Caesar

I just got a GTX970 G1, really good performance out of it (replacing twin 560Ti's in SLI). I'm running on a 750W supply, most builds I've seen utilize at least 650W.

Congratulations!

Certainly have! Haven't recently, but that's mostly because some update to my music playing software made it dislike SF2 (crashes hard some times), so not much in the way of 80s music on missions for me anymore!

Yeah, RL ™, has been hampering my forward movement with the F-14 for SF2 and DACT missions in general.

Figures I don't have the briefing on my hard drive anymore! And actually, yes, that number is messed up, it wasn't $4B in losses (memory does not serve well, clearly!); 40 aircraft had been lost to TF-30 related problems by 1996 (Jon Lake, et al) - closer to $2.2B in 2012 dollars when I built the brief in aircraft lost. These included in-flight engine explosions, engine fires, compressor stalls during ACM leading to departure (including spins), compressor stalls on approach leading to aircraft lost, or engine failures leading to failed single-engine approaches. Getting the F-110 on contract was another $235M in 1987 dollars ($475M in 2012 dollars). In the end, the cost of aircraft lost plus the new engine price tag was close to $3B in 2012 dollars, not $4B.

Also, If folks are interested, I'm still working on an AI F-14B data.ini testbed. This one has auto-flaps to help the AI F-14 in the slow fight. I didn't really have trouble flying my own F-14 against it, but figured, if I give the AI the flaps, it'll have a bit more cornering advantage at slow speed. This did so, but I do fear that the AI might wind up slowing down too much again. Use this .ini in your F-14B_96_AI if you want to test it. F-14B_DATA.7z

I'm just glad the SOB is dead. It is truly most unfortunate that innocent people had to go with him, but I applaud the responders for saving as many lives as they did.

MB, I re-read my post and I feel like I came off a bit dick-ish, which was totally not my intention - it was just weird that we had been talking about that so I brought it up. That accident in the film was based on an actual event in which an engine flamed out and the pilot and RIO ejected - in this case both survived, but the RIO's leg hit the canopy and got busted. If it had been his head, he could have been killed like Goose in the movie. Most aviation enthusiasts know that the TF-30 was a POS for any fighter application (e.g. F-14A), and it wasn't the engine Grumman designed the F-14 around to begin with (the F-100 that powered the F-15A was also supposed to go to the F-14 as well), but I actually did a briefing about a year and a half ago as to how bad the engine was. If memory serves, some $4B in F-14's were lost either directly to TF-30 failures, or "pilot error" exacerbated by the TF-30 engine. The F-110 upgrade cost just under $1B, and only 2 F-14's were lost to F-110 failures (afterburner section caught fire on two occasions, one F-16 was also lost this way). Significantly better engine. Thanks for posting zee story!

Saisran, Great job coming out on top of that one! Just to let you know, I have the same problem with my Goshawks - the nose wheel goes into the ground, so I had to do all my fights starting from in the air. Can't remember how to fix that...

Got some preliminary findings from flying the T-45. Unfortunately, no photos. I flew twice against a Su-15 armed with four missiles and the gun pods and once against an AI-Limited F-14B. The T-45 proved to be a lot more capable that I thought it would be, and I guess I should have figured it'd be a good handling aircraft being a fleet trainer. Most basically, the T-45 had a very easy time out-turning the Su-15, but its lack of afterburner made it such that I could almost never capitalize on my easily won position. In the first fight, I closed the gap with the Su-15, and flew well under it to deny it a missile shot at the merge. Of note, the T-45's small size and lack of radar allowed me to get real close to the Su-15 before it started engaging. What happened was that I wound up on the Su's tail in a single turn, and then this thing ran. And it ran. And it kept running. And holy, geez, he's running for home! I never caught it. The engagement pretty much turned into a blow through once I got on the Flagon's tail. Second fight was almost the same thing, but rather than keeping my nose pointed at the Flagon, I turned, and actually went 180 degrees from the Su-15. This time, he tried to turn back to engage. I waited until his nose was about 90 degrees off and pulled into him. He still didn't have enough time for a missile shot and we passed again nose to nose, the Flagon on high and myself pointing up. This turned into my favor, because I put a harsh turn on the Goshawk into the Flagon, and with gravity aiding me, actually caught up to the Flagon, who was now pulling up to fight gravity. But! With those afterburners, I only had a small window. Getting lined up, and knowing the Flagon was getting away, I put a set of 20mm in his direction. Missed, adjusted fire. I believe it was the third burst that caught part of the Flagon, knocking out the left engine, rudder, and a left flap. By now, I had pretty much lost him. I fired in a high arc and none of the bullets caught him. He again ran, not turning back to engage this time, even when I pulled away. So, against an interceptor, the Goshawk can easily get inside of the turn, but good luck catching the guy if he lights the cans! Going up against the F-14B with the 7.33g limiter was significantly more difficult. I did not win this fight. We merged, and knowing I didn't have an afterburner, I went for a turning fight, rather than vertical. Problem is that at high altitudes, the Goshawk doesn't sustain turns as well as a fighter, and the F-14 was getting behind my 3/9 line. I recall getting the nose low and pulling harder, which evened out the fight temporarily, but not for long, since it took energy and I didn't have a good position against the F-14. Tried to unload and get a bit of smack to do something with, but this just allowed the F-14 to get closer to my six o'clock and from here it was just a matter of time. Turned, jinked, reversed, got hit, punched out. I'll have to try the T-45 against some of the earlier generation fighters and generally get more familiar with it, but my takeaways so far are that it: 1. Can pull a good instantaneous turn 2. Can out-turn a smaller winged interceptor very easily 3. Has decent slow-speed characteristics 4. Cannot accelerate with an enemy fighter or interceptor that has afterburner 5. Cannot sustain a turn at moderate to high altitudes against a fighter Also, Crusader's beta T-45C avionics made it a hell of a lot easier!

