BVR with multiple fighters is Confusing - any tutorials?

[CommandT]

Hey guys,

 

I'm not new to the world of dogfighting, but I am pretty new to everything that goes on with BVR. I've been learning the Hornet - I've read through Chuck's guides on radar modes etc, watched loads of video tutorils on radar modes, datalink etc and I kind of get the idea.

 

However when I go the Instant Action using the Hornet into 8 vs 8 BVR, to say it get's confusing is a real understatement. I just end up randomly locking trgets unless my friendlies shoot that locked target down and then i just try to lock up somebody else. Anyway I think it ends up being a massive mess really with me just firing off missiles at anyone I get a lock on within range and then just maneouvering and chaffing when I hear missle launch high frequency beep from the RWR.

 

Is there any tutorials that show or explain multiple aircraft BVR engagements? If it's 1 v 1 - ok, I can get my head round that. 2 v 2 I'm sure I could figure out. But when it's 8 targets and 8 friendlies it's all just a randm crazy mess and I honestly have no idea who is shooting at who or what to do lol.

 

 

--------

 

On a side note - in that mission I seem to suffer some serious fps drops and stutters. Is this because 16 planes in the sky locking radars on one another is taking up a lot of computer power? I can understand why I get fps drops at Nellis and a whole bunch of static aircraft but wasn't expecting to see such poor performance way above the ground without even seeing anyone.

 

Cheers!

[Moafuleum]

I can't help you with your actual problem, however for this particular mission that you mentioned, it is very helpful to order all your wingmen to turn on their radar and engage enemy fighters. It forces a lot of enemy planes going defensive and takes a whole lot of initiative away from them. Per default the DCS wingmen are not smart enough to do that

[CommandT]

I can't help you with your actual problem, however for this particular mission that you mentioned, it is very helpful to order all your wingmen to turn on their radar and engage enemy fighters. It forces a lot of enemy planes going defensive and takes a whole lot of initiative away from them. Per default the DCS wingmen are not smart enough to do that

 

Ah, I had not realised! Also, that brings me onto another point - is there any tutorials for wingmen commands and when and how to use them? I've searched youtube but nobody has ever done anything on this.

[TLTeo]

As a rule of thumb, wingmen in DCS are incredibly dumb. Order them to do the most reasonable thing for the situation (so either "engage bandits", "engage ground targets", "engage primary and rejoin", "rejoin", etc) and let them do their thing. Which they will do stupidly or not at all depending on the state of the gremlins in their jet.

[markturner1960]

yeah, I am not sure of the point of including this mission - anyone who has enough understanding of how to handle that number of bandits and AI would not be using a training mission and someone who does not, would be completely overwhelmed...….

[TAW_Blaze]

Put 8 jets or more in a 20 x 20 nm airspace and it's chaos. You're lucky in fact because if you have AWACS the datalink gives you about 90% of the awaraness with no effort. You still need the skills to interpret it but it's a totally different challenge than building and maintaining all that information by yourself.

 

You simply have false expectations, with no comms and the idiotic AI it will always be chaos. Focus on individual BVR skills and building / maintaining SA in a crowded environment and this will give you the ability to monitor your environment and quickly adapt to the changes. Even if you had 7 skilled player wingmen with voice comms it'd still be chaos.

 

The easiest way to fight a big group of bandits is by keeping a clear front and making sure you are close to your friendlies and don't end up mixed with the bad guys. Fighting along one axis significantly reduces eventual SA problems you run into in extended fights and gives you clear exit windows. There are some other stuff you can do but once you start getting to merge territory you're just straight up gambling.

 

Although in case of AI wingmen I think sticking close to your friendlies is relatively irrelevant.

[CommandT]

Many thanks for the input to all! Anyone got any good links for BVR tactics and how to implement them in DCS? Just in general for any jet with a decent radar.

 

I see there's a few on cranking.

 

Also, is there any way of having any idea of how close a missle is from you when the RWR is telling you that you are fired on? I assume not but thought I'd ask in case there's some rules of thumb you can apply to figure out if you have to maneouver or you still have time to track and fire on your enemy before having to evade the missle flying at you.

[CommandT]

also, a follow up question - when you fire off a missle at your opponent and break off to avoid the merge, you then have zero situational awareness as he is behind you - how do you re-engage from that point?

