Cold War 1947 - 1991

1900Z midweek is a bit late for me and especially for my Tomcat pilot, but I will try to be there for the first hour or so :)

1900Z midweek is a bit late for me and especially for my Tomcat pilot, but I will try to be there for the first hour or so :)

I understand that. It's just because a whole community of 30+ players asked for the favour. And if it's a success, I don't see why not put it again on, say... this Saturday maybe?

We'll see...

My only concern is MiG-21 and F-5 pilots shying away from the challenge. That'd make things way easier for a whole dedicated community on Blue.

This sounds juicy, I hope there's enough red slots available.

Update for Round 2 - Operation Tiberias:

Thursday, the 24th of September, 1830 zulu and not 1900 zulu.

Server News:

Work on a new mission in the Syria map has started. It was not easy to find a suitable spot to be honest. First mission was at the Israeli-Lebanese border (Kiryat-Shmona) and the second one was due north at the Turkish border (Behind Enemy Lines). So if it's an Israeli-Syrian scenario again (which it is), I'm pretty much going to use the same Israeli airbases. Not that I have many alternatives. Only this time I'll keep Lebanon out of it to shift the battle zone due east away from Kiryat Shmona.

It's an amazing map no doubt only the region hasn't much to offer in terms of variety, unless I ignore the borders and the countries (which is the case in some of the Caucasus and PG missions I have) and start using random airbases vs random airbases regardless of what country they're part of.

I can only hope they'd add Cyprus, rest of Israel and Jordan and maybe parts of Egypt. Sounds much, I know, but it's such an epic region, man :)

Haha Shadow, I had folks asking for the callsigns to ident them selves easier.

You can simply crop them if needed :)

Or just press LCtrl + Y to hide bar

Server News:

As usual, today's update messed up the warehouses in all missions :(

Working on it. Needs some time though... Should be finished within the next 1-2 hours.

Is there a reason open range mission Viggens have no a2a missiles? The Rb24j is now modelled as a Aim9j / aim9p as per the newest patch notes.

Is there a reason open range mission Viggens have no a2a missiles? The Rb24j is now modelled as a Aim9j / aim9p as per the newest patch notes.

A mistake is all. I looked it up before reading your post and fixed it. Both the 24 and 24J are included. Just wait for the server to rotate, please. Bloody warehouses fixing after almost every update. That's 1-2 hours being stuck in the mission editor just doing that. The one and only part I hate about mission designing. If only that bloody issue would just go away.

Had fun tonight, really enjoying the fixed Fishbed FM.

I'm really enjoying those R-60s :)

Oh yeah, the rear-aspect R-60s are a major improvement over the R-13M1s that were the standard before the update (haven't tried out the latter). Not sure how the Aphid stacks up against the various marks of AIM-9, but it feels good to have it back. The flight behaviour feels just about right, with limited high-g launch capability and little resistance to IRCM. It does give tone in a front-aspect engagement against an afterburning F-5, but it doesn't track even when launched from as far away as possible (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong). I sent another one after a Viggen that was flying straight at very low level, but the missile went stupid and plonked into the ground with no evasive manoeuvres performed by the Blue plane. Luckily I had a full load of guns. :joystick:

Anyone got any feedback on the R-3S? I'm getting the MiG-19 as soon as there's a sale on it, I wonder if the relative overperformance of its primary armament's been toned down a bit.

Magnitude R-3S and Razbam R-3S aren't synchronised AFAIK (or at least, they weren't before, not sure about now). The 19's missiles refuse to launch above 2G and frequently fail to track. They're not totally useless, I'd rate them above a GAR-8, but they're hardly fantastic either. Your best bet is catching someone unawares, or slipping in as they're engaged with someone else. Timing is everything.

Magnitude R-3S and Razbam R-3S aren't synchronised AFAIK (or at least, they weren't before, not sure about now). The 19's missiles refuse to launch above 2G and frequently fail to track. They're not totally useless, I'd rate them above a GAR-8, but they're hardly fantastic either. Your best bet is catching someone unawares, or slipping in as they're engaged with someone else. Timing is everything

Cheers, appreciate the input.