It's funny you post that, because we were just talking about this two days ago. In the movie, the F-14 never would have entered a flat spin. The most common causes for an F-14 departure leading to a spin were unchecked asymmetric thrust or excessive inertia coupling. In the movie, BOTH engines flame out, meaning that there isn't asymmetric thrust - there's no thrust at all! This still is a piss-poor situation to be in. One pilot called the TF-30's "Ronco" engines; they were stable in mil power or zone 5, but movement from there during harsh maneuvers was asking for trouble, so, you "set it and forget it!"

Saisran, Good flying. Glad to see the limiter's got the F-14 able to survive for more than 30 seconds in a close-in fight. The credit for that isn't mine, though, it's Fubar512 who cooked up that magnificent little .ini code for the F-16. I just lowered the "g" and applied it to another aircraft like EricJ did to the Super Bug (albeit for a different reason). I'm thinking in the next F-14 Super Pack update I'd like to include "AI" entries, since I'm leery of limiting player F-14's for two reasons: (1) the aircraft had no limiters, hard or soft, in any iteration including with DFCS, and (2), players can exploit a high-g pull or two much better than the AI, which does it far too quickly. BUT! That's another discussion to be had with the team. In terms of DACT, it's nice to see a little more challenge out of the AI piloted F-14.

Certainly can. These are the .ini's. Make a copy of your F-14B_96 folder and rename it "F-14B_96_AI" and swap out the .ini's with these. To save space, I only copied one of the skins into the AI F-14's folder. F-14B_96_AI.7z

Yeah, we do need to test it out, because not all aircraft in AI hands really need the limiters (unless you wanted to do something for, say, a MiG-17 above 450 knots from a realism perspective). It seems like mostly large fighters in AI hands get the most benefits, but I've got a lot more testing to do.

Well, it finally happened: the AI flying an F-14B got the better of me in an A-4F Super Fox. The fight took a while, about 8 minutes from the merge, but I only ever got one snap shot on the F-14. The AI managed to get shots on me on four occasions, including several bursts on the third before finally getting a kill on the fourth. I think this is the first time I've lost to an AI piloted F-14 in a gunfight flying the A-4F. The big factor I feel is the limiter on the AI jet. I noticed like before that the AI was keeping in the 300-380KIAS range instead of 200-280, which allowed it to keep up sustained turns at higher "g" and tighter radius than I could do in the A-4F, vice burning all of its energy and becoming a sitting duck, and that's also what happened in this fight. Fight got slow a few times and I actually departed the Scooter 3 times, but quickly recovered with rudder. Seems like the limiter is a good fix for the AI F-14's survivability. Still need to test other aircraft.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Probably some holiday stuff going on, too, Eric, so people might not be posting much for that reason!

I second what Kyot has, but I adjusted the numbers. Now, what COULD have happened is that new versions of these aircraft came out and I didn't download them. If that's the case, this whole thing could be moot and I'm just using old data. One thing I do recall is that I checked the numbers and the numbers in my a/c matched the pounds of fuel of the real-world a/c, rather than kg, and I just adjusted the numbers 'till they matched, commenting out the old ones. Unfortunately, I'm on my laptop for the next few days (leave), so I can't give you my exact entries.

Whoops! My gut told me "it isn't in pounds" but I couldn't remember. Thanks for zee correction.

Kyot, Is your ammo set to "Normal" or "Hard"? I still haven't quite figured out the fuel thing yet (only a/c I know of where it bugs for some reason are the F-22 and F/A-18E/F/G), but gun ammo shouldn't double if you have ammo usage set to Hard. (And, come to think of it, I have to adjust the F-14 weights again sans bullets because that's part of the weight of the "basic" aircraft: guns ammo, crew, trapped fuel, etc. and the game calculates the bullets seperately). Also, the data.ini's are in all different kinds of units. Aircraft weight is in kg, engine thrust is in newtons, fuel weight is I think in pounds (per tank), max speed is in Mach, so that's something to pay attention to. With respect to your question "B", the whole discussion with "g" limiters got brought up when someone started breaking the Super Bug during bombing run pull-outs. EricJ implemented the same hard limiter used in the F-16's and the Bug don't break no more! I added the limiter to an AI F-14 to try to prevent the AI from pulling 12g in a single hard press and losing the fight because it never works for the AI. The limiter will keep the AI's energy up longer and make it more likely to regain energy in a fight, making it more difficult to shoot down as quickly. Its applicability has to do with just about any mission, since, if your wingmen are surviving more in campaign, they'll get better. In single missions, it's just as applicable, but for player A/C, I don't use the limiters. With respect to the Bug's speed on the deck, it is slower than the F-14B/D in reality; higher aerodynamic drag, lower thrust to weight.

