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New DCS Player. Air combat Maneuvers campaign can't even 1v1 another F5. Tips?


redmantab

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Hello everyone. A few months in, love DCS, use VR w x52.. and just bought a volair, enjoying this.

 

So I decide to splurge a bit beyond my volair and vr... broaden my experiences behind training and the 4 F5 missions. Purchase Nevada and the F5 ACM Campaign (along with others) . First mission in after the tour NTTR flight mission and I'm 1v1 with a F5 guns only. I cant keep behind my enemy F5.

 

I've read a ton of forums here about turn rate, different approaches etc. Yeah, can't quite do it very well. I've flown free flight a bunch to try and figure out optimum turn speed for certain conditions.... Not much consistent. success when dogfighting. For us folks that don't fly in real life but need a bit of help to enjoy this experience and Key word - Progress beyond 1 mission in.... Can some tips about 1v1 F5 DOGFIGHTING be shared? I know keep afterburner on and try and keep energy, but need help. Dumbing down for new flight sim users welcome

 

Cheers!

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ACM is hard dude! F-5E is actually more of a ground attack, then air-air. But in daylight WVR its alright. Regardless of platform, situational awareness is most difficult, in DCS, and in real life. Which is knowing your aircraft relationship to target or threats, or both at same time. External views, especially F5 nearest aircraft and nearest ground hostile view,are most usefull. Have labels, so you would know where the friendlies and enemies are. In F-5E, radar is ancillary sensor at best. Visual target and threat detection with RWR is more useful.

After SA, managing energy (air speed and altitude) is next most difficult. Aircraft needs speed for best performance. About 400-450 knots for tightest turn, and fastest turn rate. The harder the turn, the faster the AC looses energy. Read Energy Theory of Air Combat Maneuvering by USAF Col. Boyd. This is central to Western thought on ACM. Gross weight of aircraft effects how it sheds and gains energy. So you can't 'dogfight' with fuel tanks and AG stores. Even full internal fuel will slow you down, but F-5E will go through that fast in afterburner. In my opinion, within context of DCS world, unless you are fighting Mig-21, Mig-15, another F-5E, L-39, Hawk, or intercepting large aircraft, you are at energy disadvantage vs. 4th gen fighters, and will probably loose. Even AI opponent at Good or better. Mig-29, SU-27/30/33/J-11A, Mirage2K, all can see you further out, have more and better AA weapons, faster, and climb faster. A clean Mig-21Bis climbs quite a bit faster then F-5E. So best bet is one pass at enemy, fire off Sidewinders, one head on gun pass if possible, then run away. Ambush tactics! Like the Claire Chenault's Flying Tigers in China in 1940. Fighting superior Am6 Zero's with less maneuverable P-40. They would ambush Japanese, dive on them, or single pass from underneath, then run like hell.

In DCS I find that F-5E has really fast roll rate. Quicker then almost everything, except clean Mig-21. Fight at 400knots IAS is best. So roll alot, to prevent opponent gun or missile solutions . If taking a IR missile shot, break to side, and dump flares like crazy. If an opponent is on your six, and you have altitude, dive with burners on to gain speed and run away if possible.

If you are fighting against MIG-25 or MIG-31, and you survive radar missiles, get them in close, slow the fight to 350 knots, then turn to kill, take the shot, if possible, and run away at low altitude. F-5E has superior turn rate and turn radius then those huge things. Above 500 knots, your turn advantage diminishes. In real world, you should conduct your initial attack (i.e. the merge) with sun at your back. The good old 'Out Of The Sun', tactics from WWI. But, and this is just my opinion, I don't think that AI opponents are affected by sunlight in DCS. But I could be wrong.

There is a great , but old book and old 1990's Internet posts by F-16 pilot Pete Bonani. He was a top F-16 USAF pilot, though he was actually Air Force Reserve or Virginia Air National Guard. He wrote great articles, and videos describing ACM basics, air combat geometry, energy management, and so on. His work is based on F-16A and early F-16C blocks, but they hold true for ACM, regardless of aircraft.