A mistake is all. I looked it up before reading your post and fixed it. Both the 24 and 24J are included. Just wait for the server to rotate, please. Bloody warehouses fixing after almost every update. That's 1-2 hours being stuck in the mission editor just doing that. The one and only part I hate about mission designing. If only that bloody issue would just go away.

I'm sorry to hear that is the case, it appears a mission maintainers job is never ending. But unfortunately I have another query / suggestion.

Is there also a reason the F5 gets only the Aim9p whereas the MiG21 has the R60? Feels like we've gone full circle with the balance discussions and ended up with an imbalance here. The R60 has twice the manoeuvrability of the Aim9p series and also a cooled seeker head compared to the aim9p as modelled in DCS (taken from the missile definition files). We've seen the accumulative effect of missile manoeuvrability on missile effectiveness thanks to the RB24j pre-fix situation. Granted the Aim9p5 does have better CCM and slight better reach. In service dates for the R60 and Aim9p5 are also similar, not to mention the MiG21 gets double mount R60 if they wish.

No wonder blues were having a hard time when I popped on last night. I would suggest permitting the F5 to carry the Aim9p5 to balance the R60.

Aim9P5 is all aspect missile, so if you ask for that, next will be a plea to add R60M.

The R-60 came back specifically because it is no longer all-aspect capable. It was only removed in the first place because red players felt it was unfair to have a weapon that could sometimes make head-on kills (right on the edge of its Rmin) while blue was stuck with 9Ps.

The R-60 is an agile missile but has a weak warhead, often taking 2-3 hits to definitively kill something, and a relatively short range. The AIM-9P doesn't turn as well close-in, but reaches out a bit better and will almost always kill or at least cripple an aircraft in a single hit.

The solution to the 9P not turning as well is learning not to ripple off your missiles at less than half their minimum range, which is something F-5 pilots do so predictably that deliberately baiting them into wasting their missiles is a common tactic for MiGs in the server. Just like we need to avoid firing R-60s at longer-range targets because they won't catch them, blue pilots need to learn some actual trigger discipline. The 9P is fine when you use it at its intended range, and in the F-5's case, you have two fairly decent guns and an excellent radar gunsight for shots inside that range.

Aim9P5 is all aspect missile, so if you ask for that, next will be a plea to add R60M.

Have you tried the Aim9p5 for a frontal shot, its not every effective. Just as for the R60, they are quite similar in practice. To spell it out a frontal shot is easily defended for both missiles and both missiles are capable of frontal shots. However the MiG21 can potentially have up to eight shots vs the F5's two, and in practice probably has twice the missiles of the F5. Point being a frontal Aim9p5 shot is typically wasted, not to mentioned the potential for a R3R frontal shot. At the moment the Aim9p is not practically capable of frontal shots at all. Hence my proposal that the R60 and Aim9p5 are broadly equivalent. I do not believe there is a sliding slope in this situation if people stick to the numbers and actual capabilities of the missiles in game, but feel free to try out the sliding slope fallacy if you wish.

The R-60 came back specifically because it is no longer all-aspect capable. It was only removed in the first place because red players felt it was unfair to have a weapon that could sometimes make head-on kills (right on the edge of its Rmin) while blue was stuck with 9Ps.

 

The R-60 is an agile missile but has a weak warhead, often taking 2-3 hits to definitively kill something, and a relatively short range. The AIM-9P doesn't turn as well close-in, but reaches out a bit better and will almost always kill or at least cripple an aircraft in a single hit.

 

The solution to the 9P not turning as well is learning not to ripple off your missiles at less than half their minimum range, which is something F-5 pilots do so predictably that deliberately baiting them into wasting their missiles is a common tactic for MiGs in the server. Just like we need to avoid firing R-60s at longer-range targets because they won't catch them, blue pilots need to learn some actual trigger discipline. The 9P is fine when you use it at its intended range, and in the F-5's case, you have two fairly decent guns and an excellent radar gunsight for shots inside that range.

