Gaming Digital Combat Simulator Thread

[Richy]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1484048/201310/DCS/Screen_140222_215800.jpg
I didn't expect any other planes in the mission. After takeoff in the red A-10 I was scared by engine noises, with the typical feeling that my flight is going end violently in a few seconds. Then I saw this nice Il-76 on final.

It was returning to base after a close encounter with one of my Mav's.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1484048/201310/DCS/Screen_140222_220834.jpg
I don't know what hit me first, but this doesn't look like a typical AIM-9 damage. Poor plane. But I made it out .

I guess the first hit was also one of my Mav's. I had only one AIM-9 left, so I used the Mav's first.
I followed you all the way down the coast until I finally got visual. I think you saw the launch of my first missile on your MWS, and then turned around. It was quite an intense moment, when was out of weapons, and you turned towards me.
For a moment, it looked as everything missed. Then something heavy hit. ^^

 

[Hielor]

Finally started making use of the Su-25A I picked up on steam sale a few months back. After going through the trainings (made easier by the fact that it's basically the Su-25T without a Shkval), I started on the campaign.

Failed the first mission a couple times and restarted, ended up with a success. However, I'm not very impressed with the Su-25A campaign compared to the Su-25T campaign, and I'm not sure if I'll end up finishing it.

Thoughts:
- Oh hey cool, there are a bunch of other planes involved in this "strike package." I get to take off with them, rendezvous with them at a certain place at a certain time...wait a minute, I can't get there in time. That's okay, most of them are behind me. Except suddenly, at the appointed time, all of the NPCs teleport to the rendezvous location and start heading for the target. I was able to work around this by just getting off the ground ASAP. Still really frustrating to have to spend 25minutes flying from takeoff to the target when apparently we have teleportation tech.
- Mission scripted voiceovers were jarring and in English. I'd rather have the same-old text-to-speech in Russian than an awful recorded English voice.
- Turns out that despite there being 8 other Su-25s in this "strike package" (not counting my wingman who I figured would be useless), not a single one fired a shot. Not one. They apparently all overflew the area full of bad guys, then went home.
- Turns out that (I think, looking at the mission editor) I could do the exact same thing to get a mission success. All it seems to care about is that I entered the target area, left the target area, survived, and landed back at base. I'm fairly certain I could get a 100% result without firing a shot.
- I didn't end up missing not having my Vikhrs very much, since all my targets were nicely lined up on a road for me, and a single bombing run with FAB-100s took out most of them (not that I needed to do that anyway...)
- Perversely, I kind of like having to fly for 200km to get from base to the target area. It's more realistic than the Su-25T campaign only needing to fly for like five minutes. That said, without an autopilot it gets tedious rather quick--but there's a certain degree of satisfaction in hand-flying on course and staying +-20m of the right altitude. But then again, if I'm going to spend 95% of my time in hand-flying IFR routes, maybe I should be using FSX instead... My fiancée also didn't really appreciate the increased mission length. Although actually, it might not've been that much longer, it just certainly felt that way, since with the Su-25T I spent 80% of the mission actually shooting stuff.

Le sigh...I was hoping (expecting) to get more out of a paid module than I did out of the free stuff, but I guess that's not to be the case. Rather disappointing. Unfortunately, there doesn't even seem to be a place for feedback on the Su-25A on their website...

The plane itself is great, sure, but from the two missions of the campaign I've seen so far, the campaign is a buggy mess that I might as well ignore...

 

[Richy]

I can't tell about the A-10C campaign, but the one for the Ka-50 and the UH-1H are nicely made (ok, these for the Huey are also rather long).

Btw: You could join us of course when we do our training mission. There are also Su-25T spawns available. And on request, I can add some Su-25A.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Finally started making use of the Su-25A I picked up on steam sale a few months back. After going through the trainings (made easier by the fact that it's basically the Su-25T without a Shkval), I started on the campaign...

