Caesar

From last night, I did a DACT flight against the JAS-39C Gripen. The Gripen is kind of like a super F-16, even lighter, even smaller, and with large moving canards, allowing the type to pull some pretty ridiculous moves in the instantaneous regime. I was flying the F-14D. Loadouts were: F-14D: guns, 75% fuel (~11,800 lbs at the merge) Gripen: guns, 100% fuel (~4500 lbs at the merge) This fight was a pretty difficult one. Maybe not as bad as the F-31 experimental plane fight, but the Gripen is a maneuverable little bird, and nearly as difficult to hit as the F-5. The F-14 started the fight in the vertical, as it kind of typical; got to the top of the loop, dropped maneuver flaps ("takeoff") and began coming down on the Gripen. Normally, with both the GE engines and gravity aiding the F-14, it's easy to get lead, but the Gripen decided to add some vertical of its own, and the two passed each other. The Gripen was turning pretty darn well, even with the vertical element, and rather than chasing it up hill, the F-14 pulled into a sustained turn to try to meet him somewhere down low. Well, that didn't work. Rather, the aircraft went neutral for a while, but at the distance we were, the AI was comfortable making some max-instantaneous turns to get the nose around, then unload and threaten the F-14. As the F-14's nose got on the Gripen, the Gripen was already pointing at the F-14, coming down. The F-14 was not in danger, and as the two passed, the F-14 pulled hard into the vertical. The Gripen fired at nothing for some reason. The F-14 went to max left rudder to force the nose to slice more quickly at the Gripen, but still had too much energy. As the F-14 came down, trying to get its lift vector in front of the Gripen, it was able to take a snap shot, but nothing connected, and the fight went into a sustained right-hand turn. This setup happened about three times. On the third, the Tomcat entered its pull with about 250KIAS, and was down in the low-80's of knots (indicated) as it reached the apex of its loop to try to get on the Gripen. Max rudder, yaw rate was very high, and the Tomcat's nose sliced right onto the Gripen's tail. The Gripen and F-14 went nose-low for the deck with the F-14 still glued to the Gripen's tail. The Tomcat took several snap shots in the spiral down, but none connected. At the lower altitudes, both aircraft had gained significant energy and had exceptional "g" available, but the F-14 kept down closer to 6-7 for the most part, as this was all that was necessary (Gripen was between 8 and 14 at any given moment). Both aircraft were also putting out so much thrust at the lower altitudes, that gaining altitude wasn't as taxing on energy, and both the Gripen and the Tomcat made altitude-gaining turns at different points, to then try to get gravity working in their favor. No shots were made. The fight, for the most part, was now alternating between about 6,000 and 500 feet, and the Gripen had to pull straight up to avoid becoming a lawn-dart on two occasions. On the second occasion, the F-14 was able to get into firing position and take a shot. This missed, however, the Gripen was not effectively able to pull away from the F-14, which by now was getting down to about 6000 pounds of fuel. The Gripen had been running its afterburner for a while, so its surprising it wasn't out of gas. Both aircraft climbed as they turned, and the F-14 was able to splash the Gripen as the aircraft approached 10,000 feet with a gun shot. Total fight time was about 10 minutes. Takeaways: The Gripen is a pretty tough opponent, and unlike the F-31, is an operational aircraft. The big thing to remember is to use the rudders! During the various times we wound up nose-to-nose and I did my vertical pull after passing, the rudders added in high yaw rates especially at lower airspeeds, I was able to get the Gripen on the nose every time, but not really capitalize until the third instance. What it came down to was that in the previous two, the Gripen still had the energy to pull away, while the third time, he didn't, and had to go nose-low to try to get away. This didn't work out for him, and the lower altitude fighting was what eventually put him on my nose.

