Update on future products...



Nate

Nate - thanks for that. Don't worry, you can trust us with saying what the Flying Legends AC is. Just between us, ok?

LOL

Sorry I can't say - but these guys own Eagle Dynamics ........

http://fighter-collection.com/pages.php

Nate

Ooo, that kind of legendary, as in possibly a heritage flight? My first thought was something Russian and 1970's to be honest.

If the DCS series has something with a spinning thing on the front, rather than on top, then that would be huge news. Wow.

ED has an FM engine capable of simulating anything that flies. Having access to 'anything that flies' to properly simulate it is a very huge, practical bonus

Smart move on Ed's part, now I really have something to look forward to!

FC3 is good news. Looking forward to it.

About the Flying Legend aircraft:

There is a map with a bunch of files in my BS2 full version:

C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS Black Shark 2\Data\EagleFM\P51B

Could it be???

Does anyone know if FC3 will require FC2?

Thanks!

Although I can't say for certain, I assume it will only require Lock On:-Modern Air Combat. Don't take this as gospel though, no information has been given yet. But the legalities of things with UBIsoft would suggest to me that this is the only way it could work.

Nate

Ok, thank you. My cousin was planning on picking up FC2 this week. I will let him know.

news about the "classic" aircraft is very exciting. any word on whether it will have a damage model, whether it will be able to use weapons and whether it will have an adversary?

let's start the speculation here as to what the aircraft will be.

I'm guessing P-47.

I want it all and I want it now.

And it's not the Jug. This sim has carrier ops already. It will be the F6F-5 Hellcat or F4U-1D Corsair with an old straight deck flattop.

Cheers!

Rick...

The money over at the DCS forums is it will be a P-51B. Apparently there was a left over file in the A-10 beta saying P-51. But who knows. Just happy to see the Cliffs of Dover mob get some competition. Lord knows they need it.

Hooray! This makes me happy- can I perhaps hope for an Su-27S upgrade, or daresay even a MiG-29 M2 upgrade?

I'll be happy with anything they release. I'm a shameless Eagle Dynamics fan. I can't help it. They turned any resistance from me futile with DCS: Black Shark.

What I want from them now is an American helicopter, preferably not the Apache, but I'll take that too if they make it, and an F/A-18C sim with carrier ops.

If they'd do an HH-46A, CH-46D, SH-3G, SH-2F, or SH-60B sim I could die a happy man. Or a UH-1B sim featuring HAL-3 in Vietnam if they wanted to make me delirious, but that's even more farfetched than the others. Hell, I'd even settle for a really good TH-57A sim.

But overall, based on their past products, I'll grin and buy whatever they choose to produce.

Cheers!

Rick...

I'm with you Sauron, I'll be happy with whatever they release. But I would be confused if they released a WWII Aircraft. I mean, at that point won't it just be a pure flying sim? Or do you think they'll make it a WWII Combat sim?

I hope FC3 is only $10 or so. I wish they would release patches/updates for free, but I don't mind paying a little to get some large improvements. The thing is, will it be bloated with the same garbage optimization and DRM? Hopefully it will be stand alone and backwards compatible with FC2 missions.

What I dislike is the $20 Nevada terrian addon for two reasons. For one, $20 for some extra terrian is a rip off. Two, it splits the MP community. What if I want to play a mission on the Nevada terrian, and the other players don't have it? They'll get disconnected or have to quit... which kills the community far quicker. This is not such a big problem in games like BF3 with huge player bases, but Lock On doesn't even have a fraction of online players.

What I am keen to see is a complete list of improvements made in FC3... I do love the good old SU-25 so much, it has a lovely engine roar and overspeed shake. I'm hoping that they will push the quality slider closer to the study sim end of the scale. What do you think the chances are for click able cockpits being added?

My thoughts exactly. It's not that I'd be terribly dissapointed with such a release, but it seems to me that the FC2/DCS community is not exactly the target audience for a WWII classic warplane chargeable add-on that you get to fly in a modern environment. If you want to do that, you're already playing FSX and not looking at Eagle Dynamics forum updates. And if you're a true WWII simulations flyer, you're currently trying to shake out all the bugs from CoD and making it run smoothly on your computer... I'm not sure that the CoD crowd would see this as an alternative.