If you can find it, there is a book by Richard Herman, called "Fire Break". In it there is this list made by one of the story's characters. Called "Abner Furry's Rules Of Survival". Its something like Star Trek's Ferengi Rules Of Acquisition, except shorter. Furry's rules are a bit comical but memorable.

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Specifically to DCS, remember that the AI uses a simpler flight model so it can't do things that shouldn't be physically possible.

 

 

In case you haven't read it, this has great info about dogfighting: http://falcon.blu3wolf.com/Docs/Fighter%20Combat-Tactics%20and%20Maneuvering.pdf

 

 

The part about similar 1v1, guns only ACM is probably the most relevant to your question, but the whole thing is a great read if you want to learn about air combat.

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Studying these links and items. Thank you. I'm also enjoying the Cardovia vs Dreamland user created campaign. One quick question.

 

I'm in one of the campaign missions where I am able to bomb the target house, gun down the technical, air to air 2 mid 21's, and then head home. On the way home the mission has a SAM launcher fire a missile at me. On the f5's little radar it says simply 10 in the radar. That must be the type of sam.

 

I've looked around the forums and, surprisingly, haven't found much. Typically, should I time flare or chaff to throw off the SAM?

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SA10 is a very nasty SAM. If you see it on your RWR you are already in very serious trouble. From what I understand chaff will not help (Flares are for IR missiles BTW) as this is a very advanced system and is not spoofed easily.

 

Certainly dump chaff (you never know :) ) but head for the ground and get some terrain between you and the tracking radar. This would be one of those rare times where you could be excused if you over G the jet.

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Specifically to DCS, remember that the AI uses a simpler flight model so it can't do things that shouldn't be physically possible.

 

 

In case you haven't read it, this has great info about dogfighting: <EXPUNGED>

 

 

The part about similar 1v1, guns only ACM is probably the most relevant to your question, but the whole thing is a great read if you want to learn about air combat.

 

Jet AI FMs are generally pretty accurate in terms of overall performance (there are only a few deviations: They can sustain negative G that would flame out the engine, and have unrealistic control at very low speed) but the AI cheats in other ways. They aren't omniscient while cruising around, and if you sneak up in their blind spot you can get a shot off without the AI reacting. Once they've spotted you, however, things are different. An AI that's aware of your presence is always also aware of your speed, altitude, angle of attack, throttle setting and aspect relative to its aircraft, even when you're so far away you should just be a little spec in the pilot's view. In fact the AI knows these values to a greater accuracy than your instruments will display to you, because the AI code is directly fed flight data from the sim.

 

Not all AIs are created equal in DCS, and some (e.g. the F-15) are surprisingly easy to beat in guns-only dogfights due to artificial stupidity. The F-5E AI is not one of these: it will always use the exact control inputs needed to get max performance out of the jet. Combined with its perfect awareness of your movements, getting the advantage over the F-5E AI guns-only without a superior aircraft is incredibly difficult. The F-5E AI also has a working understanding of ACM and will use a variety of maneuvers to get the advantage over you: Slow down rapidly and the AI will do a high yo-yo to re-position for another attack, and if you suck it into a scissors and force an overshoot the AI will attempt to escape using a low yo-yo followed by a loop or high yo-yo to re-position onto your six. It's also rather good at deflection shooting, even against 3D maneuvers like barrel rolls.

 

Equip both sides with missiles and the fight gets a bit more even because the AI isn't very good at denying missile shots (it prefers maximum kinetic performance over preventing you from firing on its aircraft) and tends to shoot its own missiles outside of their launch envelope (the F-5 AI will fire any time it gets tone, even if you're inside minimum range or crossing its nose too fast for the AIM-9 to track.) The AI skill level also plays into this: while skill setting doesn't seem to change how the AI flies, it will change how quickly it responds to incoming missiles. Average AIs may fail to respond at all, while Expert AIs react instantly to any missile threat by launching countermeasures and (sometimes) using an evasive maneuver.

