ScottishMartialArts

FC3 is essentially legacy content, which has merely been ported to the modern DCS engine with a few substantial enhancements/added features. In other words, you're buying a 12 year old sim and it's priced accordingly. The DCS modules are much newer projects, projects which, when released to beta, have yet to pay for themselves through sales. Likewise, the depth of simulation requires a substantially more expensive development process for the developers, all of which has to be recovered through sales, and yet the deeper the simulation, generally the smaller the audience of people whom you can sell to. Something has to give, and the least worst option is price. All that said, some of the beta modules really aren't worth the money. The A-10C, MiG-21, and UH-1H betas were far enough along in development and shipped with enough content that they very much were worth the price of entry. In contrast, despite being my all time favorite military aircraft, the F-86 module, while not without merit, does not provide a comparable amount of value for its $50 price tag. With that in mind, I've been taking a break from DCS for most of this year, just waiting for the engine and environment to catch up with the module releases so that the modules can become more worthwhile purchases.

I was never able to successfully do it until I got the Warthog HOTAS. Then, I nailed it on like my second or third try. That said, one key is constant micro-adjustments of throttle, kinda like how flying the Huey demands constant micro-adjustments of the cyclic. Likewise, you will want to find a reference point for the tanker empennage in your canopy. In otherwords, find a visual reference point in your canopy, and keep the tail section of the tanker fixed in that reference point. Ignore the boom, just keep the tail section in your reference point and you should get a good connection. Once connected, focus on the reference point but out of the corner of your eye watch the scale on the boom, and microadjust throttle to keep the scale in the green.

Defensive bunch? You just reiterated what everyone else JUST DISCUSSED as if it hadn't even been said and you accuse others of defensiveness? Might want to actually READ the discussion before assuming everyone is butthurt.

If they didn't move, that's because you didn't give them orders to advance. Just because the JTAC tells you he has no further tasking for you doesn't mean the mission is over. In the CAS missions like this, mission success depends upon the ground forces reaching the objective areas, not the destruction of enemy ground units in their way. To initiate their movement you tell them to advance under the Other section of the radio menu. With some missions, it can take the ground forces quite a long time to make the trip -- upwards of an hour -- so carefully monitor their progress on the TAD and via the TGP. Do not RTB and quit out until the ground forces have arrived at their objective and you've gotten the mission success dialog.

The 6GB requirement is new as of 1.2.6. I'm still running 4gb of RAM and things seem to work fine, although load times were terrible in 1.2.6 -- they're fine in the 1.2.7 beta. I'd say download DCSW and see how it performs. You will for certain be able to run BS1 splendidly, however, as it and FC2 both use the same version of the engine.

Yes, you'll be able to run BS1 quite well. It won't look as pretty or have as many features as BS2, but load times will be much swifter and the core sim, including most of the mission content, is identical. Have fun! Although you might want to read my post in the "How Do I Combat" thread when you feel up to tackling the Georgian Oil War campaign. :)

The key thing to remember with attack helicopters is that there is a reason they belong to the Army rather than the Air Force. In other words, attack helicopters are GROUND MANEUVER ELEMENTS that just happen to use rotors, rather than legs, wheels, or treads, to get around. Practically speaking, this means you need to fight like an infantryman, rather than an attack plane pilot, albeit an infantryman who can "walk" 300km/h and can effectively engage, and kill, armored and hardened targets from 8km away. So how do infantrymen fight? Well, infantryman know that as soon as something can see them, it can kill them, so they use covered and concealed routes to get to their objective. If time permits, they may take a very round about way to get to the objective, so as to arrive at it unobserved, and from a direction the enemy isn't covering with his weapon systems. Once at the objective, infantrymen, recognizing the ease with which they can be killed, fight from cover. They may move to get to a better firing position, or in response to the enemy's movements, but when they're actually shooting, they do so from a stationary, covered position. Likewise, when they do move, there is another friendly element that is suppressing the enemy's weapon systems which are positioned to threaten that movement. Finally, an infantryman fights making use of his knowledge of his, and his enemy's, weapon systems and their capabilities. He exploits the capabilities of his weapons to best defeat the capabilities of the enemy's weapons. So let's bring this back to attack helicopters. Prior to the start of a mission, you need to perform a METT-T analysis (Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops, Time). Consider what your mission objective is and plan your flight accordingly (what MUST I kill to complete the mission, and what can be bypassed?). Identify where your enemy is, in what numbers, and with what weapons, if known, and adjust your plan accordingly (given his position, what is the engagement envelope of that SAM?). Perform a terrain analysis, looking for routes to the objective (will this route get me there without being shot at?), positions of cover and/or concealment (could I use this spot as a fighting position?), all while considering the capabilities of your weapons (from this fighting position, am I close enough to engage with Vihkr's) and the enemy's (am I in range/in line of sight at this spot?). Consider how large your flight is, which and how many weapons you'll be carrying, and the location and mission of friendly forces (will that advancing friendly armor company be in a position to engage enemy air defenses?). Finally, consider how much time you have to complete the objective (do I have enough time to take this route? how swiftly do I need to reach/accomplish the objective?). Once your METT-T analysis is complete, edit your flight plan, loadout, and target points accordingly. The latter are particularly useful for marking known enemy air defenses. Likewise, your flight plan should make use of cover and concealment, perhaps positioning waypoints at covered fighting positions from which you plan to engage the enemy. When planning your mission and your fighting positions, always try to place them such that you can engage the enemy at maximum Vihkr range, only relying on closing to cannon or rocket range if you can be reasonably certain enemy air defenses are suppressed or destroyed. Likewise, always think about what MUST be destroyed to complete your objective, and what can be bypassed. Many people think the Oil War campaign reconnaissance missions are brutally hard, but that's only because they stick with the default flight plan which has them flying directly over the enemy main line of resistance to get to the objective: if you can bypass the enemy's lines to get to the objective, rather than fighting through a company of tanks with attached air defenses, then BYPASS! If you plan analytically, and fight smartly, as above, then you'll quickly discover that an attack helicopter is one very deadly machine that stands a better than reasonable shot of coming home. Just watch out for enemy helicopters. But, on the other hand, when you see that hellfire coming right for you, you can just mask behind cover, because you're fighting from a covered fighting position, right?