What I'd hope for in terms of 'Legend' is more something along the lines of legendary aircraft that are still in active service (therefore who could logically be seen in scenarios in the DCS world), for example F-4, Mig-21... simpler avionics type of aircrafts that can be done faster than, say, an F-18 or an F-15.

Ian

Those avionics are far from simple.

They're crappy. They're crappy old stuff that you had to do a lot of manual things with to get anything done - THAT is why you had a back-seater. They'd actually be /more/ complex. Not that the F-15/16/18 had a requirement for huge avionics automation, especially the radar, so that one pilot could operate it as compared to older aircraft.

I hate to put this to you this way, but please make 'some terrain like Nevada' and then come back and say that $20 for all that work is a rip-off. I quadruple dog-dare you.

Actually, you're quite right! I was thinking more along the lines of FC2 when I wrote that, vs DCS, where this 'crappiness' could have been fudged in the way it was modeled...

Oh well, does that mean we're stuck with props for legends?

Ian

You never know, early jets aren't exactly easy to fly and fight in.

Whatever happens, you are guaranteed to have your hands full in a dogfight.

Nate

I'd like to see a terrain other than the Crimea. But I know it won't happen.

I've been flying the same skies since 1998.

Um ... nevada?

Nevada's okay, but I was thinking more like Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan, etc.

Now that a new terrain engine is coming, I would expect various other terrains to happen - either by ED or third parties. Many have tried and ended up stopping. Manchuria was in the works by an FC fan for example.

In any case, personally I think there could be more interesting theatres than Iraq/Afganistan - Pakistan maybe, Iran, Korea, perhaps somewhere in south Africa or say, around south America ...

Ooh, South America or Africa would be great! My favorite campaigns in Falcon 3.0 with the expansions were the Panama/ Nicaragua, Pakistan/ Kashmir, and Kurile Islands theaters of operation.

Its a ripoff. The entire DCS games cost $60, terrian is not worth 33% of that. Sorry.

I'd paid $20 or so for some improvements over FC2 + some extra content (terrian). $20 for just terrian? No thanks. Especially if it is filled with the DRM system that ED products tend to have. I'd pay $5 maximum.

Depending on what "improvements" they are offering me, I don't mind shelling out another $20.

But it greatly depends on what I'm getting. I would like to see them implement simplified avionics that truly work, like F4AF's did, or Jane's F-15, for us casual players.

I'm still waiting for you to create terrain and come back and tell me it's a rip-off then. Until that time, I consider your opinion uneducated

I think most people forget that sims are a niche market, therefor higher prices are necessary since the costs of making these games are huge but the profits not that high.

I 100% agree but a more simplified flight model for me instead.The weapon systems are one of the best parts of the game for me.If they could appeal to casual players a little more,this game would be the battlefield of air combat games.

Think of how they could reach out to the Ace Combat crowd if they did that.

I know ed is all about high fidelity but I don't see why they don't just try to attract both types of players casual and hardcore,they already have an arcade mode and sim mode in the game.I would also like the gameplay speed increased as well to add more intensity.I bet ed would really see a increase of revenue if they did this and the hardcore players would still have their mode.

They do though - that's why the FC series is around.



It isn't that simple. A study sim is a study sim, and bringing it down to FC level is not exactly easy or desirable in terms of programming - for now, I'll leave my comments at that.

It's even easier than that, just tell him to have a look what a good-quality, payware M$FS terrain can cost (anywhere from 40 to 130 Euros on Amazon, to provide an answer straight away). Sure, many of those add-ons will include more area than the Nevada map, but quite literally NONE of them comes with a new engine (so no, it's not just terrain) and neither do they add any new theatres that were not in the basic sim already - they simply increase detail. If anything, his comparison merely exposes once more how dirt cheap DCS aircraft modules really are for what you get in return. Arguably too cheap - it's not the $20 that's too much, it's the $60 which is too low.

