Cold War 1947 - 1991

[Alpenwolf]

3 hours ago, MMI_Grim said:

How do you guys like the A-4?

I played around with it a bit, its a beautiful module. A nice little bomb truck with lots of flexibility.

Have to work on the ground handling to be honest. Any tips on that? 

 

I only started it up, took off, flew around and landed it. I watched bits of rossmum's stream from the first round and he did some SEAD, striking and even CAP. Looked good, despite him having some issues with some key bindings.

[Alphaless]

5 hours ago, MMI_Grim said:

How do you guys like the A-4?

I played around with it a bit, its a beautiful module. A nice little bomb truck with lots of flexibility.

Have to work on the ground handling to be honest. Any tips on that? 

 

It has a brake-steering system similar to the MiG-21, but a with a lot more power to get going. I've found that 75% engine RPM is the best for taxiing around, but it still requires a bit of practice. Even if you align poorly with the catapult on the Forrestal, there is still a decently large margin where you can hook up and get the show on the road. 

Edited March 14, 2022 by Alphaless

[=475FG= Dawger]

10 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:

It's the accuracy of the EWR I'm talking about. Not the map. Not sure what you mean by "the accuracy of the map" to be honest.

In yesterday's mission, the Blue EWR was there constantly and it's placed on top of a hill overlooking the entire eastern borderline. You really don't need more than that, although you do see further east as stated above.

"I found the mission fairly frustrating due to very poor radar coverage for Blue". Are you telling me the EWR was that bad it barely responded to any calls?! Didn't hear any complaints the first round or this round from anyone else. No one wrote anything during the mission in the chat window either.

By accuracy of the map, I mean the map matches what the EWR is "seeing". The map is radar line of sight at 100 ft AGL. That means that the radar will "see" an aircraft at 100 ft AGL in the colored areas and will not see aircraft at or below 100 ft AGL outside of the colored areas. 

We would get DCS GCI calls for aircraft departing King Hussein and Marj Ruhayyil and then the calls would stop as they descended to low level for ingress. We would get a few calls for aircraft on the eastern side of the border northwest of Rosh Pinar and then silence as they moved west or south.

My experience as GCI showed we had a huge radar hole at the southern half of the Sea of Galilee and south.

Mike Delta quite often had a clear scope while we were engaged in areas where I would have expected radar coverage, particularly on the northwest coast.

After a few sorties, I stayed high and west, once I figured out we had extremely limited low level radar coverage and I needed to pull the Migs off the deck.

We fly in VR so we don't type plus I doubt I would complain during a mission in any case. This is the appropriate forum for this sort of thing.

It was noticeable enough to me to prompt making the maps to see for myself if my suspicions were correct.

If the mission design requires limited low level radar coverage for Blue, then so be it.

I don't have to like the mission.

Edited March 14, 2022 by =475FG= Dawger

[rossmum]

Guys, can we attempt to keep the personal disputes to a minimum please We don't need potential players coming in here and being scared off by watching us lay into each other.

As far as MD and helicopters go: there are ways to avoid getting hit. Don't directly overfly positions he has units in. Don't fly directly at his tanks, it makes you a very easy target. Fire from near max range and if you have more than one Hind available, have both run in from different directions. There's no need to resort to airing out frustrations in chat, just potential for learning measures that help keep you alive. You don't need to be flying perfectly straight for either Petrovich or a halfway decent human operator to make a hit, you just need to not make very abrupt changes, and your ATGMs can reach him at distances where his tanks will struggle to reach you. This isn't just limited to Hinds either - things like F-5s or Viggens flying directly at BMP-2s make easy targets to a CA player. Consider your target's possible firing arc and do what you can to either stay out of it, or be far enough away that you can dodge the incoming round.

If you get nailed in an area you didn't see any units in, it's a safe assumption he had something hidden nearby which you didn't see - so avoid that area, and scout it out from further back.

Most of all, I would recommend more of you pick up CA (yes, it's buggy and lacking in features, but it can be incredibly satisfying) and give it a go yourselves. You'll get a better appreciation of what CA players can or can't do, and we definitely need more possible tac commanders/GCIs on the server - those of us who do it already aren't always in the mood when we could be flying instead.

[Alpenwolf]

41 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

By accuracy of the map, I mean the map matches what the EWR is "seeing". The map is radar line of sight at 100 ft AGL. That means that the radar will "see" an aircraft at 100 ft AGL in the colored areas and will not see aircraft at or below 100 ft AGL outside of the colored areas. 

...

