Hi my fellow rotorheads!
I do not know if this subject is to be considered a question, complaint, observation, education, #%&*$# (I get censored?! It says "bull poop" by the way) or what. So please read it, contemplate about it and if you feel to comment on it, by all means do so.

Here we go:
I have played Longbow2 for some time now, but never felt like a great fan of the rockets. Anyhow, now I am trying to take the leap over to EECH and all the great mods the community has to offer. Even if I still have some… let say mental issues about using the rockets, I strive to overcome them. After reading this article I jumped in to the cockpit to start blow things up!

With the US choppers the procedure are rather similar to the one in LB2, and it is explained exemplary in the article with god pictures and color-codes. For the Russian gunships it looked even better, with a nice step-by-step example of how to blow up a giant chimney in manual targeting mode.

But there was something wrong, HORRIBLY wrong! *PAM-PAM-PAAAAA!*
(N.B. I just felt a little bit theatrical when writing this, sorry)
The US procedure works like a charm, but when trying the one for Mi-28N and Ka-52 I could not hit anything. Not with an automatic targeting system on, nor in manual mode. I started to despair, “has the oh-so-annoying malfunction of the rocket targeting in LB2 been inherited by the Russian dittos in EECH?!” I thought.

In my strive to figure it out I saddle up in a Ka-52, loaded the bird with 80 S-8:s and turned a coast city in Cuba into a #%&*$# (again!) between Pearl Harbor -41 and Berlin -45. Now I will try to share my observations with you. If I got something wrong, please let me (and the others) know.
By the way, I am currently playing version 1.12.2.


Just for clarification:
aircraft datum (AD) = the semicircle with wings at the center of the HUD for displaying bank (roll)
target marker (TM) = the circle with range marks, fixated around a locked target
rocket sight (RS) = the circle with a dot at the center that is supposed to mark were the rocket will hit

When the author of the mentioned article described different aiming principals, (s)he differentiate between using automatic targeting methods (i.e. radar or AI co-pilot) and manual targeting. But in my opinion there is actually better to differentiate between aiming for LOCKED targets and NOT LOCKED targets, because you can lock a target while in manual mode by hitting numpad [Enter] while pointing current “aimer” (EOS or HMS) at the target and after that the rest of the procedure (including lasing) is the same as for using automatic targeting methods.

Now, for NOT LOCKED targets in manual mode the procedure in the article is quite correct, except in one detail: direction of the range calibrating laser. If the laser always pointed at the same spot as the RS, as it might do in real life, the procedure would lead to success. Unfortunately I discovered that the laser in EECH, with no automatic targeting methods chosen, always pointing straight forward. So to succeed you need to point the center of the AD (not the RS!) at your target, lase it ones, KEEP THE AD AT THE TARGET, lase it a second time, now correct the pitch so that the RS points at the same spot as the AD when lasing, and FIRE!
The reason for you to lase the target twice is well described in the article.
The reason why the author succeed to blast the giant chimney away even though (s)he believe that the laser follows the RS is because at both lasings in that particular example, the AD and the RS are both pointing at the chimney resulting in a fairly correct range calibration and a hit.

When using an automatic targeting method to lock the target or when locking it in manual mode, the laser points at the same spot as the TM (i.e. at the locked target) and continually corrects the range calibration. Now I really want to believe that the procedure to hit a locked target with rockets is indeed supposed to be the one described in the article, as that would mean a consistent use of the RS, but I am sad to say that this is not the case in EECH. To get a hit on a locked target the AD (not the RS!) has to be aligned with the TM, then FIRE!

Why the procedures in the article and the ones I have experienced differs so I do not know. Maybe due to unknown bugs or changes in later generations of the EXE?

With this little (?!) “essay” I do not want to declare the article I referring to as a complete failure, quite the contrary. The author has actually put together a very exemplar tutorial in all aspects except for the small flaws I have been whining about. But I felt to write about it so that other rotorheads with the same problems as me finally can succeed killing foes by rocket fire and hopefully the article gets an update, or I myself get a correction on what I have been doing wrong. So feel free to comment if you believe you have something to add the subject.