Depends on how you want to handle the fight. If you do just visual, you'll slaughter the F-14's. You'd also slaughter F-15's, F-16's, and F/A-18's based on my recent experiences. Longer ranges are a little different, but the thing is, you can basically fly in at low altitude, break the lock of the AIM-7's they'll be firing at you, and so long as you can deny them the heater shot at first pass, you probably won't have too many problems splashing the aircraft. I actually did a mission just like that a little while ago; believe it was 8 F-5's vs 4 F-14A's. Final survivors were 1 F-14, 1 F-5 (not me), where about three of the F-5's were lost en-route to the engagement area, making the fight a 5 v 4 at the merge. I had gotten ahead of my flight, bagged an F-14 head on, came around to the tail of another, shot him down, then got hit by an AIM-9 myself. During that time, we lost another F-5, so now it was 3 v 2. One of the F-14's was apparently damaged (based on debug) and started running. One more F-5 got bagged trying to chase him down, another F-5 and the last F-14 got into a duel, both hit each other with guns, but the F-14 survived. The running F-14 got splashed by the last remaining F-5, who was apparently too far to turn and engage the last F-14, and both defaulted to "WAYPOINT" on the debug, then separated from the engagement area. On the flip side, the AI doesn't do the low-altitude stuff too well, so when I did the engagement from the F-14 side, the F-5's never even made it to the merge. That said, it was a lot of fun from the small fighter side; might as well see how it works out for you!

I haven't busted a Super Bug yet due to over-g. People been complaining?

S!

I did a check against the F-5 in an F-14D; the fight lasted about 45 seconds from the merge. The more powerful engines allow the F-14B/D to not only turn but accelerate while turning with the F-5, so I was able to get very close and gun the smaller aircraft expediently. It was largely the same fight, albeit in about one-eighth the time: vertical loop, turn onto the F-5, but with loads of smack on the jet from the GE engines. Line up at close range, guns, fight's over. I also was able to take the F-5 up against an F-8E. The F-8 seems to have similar alpha to the F-5, if not slightly better in between 10 and 15,000 feet, but the Crusader never got nose on. We wound up in a range of scissors maneuvers, initially, I was about to overshoot the F-8 as I was getting a position of advantage, so I pull into the vertical and the F-8 counters, and we went through about three iterations of rolling scissors. At the top of one of the loops, I fed in more rudder and some lateral stick to try to slice the nose down, and the scissors started to flatten out. Eventually I was able to get behind the F-8 and gun him, but it was a lot better fight that the AI put up than in a larger fighter! Still experimenting on both sides of the F-5. Will likely try some of the other 3rd and 4th gens tonight/tomorrow. ADDED: First additional report: F-5E vs. F-15C (79) In the F-5E against the F-15C (79) I found the fight like an elongated fight against the F-4E. The F-15C can sustain pretty high "g" but for whatever reason, the AI bungles it. This was a one circle to the end; just a long left-hand turn. What was surprising to me was that the AI went into a nose-low circle, which allowed me to sustain energy until the F-15 was on the deck and had to pull up to not become a lawn dart. Now, maybe like I brought up earlier, the F-15 was at a higher airspeed and couldn't turn as tightly at the given "g," but it would have behooved the AI to do either a vertical press or a sustained altitude turn, which I couldn't easily match in the F-5. Regardless, the F-15 never got nose on, and when he pulled straight up, like the F-14, the F-15 is hard to miss with guns, and the F-5 bagged the F-15 at about 2 minutes from the merge. On the flip side: The F-15C (79) handled the F-5E (72) without too much difficulty. I always miss the flaps/slats I have in the F-14 at slow speeds, but the F-15C has a lot of raw power, and if you wind up slow, it doesn't take too long to rebuild energy. In this case, I did a vertical press, coming down I had a little less authority due to no flaps/slats, but still wound up behind the F-5. The F-5 was able to keep the fight neutral for about a minute or two because it took me a moment to build back energy while turning with the F-5. Like the F-15, the F-5 went nose low and I followed, eventually catching up to the small fighter. Just like the F-15, he had to pull up to avoid the ground, but being the small, nimble little bastard that he is, the F-5 put on some harsh moves for guns-D. For a moment it almost looked like he'd get the fight neutral again with some harsh twisting followed by a sudden, high-g pull to the right. Unfortunately for him the F-15 had all the thrust to spare and caught right back up. In that turn, I was able to land a burst and the F-15 bagged the F-5 at about 3 minutes from the merge. ADDED 2: F-5E vs. F-16C Blk 30 So, I'm not sure why, but this fight went just like against the F-15. Exactly the same. I'm playing against "Excellent" AI, so I have no idea why it's doing the same damn thing with all of the aircraft, but sustained left-hand nose-down turn, pull up, guns. On the flip side: This time, I didn't do a vertical press, but instead went for a sustained turning fight. The F-16 does out-turn the F-5 at high speeds, so I had to unload every once in a while to clear the screen (black out), however, I got on the F-5's tail after about three circles, and MAN I forgot how jumpy the F-16 is in the gun pattern! Half of my problems with hitting the F-5 were caused by how fast the F-16 rolls and pulls. Like a mosquito on coke or something! Finally lined the F-5 up and got guns on it at around the 2 minute 30 second mark. Major takeaways: In the gunfight, the F-5 is absolutely able to hold its own against newer generation aircraft. On the flip side, like I said above, the F-5 isn't the most difficult opponent for a 4th gen fighter, but for hitting it with the gun! Its small size and ability to perform sudden jinks make it more difficult to gun at medium to long range than a larger fighter. Even hitting an F-16 or F-8 was a breeze compared to hitting the F-5.

