, Alpenwolf said:

What do you mean? I was aiming for 1700 zulu next time (maybe 1630), instead of 1800. That's 2 am for you? I thought you were in Europe?

 

Australia. This morning's run (well, yesterday's for you) was at 0400 my time

 

To sum up said mission, from what I saw ingame, in Tacview, and catching up on blue's overall picture now - first and foremost, blue need more helicopters by a factor of two for all types, maybe even three for the Gaz L. The Huey's guns barely tickle either Mi-8 or Mi-24 and hitting a helicopter with a HOT requires a well-laid ambush, a completely unaware target, and a considerable amount of luck. I still don't think that subbing out the Merkava for the Abrams will give blue a fighting chance, if anything it'll likely make stalemates more likely. It has the same gun as the Merkava, takes maybe one extra ATGM to kill, and has a similar FCS. Its only clear advantage is that it's faster. If you go the route of limiting Hinds to 4 ATGMs only rather than 8, you're basically achieving the same goal without having to swap out the Merkava with something that is exceptionally difficult for the T-72 to kill, which in turn will swing the balance the other way, etc., etc. It's a feedback loop. Limiting the missiles should help do the trick. More IR SAMs (maybe Avengers rather than, or in addition to, the Stingers) and heavier AAA should help too - sprinkling a Vulcan or two along with each platoon of tanks will force people to use ATGMs on those first and thin out the herd a bit. If red start grumbling about wanting mobile AAA too, you can give them ZSU-57s set to conscript skill or something I guess. Moving FARPs to account for weapons load/helicopter speed might be worth looking into as well.

 

There's also some stuff that I think will come with understanding of how the other team's equipment works - for example Petrovich's uncanny accuracy gives a false impression of how easy it is to hit something with the Hind's ATGMs when you've got a human in the front seat, and there are specific tricks you can figure out that will cause them to miss pretty consistently. Enabling the 'dumb Petrovich' option so he cannot aim ATGMs will also force people to multicrew the Hind and should both reduce its accuracy, as well as reduce ground unit teamkills.

 

Understanding the netcode is important too. Just because you see a hit from someone else's (including the AI's) shot, it doesn't mean there actually was one. DCS hit detection is done on the firing party's game client and the server will use that to decide hit/miss. Other clients will extrapolate where they last saw the weapon going, and so it's almost 100% repeatable to see a whole chain of Stingers "hit" someone and cause no damage, when the firing client saw every missile narrowly miss behind the target (remembering the Stinger is impact fuzed - it must hit to do damage). This effect applies to every weapon in the game and is why it looks like ATGMs are killing with wide misses - they aren't missing, your client just doesn't know where the missile actually is and it lulling you into a false sense of security. For about the clearest example of this possible, check out a guns-only dogfight, and watch in amazement as a stream of tracer that misses someone by an entire plane length saws them in half. If you can get a hold of the firing client's perspective, you'll see a clear hit, and that's all the game cares about.

 

In any case, blue fought red to a standstill today despite losing their only viable air cover very early in the mission and I personally spent 2 hours and 2 Hinds trying to clear out a single platoon of tanks. I think there are definitely changes to be made, and the first one is increasing blue's helicopter count and particularly their Gazelle L count.

Edited September 13, 2021 by rossmum

[ustio]

5 minutes ago, Alpenwolf said:

 

300 km in, 300 km out = 600 km (ca. 370 miles)

I guess, the extra 70 miles shouldn't be a problem, you're saying.

 

Thanks for replying.

yeah that range shouldn't be a problem

[Alpenwolf]

58 minutes ago, rossmum said:

 

Australia. This morning's run (well, yesterday's for you) was at 0400 my time

 

To sum up said mission, from what I saw ingame, in Tacview, and catching up on blue's overall picture now - first and foremost, blue need more helicopters by a factor of two for all types, maybe even three for the Gaz L. The Huey's guns barely tickle either Mi-8 or Mi-24 and hitting a helicopter with a HOT requires a well-laid ambush, a completely unaware target, and a considerable amount of luck. I still don't think that subbing out the Merkava for the Abrams will give blue a fighting chance, if anything it'll likely make stalemates more likely. It has the same gun as the Merkava, takes maybe one extra ATGM to kill, and has a similar FCS. Its only clear advantage is that it's faster. If you go the route of limiting Hinds to 4 ATGMs only rather than 8, you're basically achieving the same goal without having to swap out the Merkava with something that is exceptionally difficult for the T-72 to kill, which in turn will swing the balance the other way, etc., etc. It's a feedback loop. Limiting the missiles should help do the trick. More IR SAMs (maybe Avengers rather than, or in addition to, the Stingers) and heavier AAA should help too - sprinkling a Vulcan or two along with each platoon of tanks will force people to use ATGMs on those first and thin out the herd a bit. If red start grumbling about wanting mobile AAA too, you can give them ZSU-57s set to conscript skill or something I guess. Moving FARPs to account for weapons load/helicopter speed might be worth looking into as well.