[DarkStar]

also, a follow up question - when you fire off a missle at your opponent and break off to avoid the merge, you then have zero situational awareness as he is behind you - how do you re-engage from that point?

 

If you don't have Datalink enabled, you use the awacs to build the map and mental picture in your head. You can then set your radar elevation to scan the enemy altitude and put your TDC cursor to the left or right in your display to catch him as soon as you can in the turn, when you decide to turn.

 

If you really have no situational awareness you don't turn to re-engage, unless the accepted risk level is high and you are the last point of defence (and hence, expendable)

[TAW_Blaze]

Many thanks for the input to all! Anyone got any good links for BVR tactics and how to implement them in DCS? Just in general for any jet with a decent radar.

 

I see there's a few on cranking.

 

Also, is there any way of having any idea of how close a missle is from you when the RWR is telling you that you are fired on? I assume not but thought I'd ask in case there's some rules of thumb you can apply to figure out if you have to maneouver or you still have time to track and fire on your enemy before having to evade the missle flying at you.

 

 

There are probably many but I'd be careful with tutorials. Instead of looking for tactics you should seek to understand what are the core mechanics driving a BVR engagement. Once you understand them you can much more easily develop your own tactics or be able to employ tactics developed by others. A tactic by itself is of no use unless you know when to use it and why.

 

Some very basic pointers:

- missiles have a limited amount of energy and you have relatively infinite, however the missile is more powerful within those limits than you are

- guiding platform and missile guidances have several limitations

- missiles and aircraft are severely affected by air density, combine this with my first point and you can already draw some very simple yet powerful conclusions (i.e. dragging a missile down into low altitude is a reliable way of reducing the missile's energy even further)

- geometry, more specifically geometry of shooter and defender platform at various times of the engagement.. also how proactive and reactive geometry changes affect (i.e. you maneuvering before the bandit shoots at you vs. you maneuvering after he already shot, with various time intervals) the fight

 

There is many more but if you can already cover this you should have a decent foundation.

 

To your RWR question: in general you should not defend missiles after you spot them on RWR. You should observe the bandit's behavior and if he's behaving as if he was fighting you or he's even showing signs that he fired you should be reacting (or pre-acting if you predict it) accordingly. If you react to a missile when your RWR is blinking it's far too late.

 

To put it in a very simple example, if I see a guy drastically climbing at a medium range like 20-30 miles at high speed only to all of a sudden stop, start descending and turns into a crank, this means most likely has a long range lofted shot that he's guiding.

 

Equivalently in another simple scenario, if an ARH capable guy is painting me with his radar (not STT lock) at a good firing range then proceeds to turn around or maneuver in any agressive way you should presume that he did that because he fired at you and he's maneuvering preemptively to deny your shot.

 

also, a follow up question - when you fire off a missle at your opponent and break off to avoid the merge, you then have zero situational awareness as he is behind you - how do you re-engage from that point?

 

The SA is not the pixels on your screen. The SA is the information you have in your head. Just because I cannot see the pixels it doesn't mean all previous information is now erased from my head too. It's important to control how long you stay cold because of course if you stay cold too long then your information is outdated, but if you stay cold too short then the missile might hit you.

 

The important thing here is to make conscious decisions and be aware of what you're doing. This is in my opinion the biggest downfall of the average DCS pilot. They just "do things". Once you are making decisions about what you do, it becomes a lot easier to keep track of what's happening mentally and predict where the bandit should be.

[Taz1004]

I'd recommend Growling Sidewinder's YouTube videos. Below are few examples.

 

 

Also download the Tacview like him and study your missions afterwards.

 

https://www.tacview.net/documentation/dcs/en/

 

And in the beginning, it's better to use Time deceleration rather than active pause because other planes are still moving during active pause.