I'm sorry to hear about this. May he rest in peace.

The new F-5E came out today! Beautiful model, cockpit is wonderful...figured I'd take it up to see how it handles. Going up against the F-4E (72) in an F-5E (72), at about 10-15k feet, all you need to do is a one-circle fight. Put the aircraft in about a 6.5g turn with the F-4 at the merge, held the turn, caught up, and shot him down. So, I figured, why not take it up against an F-14? Using the same F-5E, I brought the aircraft up against an IRIAF F-14A. I know the AI can't fly the F-14, but it CAN do some stuff before it goes and pisses all the energy away. In essence, the fight was interesting for about two loops. At the merge, the F-14 was trying to hot-nose the F-5. The F-5 maintained angle-off, so as not to risk a 1:1 in a joust, even with a larger opponent. F-5 pulls into the vertical at the merge, the F-14 rolls on its back and dives. As the F-5 reaches the apex of the loop, the F-14 reaches the bottom of its own and starts coming back up. The F-5 notices that the F-14 has burned energy for nose position, and is close to threatening the Tiger. The F-5 changes course for angle-off, pulling back into the F-14 as the two pass. Another iteration and the F-5 still has no advantage, however, the AI goes downhill from here. The two fighters start to level out and the AI is about 80-100 knots below its best sustained turn speed. It is now only a matter of time. One thing I will say, the F-14's better alpha makes it able to jink fairly well in spite of its size. The thing is, the F-14 just about fills the windscreen; it's difficult to miss. During the first burst, however, the F-5's left gun jammed. The F-14 takes a hit, but is still flying. The F-14 is flying efficiently enough that the F-5 needs just over 60 more seconds before it can fire again, this time, setting the right engine alight, and taking some flaps. The fire goes out, and the F-5 finally shoots down the F-14 about 45 seconds later. Of note: the right gun jammed right at the same time! Some shots: On the flip side of the coin: Well, that was kind of easy. The AI F-14 managed to threaten me about twice, but that was it. How does it handle the F-5? To find this out, I took an F-14A (74) against an IRIAF F-5E (72). The F-14 had about 11,500lbs of fuel entering the arena. Fighting against the F-5 was not difficult, but HITTING it was. Whereas an F-14, F-15, Su-27 series, MiG-31, etc. are pretty easy to hit, the F-5 is a tiny little target, and it took me over 400 rounds to finally bring the Tiger down; 8 were hits. The fight went like this: F-14 goes vertical at the merge, F-5 goes low and into a turn. F-14 has gravity aiding it, pulls hard as the F-5 passes in altitude on the way up, and shortly after gets on the F-5's tail. F-14 spends next 5 minutes saddled on the F-5 in a left-hand turn. The F-14 hit the F-5 early on but didn't disable any of the F-5's flight controls or engine, so it may well have not happened, and the F-5 is finally shot down in a left-hand turn at about 18,000 feet. Takeaways: The new F-5E is a lot of fun to fly. It's a maneuverable little plane; I'll have to try it against an A-4F or an F-16 (or MiG-17 or MiG-29), since the AI seems to handle those planes a lot better than the larger fighters (well known, that). Going against the F-5, any 4th Gen fighter shouldn't have a problem so long as you play your advantages, but that sucker is tough to hit thanks to its small size. I haven't tried the F-4E vs. new F-5E yet, either. Great job to the team, and if you don't have it yet, download the new Tiger!