While pilot skill is a factor the balance of the underlying weapons is quite skewed atm (note ripple firing is an affliction to both sides, but not worth mentioning here). While the F5 gunsight is quite good the gun still sprays badly and the damage inflicted can be very variable especially against the often wonky MiG21 damage model (a few patches ago we observed a MiG21 taking forty 20mm hits but still flying and fighting). But back onto the missile topic at hand... On the lethality point most R60 hits are typically debilitating hits, granted an outright kill is less likely a debilitating hit does typically win the fight against the F5. Given the number of missiles carried by the MiG21 you also have enough to double tap people. I don't think I've ever seen a small fighter plane require three R60, perhaps some people might mistakenly fire a third due to poor trigger discipline. I had already mentioned the slightly better reach, this is acknowledged against the R60 close in and high G capabilities. As before, the Rb24j bug demonstrating the high value of a missiles manoeuvring capabilities to enhancing lethality.

Before the R60 we had a nice mix of aircraft tangling and rear aspect only missiles, interesting dogfights. My short session last night it seemed quite one sided and red was 100% MiG21. I'm offline for a couple of days but hopefully the aim9p5 argument is worth consideration. I guess see how the red/blue win rates go with the new patch and lack of aim9p5. To me, as someone who has flown both sides and also reviewed the raw missile data, this seems unfair.

Your assessment of R60 (not R60M) being equivalent to AIM9P5 is based on what if I may inquire ?

I'm also not sure if your short session comprising of one flight where you complained about absence of air to air missiles on Viggen is indicative of anything regarding missile performance. However the idea that situation before R60 was better is premature to say the least and can be easily disputed as RED was down to R3S (aim9b equivalent or copy) and R13M (aim9d equivalent) while Blue was free to use Rb24j / aim9p which are much later sidewinder variants than 1967 - 1968 Aim9D.

Also, 21 can only fire missiles in boresight since its weapon system does not provide any option to uncage seeker ( not to mention slaving seeker to radar as in f14 which hopefully in A variant will join server).

Couple of points for @Sideburns:

Although the R-60 is capable of locking on in a head-on engagement, getting a hit this way is highly unlikely, if not impossible. Yesterday I launched an R-60 at an F-5 in precisely this fashion. He was in burner and flew straight and level, and yet the missile, well, missed completely and went for his wake instead (this may have been because the fuze took too long to arm, but I'm not sure). I need more attempts to verify this, but from what I've seen so far the Aphid does have very limited all-aspect capability, though in practice it's for rear-aspect engagements only.

While the MiG-21 can carry up to 6 IR missiles (and not 8, thankfully that's a thing of the past as that's highly unrealistic), that's hardly the optimal loadout for dogfighting. With the additional drag from two APU-60-2 launchers the Fishbed loses plenty of performance. On the other hand, with 4 R-60s mounted (one on each pylon) the MiG feels somewhat more agile than with a full complement of R-3s or R-13s, which may be down to the lower weight and better aerodynamics of the Aphid. These days I rarely see people taking off with a full load of 6 missiles. I like to fly with only 2, VPAF style, to give me the best possible turn performance post-merge.

I've had at least a dozen instances where an enemy plane required more than 2 Aphids to destroy. This is particularly true of the A-10 (no surprises there) and, oddly enough, the Viggen (the latter seems capable of powered flight despite having its wings blown off and its engine on fire).

I'd be happy to go up against AIM-9P5s for testing purposes on CW. Now that the R-60 is back it's only right that we should give the F-5s a chance to adjust to the refreshed Fishbed.

Firefly: the R-60 no longer has all-aspect capability, not even the very limited one it had before. Only the R-60M does, now.

Have you tried the Aim9p5 for a frontal shot, its not every effective. Just as for the R60, they are quite similar in practice. To spell it out a frontal shot is easily defended for both missiles and both missiles are capable of frontal shots.