 

There's also some stuff that I think will come with understanding of how the other team's equipment works - for example Petrovich's uncanny accuracy gives a false impression of how easy it is to hit something with the Hind's ATGMs when you've got a human in the front seat, and there are specific tricks you can figure out that will cause them to miss pretty consistently. Enabling the 'dumb Petrovich' option so he cannot aim ATGMs will also force people to multicrew the Hind and should both reduce its accuracy, as well as reduce ground unit teamkills.

 

Understanding the netcode is important too. Just because you see a hit from someone else's (including the AI's) shot, it doesn't mean there actually was one. DCS hit detection is done on the firing party's game client and the server will use that to decide hit/miss. Other clients will extrapolate where they last saw the weapon going, and so it's almost 100% repeatable to see a whole chain of Stingers "hit" someone and cause no damage, when the firing client saw every missile narrowly miss behind the target (remembering the Stinger is impact fuzed - it must hit to do damage). This effect applies to every weapon in the game and is why it looks like ATGMs are killing with wide misses - they aren't missing, your client just doesn't know where the missile actually is and it lulling you into a false sense of security. For about the clearest example of this possible, check out a guns-only dogfight, and watch in amazement as a stream of tracer that misses someone by an entire plane length saws them in half. If you can get a hold of the firing client's perspective, you'll see a clear hit, and that's all the game cares about.

 

In any case, blue fought red to a standstill today despite losing their only viable air cover very early in the mission and I personally spent 2 hours and 2 Hinds trying to clear out a single platoon of tanks. I think there are definitely changes to be made, and the first one is increasing blue's helicopter count and particularly their Gazelle L count.

 

 

Which is what we spoke about yesterday:

 

The idea behind the Abrams was that the tank can take more shots - even if it's not much more -, but still, in order to decrease the harm done by one Hind. With the upcoming option in the mission editor of limiting pylons to a certain weapon's type, that problem should be perfectly solved and I don't have to spend much time replacing unit types'. That'd be perfect, and thus, replacing the Merkava's with Abram's wont be necessary any more.

 

I totally forgot about the option of disabling Petrovich! That's the best way to do it. So, instead of having 6 Hind pilots flying solo, they'd be forced to work together in 3 Hinds. Less Hinds in the air and no AI (Petrovich) interference. If 12 players want to fly 6 Hinds then by all means. Way better than including AI in any shape or form. On a side note, I wish we had the same option for all multicrew modules. Just a thought.

 

Good point regarding the netcode. And good news it's not another bug we'd have to deal with.

 

Overall, there will be more Blue helicopters, nonetheless, which is what I and other Blue players were talking about, before it went on chat-for-all. I mean, I witnessed it myself and saw how resilient Hinds are against Blue helicopters and almost all Blue ground units currently in use. One time, I emptied a whole round of 12,7 mm's from the M113 in a Hind's face and side and he just shrugged that off. I knew that before hand, because it happened to me while flying some of the regular missions in the Hind, but still thought if the rounds hit well, especially, the sides then maybe there's a chance while trusting in my CA experience. The Hind laughed hard, I guess

The AAA emplacements at the FARP's would knock out Hinds easily, but Hinds were never that stupid in both rounds so far to get within their range, which is good to see players being that cautious.

 

I'll make some changes and announce that as soon as they're ready.

