Love that film. CGI is good, but nothing beats the real thing. I can almost smell the fresh cut grass, oil smoke, sun baked wool, tea, and rubberized cotton.
Smell is a very powerful senseâŠ
When I was stationed in the UK, I attended a Battle of Britain Mess Night at RAF Brampton. Early September. Just before the dinner we were all invited out into the garden. It was one of those beautiful Britain late summer evenings. Then you heard the Merlin coming and soon enough there was a Spitfire overhead. He did about 10 minutes of aerobatics over us; so close you could actually smell the exhaust. What a great memory. Thanks for reminding me @chipwich.
This weekâs dcs news letter is announcing the Syria map. More spending coming soon. Need to get off furlough
I was just playing that mapâŠin Medieval 2 Total WarâŠa bit different.
AnywayâŠ
Iâve been doing a little experimentation with âNeutralâ aircraft. Flying a MiG-21 with a couple of GCI sites (Red) I put up 3 âCOMAIRâ - 1 x Neutral (Greece) 1 x Blue (Ukraine) and 1 x Red (Abkhazia).
As expected, GCI does not report the Red contact. It reports the Neutral and Blue the same way. While today, this might not be accurate, given the Red EW systemsâ1L13, 55G6 and P-19 (Box Spring, Tall Rack and Flat Face B for our NATO friends, playing from home) I think it is pretty good. You will get vectored to a Neutral aircraft and, depending on ROE, it is up to you to VID it.
I havenât tried this out with AI interceptors yetâŠnor ship on ship. Fun stuff.
Yes, it always seems to me AI have perfect IFF. You never see them accidentally drop a bomb on friendly ground units, or get a blue-on-blue kill unless itâs a collision.
While we struggle to get a positive ID, they charge right at you and launch at max effective range without hesitation.
Baby steps brother.
They do, but Iâve had several instances of catching a âfriendlyâ AMRAAM from the AI.
Evidently no harm in taking out a Neutral target - I was wondering if they would have an automatic penalty like they do with Blue-on-Blue / Red-on-Red, put nope.
Alas, a virtual Greek tourists group, on their way to see the sights of Tbilisi, gave their all to discover this fact âŠthey will be remembered. Opa!
Once an AMRAAM goes pitbull it will go for whatever is closest to the center of its FOV. If you are close to a bandit after the AI fired it could indeed go after you.
Basically, a BVR missile should not be fired when there are friendlies WVR of the target, but the AI isnât âIâ enough to know that. Likewise if you fire one at a target with a friendly nearby you could get a blue-on-blue as well. It wonât happen with a Sparrow, though, since that requires a solid lock all the time.
Watch out for friendly F-14âs doing the same with 54âs.
However, while I have had friendly missiles track me from time to time, Iâve never seen a blue AI take out another blue AI (or red-red). It seems to only be an issue with the player planes.
I have seen Blue-on-Blue AI hits, it does happen but very rarely. I canât tell you have to reproduce it either as of course, there is no human involvement. Easiest is when there is a 2v2 fight and the second pair are coming in after the first to started to tango.
I bombed my JTAC with a CBU-105 by accident. Had some high winds and bad rain. Didnât account for the wind and dropped above the cloud cover. All looked good until the bomblet parachute carried to the JTAC spot. OopsâŠ
Oh my, thatâs a hard letter to write to his next in kin.
Thatâs an achievement because the 105 is wind-corrected!
No, no, thatâs actually very realistic behavior. Iâve lost count of the times Iâve been clipped by a human controlled F-14 lobbing AIM-54s all over the place, same for F/A-18 pilots going all SPAMRAAM.
It is not bloody fool-corrected
OT because BMS (though pretty close now to DCS parameters) but against skillful opponents, which I assume most people areâŠ;), after some practice efforts in our squad we found out that when applied well, bvr is very very hard to win If youâre not fox3ing at Raero, which in BMS is about 30-35nm with mar at 25, which basically means semi-maddog⊠So I wouldnât blame the amraam spammers, it works⊠If the skies are clear of blue and green I would say itâs the (only) way to go. But thatâs a big if naturally.
Except the skies are never clear of friendlies.
Essentially if I go in last, I use IFF and try to be strategic. The hard chargers eventually all die out ahead of me. Now I am first on line. They respawn and come back, donât IFF and just fire at anything in front of them, which now is ME and then maybe the enemy. So letâs assume I die to fratricide, well that shooter is now next and whomever comes in after him likely shoots him down.
And donât bother living - I tried to RTB for fuel and ammo one time I managed to not get team killed, and I was shot down by another Hornet - WVR, by an AIM-9 while shouting off friendly/buddyspike/etc in the chat (no voice to that guy).
So now I have to treat friendlies as threats, and tend to fly out to the flank if I bother with PVP at all, and try to pick off enemy pilots caught out or trying to pull the same tactic.
Thing is that IFF is treated like a magic cure all when it isnât. A couple months back an F-14 clipped my Bug while I was doing A/G with an AIM-54 and they told me âturn your IFF on.â To which I pointed out it was an air start slot so IFF was already on and itâs one of the first things I check. Their only response was that the IFF returned negative.
Thereâs no real punishment for failure to properly identify targets and in multiplayer it can be detrimental to a serverâs popularity. That makes it a difficult problem to tackle in a reasonable way. Itâs also why I prefer to play with a smaller group of players rather than a large free for all.
âŠand therein lies the rub. In RL, Blue-on-Blue is obviously a big deal.
To a lesser extent, but definitely frowned upon, so is wasting missiles. There are various doctrines like âShoot, Look, Shootâ and sometimes, âShoot, Shoot, Lookâ. But never, âShoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, ShootâŠLook.ââŠjust sayân.