The rudder is key for formation flight, as is trim and very gentle throttle adjustments. Do NOT use ailerons to adjust your lateral position in the formation; instead, abide by the rule that the leader's wings are your horizon, i.e. always match your bank angle to the leader. If you need to adjust your lateral position, i.e. you're too far to the right or left, then use your rudder plus some gentle aileron in the opposite direction so as not to start banking. If you are too far behind or ahead of the formation, then make micro adjustments to throttle to adjust your closure rate. Ideally you should have zero closure to maintain formation, but if you find yourself with positive or negative closure, make very fine adjustments to correct for that. Finally, when the formation is turning, an outside or inside position on the formation will necessitate a larger or smaller turn radius, respectively, so make your turn accordingly -- this is the hardest part of formation flight, by the way.

True, although the overtime the term began to be used Army wide, rather than just by airborne infantry to refer to non-airborne infantry. Tankers in particular seem to like the term -- "Legs? Pffft!" -- although they're also quite fond of calling infantrymen "crunchies", i.e. the sound they make when run over by a tank. :)

Everyone else nailed it: the UH-1 is great for going up against the weapons and vehicles organic to a leg infantry battalion, but anything heavier is just asking for trouble. In terms of general tactics, when possible, get a fix on your target from a distance -- not easy without optics. Then, drop to low-level for a terrain masking approach to the target area. As you reach the outer edge of weapons range, unmask by increasing collective. Stabilize the helicopter's attitude and release weapons. Immediately turn off, trying to stay at least 1km away from the target, and drop back down to a terrain masking position. Egress the target area at maximum speed, making random steep turns to present as difficult a target to any enemy weapons as possible. Unfortunately, our beloved Huey just isn't much of a gunship, at least, not much of a survivable gunship. Without optics or longer range weapons, it has to get right up close to engage, and anything bigger than a 7.62 round is going to do serious damage. The Huey is definitely thrilling to fly in the attack, but those thrills are a result of taking risks that I would never take in the Black Shark. The Black Shark, in comparison, is really a ground maneuver element, but with rotors instead of wheels or treads. Fighting from covered and concealed positions sadly just isn't a part of the Huey's capabilities.

Great, thank you!

Yeah, being able to revert to 1.2.5 would be great. 1.2.6 is effectively broken for me to the point that I've gone back to pre-DCS World BS2 and A-10C.

So am I correct in assuming the only way to play FC1 these days is track down a copy of LockOn Gold?

Does it? This is for for the retail box available in North America, btw.

Fresh install, no modules installed, just the Su-25T. Initial mission load was LONG, so I discarded it as an outlier. Results from second mission load: GUI to Mission: 4:02 Mission to GUI: 3:22 An improvement from last night I guess, but about 3 times longer than load times pre-patch for GUI to Mission, and more like 7 or 8 or times longer for Mission to GUI.