Thanks for the overview. I was considering the standard Frogfoot, but went all A-10 A, instead (no sale purchase, but I don't mind forking out the full price to the developers every now and then).

What an ugly brute it is! Have only done one 12 minute test flight, "traditionally" from Batumi again on a home made no threats mission, after reading the manual. Really like it, so far, especially the very intuitive HUD pitch ladder that slews laterally when uncoordinated flight is taking place, thus serving as a turn and slip indicator. Remembered the use of the AoA indexer from Falcon (the last time I saw that). Helped a great deal in establishing the correct VAPP. The visibility over the nose is great, to the extent that when de-rotating after landing so much of the runway came into view I thought the nose gear had collapsed! And, of course, that BZZZZ GUN! :lol: (apologies to several buses and trucks on the coastal road).

 

[Hielor]

Just "finished" the second mission in the Su-25A campaign. By "finished" I mean I made it to the target area, didn't quite line up on the line of tanks (related: I've turned off labels, which makes it a lot harder to actually see where the bad guys are...), completely missed my first bombing run, and then lost half a wing when I came back around for a second pass with rockets. Didn't have the altitude to recover (or even eject) and ended up doing an inverted nosedive into the ground.

Somehow this still netted me a score of 50, which was enough to keep from going backwards in the campaign.

One major downside of the longer flight time to get to the target area is that if I end up failing, it's a whole lot more frustrating--I just spent half an hour flying here, only to bite it less than two minutes after engaging the targets. At least I didn't technically lose any campaign progress--if I had I'd be giving up on the Su-25A here and now.

As it is, I'm finding it hard to motivate myself to actually try again, given that it's basically the exact same mission as the ones I've already done--take off from the same airfield, fly half an hour to the same rendezvous point, bomb a line of targets on a road in approximately the same place. In fact, it almost seems as if the enemy team has advanced, unlike the Su-25T's campaign where there was noticeable progress after each mission.

Sigh. Probably won't try again tonight, which means probably not until next week.

 

[Richy]

I'm again in the mood for some DCS this saturday. Still have some things I want to try. So I intend to open my "Weapons Training" server again to public, if anybody is interessted.

But I think I launch it already at 1800 UTC, and give the mission maybe an hour more daylight.

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm again in the mood for some DCS this saturday. Still have some things I want to try. So I intend to open my "Weapons Training" server again to public, if anybody is interessted.

But I think I launch it already at 1800 UTC, and give the mission maybe an hour more daylight.

I will be there, though I might be using it for some refueling training.

 

[Fabri91]

I'll be there too, and I'd also join in on the refueling training.

 

[IronRain]

I've just downloaded the package and I might join too! :thumbup:

 

[Swigert]

If older planes is your cup of tea, you'll love War Thunder. It takes place in the 1940s as WWII rages on. You can fight for the United States, England, Russia, Germany, and Japan, and fly their respective planes during the era. It takes realism and intense, adrenaline-filled flying and mixes the two. As a free game, it has AMAZING graphics and physics.

 

[Fabri91]

Ok, so...did my first air to air refueling in a loooong time and managed to somewhat-learn to use the force-correlate mode on the Mavericks with optical seekers! Weehaa!

However, after this I just couldn't manage a landing without blowing my left main tire...And this with just a GBU-38 and the tanks about 3/5 full.

After repairing and a circuit, another blown tire.

Second time repairing, second circuit...successful landing! Turns out, in DCS even the basics are never really routine.

After which I was greeted with a pleasant surprise:

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Ok, so...did my first air to air refueling in a loooong time and managed to somewhat-learn to use the force-correlate mode on the Mavericks with optical seekers! Weehaa!

Well, that was just way too cool. :thumbup: I simply had to try that refueling as my second A-10A flight. Problem was (apart from a shortage of time for having some fun ATM) there did not seem to be too much detail regarding air-air refueling in the A-10 A AFM, so I did not know if it was even "sim-capable", despite the discovery in the key assignment options of the fueling receptacle cover operation. I set up a mission in ME with a KC-135 on a box pattern at 10K and went for it. I had to figure out the radio calls along the way, and it took half an hour of wobbling around under the tanker doing exactly 232 KIAS - my whole life became that probing nozzle for those moments - but eventually there was a rewarding contact. Unfortunately (because I paused at that point to get the screenshot) it disconnected again, and it was another five minutes before I got another one.