Beautiful! Congratulations to the team!

Cougar, No, dynamic launch zone is not modeled in this sim, but at the same time, missile performance does require you to know envelopes to an extent. This is especially true for the AIM-54 in the F-14 SuperPack. It can be fired from 115NM, but will hit its target only if the target is closing with you (and it also helps to have speed on the jet). If you try to fire at that range against a target flying perpendicular to your flight path, the missile won't reach. You have to be around 65-70NM or so to hit a non-closing target. Running, I still haven't found the max range yet. It does boil down to how each missile is modeled, however. Some missiles can still hit a non-closing target at advertised Rmax, which they can't do in reality (e.g. the AIM-7F could hit a closing target at I think 26NM, but 90 degrees angle-off lowered that range to 8NM).

Prezactly! Knowing where your aircraft best sustains its turn vice where it can sustain max "g" is imperative to success. Also, just because an aircraft can achieve something like 9g does not necessarily mean it will outperform an aircraft that does less. If an aircraft can sustain, say, 6g at 310 knots (~21 deg/sec and 1450 ft radius at sea level), it will be able to out-turn a 9g aircraft that needs 500 knots to sustain that "g" (~19.5 deg/sec and 2600ft radius at sea level). So, in the examples of the F-35 vs. Su-35, the trick would be to hold the F-35 in a region where it best performs, vice just shooting for max "g." Sometimes, this means dropping airspeed, "g" or otherwise. That's one of the things I've started to use a lot more in recent years; AI in UFO like aircraft have to pull ridiculously high "g" to threaten me, while I hang out at lower speed and lower "g" and can either match their turn in a tighter circle and lower "g" or prevent them from threatening me by cutting off their angles.

Eric, Could be because he had missiles, so rather than going for "Lag Pursuit" for guns, he was probably pulling harder to get the IR missile shot!

