OlWilly

SymbolType=TD_RADAR is for target locked in STT SymbolType=TD_HEAT is for target locked by SRM own seeker Usually it's two different symbols so they don't overlap. Also remember that most fighters could slave SRM seeker to a radar I am not sure if you can disable TD_RADAR when SRM is selected since it's two different functions

I also post at SAS, which is Il-2 modding site, and their server costs are peanuts because they don't host any files, people just upload links to mediafire or somesuch. While this makes server maintenance cheaper, the preservation is worse, and many links are dead. So I understand what you mean. What I would suggest, if anyone ever asks me, is not block the downloads completely for free accounts, just limit them more severely. Let's say, 1 download per day; for heavy files (over 1GB) one download per month, also introduce probation period to deal with the alts (no downloads until account is 6 or 12 months old). And one should not forget about old good IP identification, having two or more accounts from the same IP should raise some concerns. You can also link download privileges to reputation, for example one download/day for every 100+ (thus I get 1 and you get 22). Many combinations actually.

I've definitely seen that in some of planes I adjusted. Your method is superior, as it allows for finer tuning and better results, but requires matching the armor values for nearly every aircraft individually. You can do things like, for example, having a multi engine bomber and giving its engines better protection from the rear and sides, but worse from the front, encouraging frontal attacks. StructrualFactor is just simpler, you can slap it on every component and get the durability boost

That's the crux of the matter, we all understand that keeping the site online costs money. But maybe it is the core issue that should have been addressed? Put a big banner on the front page with announcement: "You like Combatace? Well, keeping it online costs money, and I am not Jeff Bezos to pay for it all myself. Chip in or the lights go down". But alas, I won't teach you how to run your site. It's just for me, because of banking sanctions, the access is closed, essentially, forever, and if I lose my current install, I may just forget about the game existing.

If you compare SF with other sims you may notice that planes explode way too easily. You just look at the plane funny and it's already going down in a ball of flames. In my install I went out to fix this. Generally, every airplane part (fuselage, inner wing, etc) has its own HP bar. Once it's depleted, it's gone. HP pool is determined by the size of the part - obviously, B-52's inner wing would have more HP than F-15's. StructuralFactor statement is a plain multiplier for every such part. At 1.0 it does nothing, leaving HP at 100%, at 2.0 it makes it 200%, etc. So, what I did, I gave every structural part a StructuralFactor=2.0, unless it was already higher. This gave some ruggedness, but planes were still exploding too much. The issue is fuel tanks. They are big, always get hit, and once hit - leakage, fire or explosion proc very easily. This allows stuff like easy kills with just 1-2 cannon hits. I wasn't looking for an elegant solution, and as a dirty crutch just added 35mm of steel armor on every fuel tank (it has no weight so alright). This is not supposed to represent any real-world protection, just to crutch over game's engine mechanics. And it gave good results. Aircraft did not become indestructible, a good missile hit or aimed burst still takes it down. But aircraft (you and AI alike) now can take some non-critical damage, and you may even see damaged planes actually hit the ground. For the first time while playing, I managed to get hit and lose one engine, limping home instead of outright exploding. Another issue is ground vehicles. In vanilla SF, a single 20mm shell destroys any tank from a single hit, from any projection, which is wrong. After experimenting I found that ground vehicles have pitiful HP bars and you need to up them literally by 1000s. For example, I gave T-55 StructuralFactor=4000.0 for hull StructuralFactor=5000.0 for a turret. You would think that this is a lot, but a single Maverick still gets it; if you use cannon, now you have to work for a kill. The downside of this is that you have to apply changes manually to every vehicle you want to have it. I had a lot of available time during night shifts, but it is really a tedious process. But it makes dogfights and ground attacks more involved for sure

Wouldn't it make the server situation worse? Before, most people would login and download a plane or terrain or two, and then play with them. Now, people would pay for a month and make it worth, downloading as much as they can. This is basic psychology, I saw people with like 500 games on steam which were bought "because it was on sale!", with 95% of these games showing 0h playtime. I can imagine server usage spikes. Speaking of which, if someone uploads a mod at CA but attaches a mediafire link for people who can't get subscription - this would be alright, sure?

If I am not mistaken, SARH missiles don't have a HUD symbol of their own, the target gets the symbol from being locked by radar. I can't remember what symbol it is, most likely [HUD_TD] SymbolType=TD_RADAR

Ahh, now I understand. A shame though, I was hoping to continue low-key modding

I see a number of typos in cockpit labels on the screenshot. Usually I would offer to help spellchecking them, but no point in it now

The decision to drop Strike Fighters series is actually strange from financial point of view. For post WWII era we have two great study sims - DCS and Falcon BMS. Lots of arcade flight games (not worthy being called sims), like Ace Combat or whatever. But for survey, lighter sims, right in the middle, there is an actual shortage on the market. Notice how Nuclear Option waltzed in and seized a decent following just overnight, and it is still in Early Access. A lot of people enjoy sim mode in War Thunder, but hate the grind, and won't mind an offline or less grindy version/spin-off of it. Strike Fighters 3 would easily get its share of the market, especially if it will have an online mode, but without the grind like in WT

From my understanding, BoresightElevation and BoresightAzimuth define the direction of the beam. In this case, it will be 0 azimuth - straight center, and -2 elevation, meaning that it's angled down -2 degrees from the aircraft's centerline. BoresightBeamAngle should be the width of the cone, imagine it not as a "line" but as a "cone" with apex being placed at emitter and degree being measured from the centerline (or bore in that matter)

.LOD in general is not owned by TW, but this is the "umbrella" format of sorts. Some other games used .LOD too, and guess what, they are incompatible with SF2 Generally, I don't recommend this format for open source game as it is a locked format, with no easy editing. Strike Fighters .LOD models are exclusive for Strike Fighters From what I understand, TW is very touchy on the matter of using their 3D assets, so this is a hard no. This is one of the reasons why they choose .LOD format, so no one could touch their precious 3D models On the other hand, modders created tons of decent and great 3D assets for the game, but here comes the issue. All the mods available here are in .LOD too So, you would need their permission and original 3DSMax/Blender/whatever models which would be hard to get. Many modders are no longer active and many original models are lost to time TLDR - if you manage to contact the modders and convince them to share their original 3DSMax/Blender/whatever models, you are good to go. But if you want to work with SF .LOD format, you're out of luck

From what I understand, those are low level functions that process the raw data generated by the game's engine This data is called by scripts which govern the actual functioning of the game, avionics, flight model, etc. Scripts, in return, are set up by .ini files So we have two levels here, with the higher one being accessible to tuning, but not modding. Thus, we know that the low level is contained in binaries. The scripts themselves, the higher level, I assume hidden in the binaries too Low level itself may seem not that important to modding the engine as it's just a set of tools to get and process raw data. But it could open the way into the actual meat of the code, the scripts, and help understand how they actually work Speaking of which, do we know in what language the game is written? C++ I presume

Some compromises had to be made, but overall function of RP-21 could be modeled just fine. You just need to create proper symbology

Indeed, the game engine was built to deal with a limited number of assets during a single mission. You have like up to 10 types of aircraft, limited number of munitions and very few ground objects all using relatively low res textures and not too crazy on polygon count. Then you load up a heavily modded game with number of objects increased by order of magnitude and all using bigger textures and often high poly. Ground vehicle mods tend to contribute to this problem a lot. A single mission won't generate too much types of the aircraft, but can go crazy with ground units. When I added vehicles from massive WarPac pack the loading times increased a lot ...