The 9P5 will acquire a front-aspect target further than a 60M, let alone the pre-fix R-60. Both missiles can be defeated frontally, if they're seen.

However the MiG21 can potentially have up to eight shots vs the F5's two, and in practice probably has twice the missiles of the F5.

Nobody is going around carrying 8 R-60s. I mean nobody. To do so requires a pair of double R-60 rails and a pair of double R-60M rails and I have seen this done exactly once, by two players flying together, in two years of playing DCS. They were not successful with this 500IQ loadout. The weight and drag penalty is enormous and you are better off taking 2 or 4 missiles and relying on the gun for the rest. If I am expecting a tussle with F-5s I take less missiles, not more.

Point being a frontal Aim9p5 shot is typically wasted, not to mentioned the potential for a R3R frontal shot.

Frontal R-3R shots are effectively countered by staying low, which almost everyone on the server already does. Even the fixed beam lock exploit will not work consistently against a small target, and will not work at all if said target is below the horizon from the radar's perspective.

If you waste your 9P5 on a frontal aspect shot, that's your problem. Giving that front-on shot to the F-5 but not to the MiG just means that F-5 pilots can make front-quarter engagements that may be outside the MiG pilot's cone of vision, or can fire into an engagement from any aspect, which the MiGs cannot retaliate against.

At the moment the Aim9p is not practically capable of frontal shots at all. Hence my proposal that the R60 and Aim9p5 are broadly equivalent.

Did you miss the bit where the R-60 lost its front-aspect capability altogether? Now instead of having a 50/50 chance of connecting an Rmin shot taken a split second before a merge, the R-60 will not track a front-aspect target at all. I don't know where you're getting the idea an all-aspect missile is broadly equivalent to a missile with about half the destructive power and which is rear-aspect only.

I do not believe there is a sliding slope in this situation if people stick to the numbers and actual capabilities of the missiles in game, but feel free to try out the sliding slope fallacy if you wish.

You're assigning capabilities to the R-60 which have literally just been removed, while ignoring the fact that both the Viggen and F-5 can uncage their seekers to lead shots (no red platform can do this except the MiG-29, with any of our available missiles), while ignoring the fact it frequently takes a pair of R-60s to actually kill something rather than damage it, or that nobody in their right mind is willingly lugging 8 missiles into a dogfight.

The best loadout for close combat in the MiG-21 is two to four missiles (two only, for the larger Sidewinder derivatives) and the gun.

While pilot skill is a factor the balance of the underlying weapons is quite skewed atm (note ripple firing is an affliction to both sides, but not worth mentioning here). While the F5 gunsight is quite good the gun still sprays badly and the damage inflicted can be very variable especially against the often wonky MiG21 damage model (a few patches ago we observed a MiG21 taking forty 20mm hits but still flying and fighting).

The balance of weapons is not skewed at all. You are ignoring the fact that an F-5 can uncage its seeker, lead, and make a shot while every single red aircraft has to hold the target in its boresight for several seconds. For a bonus round, the MiG-19 can't fire its missiles above 2G, and the R-13M and M1 also have launch G limits. The R-60 doesn't, but the fact you have to hold the target in boresight means that you can't use its full potential like you can with the uncaged Sidewinders on the blue jets.

As for the guns... yes, the 21 tanks 20mm. Meanwhile Viggens consistently fly with no lift surfaces at all and fire coming out of every orifice, as well as being able to outrun everything else (even the MiG-29) at low level, making them not only extremely hard to intercept in their actual interdictor role, but extremely successful hit-and-run fighters. Let's not pretend the MiG's damage model is even close to the worst offender right now. They can be killed and if you're having trouble with the dispersion, just don't open fire from so far away. If you're still having trouble, fly in pairs (which people should be doing anyway) or just know that you've likely forced the 21 down short of his airbase or caused him to have to RTB early.