Thank You for the time You spent upon reading this, the oh-so-valuable time that You could have spent on close friends and family, or maybe to carry out the garbage an clean the dishes. But You chose to spent it on this. I truly appreciate that.

Yours sincerely
/Holton181

tha lasing direction is tied to the EO sight, so where ever that points the laser will be pointing. So you can tell quite easily where the laser is aimed by checking the EO sight. Does it correspond with the point for the rocket sight?

At least I can see quite clearly that the point being lased changes. If I lase for range while on the ground in the Mi-28 (which has a nose up attitude on the ground), then the sight initally moves down a lot (since the laser doesn't hit anything and calibrates the sight for maximum range). The next time I lase the sight moves up again (but not all the way up). It wouldn't do that if it was still pointing up into the sky, because then it would get maximum range every time.
Is that what happens for you too?



The datum is positioned directly ahead (0 degrees pitch), which is also how the rocket pods are aligned. If rockets hit that point then they don't drop anything at all. Is that what you're seeing too, that the rockets don't drop anything at all?
Maybe you're using a GWUT file where weapons drop is not enabled...

Hi arneh!
Thank you for your reply.



According to what I can tell from the article the laser are supposed to point at the rocket sight and the EO camera is slaved to that point:


And yes, the EO sight and the rocket sight follow each other even for me.
But through my first tests I found that the rocket sight (and so the EO) got a correct range calibration if I pointed the datum and not the rocket sight at the target when lasing twice an first after that corrected the pitch to point the rocket sight at the target.

Now after reading your reply I performed some additional testing and found that my first conclusion about the not locked targeting mode was wrong. Now I actually found that the rockets indeed do not drop for me. And according to your second comment, that would explain the failing when in automatic targeting mode too. Actually it was that comment that made me redo my testing.


My GWUT file is gwut1120 and it is correctly declared in eech.ini.
But if there is something wrong with my GWUT file then it would be wrong for everybody using it. Or can it become edited through the game? Maybe by mistake?

Tack än en gång arneh!

Yes, that's at least how it's supposed to work.




That's the GWUT file I'm using too, and rockets do drop for me... So this puzzles me. You are sure it's being used? It says so during start-up? You haven't edited the GWUT file yourself?
To see if the GWUT-file is used, could you try making a change which would be really obvious in game? E.g. for the M230 in the weapons section change it's muzzle velocity from 808 to 8 or something. When firing the Apache's cannon the cannon rounds will be really slow then (and if there is weapons drop then they will just barely make it out of the barrel before they fall to the ground). Make a backup before you change the file though, unless you want the cannon to behave like that

Arneh, I hope we are getting closer.

First I tried with gwut1110 and gwut190, but no difference.
But at the startup the correct gwut are announced.

Then I tried gwut1120 with the changes you suggested (two values had 808, changed both to 8). The bullets was falling like bombs (actually killed an allied when flying over him :P).
But otherwise I have never changed anything in any gwut file ever.

But what value should I change to make the S-8 fall like the M230 rounds?
Just to test that

For rockets it's the rocket burn time which mostly affects the speed. For the S-8 the burn time is 0.7 seconds, so find that number and set it to 0 or some other low number.

Well, as I suspected the rockets drop.
Then I must have been blind when locking for it earlier.

As closer I´m flying to the target, the more off I´ll get with my salvos. Maybe that is normal?
The best hit rate (and it´s not high) I get when the target is far away like 3-4km.
When I do my testing I try to keep the rocket sight and datum separate, just to rule out or confirm the possibility that the laser is pointing at the wrong direction.
But I am getting more and more convinced that the only thing that fails here are the man behind the controls (not surprisingly).

I suggest that you don’t engage yourself in this to any further extent for the moment, unless there are other pilots experiencing the same “strange” behavior as I.

But I thank you a lot trying to help me, arneh and of course an apology to the author of the article may be on its place.

/Holton181

Unfortunately I don't have a working joystick at the moment, and it's hard to do any accurate rocket aiming with the keyboard. But I'll check it out when I get my joystick back.

Anyone else think we should take up a collection for a new joystick for arneh and have it drop shipped?

IMO, arneh without a joystick is UNSAT!

I do have a joystick, but it failed so I sent it back to the store and I'm waiting for the replacement to arrive.