[rossmum]

Just to drive home the point about the futility of engaging the red helicopters with the Huey's miniguns, by the way - about 80%, possibly more, of the helicopter's side-on silhouette is fuel tankage and/or void space. The only places you will do any genuinely fatal damage to it are the cockpits (too armoured for 7.62 to penetrate, except maybe through the plexiglass hoods), the engine and main gearbox (both armoured from the side, again proof against 7.62), and then the shaft running to the tailrotor (a tiny target) and the tail rotor reduction gearbox (which, if I recall correctly, is also armoured) and the rotor blades themselves, which are also fairly sturdy against rifle calibre. 20mm will go through that armour, miniguns will not. Even head-on, about half the helicopter's silhouette is void space. It'll survive hits to the fuselage and lower part of the tail boom all day because there's nothing there to be damaged, at least besides fuel tanks that might leak or some minor subsytems or weapons mounts. Most people are going to aim for centre of seen mass, which is the correct way to aim at something, but in the case of the Hind that will work against you as its centre of mass is an empty troop compartment with no structural significance to the helicopter. This is exactly why the Gazelle L is such a big deal - it can actually hurt them, albeit you still have to aim with it, it just punches through the armour around the critical components. By comparison both the Huey and Gazelle are small, single-engined, and completely unarmoured. They also have void space near their centre, but it only takes one lucky hit to an engine or the cockpit to kill them.

 

The Mi-8 has roughly the same armouring scheme around the engines and gearboxes, but obviously is a lot more vulnerable around the cockpit. With that said, hitboxes for the crew do seem inconsistent at times. Like the Mi-24, if you shoot it anywhere except the cockpit or the very top of the fuselage where the powertrain is, you're doing pretty much nothing to it, especially with 7.62. Also, the "V" in Mi-8MTV stands for vysotniy, high altitude. Its engines are specifically optimised for flight at high (for a helicopter) altitudes and it has two of them. The Hind is the same. You can climb above them if they're low, because they're sluggish and heavy, but you cannot climb higher than them, if that makes sense.

 

Ultimately what we need are closer blue counterparts in the form of a Cobra and a Blackhawk (although even the Cobra is built to a slightly different role and relies more on standoff than protection), but in the mean time playing with the number of helicopters available to each team and adding more 20mm-armed Gazelles will have to do it if you want to keep the mission rotary wing.

 

e/ you beat me to the punch, but I'll leave this up anyway for the Huey guys.

Edited September 13, 2021 by rossmum

[Alpenwolf]

21 minutes ago, rossmum said:

Just to drive home the point about the futility of engaging the red helicopters with the Huey's miniguns, by the way - about 80%, possibly more, of the helicopter's side-on silhouette is fuel tankage and/or void space. The only places you will do any genuinely fatal damage to it are the cockpits (too armoured for 7.62 to penetrate, except maybe through the plexiglass hoods), the engine and main gearbox (both armoured from the side, again proof against 7.62), and then the shaft running to the tailrotor (a tiny target) and the tail rotor reduction gearbox (which, if I recall correctly, is also armoured) and the rotor blades themselves, which are also fairly sturdy against rifle calibre. 20mm will go through that armour, miniguns will not. Even head-on, about half the helicopter's silhouette is void space. It'll survive hits to the fuselage and lower part of the tail boom all day because there's nothing there to be damaged, at least besides fuel tanks that might leak or some minor subsytems or weapons mounts. Most people are going to aim for centre of seen mass, which is the correct way to aim at something, but in the case of the Hind that will work against you as its centre of mass is an empty troop compartment with no structural significance to the helicopter. This is exactly why the Gazelle L is such a big deal - it can actually hurt them, albeit you still have to aim with it, it just punches through the armour around the critical components. By comparison both the Huey and Gazelle are small, single-engined, and completely unarmoured. They also have void space near their centre, but it only takes one lucky hit to an engine or the cockpit to kill them.

 

The Mi-8 has roughly the same armouring scheme around the engines and gearboxes, but obviously is a lot more vulnerable around the cockpit. With that said, hitboxes for the crew do seem inconsistent at times. Like the Mi-24, if you shoot it anywhere except the cockpit or the very top of the fuselage where the powertrain is, you're doing pretty much nothing to it, especially with 7.62. Also, the "V" in Mi-8MTV stands for vysotniy, high altitude. Its engines are specifically optimised for flight at high (for a helicopter) altitudes and it has two of them. The Hind is the same. You can climb above them if they're low, because they're sluggish and heavy, but you cannot climb higher than them, if that makes sense.

 

Ultimately what we need are closer blue counterparts in the form of a Cobra and a Blackhawk (although even the Cobra is built to a slightly different role and relies more on standoff than protection), but in the mean time playing with the number of helicopters available to each team and adding more 20mm-armed Gazelles will have to do it if you want to keep the mission rotary wing.

 

e/ you beat me to the punch, but I'll leave this up anyway for the Huey guys.