But back onto the missile topic at hand... On the lethality point most R60 hits are typically debilitating hits, granted an outright kill is less likely a debilitating hit does typically win the fight against the F5.

In two years of hitting a lot of things with R-60s, it is not uncommon to see F-5s continuing to fight for several more minutes (longer, if they close their crossfeed to the leaking wing tank), and the aforementioned invincible Viggens. "Debilitating" to me means "totally unable to fight back". In my experience flying both the F-5 and Viggen, there is no damage state short of an outright kill that prevents them launching their missiles. In the 21, almost any missile hit will kill your electrical system and you can't even jettison your missiles, let alone fire them.

Given the number of missiles carried by the MiG21 you also have enough to double tap people. I don't think I've ever seen a small fighter plane require three R60, perhaps some people might mistakenly fire a third due to poor trigger discipline. I had already mentioned the slightly better reach, this is acknowledged against the R60 close in and high G capabilities. As before, the Rb24j bug demonstrating the high value of a missiles manoeuvring capabilities to enhancing lethality.

The Rb 24J can have its seeker uncaged. The R-60 cannot. This is a hugely important distinction and I can't help but feel you're either unaware of the capability, or you're deliberately not mentioning it.

I can make shots in the F-5 and Viggen that I would not even dream of in the 21, because the R-60 still has to be boresighted to get a lock and doing so against a high aspect target usually means dumping so much energy that the missile is then easily outrun.

Before the R60 we had a nice mix of aircraft tangling and rear aspect only missiles, interesting dogfights. My short session last night it seemed quite one sided and red was 100% MiG21.

Perhaps basing your opinions on more than one short session would be a start.

I'm offline for a couple of days but hopefully the aim9p5 argument is worth consideration. I guess see how the red/blue win rates go with the new patch and lack of aim9p5. To me, as someone who has flown both sides and also reviewed the raw missile data, this seems unfair.

Unfair was the R-60 having a front-aspect ability (albeit a very tight one) when blue didn't have any. The R-60 is not magic. It is easily run out of energy, it is easily decoyed, and it can only make shots when the launching aircraft holds its nose on the target for ~2 seconds.

What would actually help blue a lot more than leaning on the 9P5 (and almost certainly taking every opportunity to make front quarter attacks, especially knowing the MiG has relatively poor forwards visibility by comparison and the 9P5 has better flare rejection) would be learning what shots they can and can't take, flying together cooperatively, and realising that the MiGs they should really be worrying about are the ones carrying less missiles, because they're the ones who are generally aware of what they're doing and will be much more dangerous in a close-quarters fight.

If you guys couldn't capitalise on having better missiles before the R-60 was reintroduced, couldn't capitalise (at least, not all of you) on having something that could run down MiGs at will and then accelerate away too quickly to be retaliated against, couldn't capitalise on having the only all-aspect, instant-lock missile in the server attached to a helicopter with all the inertia of an RC drone, and still want to somehow lay the blame at the feet of red having some inexplicable advantage, then I don't even know what to tell you. I've spent enough time on both teams to know that both the F-5 and the MiG have their strong and weak suits, and the R-60 only goes so far. More often than not F-5s waste both missiles in a salvo at half Rmin, spray their guns in all directions because they aren't using the sight correctly, then easily get baited into stalling themselves out as they try and match the MiG's instantaneous turn rate rather than letting it get slow and exploiting its poor energy state.

I've said it before, but if every time I feel red does actually have an unfair advantage somewhere it turns into "All I Want For Christmas" for blue players, I'm not even going to bother suggesting they be removed. Right up until the point the R-60 was removed on our request, nobody seemed to have any issues with it, and suddenly everyone's an expert in its performance after the one thing that did make it unfair has been addressed.

The R-60 and the RB-24J stay. Not that anyone ever complained about the latter being added back. It was merely reported so it was removed until it was fixed. The day I restricted all IR air-to-air missiles to rear-aspect only was the day I also took the R-60 out. Why? Because it was behaving (not always though) as an all-aspect missile. That's fixed now, hence the resurrection of it.