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Reading this, I hope that the technology behind Heatblur's Jester AI will eventually make its way into the rest of the sim.

 

From the sounds of it, they're developing AI based on human limitations (actual line of sight etc.) and are having good success with it.

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Jet AI FMs are generally pretty accurate in terms of overall performance (there are only a few deviations: They can sustain negative G that would flame out the engine, and have unrealistic control at very low speed) but the AI cheats in other ways. They aren't omniscient while cruising around, and if you sneak up in their blind spot you can get a shot off without the AI reacting. Once they've spotted you, however, things are different. An AI that's aware of your presence is always also aware of your speed, altitude, angle of attack, throttle setting and aspect relative to its aircraft, even when you're so far away you should just be a little spec in the pilot's view. In fact the AI knows these values to a greater accuracy than your instruments will display to you, because the AI code is directly fed flight data from the sim.

 

Not all AIs are created equal in DCS, and some (e.g. the F-15) are surprisingly easy to beat in guns-only dogfights due to artificial stupidity. The F-5E AI is not one of these: it will always use the exact control inputs needed to get max performance out of the jet. Combined with its perfect awareness of your movements, getting the advantage over the F-5E AI guns-only without a superior aircraft is incredibly difficult. The F-5E AI also has a working understanding of ACM and will use a variety of maneuvers to get the advantage over you: Slow down rapidly and the AI will do a high yo-yo to re-position for another attack, and if you suck it into a scissors and force an overshoot the AI will attempt to escape using a low yo-yo followed by a loop or high yo-yo to re-position onto your six. It's also rather good at deflection shooting, even against 3D maneuvers like barrel rolls.

 

Equip both sides with missiles and the fight gets a bit more even because the AI isn't very good at denying missile shots (it prefers maximum kinetic performance over preventing you from firing on its aircraft) and tends to shoot its own missiles outside of their launch envelope (the F-5 AI will fire any time it gets tone, even if you're inside minimum range or crossing its nose too fast for the AIM-9 to track.) The AI skill level also plays into this: while skill setting doesn't seem to change how the AI flies, it will change how quickly it responds to incoming missiles. Average AIs may fail to respond at all, while Expert AIs react instantly to any missile threat by launching countermeasures and (sometimes) using an evasive maneuver.

 

 

Uh, ok. In my experience I always felt like the AI does stuff that seems questionable; for example in the F15 vs F5 aggressor mission in FC3 I always feel like the Tigers can keep up with me (in a clean Eagle) in a climb which just seems silly. Maybe I'm screwing up somewhere though.

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Uh, ok. In my experience I always felt like the AI does stuff that seems questionable; for example in the F15 vs F5 aggressor mission in FC3 I always feel like the Tigers can keep up with me (in a clean Eagle) in a climb which just seems silly. Maybe I'm screwing up somewhere though.

 

If you watch the AI in tacview you'll see that they generally don't do anything crazy- they just never make a mistake while maneuvering, while you may (at any point) be pulling too much or too little by a tiny amount. This can give them unexpected energy advantages that allow them to keep up with you in that sort of situation. I'll make one exception: The AI AV-8B is ridiculous. It can outrun the likes of the MiG-21bis in a gentle turn, and I'm fairly certain that I've seen it exceeding its specified maximum speed at sea level (I was at 1100km/h indicated and the Harrier was pulling away!) Try the same in the player version and you'll be eating an Atoll faster than you can say 'induced drag.'

 

Flying F-15 against F-5E is actually pretty easy if you keep an eye on your speed and play to the Eagle's strengths, which are... pretty much everything, actually. It has better climb, turn rate, turn radius and max G. The trick is to keep the plane in the range of speeds at which it performs best. After-burning jet engines generally deliver more thrust at higher speeds, so the faster you go the faster you'll be able to regain energy. Going below 330 knots is a big no-no unless you really have to or it will give you an angle for a guns shot that the enemy cannot avoid.


Edited by Nerd1000
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