 

 

Very true. We talked almost about all the above on the Blue side. We even yearned for the AH-1 and the Blackhawk. The latter is way better than the UH-1 and can carry heavy weapons (depends on what variant we're talking about). We were dreaming and having futuristic thoughts and wishes. That's how helpless our pilots were

 

I think with the AH-64D (even an A would do) and the OH-58D added to Blue would be far more suitable than the current setup. As I said last week, work on a mission with the Ka-50, the Mi-24 and the Mi-8 vs the AH-64, the OH-58 and the UH-1 has started (mainly looking up the terrains of all maps so far for suitable FARP and assets' locations). Such a setup would be more suitable and most importantly, we'll have Blue helicopters that are way more attractive to fly than the Gazelle.

 

Operation Close Air Support will still be around, and it was a nice experience for many. We got to experience our helicopters differently and we won some CA fans! That's a huge PLUS for the our community, so thank you all for the support and time invested! I'll keep tuning around and make the mission better while pouring the experience gathered into the upcoming and more advanced Close Air Support mission, once the AH-64 and the OH-58 are released. At least once the Apache's released.

[Alpenwolf]

After Allied Assault's last session, one user suggested changing the AI EWR I use in my missions to one of the two options:

 

1- Receiving information (BRAA) through the F-10 menu -> text messages that others from your coalition can see (might cause lots of messages to appear on the screen?).

2- BRAA's provided by an AI Overlord through SRS for which players would need to change their username like this -> see here.

 

We all know how stupid the AI EWR can be. It gives you BRAA's about bandits 100 km away while neglecting bandits within visual range to only tell you suddenly that you're merged, causing an abrupt raise of heart rate, sweaty palms and random head movements in all directions. Joke aside, I'd like to hear from you whether you'd rather have one of the two options implemented or not. Most of you fly on servers where one of the two features is integrated, I guess, so, share your feedback, please.

 

Here's the original post:

 

 

[=475FG= Dawger]

I am fine with the game GCI for the most part and would absolutely prefer it to any text based lua script. In VR, text messages block a very big part of the screen, especially multiline messages.

Please, no more text messages.

 

The SRS based system would be my preference if there were to be a change. It has the added benefit of forcing more people on SRS.

 

And if you switch to an SRS based system, please consider switching the current text information messages to SRS as well. it is easy to do and I would be happy to help.

 

 

[sLYFa]

+1 for overlord bot through SRS. However, I would be fine with the text version too, if you would limit the amount of text it displays (e.g. to the two closest contacts). 

[Alpenwolf]

20 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

I am fine with the game GCI for the most part and would absolutely prefer it to any text based lua script. In VR, text messages block a very big part of the screen, especially multiline messages.

Please, no more text messages.

 

The SRS based system would be my preference if there were to be a change. It has the added benefit of forcing more people on SRS.

 

And if you switch to an SRS based system, please consider switching the current text information messages to SRS as well. it is easy to do and I would be happy to help.

 

 

 

I'm also leaning towards this option if more players push me to make a change regarding EWR's. However, switching text information as you've suggested to SRS would be too much chatter at some point, and players might get annoyed by it.

 

The donation messages for instance are very important, because not everyone checks out the forums.

Mission's progress and situational update is also important, and other messages that might pop up on your screen.

Putting all that into SRS would be too much, I'm afraid. And I feel for VR users. I see that in some youtube videos where the text messages are really annoying.

[=475FG= Dawger]

8 minutes ago, Alpenwolf said:

 

I'm also leaning towards this option if more players push me to make a change regarding EWR's. However, switching text information as you've suggested to SRS would be too much chatter at some point, and players might get annoyed by it.

 

The donation messages for instance are very important, because not everyone checks out the forums.

Mission's progress and situational update is also important, and other messages that might pop up on your screen.

Putting all that into SRS would be too much, I'm afraid. And I feel for VR users. I see that in some youtube videos where the text messages are really annoying.

There are a few options with regard to text messages. 
 

The first option is to separate the Air to Air frequency from the Strike frequency. This is done in the real world because A/A gets very busy. We basically already have this in Cold War to some extent. As an example for Blue, Overlord bot and Human GCI could operate on 251.000 and Mission target status messages could be broadcast on 256.000 and 30.000 FM. The donation message should remain on text. However, I would suggest re-formatting. 
 

The second option is to retain the text messages but re-format them to be less intrusive. Single line messages are ideal in this regard. The target status messages could be staggered in time so that no more than one is visible at a given time. 
 

The donation message could be broken into a series of one line messages. 
 

I would prefer moving mission status messages to an SRS strike channel for the simple fact that it forces all players into SRS.