Rocket tactics on bunkers

Didn't you use to be able to somehow show the video in posts?

 

 

Reaper6

 

Yeah, but you have to be in the "Advanced" mode of reply, which has the Youtube icon. Paste the youtube link, mark it with left mouse button and then click on the Youtube icon.

 

About the Ka-50 weapons, is there any that can destroy Command Center? I have tested all, except bombs, and had no success...

No, you can just write the tags in by hand and paste the part of the URL after the = symbol bbetween them.

Hit quote on any post with a video to see the format

Yeah, but you have to be in the "Advanced" mode of reply, which has the Youtube icon. Paste the youtube link, mark it with left mouse button and then click on the Youtube icon.

 

About the Ka-50 weapons, is there any that can destroy Command Center? I have tested all, except bombs, and had no success...

 

Thank you, I'll try that out.

 

 

The only weapon I've been able to kill the Command Center with are 4xFAB-500. I've even tried 2x kh-25ml, and no luck. The FARP Command Post though, is about the same as a bunker. a couple of S8 rockets, and it was out of action.

 

**EDIT** Scratch that! I just killed the Command Center with 2x FAB-250.

Reaper6

Edited February 26, 2018 by Reaper6

Yeah, but you have to be in the "Advanced" mode of reply, which has the Youtube icon. Paste the youtube link, mark it with left mouse button and then click on the Youtube icon.

 

or, in the normal quick reply box, if you replace the ( ) brackets in (youtube)2RT8OVLF14k(/youtube) with [ ] brackets you'll get:

2RT8OVLF14k

 

The numbers being the bit after the '=' in the youtube url:

Edited February 27, 2018 by Weta43

About the Ka-50 weapons, is there any that can destroy Command Center? I have tested all, except bombs, and had no success...

As I mentioned in my first post, I succeeded to kill it with S-13s a few days back, actually twice (l call them command bunkers though, the digged down, almost invisible ones). It's the only times I've done it since BS1 days and it was just pure luck.

So, would like to give some feedback on this subject so far.

I created a mission with 10 bunkers in a row with 1NM separation. No wind. To this I linked a very useful training script, Simple Range Script by Ciribob, that give me an indication of how far from my target my rockets hit (or more correctly how far from the center of a trigger zone I hit). A small modification of the script also gives me an indication every time I actually hit my target, not only distance.

It works pretty well, and I cant see that strange invulnerable bunkers I described from the Shooting Range mission (I guess it's bugged some how).

I haven't ben able to kill a bunker with only two rockets yet as Reaper6 did, but I'm improving my accuracy.

 

Now about this tips:

Which is why I recommend using the "Standby Reticle Mode", when engaging with unguided rockets.

I have tried to wrap my head around the Standby Reticle

and the "Rockets correction table"

but I see no correlation between them. I tried to position myself at a hover close to ground (also up to 500m AGL) and locked the Shkval on a bunker and switched between ordinary HUD and the Standby Reticle to see where on the Standby Reticle the Gun sight aiming mark would appear, and I needed to go as close as about 400m to get the Gun sight aiming mark at about +100Mils, just within the reticle, not even close to what the correction table say. If I interpret it correctly, it gives number of Mils from the helicopter horizontal axis, i.e. +53 or +68 @500m in a hover (I believe the 0km/h and 120km/h columns are mixed up, but not sure. Also the 300km/h look suspicious). Mowing at about 200km/h I needed to go close to 1000m distance to get hits having the target at +100Mils, not +40mils as the table states.

Anyone having any insights on how to read the table? Is it intended to be relative to another datum than the helicopter horizontal axis? Is it for other rockets with different ballistic behavior?

Also, I assume the table is for a set elevation difference between you and the target, because firing from different altitudes by necessity require different aiming angle (I also tried hovering at 500m AGL at a distance of 1000m in case Dm would be altitude above target at a standard distance of 1000m, but no).

So, would like to give some feedback on this subject so far.

I created a mission with 10 bunkers in a row with 1NM separation. No wind. To this I linked a very useful training script, Simple Range Script by Ciribob, that give me an indication of how far from my target my rockets hit (or more correctly how far from the center of a trigger zone I hit). A small modification of the script also gives me an indication every time I actually hit my target, not only distance.

It works pretty well, and I cant see that strange invulnerable bunkers I described from the Shooting Range mission (I guess it's bugged some how).

I haven't ben able to kill a bunker with only two rockets yet as Reaper6 did, but I'm improving my accuracy.