This sim is the greatest, no doubt....

 

[Urwumpe]

my whole life became that probing nozzle for those moments

Don't follow the boom - important rule in aerial refueling. The boom operator does that already for you. Focus on the aircraft, stay centerlined.

As hard as it is with this long thing pointing in your direction.

Fabri91: About the tire problems: These can get caused by too much yaw during landing. More than 10° yaw is not recommended in the manual.

 

[Fabri91]

I was thinking that could have been a factor, but the wind was (purposefully ) aligned with the runway, even though the tower thought it would be fun to make me take off and land with tailwind, which was of about 3 m/s. Still, that of course made me faster on touchdown than I otherwise would have been by about 5 knots.

Keith: congrats!
Here are some tipps on how to better set up the tanker in the mission editor:

• Lower the tanker fuel loadout to about 60% (this still leaves you 100000 lbs to play with, while lowering the angle of attack of the tanker)
• Consider that the speed set in the mission editor is ground speed: 280 at 12000 feet equates to about 240 kts IAS
• Use the Orbit waypoint command: the tanker will orbit between the relevant waypoint and the next one in a race-track pattern. 15 nm are a reasonable distance for that.

 

[Urwumpe]

Use the Orbit waypoint command: the tanker will orbit between the relevant waypoint and the next one in a race-track pattern. 15 nm are a reasonable distance for that.

I recommend the more standard 50 NM (90 km) racetrack pattern (Strange, I have Racetrack in my DCS mission editor, not Orbit there)

50 NM means about 10 minutes of straight track before the tanker turns again. That should be enough time to move from precontact to contact position.

---------- Post added at 11:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:05 AM ----------

This here could be interesting for the mission planning and for the hogjockeys around here:

http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafiles/06BDC1E5_1143_EC82_2E4C0F92CA91AA06.pdf

It puts the minimum length for a refueling leg between 50 NM for ideal conditions and 70 NM for degraded navigation.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Don't follow the boom - important rule in aerial refueling. The boom operator does that already for you. Focus on the aircraft, stay centerlined.

That makes sense. It was my bad that I was going at it like a drogue basket type of refuel point. It is precisely the sort of advice that should be in the manual. I'll try it next opportunity.

Keith: congrats!
Here are some tipps on how to better set up the tanker in the mission editor:

• Lower the tanker fuel loadout to about 60% (this still leaves you 100000 lbs to play with, while lowering the angle of attack of the tanker)
• Consider that the speed set in the mission editor is ground speed: 280 at 12000 feet equates to about 240 kts IAS
• Use the Orbit waypoint command: the tanker will orbit between the relevant waypoint and the next one in a race-track pattern. 15 nm are a reasonable distance for that.

Thanks! I had set up a box of about 30 nm a side, which the tanker went around twice before going home. I was sorry, during the initial refuel attempts, that I had set up this box with little segments to "lozenge" off the corners, in the hope that it might make the tanker do a slower rate turn to each successive perpendicular segment. That didn't really work the way it was intended. The orbit idea is much better.

 

[Urwumpe]

That makes sense. It was my bad that I was going at it like a drogue basket type of refuel point. It is precisely the sort of advice that should be in the manual. I'll try it next opportunity.

Actually stands there - page 494, hidden in the pre-contact procedures.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Actually stands there - page 494, hidden in the pre-contact procedures.

:hmm: You must be referring to the A-10 C's manual. I have yet that to look forward to.

 

[Richy]

Nice to have some positive ressonance here. I'm looking forward to the session.
Fabri91, are you again able to host a TS server?

 

[Fabri91]

Yep, will do!