Is the Tomcat the Air to Air King in DCS

As someone relatively need to DCS I was just curious where the tomcat stands in terms of air to air amongst the other modules. I’m sure there are better dogfighters than the tomcat but at BVR does anything beat the AWG-9 and the Phoenix? Thoughts?

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Not only is the F-14 the air to air king but it's also the best looking...

No particular aircraft is necessarily the Air-to-Air "king". They all have their own strengths and weaknesses which you must learn to exploit.

"The quality of the crate matters little. Success depends on the man who sits in it."

- Manfred von Richthofen

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You will need a potent human RIO for that.

In a scenario where a competent F-14 crew is going into a BVR only engagement, and the enemy chooses to use BVR tactics (and is not another tomcat), the F-14 will win most of the time, purely because of the massive range of the phoenix.

A 30nm phoenix shot will have a much higher PK than a 30nm AMRAAM shot.

There is a lot of niuanses to BVR, but unless the target forces shorter ranges, the tomcat has many advantages in BVR.

In a scenario where a competent F-14 crew is going into a BVR only engagement, and the enemy chooses to use BVR tactics (and is not another tomcat), the F-14 will win most of the time, purely because of the massive range of the phoenix.

A 30nm phoenix shot will have a much higher PK than a 30nm AMRAAM shot.

 

There is a lot of niuanses to BVR, but unless the target forces shorter ranges, the tomcat has many advantages in BVR.

A maddog AMRAAM launch puts pay to those pesky 154's :thumbup:

If you take this plane (or any other plane for that matter) into with that kind of mentality, you are going to get your behind handed to you, regardless of if it's BVR or WVR.

WVR, it's all about you. You learn how to fly it right, and nothing will get in your way. Same goes with any other plane.

BVR......now BVR is a tricky one. No matter how good you are, if you fly with a bad RIO...... tough luck. Jester? Nah, not really.....not against competent human bandits in MP. Maybe there is a way to mitigate this by scripting every single Jester command so you can do it from the front seat, but i have a life and way too little patience to do it myself.

EDIT: just to illustrate the difference. I'm too busy to fly with a squadron, and where i live too few people fly DCS and even less have the F-14. So i always fly solo, even when going MP. ACM? Took me about 4 separate sessions to figure out how to put into practice what i know from theory. BVR???? How should i put this......i though i had some idea about how to use this plane with Jester. Then, the weekend before this one, on the Growling Sidewinder's open server, this random guy asks to join me as a RIO. It's something like 2 AM and i tell him i can't use any audio-vocal communication, because my family is sleeping next room. He says no matter, just let me in the back. So, heck.....why not. I let him in, load 2 AIM-9M's, 2 AIM-7MH and 4 AIM-54C mk47. I take off, do nothing fancy, i mean i jut drive the thing to the Bulls eye and the guy bags a Hornet with a single shot. A single shot man! Sometimes it takes me 6-8 launches before i can kill an F-18 in BVR. If that doesn't tell you how much a human RIO makes a difference....i don't know what will.

I then proceeded to spoil it all by getting shot on egress, mostly by being clumsy and stupid. Man, if you are reading this, kudos! You make one hell of a RIO.

I just managed to rebind the Jester commands to make them easier to reach, then memorized those keybinds, and I've been able to get by just fine.

Trying to gain any sort of air dominance in MP is a waste.

Not possible with unlimited respawns and auto starts.

Turn the radar off, get her chooching at low level, close in with Awacs calls at 30nm radar on but dont even lock just point nose in general direction pump off 4 to 6 PH like your daddy pays for em them radar off and RTB.

If that air quake stuff suits you...

Trying to gain any sort of air dominance in MP is a waste.

Not possible with unlimited respawns and auto starts.

 

Turn the radar off, get her chooching at low level, close in with Awacs calls at 30nm radar on but dont even lock just point nose in general direction pump off 4 to 6 PH like your daddy pays for em them radar off and RTB.

 

If that air quake stuff suits you...

Very much depends of the server and how competitive the gameplay is.

So for example DDCS modern server you have life points and when shot down or not returning the aircraft you lose LP which means that you will quickly run out if not a good pilot, thus not enable to fly the aircraft, thus the other side can win air dominance. It works well.

I cringe when see people fox3 x 6 all within the space of seconds.

Agreed, I stick to inferno PvE, semi random encounters and if you like CAP you can support the ground pounders.

Although it's just a stop gap until we get proper dynamic online campaigns with moving front lines and resource capture/suppression.

I can dream right?

No particular aircraft is necessarily the Air-to-Air "king". They all have their own strengths and weaknesses which you must learn to exploit.

 

"The quality of the crate matters little. Success depends on the man who sits in it."

 

- Manfred von Richthofen

 

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I couldn't find a better answer !

Maybe there is a way to mitigate this by scripting every single Jester command so you can do it from the front seat

Interesting, but what kind of Jester command are you talking about ? What do you want to achieve more specifically ?

I only played that module during the free week-end so I can't check by myself.

Interesting, but what kind of Jester command are you talking about ? What do you want to achieve more specifically ?

 

 

 

I only played that module during the free week-end so I can't check by myself.

Mostly fine radar scan control. Right now controlling your azimuth and elevation through the Jester RIO is pain in the <insert your most annoying body part reference here>. Single pre merge fence is doable, but a dynamic multi bandit environment....... without a human RIO, it's very clumsy and slow. There is no easy way to go look-up or look-down, nor to crank. Doing both cranking changing elevation is a no-no. Even if you don't do the trigonometry in your head and just use tables for elevation at range values, you are still 3 menus deep before you even get to chose what you need. And this is a must for a dynamic engagement. Not to mention even this wouldn't give you a direct radar steering control which a human RIO would use anyways. So good luck pointing you radar the right way at the right time.