Eric's engagement reminded me that several months ago I had done a "4th gen vs. 5th gen" shootout and all of the 5th gen fighters were completely benign. I have been tweaking the F-22 recently, as it has more than double the internal fuel it should, even though the data.ini shows the correct numbers. Not sure why that is, but I changed it so that the aircraft has roughly 18,000lbs internal, rather than 36,000 to mirror its real world loadout. It is time for F-14B vs. F-22A Round 2! This was a gunfight, both aircraft started around 100% fuel, but prior to entering the arena, I burned my jet down to just below 15,000 pounds. The weight of the F-14B as it entered the engagement area was 59,361lbs, the F-22 was at 56,114, though I have noticed the AI starts at lower weight than the player for some reason. The F-14 gets tally and pulls into the F-22; the F-22 does the same. Both aircraft pass each other with about 1500 feet lateral separation, and the F-14 pulls hard into the vertical, maxing out at just above 9.7g. The objective it to do max instantaneous to get the nose around and threaten the F-22 as fast as possible. The F-22 pulls into a hard right turn. At the apex of the loop, the F-14 drops flaps, and is headed towards the F-22's tails, aided by gravity. This is the remainder of the fight. The F-14 continues down as the F-22 continues a nose-low right-hand turn. Eventually, the F-14 gets lead and guns the F-22 with a quick burst of 20mm. Fight's over. Hrmm...Still kind of benign in the gunfight. Bear in mind that I haven't touched the thrust of the F-22, it's still ridiculously high (over 100,000lbs total thrust in max AB), but I HAVE significantly reduced the bird's weight by getting its fuel quantities corrected. I also know from having flown the aircraft recently that it will easily push to over 30 units AoA. The F-14 doesn't usually do this except at altitudes of about 20,000 feet or more, and does not normally sustain more than 28 unless it's at the same altitudes with flaps down while pulling. I feel that in a guns-only fight, the AI F-22 runs into similar problems that it does with the F-14, F-15 and Su-27: for whatever reason, it just doesn't handle the larger aircraft as well. What I will say, however, is that with 18,000 pounds of gas removed, the aircraft was much more lively than it was in the past! The first time I did this fight, I think the F-22 just tried one turn, then it ran out of energy, and just kind of hung there doing nothing 'till I shot it.

Just did a quick test of the AIM-54 against a close range target. I remember testing against long range opponents, as well as circumstantial close range ones, but I couldn't remember if you could use Phoenix in PDSTT or VSL. Turns out you can. Due to the missile's long Rmin (1.8NM), it isn't advisable (as I outlined in the manual, there is a high chance you'll pull the trigger and the target will go outside of the seeker's visibility), but I just brought up an F-14 against a MiG-23 target (I say target because I just game him guns as the objective was to test the missile). Using VSL, you can lock up an enemy aircraft, but be very mindful of closure rate. You'll only have a few seconds to fire the missile before it falls inside of Rmin. Alternatively, you can use RWS to acquire your target, then lock him with PDSTT and lob a Phoenix at him that way. In game, the missile will go active almost immediately (it drops from the rails, fires, and after about a half second of flight, you can see it acquire and steer towards its target). This mirrors the real-world dogfight mode for the AIM-54, and I think it's dictated in part by the missile's seeker range in the data.ini. Pretty cool.

The AWG-9 has several dogfight modes, only one modeled in the TMF (and TW for that matter) F-14, that being Vertical Scan Lockon-High (VSL-Hi). This causes the AWG-9 to continually sweep a 4.8 degree azimuth beam between 15 and 55 degrees elevation, with a maximum scan range of 5NM. VSL Low does the same sweep, but from -15 to +25 elevation. VSL was generally considered the most useful mode in a dogfight. There's also two others I know of: NFO Rapid Lockon, which allows the RIO to slew the radar in the direction of the target, though under a high-g ACM environment, this wasn't considered a very useful mode, and Pilot Lockon Mode, which is a boresight mode looking for a target directly in front of the F-14. Just about every F-14 pilot or RIO I've spoken to only ever talks about VSL, so that seems to have been the one used most.

Eric, Really like this campaign, reminds me of Fleet Defender! Great work!

Nice reports, gents!

OK, so I did something a little out of character for me: I did a DACT with missiles. Also wish I had recorded this one because it was a pretty interesting finale. The fight was a 4 v 8 modification of a TOPGUN mission I had made with A-4's and F-5's against whatever I chose to bring up against them. This time, I replaced the simulator aircraft with MiG-17F's and MiG-21bis. Year was 1975, so the reliability of the missiles and their general capabilities were not as good as with the later "death rays." My flight was a mix of Navy aircraft, myself in the F-14A_74, #2 in an F-4J, #3 in an F-8J and #4 also in an F-4J. Loadouts were: F-14A: 2x AIM-54A on glove pylons, 2x AIM-9G on glove pylons, 4x AIM-7E-4 between the engines, guns. F-4J: 4x AIM-9H, 4x AIM-7E-2. F-8J: 4x AIM-9H, guns. The enemy were loaded with: MiG-17F: Guns. MiG-21bis: 4x AA-2, guns. The fight started about 127NM away with the AWG-9 picking up the flight of four MiG-17F's. While I had the option to fire at about 115, the aspect was about 90 degrees angle off, and I knew from prior trials with the AIM-54 that they wouldn't reach their target if I fired them from that far away at that aspect, so I continued to close. At about 90NM to the Fresco flight, the MiG-21's began to take off, and were flying towards my flight. I directed two and three to engage the Fishbeds. At this point, I lit the cans to get my AIM-54's some decent starting speed. At about 58NM to the MiG-17's and at 1.55M, I designated two as targets and fired two AIM-54's, the first came off stupid, the second fired properly. This put me ahead of my flight and closer to the MiG-21's, but they had neither long range missiles or face-shooter short range missiles, so I wasn't overly concerned. My original plan was to down the MiG-17's at long range and deal with the MiG-21's in close, since the Frescoes are extremely maneuverable and I didn't want to be turning and burning with them. The first Fresco got hit and destroyed by the AIM-54. Unfortunately, the MiG-21's were now very close to me, so I had to change my attention to them. The AIM-7E-series has a short Rmax and the MiG-21's would begin to turn to change aspect when we locked them up. At about 11 miles to the first, I fired an AIM-7 at the second MiG-21 on my radar. About 5 seconds later, my wingman fired an AIM-7 at the lead MiG-21. Both Sparrows hit and destroyed their targets. I got lock on the final MiG-21, too close for an AIM-7 shot, but in the ideal envelope for an AIM-9; I considered that the Frescoes were still up, and I'd probably want the AIM-9's for them, but this was perfect for a shot and I fired that AIM-9 at the MiG-21 on the nose and hit him. At this time, two things happened. My number three called BINGO, and I got lock on one of the MiG-17's. They had spotted us and were closing. I elected to send flight 2 home, but that's when I realized that this included my wing man, who I had hoped would engage the Frescoes with me. Well, too late now. Locking one of the Frescoes, I sent an AIM-7 his way and shot him down. That's when I noticed one of his other two wingmen were headed right at me, and I pulled a bit to get off of their nose to deny a head on shot. The second one was beneath me, flying up, and attempting to get a head-on solution as well. I could see this guy was now the threat, pulled into him, nose slightly low. Since these two were already in a turn, it didn't take them long to start getting into a threatening position. The guy who had passed me earlier was coming around onto my tails since I had made a maneuver to deny his wingman a shot. I had begun to turn with him, then I thought to myself "what the hell am I doing?" and pulled vertical into a loop. The MiG-17's followed, but I had done this a hundred times before: they can't stay in the loop because they run out of airspeed. As I entered this loop, the MiG-17 that had gotten on my tail tried for a shot, but I rudder rolled and he missed. The second Fresco was near the top of the loop, and within a second of the last also fired, and also missed. I realized I didn't have my flaps down, but I was already regaining energy. We were at low altitude, and before coming back up, I kept the nose pointed down to get closer to the terrain. At about 1000 feet, the MiG-17's stopped tracking me and did a direct pull up for ground avoidance. Now I went back up into another loop, also having an idea of their "knock it off" altitude. On the way back up the second time, I got the flaps out and the Frescoes stalled out, but I wasn't able to immediately capitalize as I was just getting to the top of my loop. As I came down I fed in rudder; the trailing MiG-17 was a more achievable target and I sprayed some 20mm in his direction. Not enough lead. However, the MiG-17 was on the deck again and leveled his wings. I finished my turn onto his tail and launched an AIM-9 at him, splashing him. I then checked for the last MiG-17, who was turning at about my 9 o'clock. Rolled and pulled into him, using low altitude and flaps as an advantage. At certain points in the turn, the Fresco pilot pulled to avoid the ground, then re-entered the turn. We were approaching nose-on each other, and I could see I'd get first shot. I attempted to get lead and fired a burst in his direction, but missed. We passed, continued, and twenty seconds later, I got good lead and shot him down with the Vulcan. Takeaways: Sending flight 1 home also sends home your wingman. I hadn't remembered that, but now I do! Not the kind of thing you want to do necessarily, but with 3 and 4 at BINGO, they'd have been useless. Having the long range advantage is particularly powerful and can easily help to dictate the fight as it did here. In the end, there was a furball, but that furball wound up being 1 v 2 rather than 4 or 8. Also, I have no idea what the hell happened to the last MiG-21. By the time I headed back to base, he was nowhere to be seen. Also, it was nice to get a kill with every weapon system on the aircraft!