Well, I didn't touch the limiter on the Super Bug, I've still got that one at 9. I gave the AI F-14 a lower limit (no limiter on player aircraft) because I felt the AI already gets too slow with that bird, and having it hang out at 9 or trying to reach 9 over and over would keep it doing the same crap it usually does.

Something interesting about the new limiters EricJ put on his Super Bug: they make the plane more survivable in a gunfight when in AI control. I went up against the newly limited Super Bug in an F-14 and it took me a hell of a lot longer to shoot the thing down. The reason is that it prevents the AI from immediately pissing all of its energy away in a super-high-"g" maneuver for nose position, which backfires and leaves the bird open to attack. So, this got me thinking: the biggest problem that the AI has with larger aircraft is keeping energy up; what if I put a limiter on an F-14? So, I made an AI variant of the F-14B with a limiter on it and took up both another F-14B (no limiter) and an F-5E against it. What I found was that the AI is much more survivable. The fight in the F-5E lasted about 13 minutes, and the AI was able to get a firing solution on me twice, one time I probably only survived due to my tiny size. What an improvement! BUT! The AI still does not handle the plane in a fashion I'd call "good." The fight was likely that long because I'm so used to just being able to out-sustain turn the AI that had I managed my energy better, it wouldn't have gone on so long, especially early on when the AI jet wound up down in the 150s of KIAS for a bit early on. In the F-14B, it was nowhere near that long, but it was two to three times longer to bag the AI F-14 than usual. The major tactical implications are if the AI has missiles. If your enemy hasn't pissed all his energy away and can keep you concentrated on him as his wingman pulls around, you're more likely going to take a missile up the pipe trying to sweeten that firing solution, or get hit by an all-aspect heater from a guy you're not maneuvering against. I have to test this theory, but simply finding myself in a prolonged circle, or trying to reverse and suddenly having the AI with nose on taking a shot tells me that if heaters are involved, some of these fights are going to be a lot more dangerous. Of note, the AI still does wind up too slow sometimes (as mentioned above), but it takes it a lot longer to get there, and without the huge stab deflections, will actually sustain around 6-7g for a circle or three, rather than doing a push to 12, then ending up out of energy to maneuver. Also, the limiters don't appear to affect slow-fighting since they're "g" related. The AI F-14 was pushing out to 24-25 units AoA at certain points when it did get slow, and the F/A-18F that I tested against did similar, at one point getting pretty close to my tails; took a bit of effort to shake him off and shoot him down. The values I used for the AI F-14 (called F-14B_96_AI) are 7.33 to deploy the limiter, 7.25 to retract. Also makes me wonder about some of the other "easy" opponents like the F-15 and Su-27 (using a slightly higher value for those A/C, like 8 or so)...

Cougar, He actually shut them down. Story as recounted at Tomcat-Sunset by "Clem" (an F-14 RIO): "OK, first you need a LOT OF SMACK (read speed). Then at 10 miles, you shut 'em both down (i.e. the ENGINES), not IDLE mind you shut the F___ERS DOWN! At 2 miles (inject cold car cranking noises with turning keys motion and pumping an invisible gas peddle), you CRANK EM BACK UP. You'll still have about 400 at the merge and I'd suggest you make the first move in the vertical!" Think that's also mentioned in "Hoser here, Shoot!" but I lent my copy out so I can't confirm.

Did a couple of structural test flights in the F/A-18E. It took about 20 pulls to beyond 12g before the aircraft broke on the first flight, and the pull that broke it was beyond 15. On the second, it broke quicker, but I was going a lot faster (450-600KIAS, depending): on the sixth pull, I hit 18g and the left wing came off. Pulls to between limit and 12 don't seem to do too much to the airframe, and you should be able to hit those numbers if need be once or twice in a fight. Getting higher than 12 is where stuff really starts happening. This was with 8 AIM-120's and 2 AIM-9's, total weight between 48 and 52k pounds. With bombs (2x 1000lb, 2x 2000lb and 2x AGM-84E SLAM Harpoons) and a weight of 58k pounds, the plane still took a hell of a lot of "g" to break, and pulls to as high as 15 did not immediately break the jet. Is the user sure he/she isn't pulling 18g, rather than 8?

Just took a look at the data.ini's. I've got a g limit of 7.5 and a structural factor of 1.5 on just about every surface, so that is kind of odd that it would break after 8g. We have the F-14's at 7g with a 1.5SF and I've gotten as high as 13g on the bird in a defensive break, and have not broken the aircraft. If memory serves, it's usually multiple pulls above the g-limit that cause the aircraft to break, unless the pull is significantly more than the limit times the structural factor. For example, I recently broke a B-2 when I put 4g on it during a test flight. Not sure why the Bug would break at 8, unless the game has some factor for weapons carriage; the B-2 was packing a LOT of bombs when I put 4g on it.