 

All that is good in theory or in real life, but EWR's in DCS don't work like that. That's all I meant to say. I don't mind adding one more EWR due north, but I fail to see how the mission as a whole is rather frustrating or not to your liking, as if it all came down to this EWR issue when neither MD nor anyone else said anything about it. After round one I had a quick debrief with a few players on TS, including MD and Micarra. I don't recall any complaints or disadvantages being highlighted concerning any matter. All of sudden and after round 2 it's frustrating. A bit confusing from my point of view.

[rossmum]

While I'm here - regarding the objectives one side or the other shouldn't know about, that's the issue we get with DCS - we've all seen the briefing for both sides, we've all played some of these missions dozens or hundreds of times, we know exactly where everything is (including hidden objectives) and so the temptation to attack things like roadbases or supply crates can be quite high, especially if one team feels they're stacked against. The main thing to think about is - is this going to mildly inconvenience the other team, or is it going to make them too frustrated to play? If it's the latter, maybe don't do it, or at least wait until a few hours into the mission. Losing all EWR coverage in the first 20 mins of a 4+ hour mission is a great way to kill server population, and not all missions allow sling loading of new radar sites. Likewise, hobbling a team by blowing up all their special objective crates early on can really kill the fun of a mission. I get that it's a sound strategy, but we have to consider what is/isn't going to be fun and try to balance that against the desire for our team to win. I used to play on a PvP Space Engineers server that had a rule to deal with this sort of thing - "keep it funny and charming, not cruel and tragic".

Unless there's a way to randomise where those special objectives spawn, or where EWRs do, I don't know if there's really any other effective way of removing that extra situational awareness.

[Alpenwolf]

Just now, rossmum said:

While I'm here - regarding the objectives one side or the other shouldn't know about, that's the issue we get with DCS - we've all seen the briefing for both sides, we've all played some of these missions dozens or hundreds of times, we know exactly where everything is (including hidden objectives) and so the temptation to attack things like roadbases or supply crates can be quite high, especially if one team feels they're stacked against. The main thing to think about is - is this going to mildly inconvenience the other team, or is it going to make them too frustrated to play? If it's the latter, maybe don't do it, or at least wait until a few hours into the mission. Losing all EWR coverage in the first 20 mins of a 4+ hour mission is a great way to kill server population, and not all missions allow sling loading of new radar sites. Likewise, hobbling a team by blowing up all their special objective crates early on can really kill the fun of a mission. I get that it's a sound strategy, but we have to consider what is/isn't going to be fun and try to balance that against the desire for our team to win. I used to play on a PvP Space Engineers server that had a rule to deal with this sort of thing - "keep it funny and charming, not cruel and tragic".

Unless there's a way to randomise where those special objectives spawn, or where EWRs do, I don't know if there's really any other effective way of removing that extra situational awareness.

I've thought about it quite often and I always ended up submitting to having a little faith in players hoping for things to play out rather funny and charming, not cruel and tragic. That's why we had tons of intense and great sessions throughout the years and others not so much. So I say it again, it really comes down to what players do with the missions and how they play them.

The only way around this that I came up with is having players signing up for either Red or Blue after a mission is announced. All players get to read and study the situation of a mission while the objectives are sent via pm to each and every player accordingly. If you sign up for Red, you receive the complete briefing for Red only. Same with Blue. The only problem is, we get to play the mission once. After that everyone knows everything.

The way things work in DCS allow players to get their hands on the missions (.trk files) which is rather unfortunate. Every hidden detail, every trigger or flag that is only of importance for the mission designer himself to work around the many obstacles in the mission editor, becomes visible and known. Some players use that and exploit it for their own benefit which results in mysterious and incomprehensible advantages for the enemy. While everyone is wondering why something is not working properly in a mission, I know instantly what's going on and can only be sure that some player has figured out something and is doing things not as supposed to, yet gets the job done which confuses others even more. And that's the endless cat and mouse game I've had since day one of hosting with some players. In a way it shows me where I should improve things, however, it wouldn't be necessary if they wouldn't push me in the first place

[=475FG= Dawger]

6 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:

All that is good in theory or in real life, but EWR's in DCS don't work like that. That's all I meant to say. I don't mind adding one more EWR due north, but I fail to see how the mission as a whole is rather frustrating or not to your liking, as if it all came down to this EWR issue when neither MD nor anyone else said anything about it. After round one I had a quick debrief with a few players on TS, including MD and Micarra. I don't recall any complaints or disadvantages being highlighted concerning any matter. All of sudden and after round 2 it's frustrating. A bit confusing from my point of view.