I'd pay $20 just for the Caucasus theatre to get EDGE'd!

You guys crack me up. Whining about appealing to everybody. There are already flight "games" for the arcade crowd. If you speed up the gameplay you have arcade. Most people want at least SOME realism. I admit to not having time to spend on one sim, so extreme hardcore becomes a problem for me. But I appreciate the effort that goes into this "niche" market, and I'm a regular buyer. I don't even consider FC to be sim-lite. It certainly is not arcade.

Third Wire has plenty of excellent sim-lite titles for the modern air combat fighter jockey. Stop complaining about hardcore. Some people want nothing less.

Air Combat (and other console ported titles) = arcade
Third Wire titles = sim-lite
ED = hardcore (by comparison) with both study and survey sims

See? Something for everyone. You can't make one sim that appeals to both hardcore and casual. Third Wire's Strike Fighter series comes closest, but most hardcore peep find it TOO casual.

So pick your category (arcade, sim-lite/casual, or hardcore) and pick the sims in that category. Stop whining about sims in other categories and asking that they be "dumbed down" to suit you. DCS is too hardcore for me, but I don't complain about it. They shouldn't have to dumb it down for me. If I get frustrated, I can play one of the other titles. It's hard to master hardcore when you only have 20 - 30 minutes a day to play a sim (I play other games too). But I buy the hardcore stuff anyway, to support the industry.

When you try to manufacture products that don't alienate anyone, you inevitably wind up with something mediocre and bland. Look at Chevrolet. With the possible exception of the Corvette, which isn't intended as a mass market vehicle, is there anything blander than a Chevrolet? I'll take a polarizing design or product every time. You either love it just the way it is or hate it.

Forget trying to appeal to everybody.

Then why did ED toss in a game avionics and flight mode for every title they've made?

If what you say is true, then ED shouldn't have even bothered. Right?

Point is, they already have a game mode, I'd just like to see them tweak it a little.

What /I/ say is true, and /you/ say is true, the devil is in the details. It is very time consuming to make a fine-grained realism adjustment - actually pretty close to just creating a different aircraft. A blanket 'arcade' mode might be a lot easier to create. There might be a better solution to this in the future, if ever, but not soon IMHO.

Because ED are good people, and that was their attempt to placate the "casual" crowd. But some on this thread want DCS/FC dumbed down ...sorry, "simplified and speeded up" even more. I say buy the titles that are right for your tastes.

What's the 'new engine'?

Is it the one we have already paid for twice in DCS A10c and BS2?

Are we expected to shell out money for a 3rd time? This is what I don't understand with the way ED are going....

I paid for FC, I paid for FC2, I paid for BS, I paid for DCS A10C, I paid for BS2 - surely I've already paid for the new engine twice, the aircraft within FC, KA-50, A10 Warthog and next I have to pay for ED integrate yet another package which combines all the bits and pieces I've already paid for?

That is hardly modular nor integrated. I'll pass if this is the way the series has gone/is going. I'd much rather see an announcement with regards to how they are taking the series forward because as it stands at the moment they haven't got a clue which way to turn and how to progress.....yet they're happy to announce yet more payware upgrades that can only face in one direction - a dead end, or a series which gets more and more expensive as each platform needs updates. They've got their business model totally back to front.

What you're paying for is improvements specific to the title and additional content.

I'm not saying I hate the game,I'm just stating my opinion on what I think make it even more fun for me and would also bring more people to the game.I like some realism myself and thats why I enjoy flying to a target area and using the advanced weapons systems in the open world enviroments.Games like hawk and ace combat tend to get old for me but have never played strike fighters but plan to.I don't anything as far as programing is concerned but I think if they were to do the things I've stated that ed's popularity could increase greatly and that would be a plus for all gamers cause we all know what makes the world go around.

Are you referring to my post? If so, I was talking strictly about the Nevada add-on which will come with a completely new terrain renderer (not found even in DCS:A-10 or BS2, it enables things like true 3D trees, higher mesh resolutions and dynamic terrain shadows), NOT FC3.

