DCS 2.5 Update Thread (2020)

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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.

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Smell is a very powerful sense


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. :slightly_smiling_face:

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This week’s dcs news letter is announcing the Syria map. More spending coming soon. Need to get off furlough

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I was just playing that map
in Medieval 2 Total War
a bit different. :slightly_smiling_face:

Anyway


I’ve been doing a little experimentation with “Neutral” aircraft. Flying a MiG-21 with a couple of GCI sites (Red) I put up 3 “COMAIR” - 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 systems–1L13, 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 haven’t tried this out with AI interceptors yet
nor ship on ship. Fun stuff.

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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 it’s 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 I’ve had several instances of catching a “friendly” 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 
they will be remembered. :grimacing: Opa!

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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 isn’t “I” 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 won’t happen with a Sparrow, though, since that requires a solid lock all the time.

Watch out for friendly F-14’s doing the same with 54’s.

However, while I have had friendly missiles track me from time to time, I’ve never seen a blue AI take out another blue AI (or red-red). It seems to only be an issue with the player planes.

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I have seen Blue-on-Blue AI hits, it does happen but very rarely. I can’t 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. Didn’t account for the wind and dropped above the cloud cover. All looked good until the bomblet parachute carried to the JTAC spot. Oops


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Oh my, that’s a hard letter to write to his next in kin.

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That’s an achievement because the 105 is wind-corrected!

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No, no, that’s actually very realistic behavior. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been clipped by a human controlled F-14 lobbing AIM-54s all over the place, same for F/A-18 pilots going all SPAMRAAM.

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It is not bloody fool-corrected :stuck_out_tongue:

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OT because BMS (though pretty close now to DCS parameters) but against skillful opponents, which I assume most people are
;), after some practice efforts in our squad we found out that when applied well, bvr is very very hard to win If you’re not fox3ing at Raero, which in BMS is about 30-35nm with mar at 25, which basically means semi-maddog
 So I wouldn’t blame the amraam spammers, it works
 If the skies are clear of blue and green I would say it’s the (only) way to go. But that’s a big if naturally.

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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, don’t IFF and just fire at anything in front of them, which now is ME and then maybe the enemy. So let’s assume I die to fratricide, well that shooter is now next and whomever comes in after him likely shoots him down.

And don’t 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.

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Thing is that IFF is treated like a magic cure all when it isn’t. A couple months back an F-14 clipped my Bug while I was doing A/G with an AIM-54 and they told me “turn your IFF on.” To which I pointed out it was an air start slot so IFF was already on and it’s one of the first things I check. Their only response was that the IFF returned negative.

There’s no real punishment for failure to properly identify targets and in multiplayer it can be detrimental to a server’s popularity. That makes it a difficult problem to tackle in a reasonable way. It’s also why I prefer to play with a smaller group of players rather than a large free for all.

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and 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 “Shoot, Look, Shoot” and sometimes, “Shoot, Shoot, Look”. But never, “Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot
Look.”
just say’n.

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