The whole inconvenience (if that's what it is) is very unclear to me. Especially, when talking about the missile to then shift the argument over to the amount of missiles the Fishbed can carry, which has always been the case. Awkward. Then it's the damage model. Then it's this. But then it's that, and so on. Every time there's a bug out there we come back to this kind of arguments. Don't get me wrong though, you can write whatever you want. It's just not the kind of constructive arguments to me. Let's not confuse that with all the constructive feedback and criticism I've always received from you, gents, to help me improve the missions and even change things completely to keep things as good as possible. Which is why I welcome and read every post and appreciate the time you take for sharing your thoughts with me and everyone else here.

I read your post, Sideburns, and I can only advice you to read what the users wrote back to you.

S!

Cheers Alpen.

Look, guys, let me put it like this: I would happily see the entire server restricted to R-3S/GAR-8 only, or even guns only, because then neither team will have any latitude to whinge and that's all a good pilot needs. It would be no skin off my nose, especially with how much guns practice I've had while dealing with the R-3S and R-13. But at the end of the day someone will always find a reason to say the other team has it better, and the more toys we have to play with I think the happier people will be. Guns only would certainly be totally equal, but if I want that I can go to JDF or the Korea 1952 server.

IMO blue's biggest problem on the times I've played on it was comms. There either were none, or there was no GCI, or the GCI had severe tunnel vision (understandable, I do the same when I've tried it). By contrast red usually has a lot of people on comms, one or several experienced GCIs, and we try and drag enemies into each other and set up traps and ambushes where we can. Fly in pairs, guys. Encourage your friends to come on and GCI. Find some clever tactics like using feints to facilitate fighter sweeps or bait greedy MiGs (like me probably) in front of a trailing, unseen pair of fighters. There's a lot more to be gained through that than asking for this or that missile or more of a given type of aircraft.

I tend to fly a single bag on the F-5 just to avoid installing the extra pylons, myself. It sips fuel anyway so it's not a big deal.

When the F-4 comes we'll probably have had the MiG-23 for at least a while. I'm somewhat worried about what the 23 will do (as in, salt generation) as the MLA is significantly better than most people are expecting and should trounce even a slatted Phantom assuming equal pilot skill (and a passable RIO/WSO, for the Phantom). I guess the big balancing factor there is that its BVR load is limited to only two missiles versus the Phantom's four, and the Phantom may get better Sparrows to compete with or better the R-24, but it's faster, more agile, has a better and easier to use radar, and accelerates like a rocket. The only way I really see the Phantom redressing the balance, particularly close-in, is if it comes with VTAS - but then that will make life particularly unpleasant for everything else. The idea of trying to balance aerial combat of this era is a real tug-o-war with pulls this way or that.

The point about the ecosystem these aircraft exist in is spot on. It's worth noting that AAA/MANPADS and particularly SAM coverage in the server is far, far, far watered down from what you'd actually expect - mostly because we don't really have period-correct SEAD (yet) and a lot of people get frustrated and quit if they're hampered by SAMs over and over again. In a realistic scenario, particularly one where red are playing the part of an actual Warsaw Pact nation or the USSR itself, it would be pretty intense - especially with the S-200 coming. Can't use your fancy AWACS if it can't come anywhere within 200km of the defensive belt...

Overall the server does a good job of having simple, well-optimised, easily-remembered missions where each type of aircraft gets to feel useful and important but which also allows for a lot of the quick action people enjoy. It's just important to remember that it's not what these aircraft were designed to do, not how they were historically employed, and nor should we aspire to reach the perpetual PG islands stalemate Blue Flag did because the balance police decided to start going to the accountants with weapon data. As long as an overall asymmetrical balance is achieved, one aircraft having two or four extra (but weaker) missiles, or one missile turning better but lacking punch and range, isn't a big problem. One side being able to engage where the other cannot retaliate - now that would be a problem, and that's why the R-60 went on vacation in the first place.