That's a mostly true statement. Phoenix WAS designed to take down bombers and cruise missiles, but those bombers absolutely had jammers on them and multiple OT&E tests had to defeat powerful ECM to include pulsed interference. The missile WAS tested against maneuvering targets as well. While it wasn't the original intent, Phoenix was better at hitting maneuvering targets than contemporary versions of the Sidewinder or Sparrow, as proven in 1973 when one loaded over 18g to ram itself through a QF-86 in a 6g pull for a kinetic kill after chasing it down from 10 miles aft. RADM Gillcrist considered that a significant step forward, since the maneuver tested had always been a successful defense against air-to-air missiles. Something we forget is that neither Sidewinder nor Sparrow were originally designed to take out fighters, either: both were meant to shoot down bombers, and it showed in Vietnam. It was only with significant improvements to the guidance systems, warheads and motors that the AIM-9 and AIM-7 became effective for downing maneuvering fighters. So, while it is true that Phoenix was not designed as a fighter killer, it absolutely can take down an enemy fighter, and defeating an enemy through jamming WAS a requirement for the missile.

So, I decided to fly the Su-27 just to see what's going on with it: I think the big difference is that there is a limiter on the NF5 bird, because when I jumped into the cockpit, it is still ridiculously overpowered. It'll accelerate through 15g at 1.1M and 18g at 1.3M, then the "g" bleeds off again probably because of the horizontal tail authority. The Flanker also doesn't bleed energy in a climb until probably over 20,000 feet. So, it is still a UFO, but, as alpha builds, it actually causes drag for the NF5 version vice the SFP1 version, and that's probably why its easier to deal with, and why it gets as slow as it does. Will have to see how the Su-33 handles when it gets released, given that it is being developed for the SF2 series, rather than SFP1.

The BOL dispensers should work in the F-14 at least; we moved them to the data.ini for all (96) and beyond Turkeys, which was the big issue for the AI. I think the frustration comes from the fact that the game only cares about the launching aircraft's radar, not the missile's terminal guidance radar. If a platform fires at you in TWS, you're not going to get any warning other than that there is a radar emitting out there, but once the missile goes terminal, its own internal radar kicks on, and that's when you'd get the track warning. The game doesn't do this. I remember doing the experiment over a year back with USN F-14's vs. IRIAF F-14's. You'd have the search warning going, then the AI would fire, and you could actually tell by the warning cutting off for a second, then it'd come back on before the AI fired again. So, theoretically, you DO get a warning, you just have to hope the RWR cuts out when its in the middle of making a search warning tone.