 

Now about this tips:

 

I have tried to wrap my head around the Standby Reticle

[ATTACH]181367[/ATTACH]

and the "Rockets correction table"

[ATTACH]181368[/ATTACH]

but I see no correlation between them. I tried to position myself at a hover close to ground (also up to 500m AGL) and locked the Shkval on a bunker and switched between ordinary HUD and the Standby Reticle to see where on the Standby Reticle the Gun sight aiming mark would appear, and I needed to go as close as about 400m to get the Gun sight aiming mark at about +100Mils, just within the reticle, not even close to what the correction table say. If I interpret it correctly, it gives number of Mils from the helicopter horizontal axis, i.e. +53 or +68 @500m in a hover (I believe the 0km/h and 120km/h columns are mixed up, but not sure. Also the 300km/h look suspicious). Mowing at about 200km/h I needed to go close to 1000m distance to get hits having the target at +100Mils, not +40mils as the table states.

Anyone having any insights on how to read the table? Is it intended to be relative to another datum than the helicopter horizontal axis? Is it for other rockets with different ballistic behavior?

Also, I assume the table is for a set elevation difference between you and the target, because firing from different altitudes by necessity require different aiming angle (I also tried hovering at 500m AGL at a distance of 1000m in case Dm would be altitude above target at a standard distance of 1000m, but no).

 

Unguided rockets are in no means a precision ordinance. I believe the table is for the OFP rockets(HE, used against personnel, soft and lightly armoured targets). Considering you really don't want to get to close to use KOM to kill tanks and such, when you have Vikhrs. You can also research the "flashlight effect", when using unguided rockets. Basically a steep trajectory concentrates the unguided rockets into a small impact area. While a shallow trajectory spreads them out, much like a flashlight hitting the floor or wall at an angle.

 

 

Unguided rockets are an area suppression weapon. With tons of practice sure you can knock out things with a degree of precision. I only mention using the Standby Reticle as a means of practice to better understand the use of rockets. There are a lot of factors that come in to play when firing unguided rockets. Your altitude, their altitude, your speed, their speed, your angle of attack, wind, etc etc. Which is why it takes hours and hours of engaging different types of targets with different types of rockets. The rocket data is just a guideline or starting point, from there you adjust on the fly. Using the Standby Reticle, you can estimate range of the target, speed of the target, etc. But most aren't that interested in getting in to all that...

 

 

I recommend using the worst conditions imaginable when training, even night time, rain, snow, heavy wind, etc. So when the conditions are favorable it's 100x easier. Much like landing on a ship in the Shark, I would put the worst weather conditions, moving ship at high speed, and at night. So you land on a ship during the day when the sun is out, it's nothing.

 

 

For me I load up the OFP rockets on multiplayer servers, just mainly due to the heavy manpad concentration(usually). But for me, they are ALWAYS A LAST RESORT. Your canon has a better standoff range then an accurate rocket does. I will even fire off a pair of rockets in the direction of an enemy aircraft, just so they will piss off and leave me to my work. 9 times out of 10 they only see the smoke trail, so that's all I need.

 

 

But if you're really hell bent on being precise with rockets, then you're probably on the right path. Just tons and tons of practice, and trying new approaches. But I must say, I spent probably 1000+ hours of doing nothing but just rocket attacks to get anywhere near bring precise. Where your rocket hits a target is a big factor of whether you kill it or not.

 

 

Reaper6

Indeed I know it's not precision weapons, but I want to go from utterly useless with them, spending an entire load-out killing maybe one single supply truck among a tight crowd if I'm lucky, to at least deliver them with some degree of confidence. Been flying her since BS1 butt never found the patience to practice efficiently. Time to change that. And my history of almost invincible bunkers triggers me even further.

 

Soft and lightly armored targets can be taken out with the canon, as you said. Heavy armor and air threats, Vikhr. But I don't want to waste my precious Vikhrs on "simple" targets like bunkers! They are not very efficient against them anyhow.

 

The standby reticle can, as you also said, be useful for getting a feeling how the rockets behave, but maybe not so much otherwise. Unfortunately though l'm an engineer, and I can't settle with the thought of the correction table having no purpose and leave it there without explanation. It's a part of my personality, someone put it there, perfectly readable, it just HAVE to have a purpose and I'm dedicated to find out how to use it (with correlation to the actual rocket handling), even if I never ever will use it once I figured it out!

I will try the OFP and see if they correlate better. But I assume its a little bit of a Chase 22, I want the standby reticle to practice, but to really see if I'm using it right with correct version of rocket for the table I need enough experience and precision...(indeed I'm not forced to a particular rocket type or canon to use the reticle, but you get my point regarding the table).