I wasn't available for Round One so this was my first go round for me or any of my group.

Also, with regard as to why this came up, its because on our first sortie we were directed towards the Sea of Galilee by GCI and had very sparse radar coverage in an area that should have been well covered by radar. Its a flat body of water, after all. I was jumped by a Mig southwest of the Sea of Galilee that was not called by the game GCI or our human GCI. After I died, I hopped into a JTAC slot and got a first hand look at what was going on. Enemy aircraft at low level were disappearing as they crossed into the southern portion of the Sea of Galilee.

Later engagements with no game GCI callouts or human GCI visibility of helicopters a few hundred feet off the ground between Naquora and Haifa told me their was no low level radar coverage there.

This is what prompted me to investigate further.

You have said twice now that "EWR's in DCS don't work like that". What exactly do you mean when you say that? Are you saying that line of sight from the antenna isn't relevant or is it something else you are referring to ?

 

 

Edited March 14, 2022 by =475FG= Dawger

[Alpenwolf]

16 minutes ago, =475FG= Dawger said:

I wasn't available for Round One so this was my first go round for me or any of my group.

Also, with regard as to why this came up, its because on our first sortie we were directed towards the Sea of Galilee by GCI and had very sparse radar coverage in an area that should have been well covered by radar. Its a flat body of water, after all. I was jumped by a Mig southwest of the Sea of Galilee that was not called by the game GCI or our human GCI. After I died, I hopped into a JTAC slot and got a first hand look at what was going on. Enemy aircraft at low level were disappearing as they crossed into the southern portion of the Sea of Galilee.

Later engagements with no game GCI callouts or human GCI visibility of helicopters a few hundred feet off the ground between Naquora and Haifa told me their was no low level radar coverage there.

This is what prompted me to investigate further.

You have said twice now that "EWR's in DCS don't work like that". What exactly do you mean when you say that? Are you saying that line of sight from the antenna isn't relevant or is it something else you are referring to ?

 

 

 

The LOS isn't always relevant.

Years ago I had AWACS planes in all missions on both sides. AWACS is not reliable and gives you constantly BRAA's regarding the enemy AWACS, so I had to look for an alternative. Imagine being in a dogfight or trying to find a nearby bandit and you keep getting BRAA's for the enemy AWACS at 150-200 km away. Not too convenient. That being said, I ran loads of EWR tests and had help from a few players who flew almost every day on the server back in the day. The results showed me that EWR's are way better, but have their own problems still. One problem is ignoring the LOS in some occasions. We flew both helicopters and jets in mountainous areas of the Caucasus while one guy (sometimes me) was monitoring the F10 map through the enemy's cmdr. You're mostly hidden, but sudden turns or maneuvers (even if still obscured and well hidden) would result in showing your aircraft on the map for a few seconds. I haven't noticed any fixing or updating for the EWR's ever since, so I take it it's still the same. And note that I do GCI quite often myself and spot UH-1's when I shouldn't, knowing the area they're flying in and pretty much everything about the mission setup.

Just west of Galilee you have your EWR on a hill overlooking the entire sea and areas around it. If the EWR was still not showing anything or rather poorly, then surely we're talking about a game issue. I said earlier above in one of the posts that I do my part and fix or work around what I can, but there are things that are game related and that is beyond me.

I'm sure the hill is actually a good place for the EWR, but I'll look around and try to find a better spot or spots.

[Giskvoosk]

If i may chime in, from my earlier mission planning I've been searching for ideal EWR deployment for the Blue. The one presented in the game play was actually tested then discarded. My conclusion is to place the radar down here for the optimal coverage. Shame Huey pilots all been busy transporting equipment to the two airbases.

 

images shared from early mission planning

Edited March 15, 2022 by Giskvoosk

[=475FG= Dawger]

22 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:

The LOS isn't always relevant.

Years ago I had AWACS planes in all missions on both sides. AWACS is not reliable and gives you constantly BRAA's regarding the enemy AWACS, so I had to look for an alternative. Imagine being in a dogfight or trying to find a nearby bandit and you keep getting BRAA's for the enemy AWACS at 150-200 km away. Not too convenient. That being said, I ran loads of EWR tests and had help from a few players who flew almost every day on the server back in the day. The results showed me that EWR's are way better, but have their own problems still. One problem is ignoring the LOS in some occasions. We flew both helicopters and jets in mountainous areas of the Caucasus while one guy (sometimes me) was monitoring the F10 map through the enemy's cmdr. You're mostly hidden, but sudden turns or maneuvers (even if still obscured and well hidden) would result in showing your aircraft on the map for a few seconds. I haven't noticed any fixing or updating for the EWR's ever since, so I take it it's still the same. And note that I do GCI quite often myself and spot UH-1's when I shouldn't, knowing the area they're flying in and pretty much everything about the mission setup.