So, I'm not sure if there's a difference in FM's, but the Su-27 I went up against recently was the original Marcfighters one for SFP1. I had an experimental FM on another Su-27 from about two years ago which gave it better slow-speed pitch authority, but it wouldn't sustain a turn worth a damn in AI hands - straight up instantaneous. That's the one I had been flying against for a while, which is why I considered it an easy opponent. The SFP1 variant, significantly different. I'll have to check out the NF5 one, there could be changes to it. EDIT: Yes, there is a definite difference between the SFP1 variant and the NF5 variant, and I'm guessing the ones I had been going up against prior to re-installing the SFP1 version were either the NF5 version that I had forgotten about, or a version that led up to the NF5 one. This also explains why I remember them being so easy (I stopped fighting them a while back when a patch broke the bird. I recently remembered an easy fix was to delete the shadow file. Voila! It works again!). While, yes, the NF5 Su-27 will pull very high "g" in a hard press as one would expect, it actually loses energy when it yanks 12g unlike the SFP1 version running in SF2. I brought up an F-14B not knowing what to expect. Basically, we merged, the F-14 pulled vertical, the Flanker turned, then tried a very high "g" pull as the F-14 came down, but didn't get nose on. The F-14 was still descending and the harsh pull burned all the Flanker's energy. This is when the Flanker entered into a "death porpoise" pitch/push cycle, but because it has such good control authority at high alpha, it didn't depart. The F-14 turned into the Flanker, which had managed to pull and get its nose to under 90 degrees angle off the F-14's nose continuing hard pulls, but as the two aircraft closed, the Flanker pulled right into the F-14's gunsight and took on a face full of 20mm, ending the fight at 1 minute 59 seconds. Lock, in the turn as the Flanker works all the alpha in the world for nose position: Splash off the nose: Takeaways: Like the F-14 in AI hands, the AI piloted Su-27 (non-SFP1) gets too slow, too quick and winds up a sitting duck. While, yes, it does have exceptional nose-pointing authority at those slow speeds, it gets SO slow that as you can see from the screenies, I was out turning it at about 150KIAS. Granted, I was nose low, blower selected, so by the time he got around, I had already gained about 110 knots, while he was fighting gravity, but he needed a lot more speed than that, or to pull less harshly to threaten me.

Great to hear things are getting better on the health front, Falcon!

Eric, Welcome back! Shaking the rust off is a royal PITA, but just to let you know, with the debug on, I can see that the Su-27 is a UFO in the current patch, so I wouldn't feel too bad about it. It'll do repeated pulls to 18g+ and normally doesn't burn energy even around 9g at 400KIAS in AI hands. That being said, the bird's FM was made for the SFP-1 series, and I personally don't remember it being that overpowered in that series, so I'm guessing something's changed between the two. I took up an F-14D against it last week and the fights were basically energy circles. When I pushed vertical, the Su was able to pull harder, but never got an effective shot. Fights went 3 wins and 2 draws. At least twice, I completely ran him out of gas, but that doesn't actually affect the AI, and during one fight I got the F-14 to about 90,000 feet with the Flanker in trail, departed the aircraft, recovered at about 35,000 feet, found the Flanker ran out of gas again, but I was bingo and had to RTB as he went his own way. In reality, he'd have crashed. Not sure if anyone will revise the FM, but in its current state at the current patch level, it is a bastard.

Robert, Thanks for posting. Haven't seen much of the mobile game; though this forum is centered on SF2, it was interesting to see that fight, and it's always good to see new people posting their fights. I think the best guys to bring up an F-104 would probably be Macelena, Streakeagle or based on what he's posted so far, Cougar. Streak doesn't usually post in here, but it seems like those guys have a good handle on the pre-Teen-series fighters. I'd humor your request, but I focus almost entirely on the F-14A/B/D, and branch off into the F-16, A-4, and F-15 every once in a while, so I don't think I could give the Zipper a fair assessment. Even the F-4, if you look back, I get bagged in way too many times, which must be fairly humorous to the guys who spend a lot of time in the virtual Phantom, saying to themselves "what the hell are you doing there, Caesar?" Any takers for the Zipper in SF2?

Best part about hanging, drawing, and quartering is that before the entrails were pulled out and burned, usually the individual's genitals were removed and burned before them as well. I second (third?) hanging, drawing and quartering.