 

Regarding worst case scenarios, I flew her for several years in the beginning with all AP channels off at all times just so I would really learn how to FLY her, then started to engage AP to unload me in hot situations. Might not be a "worst case", but somehow follow the same philosophy. Might as well be an advise I follow.

 

Thanks Reaper6!

Rockets video using the Standby Reticle

 

I set up a little target practice so I could record a rocket attack on various targets. With a load out of S8kom on inner pylons, and S8ofp on outer pylons. But hopefully got the idea how to practice rockets with the Standby Reticle. I'll try and put up more detailed information about the Standby Reticle later on.

 

 

I think the rocket correction table is useful, but merely as a reference point. There are just way too many factors at play to give a solid "put the target on this mil line and shoot" instruction. Like with the military(at least in the US), every piece of equipment comes with instructions. whether those instructions are useful in real world scenarios is a different story. I would think that the correction table was made by an engineer(no offense), using math only for the calculations. Or else the correction table would not even fit inside the cockpit of the Shark. You would have a table for every type of target, every difference of humidity, Altitude ASL(for you and target), what is your direction of attack vs direction of the wind, on and on. So slap something on there that is small and makes sense mathematically and call it a day. There are tons of manuals how to get a good shot using a sniper rifle, mostly dealing with math. Which is not useless information, it's just a reference point when you fire your first shot. After that your logs, range cards, metrological data, experience, etc is what is most important. As for how the model in DCS is, I couldn't even begin to imagine(probably mathematically lol).

 

 

TAKajq8QM3c

 

 

Reaper6

I find that the boresight circle for rockets is pretty accurate out to about 3km, you just have to anticipate the half-second of lag between pulling the trigger and the rockets actually shooting out.

I set up a little target practice so I could record a rocket attack on various targets.

 

Thx for the video. I expected some shots from a safer range (3-4 km), the Shark's nose is almost touching the target when firing rockets

Thx for the video. I expected some shots from a safer range (3-4 km), the Shark's nose is almost touching the target when firing rockets

I actually have to agree on this, at least 1.5-2km. Good video otherwise, the only one with the standby reticle as I know of, very appreciated!

 

I have experimented a little with the OFP and my understanding so far is that the correction table are supposed to be used with diving attacks from some set but undocumented height AGL. I actually started to see some correlation. Need more practice to be proficient enough to draw any real conclusions though.

 

EDIT:

I have found how to do below request myself. If anyone is interested I can share it. It's actually quite nice to have if learning the standby reticle.

"Anyone knowing how to edit some lua files to get the standby reticle to overlay the standard HUD? If at all possible? It's a little tricky to to toggle between them to compare gun sight position with the reticle."

Edited March 22, 2018 by Holton181

Some more feedback!

I'm getting better, but I'm far from perfect...

I have noticed something interesting regarding the two types of rockets, KOM and OFP2. Thanks to the slightly modified Simple Range script I get an indication every time I get an actual hit on the target. And when I'm talking about "hit" here I'm talking about the game register a hit, not when I'm visually see a hit, two completely different things!

When I get a hit indication I can go to F10 map and see how much of the life bar that hit caused to my target (bunker). In general, the OFP2 is harder to get a hit with, especially from shallow attack angles. But when i finally get a (single) hit, more than half of the life bar is gone on a bunker (bunker 1, FORTIFICATION)! If I get two hits, well then the bunker is history. The KOM on the other hand feels easy...well easier...go get hits with, especially at shallow angles. But I need maybe 8~10 hits to kill it, the life bar decreases much less than with OFP2. I'm on DCS 1.5.7, and I don't know if anything changed regarding rockets until 2.5, since Reaper6 successfully kills bunkers with only two KOM.

Anyhow, its quite an interesting observation. I need less OFPs but they are more difficult to hit with.

 

Regarding the Standby Reticle VS Rocket Correction Table, I'm getting closer to understand the tactics involved to get them to correlate. Basically, from my observations so far, fly strait, level and trimmed towards your target in a speed given in the table (yes, this is for correlation purposes only). when you reach a distance given in the table briefly point your nose down to given angle, fire an continue without changed speed or altitude. The nose down need to be brief to not alter speed or altitude. Doing this I get the best correlation so far, but I'm still too shaky to get the reticle steady.

I have been able to test this easily by making the Standby Reticle to overlap the ordinary automated gun sight, so I can always see where on the Standby Reticle the gun sight aiming mark is whenever I approach my target, and when going nose down, i.e. the aiming mark will be located on the exact corresponding point on the Standby Reticle to get a hit, at every given time, so it's fairly easy to see what angle it is located at. But I still have to work out at what height above the target I get the exact values in the table.

 

For anyone interested, I attach my training mission with the targeting and hit indications, and my OvGME ready MOD to get the Standby Reticle overlaid the automated gun sight. The mission is made in 1.5.7, but as long as it's not too many treas in the area I believe it will work in 2.5 too. Otherwise I believe it exist some kind of "lumberjack" function in the 2.5 ME to modify it with.

To play the mission enter one slot, a JTAC for instance, and wait for a couple of seconds to alow the scripts to load, then change slot to a KA-50. The #1,#3 and #5 are loaded with OFP2, #2 and #4 has KOM.

First target is for canon, but rockets are counted as well. Otherwise you have 10 bunkers to play with. Their flares will go out ones dead.

A JTAC HMMWV has been added in case you have the KA-50 JTAC MOD. Doesn't work for bunkers though...

The first target is taken from 476th vFG Air Weapons Range Objects. Change it to whatever you like if you don't have it.

For more information on the script go to Simple Range Script.

 

 

BR

/H

Test Range Bunkers KA-50.miz

KA50 Standby Reticle on HUD.zip

I did some testing with that mission on DCS 2.5 and I got some interesting results. When targeting a bunker with the Shkval, the targeting computer indicates the max range of both rocket types to be 1km. You can fire them from beyond that range, but it almost seems like there's some sort of rapid damage fall-off as the range increases. I've scored direct hits on the bunker from around 1.2 to 1.5km, but the script says I'm 2-5m off and the rocket did no damage. When I close to less than 1km, then the damage is applied as expected.

 

There also seems to be issues with the hit boxes for the bunkers. Sometimes when firing from point blank range and scoring a direct hit, the rockets won't do any damage. If I change my position slightly, then suddenly the rockets will properly damage the bunker. The back side of the bunker seems to be one area that I frequently have trouble with, and the front seems to be the most reliable when it comes to detecting the hit.

 

I find that it takes around 3 salvos with either the S-8KOM or S-8OFP to destroy the bunker. Whenever I score a direct hit with the S-8KOM, the script reports 4 hits, but with the S-8OFP it reports it as 2 hits. I know from experience that the OFP does more damage than the KOM, but perhaps there's a special setting that makes the KOM's do twice as much damage to bunkers.

Thanks Ranma13 for testing it out and giving feedback!

 

I've scored direct hits on the bunker from around 1.2 to 1.5km, but the script says I'm 2-5m off and the rocket did no damage.

I assume you did not get any hit indication? As I mentioned, even if you visually hit dead on, you might not cause any damage. Only when you get the indication you have made a hit, according to the game. But I assume you already understood that. Regarding the distance indications they work with other mechanics than the hit logic. The hits are taken straight from the game as events (and are the result of a very small modification of the script) and are target dependant, while the distance are taken from the center of a zone and has actually nothing to do with the target. It's described in the original thread about the script.

 

There also seems to be issues with the hit boxes for the bunkers.

My observation as well. Guess it's to simulate the difficulty of destroying bunkers or something. Hitting from above, on the roof seems to be the easiest to generate real hits (not only due to the "flashlight effect").

 

I find that it takes around 3 salvos with either the S-8KOM or S-8OFP to destroy the bunker.

Reaper6 also testify about equal numbers of the two rockets to kill bunkers, at least in 2.5. That is definitely not my observation in 1.5.7. Will fire up the mission in 2.5 and see if I can observe any difference.

 

Whenever I score a direct hit with the S-8KOM, the script reports 4 hits, but with the S-8OFP it reports it as 2 hits.

Interesting, will investigate this further. I assume that you by a hit in this context mean two rockets, one from each pod?

Yes, 2 rockets.

I find that it takes around 3 salvos with either the S-8KOM or S-8OFP to destroy the bunker. Whenever I score a direct hit with the S-8KOM, the script reports 4 hits, but with the S-8OFP it reports it as 2 hits. I know from experience that the OFP does more damage than the KOM, but perhaps there's a special setting that makes the KOM's do twice as much damage to bunkers.

Now I have tested it some more and yes indeed, the KOM mostly generates double hits in 2.5, butt not always. The OFP is really hard to get hits on bunkers in 2.5 and I have not seen any double hits there either.

But in 1.5.7 OFPs are much easier to hit with, even if still more difficult than with KOMs, and I believe both types generates double hits (I admit my memory isn't perfectly clear on this at typing)

I wonder if this is a bug or a feature, like if you get a good hit it will be counted as two.

I might post a bug report about it.

 

Regarding the damage made by the two types, it's definitely a rather big difference in both 1.5.7 and 2.5.