Just west of Galilee you have your EWR on a hill overlooking the entire sea and areas around it. If the EWR was still not showing anything or rather poorly, then surely we're talking about a game issue. I said earlier above in one of the posts that I do my part and fix or work around what I can, but there are things that are game related and that is beyond me.

I'm sure the hill is actually a good place for the EWR, but I'll look around and try to find a better spot or spots.

I will organize some testing of radar line of sight within my group to determine how closely the LOS maps from CombatFlite match what is displayed in game and report back my findings.

UPDATE: After doing a quick preliminary RWR flight, I recalculated the Blue 100 AGL radar coverage with the position of the EWR corrected a few meters south, which makes a substantial difference in coverage although it doesn't really expand the area, just shifts it. RWR results closely matched the new map. In the next few days I hope to do live Blue GCI and human pilot use of game GCI testing.

 

Edited March 15, 2022 by =475FG= Dawger

[=475FG= Dawger]

 

[Skyracer]

Is there any plans do add apache to the missions?

[Alpenwolf]

2 hours ago, Skyracer said:

Is there any plans do add apache to the missions?

Last summer I started working on a mission by the name Close Air Support - Dynamic (see other Close Air Support missions here). It will feature the Ka-50, the Mi-24 and the Mi-8 on one side, vs the AH-64, the OH-58 and the UH-1 on the other. Ground units and Combined Arms will be heavily involved to keep things... well, dynamic. We all thought the Apache and the Kiowa were to be released by the end of 2021 or maybe even earlier in summer of last year, which is why I started working on that mission. Plans changed and things were postponed, but the mission will be made. It will be a 24/7 mission to say the least and might run for days until one side wins.

Apart from that, there will be a Helicopters Tournament featuring the Apache. Will work on that soon. I hope.

[Alpenwolf]

When the Su-25T was your worst enemy as a "fighter" with "BVR" capabilities back in the day

 

 

[Alpenwolf]

Server News:

- The warehouses in all Caucasus missions were adjusted. With the latest update a few things were changed, but shouldn't be noticeable for you.
- Missions on other maps will follow.
- Work on the MiG-15 vs F-86 mission has resumed.
- Work on the Helicopters Tournament 15 has started.

Important Note:
The last 1-2 DCS updates have introduced some inconvenient bugs to the Combined Arms module. This will surely have effect on the ground warfare with players probably refraining from playing the module. This is a hard hit to the Cold War 1947 - 1991 server, as most missions happen to include the Combined Arms module, and completing some objectives is heavily dependant on it. Operation Arab-Israeli War is supposed to kick off next Saturday. I'm really not sure what to tell you. Without the Combined Arms players it'd be incomplete in a way.
Sorry, folks. I'm just clueless here.

[The_Tau]

@AlpenwolfIs having aim9Ls for A10 in Phone Booth intended? 

[MMI_Grim]

The update messed up the warehouses. Keep reporting stuff like that to help Alpenwolf fixing stuff.

[Alpenwolf]

3 hours ago, The_Tau said:

@AlpenwolfIs having aim9Ls for A10 in Phone Booth intended? 

No. It was fixed yesterday.

[Alphaless]

Are Limas intended in any of the missions in rotation? I can recall one more where they were available for the A-10.

[Alpenwolf]

2 hours ago, Alphaless said:

Are Limas intended in any of the missions in rotation? I can recall one more where they were available for the A-10.

They're not intended. The latest DCS update messed up the warehouses a bit, and it's not just the L missiles.

All Caucasus missions were fixed so far. Others will follow. Bear with me, please.

[Alphaless]

Aye, no worries. Just making sure because I had thought they were deliberate. I can't remember the name of the mission I am thinking of, but if it helps, it was on Syria and the objectives were those target areas that became available in succession.  

Edited March 21, 2022 by Alphaless

[MMI_Grim]

Hold the line. BK90 for the Viggen.

[Alpenwolf]

5 minutes ago, MMI_Grim said:

Hold the line. BK90 for the Viggen.

I'm going through all warehouses anyway, so it'll take some time. The good old bug never stops haunting me, I guess. Can't live without me or something.

[Alpenwolf]

Server News:

The warehouses in all Persian Gulf missions have been adjusted/fixed.