Mission 8 issues

[Dragon1-1]

First of all, I have to note that advice given in that mission is bogus. In IMC helicopters fly a lot like very slow airplanes, including observing a minimum speed to maintain stability. You do not lower your altitude just because "it'd be easier to land" just because you're over water. You stay high and only descend when it's safe to do so. It's also more than a bit curious that there's advice to fly over 500ft because of terrorist threat, while the reasonable altitude in those conditions is 1000-2000ft ASL just because of the weather. ILS frequency for Batumi is also not given, and the flight plan doesn't go to the FAF for an ILS approach, but directly to Batumi. 

1. The carrier should be replaced with the Stennis. Not only does Carl Vinson have no lights, as noted in the briefing, it's also invisible until you're right on top of it. It's annoying in the first mission, in this, it makes it basically impossible to complete, except by luck. The ad-hoc method of lighting it up only makes it worse, producing flashing, floating lights that end up being really disorienting and unpleasant in VR. As a bonus, the Stennis has really nice lighting at night, similar to SC carriers. 

2. I can't contact Batumi to call inbound, in order to get them to turn on the runway lights. It just doesn't appear in the comms menu, even when I'm right on top of it. This makes it hard to follow a proper IFR landing procedure. The dialogue and flight plan suggest they want you to just come in to a VFR-style landing, which, needless to say, would be suicidal in IMC and would never be approved IRL.

3. Hooking the cargo up on the ground doesn't work. A minor issue compared to the other problems, but it forces a maneuver which would likely be too dangerous to attempt in those conditions IRL.

4. Seriously, get rid of the "no NVGs" thing, in both this and the 4th mission, it's not very realistic and a rather lame contrivance, anyway (and the way they cause mission failure if turned on for one second is rather grating, too). If there were no NVGs available, M4 would not get flown, for futility, if nothing else (even if the spotlight was working, locating a bunch of people on a moonless night from a helo would be practically impossible), and this one is just frustrating, given the limitations of DCS lighting and the above problems.

The other missions, except for problems with AI gunners not engaging, are mostly good so far, but night missions are terrible. Even if they were designed when nights in DCS weren't particularly dark, those missions should have been updated when the lighting changes were made.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Dragon1-1

[gmetzo]

I feel like necroing right now but january 2025 and the mission still is dog<profanity>. very sad to see Petritis hasn't replied to this post.