A feature completely missing from the RIO even without the interface obstacles is the ability to resort TWS priority to the targets. Often resulting in new and much higher threat contacts being sorted lowest on the priority scale.

Part of this can remedied by incorporating some new elevation presets that would help with long and medium range engagements. But anything sub 25-35NM requires fine control.

No, the Tomcat is not the Air to Air King. The Phoenix missile is.

No, the Tomcat is not the Air to Air King. The Phoenix missile is.

Since the F14 is the only aircraft ever to carry this missile, this statement has no point.

Since the F14 is the only aircraft ever to carry this missile, this statement has no point.

It's a point since Tomcat doesn't carry only the AIM-54. :smilewink:

Since the F14 is the only aircraft ever to carry this missile, this statement has no point.

I find a Sparrow-Sidewinder-Cannon armed Tomcat pretty harmless to fly against...BVR or WVR, that's my point. :thumbup:

Hmmm... tbf I dont play multiplayer esp as it wouldnt be fair without a rio but..

I kick ass with sparrows sidewinders and guns.

Last mission in my dce xampaign all 4 of my.phoenixes missed. My wingmen got all the fighters. But then a bunch of backfires took off towards the carrier group. I attacked. Got 4 to sparrows and sidewinders. Another to guns. Then the mig 23s and 25s showed up. Dmgd a 23 and killed a 25 with guns (i admit thisnwas one of my best a2a ever) before a SA3 slammed into me and ended my fun.

I dont know what they did but sparrows work a lot better recently

Trying to gain any sort of air dominance in MP is a waste.

Not possible with unlimited respawns and auto starts.

 

Turn the radar off, get her chooching at low level, close in with Awacs calls at 30nm radar on but dont even lock just point nose in general direction pump off 4 to 6 PH like your daddy pays for em them radar off and RTB.

 

If that air quake stuff suits you...

Air dominance really depends on the server, DDCS and BlueFlag both have "lives" on BF you get 3 in a "good" fighter, then once those are gone you can still fly bombers/helos to be useful. Or second tier point defense interceptors like the F5 or mig21.

But yes, given that the phoenix is still "active" off the "rail" the tactic you described unfortunately works rather well. Hopefully that might get addressed with the new ED missile API, but I haven't seen any announcement on it.

Its also really annoying that while the Cat can turn on its ECM, it is totally unaffected by enemy ECM, and the AWG-9 with its yugge side lobes and 1960's processing capabilities should be rather easy to jam by modern jammers, and hey, incidentally that same for the earlier variants of the phoenix. This further "buffs" the cat at the current point in time, and I don't recall ever hearing when HB plans to include jamming effects if ever.

So those two rather major "problems" make the 'Cat hugely overpowered online for BVR. WVR it seems ok to me.

Yet AIM-54 are eager for chaffs :music_whistling: (even AIM-54C).

IDK, maybe they are, but I get hosed by them a lot, now mind you most of the time I can dodge a FEW, but guys yeeting of like 3-4 at a go, and then following up with 2 more gets to be a bit too aeroquake for me.

I was also killed by one recently no RWR warning at all, just "boom". But I think that may have been desynch.

Honestly I think the Phoneix "logic" really needs to be "fixed" and I hope the DCS API is up the task. It would make life much easier if the Tom actually had to provide guidance telemetry to the Phoenixes. (hey those links can be jammed too....)

And the ECM issue would be as simple as "switch" in the editor to let server owners or mission designers enable or disable it as they saw fit for "balance" reasons.

You need to learn how to defeat these missiles before whining. You're way off the mark here. This topic has been discussed to death. If anything the Phoenix is undermodeled compared to real life based on statements from actual 14 pilots/RIOs. You're going to have to learn to defeat it. It won't get worse, it'll get better with the missile API.

You need to learn how to defeat these missiles before whining. You're way off the mark here. This topic has been discussed to death. If anything the Phoenix is undermodeled compared to real life based on statements from actual 14 pilots/RIOs. You're going to have to learn to defeat it. It won't get worse, it'll get better with the missile API.

I know how to defeat them, at least until I run out of Chaff. If anything I'm bitching about aeroquake and yeeting off 6 phoenixes at single fighter sized target and how annoying and unrealistic it is. Or maybe the SME's would care to chime in about how "realistic" yeeting off 6 Phoenixes at a lone fighter sized target is.

The problem as I pointed out is this whole half modeled approach in DCS. The AWG-9 is jammable by modern jammers, i.e. can't see the target can't shoot it. But wait, that's not done, hell its not even on the roadmap as far as I can tell. Yes you can "notch it", but that has 0 impact on phoenix guidance, which track you regardless. So I'd say not being able to use 2 fairly standard tactics against the 'cat is kind-of a problem. And yes I know all about HOJ.

The AIM-54A with its state of the art 60's radar was also pretty susceptible to various jamming techniques by the 1990's which given the state of the art of DCS means it goes for chaff since that's what we have instead of an actual ECM model.

I know how to defeat them, at least until I run out of Chaff. If anything I'm bitching about aeroquake and yeeting off 6 phoenixes at single fighter sized target and how annoying and unrealistic it is. Or maybe the SME's would care to chime in about how "realistic" yeeting off 6 Phoenixes at a lone fighter sized target is.

I agree, but it isn't worst than DCS Hornet with 10 AIM-120.:music_whistling: