Do335

Wow. Just... wow.

aha hell, i could even imagine the supposedly DCS hornet team scratching their heads trying to implement it. "these data must be... hidden in this big pile of docs somewhere.... and then... how do i write this into game code" a viper doesn't limit your G when bomb trucking for example. it's so easy to pull too much given them jets are so nimble these days, and then bam... your JDAMs are now duds. hornet seems to get better bells and whistles due to... it's McD heritage and being born a decade later? ...... "Oh I wish I had the alpha of a hornet, living to fight slow when others scorn it. When I can still pitch and roll, that other guy's going out of control, I wish I had the alpha of a hornet."

o bomb truck extraordinaire speaking of which.... I still have a copy of Jane's F-18 manual on the shelf. Borrowed it from a high school friend and never returned it, feel pretty guilty about that.. sigh. Anyway in which says the hornet's flight control system automaticly adjusts max allowable G according to ammo and fuel load. that number is then displayed on the HUD. I dunno whether it's the same on the real thing..? To me it looked like pretty impressive avionics.

*Climbing Safe Escape Maneuver (CSEM)* in bombing training: no turn 5G pull till fpm reaches horizon, continue climbing 20-30 deg to base altitude. so yeah summin' like 5G is a good bet.

LOL reminds me of this....

yeah, too strong a word there but hey this forum needs a bit spicing up... i suppose many just have a hard time adapting to the "grinds" and "unlocks" MMO mindset. i wasn't surprised myself at all, given that war thunder and world of tanks hit it big and are trending on that part of the world. heck by keeping it simple and familiar wouldn't they even tap into an existing customer base. otoh if a business model supports a real hardcore and immersive sim nowadays i'd jump right in. but many don't realize times have changed... gotta roll with the punches.

well there'd be different kinds, some flame wars are due to shared love of the game and fans debating different preferences or views about it, where despite high flying emotions they're actually positive. this one seems to be mass disappointment. but alas you might have a point there, Cliffs of dover turned out OK, so it might be too early to say for BOS.

Looks like major BOS flame war going on @ simhq...

slick cowboy, could it be that u lined up the RA-5C air units after the VPAF ones? (you mentioned it was stock sf2v campaign, and i show 165 air units in it, and the last 13 or so are reds) if so, better move the ra-5c units to the end of Blue air unit list... after that gotta re-match the unitID in campaignv1.ini

mwahaha:D it is good to see that despite tk bumped up player msl effectiveness there're still no damage explosions. what's more interesting is why the 2nd shot missed... but i digress...

grrr vpn continues to fail me, can't even get on u2b to see what's going on... what happened to the python shot? eh well gonna ditch this one and go online shopping...

not an American but i think it's pretty darn good... (altho can't beat deer hunter:D)

so, 4th engagement. to get to the bottom of this i decided to reverse my role and fly the mig-17 against the hunter. we merge and commence the horizontal turn fight as usual, only to arrive at the previous deadlock of me 45 degrees behind. But this time only seemingly so. gradually i notice the hunter's speed dropped below 200 while i was able to maintain around 220. the difference is trivia, but this close to stall it's enough to warrant an energy advantage. more importantly it points towards where things are heading. i bank a little bit to the right to put the fresco in a slight climbing turn. bit my bit my altitude advantage built until it was enough to change my plane of motion almost completely to the vertical. a few rounds later i was able to directly go up and over the top. meanwhile the hunter does something amazing as well. as we know when the AI jets fly close to stall, they periodically change to "stall recovery" mode hence displaying the porpoise like floating motion. the hunter doesn't do it here, instead it handles itself quite well flying at low 100 kts. as i come down threatening him with a gunshot, he maintains his airspeed by banking downwards while turning into me, therefore repeatedly denying a tracking shot. and so it got to the point that i had to settle with a high deflection shot unless i want to run myself outta fuel. still, the angle off had to be reduced somewhat... by banking to the outside a bit while coming down from the loop, i got to the outside of his turn and the hunter reversed to the right. that helped a bit. i opened up at his right hand descending turn, the rounds connect, but to be fair it was a dodgy shot at best. and so the engagements with the hunter come to a close for now. in the DACT arena the mig-17 was able to out fly her just a tiny bit, but the hunter can more than hold her own, and that advantage largely comes from having an engine with afterburner. in tactical situations i feel the winner will mainly depend on initial position/energy levels of each jet, and whether the mig-17 has enough fuel to support an entire engagement. in desert campaigns with the hunter i feel that long as it's flown fast and SA is maintained, the mig-17s wasn't very hard to tangle with. it's the damn vampire fb.52s that are nail biters for those things turn on a frggin' dime...

having done the previous 2 fights one thing is certain. the hunter is no better in the horizontal compared to the fresco and is even out-classed in the vertical. what can play to the hunter's hand when the playing field is even... i intend to find out in this one. the fight starts. obviously i can't stick to a horizontal turn as we know how that'll turn out, and i can't go up either coz we know he'll come up and get me. so climbing turn it is. however it is still a maneuver that heavily relies on vertical performance, and as i gradually ran outta smash, there was no choice but to turn into him. it became heated, we came head on, with the mig's guns ablaze. leveling out a few seconds after the mig flew by, i realize there's not enough airspeed for a pure vertical conversion, so decided to go for a one circle turn into him, while keeping some vertical movement. we meet head to head again, the trigger happy AI left me cursing for sure but i know he's not fully aimed. after this second head on, a two circle developed, and i was able to out rate him and get behind his 3-9 line. he continued going high, airspeed dwindling which extended my rate advantage even further. i ended up squarely on his six. but, obviously the 'nam pilots saying the mig standing on one wing and ends up behind you in a blink of an eye ain't kidding, for the mig, with just 0.7 nm separation between us, broke hard left, instantly creating some 90deg angle off between us and denied me a shot... grrrrr and so from this point on it is a repeat of the 1st engagement all over again. a tied up horizontal turn fight, a low yo-yo by me developing into a downward spiral, me going up upon reaching ground level... except by keeping my speed up and not completely hanging in the vertical, the fight remained neutral. ....until at the bottom of a loop the mig suddenly stopped maneuvering and started bugging out. I turned on debug. Yep. He's out of fuel. He then put up some evasive maneuvers, but nothing one can't handle, and ended up without a vertical tail. apparently with a limited fuel load and a reheat guzzling fast, the fresco couldn't stay in a fight too long which ended up being his demise. so this concludes this engagement which... lasted a whopping 9 minutes. however, it is not over yet. to be continued...

To seek revenge in the 2nd engagement, i chose the classic pure vertical move, which is to run max throttle all the way to the merge and pull up immediately after. up from 15000ft apex at some 60kts/30000ft, the mig is no slouch either ending up just 5000ft below, going in the opposite direction from me. split-s back and a high yo-yo later he's down from 30mm gun fire so, the mig has a powerful engine but not that much powerful. but the "i-go-up-he-goes-left merge" feels more like an AI exploit, so i decide to play fair in the 3rd engagement. to be continued..

here's my hunter chronicles. i was originally thinking of taking her (which seems like the British way of calling everything..) up against the mig-19, but turns out she's vastly outclassed by the Farmer. So i chose the mig-17 as the opponent. 1st engagement, decided to keep it horizontal. But just like the fight in fagot vs sabre, it settled in a deadlock close to stall speeds with my nose sticking up to about 45 degrees angle off and unable to do anything better. again, i opted for a low yo-yo to increase my turn rate, again no avail as the fight develops into a downward spiral.. approaching ground level, in an attempt to break up the deadlock i pull into the vertical looping back with the mig in tow, only to find him gradually gaining to my 6 o'clock... and as i pull up into the 2nd loop he opens up on me! i desperately changes plane of motion but no good. he promptly shot me in the back with his 6th volley. ouch!... the hunter is still flying, but the engine is completely dead and the roll is very stiff. i was able to avoid his follow on shots and put her down on the field, while the mig circles overhead like a vulture... apparently this round goes to the fresco. the vertical switch was the bad call, because it seems like the fresco has better vertical performance with that afterburner of his. to be continued...

hey was wondering how it would end half way thru the vid, turns out it's a curve ball. by changing the plane of maneuver and rhythm of the fight, the ever lasting energy circle was broken, leaving a confused flanker and a victorious EF... me likes:) (PS i have typhoon phobia. thing was almost unbeatable for me in my falcon time... good to see it's not so OP here)

hey appreciate it guys. a bit occupied today, mayhaps gonna try the hunter tomorrow. what the... that's unworldly going thru all the trouble to implement a wing sweep but just to serve as a glorified flap... hell. also reminds me how little i actually know of some of them ruskie birds... thanks mate that's good info for me. PS i did some research on what the buffet means in the game and here's what i came up with, based on what TK said in some posts. basically you start to hear the buffet sound once your alpha goes past "alphastall" and your aircraft's CL is on a reduced slant. more over some stall characteristics also kicks in once past it. anyway the point i got from this is to avoid buffeting as much as possible, unless pulling in for a shot / doing last ditch maneuvers etc.

here's the DACT i mentioned a few pages back flying the mig-15. the guy talking is me:D for i decided to do a voice over this time. next up.. probably gonna do a Hunter vs mig-19.

Nice one cougar! I've always wondered what happens when the flogger tangles with the phantom. i'd thought that due to its variable sweep wing like the tomcat, it will gain the upper hand once the fight gets slow but apparently... that is not the case at all..?

hi Beach. wrt to 1, i think the best anyone ever did here was a 'squadron editor' for SF1, where you can adjust the stats of your squadron mates in a campaign save file. (It's no longer applicable to sf2 apparently, but I still managed it with a hex editor..) You're right that a lot of this stuff is simply not displayed for the user to see, like in EECH or Falcon4. It's not even well documented by TK or just vaguely... the campaign save file is in a encrypted format and very hard for a 3rd party to crack any of it at all i reckon. to 2 i think it's been many times mentioned, killing tanks, parked a/c, supply dump etc will have direct effect. i remember toting a gunpod on my phantom in the iceland campaign and just strafe the enemy tank formations mission after mission. by the time my ground forces launch offensives, there're no enemy ground units to fight them anymore - instant win. basically this game is such a hidden (pun intended...) gem. but i think it's still way better than ones that have no dynamics in its campaigns at all.

ah darn my jokes mate. i mean after top gun the aviation community just loves the tomcat even more, and we know all the buffs between the cat and the bug... remember once in a chat room i said something like "the hornet is great it turns and banks at 90kts!" and then everybody started jumping at me ehehe. and about what you're saying though, although a hobby is not important as a family or a career, i do think it is important that one keeps his passion, it is afterall one of the things you live for. i've had to take a few breaks along the years as well and it felt a significant part of myself is just missing. RL is tough and takes precedence for sure, but gotta give yourself props for getting back to it! anyway got a few DACT ideas in mind, will contribute my report soon.

modders work for free and work based on their interest. leave them be :D

yeh clear avenue of fire is issue in real life too, amraam shots into furballs or past friendlies are generally forbidden due to possible fratricide. and wow did this thread explode recently, having some great read here. plz do keep 'em up, and good to see your reports again EricJ. hornit lover here as well btw, sometimes tis a tough life among a post 'top gun' community :p

Third wire series:D if ya don't like it the notepad is just a double click away no?:D