So it's not reasonable to expect the auto-updater to do its job and not **** up the installation each patch, leading to a myriad of problems that require a full reinstall? Gotcha. Look, I'm not trying to be a dick here, but the simple reality is that I play a lot of games, and a lot of sim, and DCS is the only one where patches routinely take more steps back than ahead. I love DCS and ED, but at the end of the day, a lot of things about the DCS experience aren't up to standard. Limited budget, constraints of the niche flight sim market, small team, etc. I understand all that, but it doesn't mean you get out of jail free on problems that really shouldn't be there to begin with.

That was the fourth time I had loaded the game, and had been the longest one yet. I quite literally started loading, then took my shoes and jacket off, then went and made a cup of coffee, then came back and responded to twitter on my phone, and then still had to wait another minute or so during the transition between between load completion, and when framerate had sufficiently stabilized to start the mission, finishing my cup of coffee before I actually took control of the helicopter. It is very common for new patches to **** up the load time and performance. I thought 1.2.2 (or maybe 1.2.3, can't remember) was intolerable, but then 1.2.6 came along Redownloaded everything over night, and am reinstalling now. Hopefully that will help, otherwise I guess I won't be flying much of the Mi-8 for a while yet.

Yeah, seriously. I guess we're still waiting on that dream becoming a reality.

So I guess a completely clean install is the way to go? I was hoping to avoid that on my garbage net connection, but honestly the load times are making DCS unplayable right now, so I guess I'll give it a shot.

It just took me 8:24 to load the first Mi-8 mission. In 1.2.4 and 1.2.5 my load times were under 2 minutes for initial load, and then just over a minute for subsequent loads. There was an earlier version -- 1.2.2 maybe? -- which had terrible load times, i.e. 5-6 minutes, but 1.2.6 seems to be setting new records in this regard. Anyone else having this problem?

I work in social services. Specifically I manage one of the three foster youth group homes that my agency runs. Lots of staff scheduling, budgeting, mentoring/counseling, ensuring regulatory compliance, etc. Beyond the nitty gritty details which absorb most of my days, the main effort is developing means with which to keep our kids in school and away from drugs/gangs/prostitution/etc. Sadly, most of the kids we get are so messed up and traumatized by the time they were finally pulled from their parents home, that there is often very little we can do. I doubt I'll be in this field five years from now, to be honest -- the work is too sad and stressful, for very little reward. I'm actually a pretty competent hobbyist programmer in C/C++, so I suspect that in a few years, once my undergrad loans are mostly paid off, I'll go to grad school for CS and go that route: at least the problems you face in software engineering are solvable.

Ropes and harness on a Confidence Course? What is this bullshit? :P In Army pre-commision officer training, our Confidence Course was completely unprotected: if you fell, you broke your leg, or worse. None of it was technically difficult, so a fall wasn't a major risk so long as you paid attention to what you were doing, but the possibility of serious injury was very real. As an aside on inter-service rivalry: the Army and Airforce, and likewise the Navy and Marines, depend upon each other to such a degree that neither could accomplish their mission without the other's help. That said, if you visit the Air Force Academy, the monuments and objects on display are almost entirely of the aircraft flown by academy graduates. If you visit West Point, the monuments and statuary are all of the academy graduates themselves who led soldiers in battle with distinction and honor. I think that difference in emphasis (the impact of a machine versus the impact of a man), and what that implies about the values of the respective branches, speaks for itself.

Yeah, Patrols is a pain in the ass: see my thread from a week or two ago. It IS completable, but I think it took me 5 separate attempts, some of which were over an hour long. Overall, the campaign is quite good, but with average mission length in the 90 minute range, it can get VERY frustrating when you're having to repeat a certain mission multiple times.

Cool that fixed it! I feel a bit sheepish now: I think I had messed with every other dial on the UHF radio, trying to get the game to recognize that I had set the frequency to 240.00, and all along the problem was just that I was in preset channel frequency mode. Oops. :P

This mission has a broken trigger almost right off the bat. Once you have an airspeed in excess of 20 knots, a message triggers, instructing you to contact the UN HQ on UHF 240.00. According to the trigger in the mission editor, setting the UHF radio to 240.00, and not having activated Flag 5 -- which activates upon reaching the UN HQ -- should cause a radio message to play in which your character contacts the UN HQ. Currently, it does not. The initial trigger creating the message to set your radio to the right frequency does NOT create a radio menu item, and looking at the triggers, it is NOT necessary to send a radio message to activate the next trigger: what should happen is that you set the UHF radio to 240.00 and the next trigger activates. Again this isn't happening, which brings the mission to a screeching halt. The triggers all appear to be written correctly, it's just that the game isn't activating an early trigger even when the conditions are true. A DCS World bug, perhaps?