Edited May 14, 2020 by Taz1004

[Pikey]

There are some basic guides out there, but the best ones are dry, the worst ones are fancy presentation in order to attract casual attention. No one wants to hear about IDCRITS, and ROE is non existent in the public game. Risk management? Do not be silly. The Timeline? Why, casual play does not need or want to coordinate and does not have a large organisation with support personnel and process to consider. Popcorn entertaiment videos should be avoided for learning anything valuable

 

The reality of BVR is that it has to evolve in a simulation to support tactics that no sane person would want to go near in real life, because, they actually value their life. So one has to choose early on if they want to copy what the processes are, or engage in public uncordinated play (not public coordinated play, which can make its own processes and quite probably better than real world ones due to simplicity). You can't really fit into both at once, else you'll never work out why you can have 10 AIM-120's fired at you, or someone flew 20ft from the ground for 50nm to evade DCS radar on a suicide mission intent on taking two people out in exchange for his own virtual life. "Two for one" is regarded as winning in DCS online. In the real world, dying is just not on the table and forms part of a complex risk matrix based on the value of the objective, of which in DCS an 8v8 melee has none, bar complete annihiltion of the other side. In DCS it's never about your own death, it's about how many people you killed before your plane was vapourised. And that changes the view and behaviour of pre-shot "tactics", for want of a better word. Fuel planning? Ha.

 

However the physical delivery of a missile, because it is constrained by reasonable physics in DCS, is identical bar some game limitations. Shoot first, shoot with more energy and defend better against the assumed returned shot, actually the basics are the only fundamental you need to learn and its quite quick.

 

So I assume the OP's question is ... there must be more to it? Well, at a basic sense, no. But if you want to pretend to value your life, or mimic real world process then yes. You just can't mix and match because in the real world there are things such as id crits to work through, roe constraints, process to follow and the insanely busy Timeline that rip the fun out of the joy of pressing the fire button and the views on Youtube.

 

In a single player sense, AI behave like public servers, with maybe some regard to their personal life but only basic rules to follow.

 

Choose your poison. Ask yourself if you are flying 8v8 in order to score a tally, or if you had to stop something happening tactically. Then you will know if you will look online for pvp ideas or tactics from a countries airforce that are available, and study history, to work it all out.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Pikey
tpyos

[CommandT]

There are probably many but I'd be careful with tutorials. Instead of looking for tactics you should seek to understand what are the core mechanics driving a BVR engagement. Once you understand them you can much more easily develop your own tactics or be able to employ tactics developed by others. A tactic by itself is of no use unless you know when to use it and why.

 

Some very basic pointers:

- missiles have a limited amount of energy and you have relatively infinite, however the missile is more powerful within those limits than you are

- guiding platform and missile guidances have several limitations

- missiles and aircraft are severely affected by air density, combine this with my first point and you can already draw some very simple yet powerful conclusions (i.e. dragging a missile down into low altitude is a reliable way of reducing the missile's energy even further)

- geometry, more specifically geometry of shooter and defender platform at various times of the engagement.. also how proactive and reactive geometry changes affect (i.e. you maneuvering before the bandit shoots at you vs. you maneuvering after he already shot, with various time intervals) the fight

 

There is many more but if you can already cover this you should have a decent foundation.

 

To your RWR question: in general you should not defend missiles after you spot them on RWR. You should observe the bandit's behavior and if he's behaving as if he was fighting you or he's even showing signs that he fired you should be reacting (or pre-acting if you predict it) accordingly. If you react to a missile when your RWR is blinking it's far too late.

 

To put it in a very simple example, if I see a guy drastically climbing at a medium range like 20-30 miles at high speed only to all of a sudden stop, start descending and turns into a crank, this means most likely has a long range lofted shot that he's guiding.

 

Equivalently in another simple scenario, if an ARH capable guy is painting me with his radar (not STT lock) at a good firing range then proceeds to turn around or maneuver in any agressive way you should presume that he did that because he fired at you and he's maneuvering preemptively to deny your shot.

 

 

 

The SA is not the pixels on your screen. The SA is the information you have in your head. Just because I cannot see the pixels it doesn't mean all previous information is now erased from my head too. It's important to control how long you stay cold because of course if you stay cold too long then your information is outdated, but if you stay cold too short then the missile might hit you.

 

The important thing here is to make conscious decisions and be aware of what you're doing. This is in my opinion the biggest downfall of the average DCS pilot. They just "do things". Once you are making decisions about what you do, it becomes a lot easier to keep track of what's happening mentally and predict where the bandit should be.

 

Cheers for the advice - still learning! :music_whistling:

[CommandT]

There are some basic guides out there, but the best ones are dry, the worst ones are fancy presentation in order to attract casual attention. No one wants to hear about IDCRITS, and ROE is non existent in the public game. Risk management? Do not be silly. The Timeline? Why, casual play does not need or want to coordinate and does not have a large organisation with support personnel and process to consider. Popcorn entertaiment videos should be avoided for learning anything valuable

 

The reality of BVR is that it has to evolve in a simulation to support tactics that no sane person would want to go near in real life, because, they actually value their life. So one has to choose early on if they want to copy what the processes are, or engage in public uncordinated play (not public coordinated play, which can make its own processes and quite probably better than real world ones due to simplicity). You can't really fit into both at once, else you'll never work out why you can have 10 AIM-120's fired at you, or someone flew 20ft from the ground for 50nm to evade DCS radar on a suicide mission intent on taking two people out in exchange for his own virtual life. "Two for one" is regarded as winning in DCS online. In the real world, dying is just not on the table and forms part of a complex risk matrix based on the value of the objective, of which in DCS an 8v8 melee has none, bar complete annihiltion of the other side. In DCS it's never about your own death, it's about how many people you killed before your plane was vapourised. And that changes the view and behaviour of pre-shot "tactics", for want of a better word. Fuel planning? Ha.

 

However the physical delivery of a missile, because it is constrained by reasonable physics in DCS, is identical bar some game limitations. Shoot first, shoot with more energy and defend better against the assumed returned shot, actually the basics are the only fundamental you need to learn and its quite quick.

 

So I assume the OP's question is ... there must be more to it? Well, at a basic sense, no. But if you want to pretend to value your life, or mimic real world process then yes. You just can't mix and match because in the real world there are things such as id crits to work through, roe constraints, process to follow and the insanely busy Timeline that rip the fun out of the joy of pressing the fire button and the views on Youtube.

 

In a single player sense, AI behave like public servers, with maybe some regard to their personal life but only basic rules to follow.

 

Choose your poison. Ask yourself if you are flying 8v8 in order to score a tally, or if you had to stop something happening tactically. Then you will know if you will look online for pvp ideas or tactics from a countries airforce that are available, and study history, to work it all out.

 

Yep, well I'm definitely more interested in surviving whilst scoring a kill than going in full guns blazing haha!

 

My biggest confusion lies in how to re-engage really. I know some basic tactics of using energy to evade missiles and being able to get your own shot off but I can't seem to find much material yet on how to re-engage the fight once you've turned your back to escape enemy missiles.

[TAW_Blaze]

There are some basic guides out there, but the best ones are dry, the worst ones are fancy presentation in order to attract casual attention. No one wants to hear about IDCRITS, and ROE is non existent in the public game. Risk management? Do not be silly. The Timeline? Why, casual play does not need or want to coordinate and does not have a large organisation with support personnel and process to consider. Popcorn entertaiment videos should be avoided for learning anything valuable

 

The reality of BVR is that it has to evolve in a simulation to support tactics that no sane person would want to go near in real life, because, they actually value their life. So one has to choose early on if they want to copy what the processes are, or engage in public uncordinated play (not public coordinated play, which can make its own processes and quite probably better than real world ones due to simplicity). You can't really fit into both at once, else you'll never work out why you can have 10 AIM-120's fired at you, or someone flew 20ft from the ground for 50nm to evade DCS radar on a suicide mission intent on taking two people out in exchange for his own virtual life. "Two for one" is regarded as winning in DCS online. In the real world, dying is just not on the table and forms part of a complex risk matrix based on the value of the objective, of which in DCS an 8v8 melee has none, bar complete annihiltion of the other side. In DCS it's never about your own death, it's about how many people you killed before your plane was vapourised. And that changes the view and behaviour of pre-shot "tactics", for want of a better word. Fuel planning? Ha.

 

However the physical delivery of a missile, because it is constrained by reasonable physics in DCS, is identical bar some game limitations. Shoot first, shoot with more energy and defend better against the assumed returned shot, actually the basics are the only fundamental you need to learn and its quite quick.

 

So I assume the OP's question is ... there must be more to it? Well, at a basic sense, no. But if you want to pretend to value your life, or mimic real world process then yes. You just can't mix and match because in the real world there are things such as id crits to work through, roe constraints, process to follow and the insanely busy Timeline that rip the fun out of the joy of pressing the fire button and the views on Youtube.

 

In a single player sense, AI behave like public servers, with maybe some regard to their personal life but only basic rules to follow.

 

Choose your poison. Ask yourself if you are flying 8v8 in order to score a tally, or if you had to stop something happening tactically. Then you will know if you will look online for pvp ideas or tactics from a countries airforce that are available, and study history, to work it all out.

 

There is a lot of truth to what you're saying but in reality it's not so black and white in my opinion when it comes to online flying.

 

Typically you have 2 (3) categories of flying

- your everyday fun / learning

- realistic scenarios

- (competitions)

 

Now by the nature of these categories they implicitly define how people behave. A lot of people tend to fly daily for fun or to get better at something. Therefore continously running realistic scenarios is not practical for this purpose. On the other hand continously limit testing yourself is very practical because every single fight is a new experience that makes you a better virtual fighter pilot. The key is to be conscious about what you're attempting and evaluate the results objectively using Tacview etc. 1-1 coaching or airquake in a server is far more efficient at training the main elements of fighting than running a 5 hour combat scenario where you're AFK for 90% of that time. However of course you do have to train the part where you make your own flight plans, timelines, group tactics etc.

 

The nature of limit testing itself can also widely vary. In order to grow your skills one day you can choose to limit test by always trying to push the merge no matter what, another day you might limit test by staying in the air for the longest possible time while still staying alive, getting kills and/or achieving some arbitrary objective. You can even fly simulating VID RoE against otherwise uncooperative bandits who will try to kill you without any kind of RoE of their own. Obviously the online environment itself can impose some limitations on what you can "reasonably" train, but theoretically almost anything can be done.

 

In fact I'd easily say this is how you should train yourself. If you are constantly sticking to the same tactics because "this is how you fly in a realistic environment" you are only limiting yourself because you will not experience all those other situations and you will not be able to make the best decisions if they occur (spoiler alert, they do). A pilot who understands the vastly different possibilities that can occur in a fight will be able to make far better decisions under realistic scenarios because they are more aware of their own capabilities. Bottom line this is not an encouragement of unrealistic flying but rather to add more knowledge to a person who can otherwise also train himself to fly in a disciplined way to achieve his objective.

 

Ultimately no matter what scenario there are no guarantees that people are not pulling complete wild card moves even in real life. For instance there was a mig pilot in the korean war who pushed if I recall a -2 or -3 g nose dive to try to counter a bfm scenario.

[=4c=Nikola]

My biggest confusion lies in how to re-engage really. I know some basic tactics of using energy to evade missiles and being able to get your own shot off but I can't seem to find much material yet on how to re-engage the fight once you've turned your back to escape enemy missiles.

 

Once you go cold you practically finished that fight. Any competent opponent will exploit your attempt to re-engage. Competition in BVR is not necessarily about killing an opponent, it's very often about maintaining offensive stance longer than your opponent can do.

 

What should you do is use all available intel. (AWACS, Datalink, teammate reports, RWR...) to rebuild SA and pick a new fight only when you are outside of desired timeline. Trying to re-engage and join your timeline at arbitrary point will lead to some nice kills but you will most probably end up dead.

 

At the other hand, re-engagings are fun, so no reason to not use them here and there when you feel so.

[Pikey]

Yep, well I'm definitely more interested in surviving whilst scoring a kill than going in full guns blazing haha!

 

My biggest confusion lies in how to re-engage really. I know some basic tactics of using energy to evade missiles and being able to get your own shot off but I can't seem to find much material yet on how to re-engage the fight once you've turned your back to escape enemy missiles.

 

Well, to be fair you've described playing on your own, which is the most dangerous way to play anything combat related. Everything in combat is about having more and better forces. I guess most forces don't plan for solo tactics, so you wont read anything on it.

 

If you are running with your back turned, just do that properly and assume he's on your 6 just out of guns range. Players and AI are known to chase :)

 

The process from CNATRA in a nutshell is switch to ACM 20nm maintain flight integrity, get your scans up per contract, sanitise close then far and "rebuild SA". Can't imagine their processes talking about last ditch banzai with eyes closed, wingman dead, it is usually expected you have someone to talk to on a radio, other flights, agencies working for you, friendly ground AD and a real world.

I think I recall Teknetium chasing me 150nm from Kraznodar to Vody on burner in BlueFlag 2014. Sukois have surprising fuel and speed. I never turned to engage because I had no idea how far he was away. But I thought about it for 20 mins. Turns out he was close enough to kill me had I turned.