As for your gripe about paying for compatibility, I agree that the current business model is not tenable in the long term and ED has stated that a truly modular approach remains their ultimate goal. It's not so much the absolute cost that I'm worried about though, objectively speaking, DCS modules are still ridiculously cheap for what you get. For me, it's the fact that the price per module would increase with each new release if you bought them all, as you'd then have to purchase multiple compatibility upgrades for your existing modules. That is neither logical nor an appropriate way to treat the company's most loyal customers. I also share your concerns about Flying Legends (if that's what you mean by dead end), ED has proved incapable of achieving their originally envisioned release cycle for DCS and failed to deliver the planned modularity. It is hard to see how adding yet more and, most importantly, totally unrelated work to their agenda will help them catch up with their initial plans (sooner or later there will be no way around a modular architecture).

I wasn't replying to your post but I agree entirely about everything you have said.

I wasn't even taking into account the new Nevada terrain engine which surely just adds more complexity (and expense) when existing modules will yet again presumably need to be made compatible on an individual basis.

My original concerns even with BS2 is that I've effectively paid for the new engine when I bought A10c, I already bought the KA50 platform yet I've had to pay for the engine and the KA50 again with BS2 along with the additional features.

If, as Greyghost says we are [only] paying for new functionality, then I would gauge the new functionality to be approximately 3% of the overall package yet the cost is approximately 25-30% of the full game.

Actually, Nevada and the new terrain renderer in particular are probably the most sensible of all the new ED projects. I would guess that the opportunity is being taken to already develop the new engine with modularity in mind, so that further compatibility issues are avoided once all products have been updated to that standard. It also addresses all of the few remaining weaknesses in ED's terrain graphics (billboard trees, very coarse terrain mesh, lack of terrain shadows) and will be appreciated no matter what future flyable aircraft are released. Unlike Flying Legends, there is no danger whatsoever of it becoming a dead-end, orphaned product.

You're absolutely right, but it doesn't fill me with confidence with ED's announcement after BS2 because they don't seem to know how to ensure the DCS series becomes modular, because it certainly isn't at the moment. If Nevada and the terrain renderer was to be the new foundation for the series then surely ED would have planned that a long time ago and would already know the direction in which they are going and wouldn't have needed to release a statement saying they are not sure how best to move forward in their quest to integrate future software.

I've said before, the obvious way forward you would think....would be to start with the engine and use that as the baseline. The platforms then become the modular entities and could be integrated a lot more easily, it would certainly be the only plausible way they would get anywhere near ED's original statement of a 9-month turn-around per platform. All we've seen so far are complete engine overhauls which are forcing each platform to require an update.....Flaming Cliffs being the latest!

If ED make your changes the sim is no longer hardcore. Hardcore is hardcore. It's a very specific market, and hardcore simmers don't want their titles made easier for a broader audience. That would defeat the purpose, at least for the sim player. I bought and installed all the ED titles but I don't play them very often because I don't have the time to devote to climb the learning curve, but I respect those who do.

Face it, what you prefer is something for a different market. There are flight titles for that market. Third Wire has Strike Fighters 2, Strike Fighters 2: Europe, Strike Fighters 2: Israel, Strike Fighters 2: Vietnam. I got all four in a combo pack for the price of one. They are not arcade like Hawx, Ace Combat, there is at least some realism, but they are not as hardcore as the ED stuff. That's why I call them "sim-lite." Enjoy!

This is not a valid concern. Yes, it is an updated engine, and yes you bought it a few times. But Gears of War was built on the same engine (UE3, with improvements/different builds) three times, and sold for full price. My point is that this is nothing new.

What irks me is the expensive terrian addon, and the fact that it will split the MP community between those that do and those that don't have it. ED should take a look at what BIS is doing with ArmA 2. BIS released some DLC, however MP compatibility is still kept between people with and without the DLC. If ED wants to charge extra for DLC then that is fine, but it should be done in ways that did not split the MP community. EX) Sell some extra campaigns, new aircraft skins, ect.


As for the realism, it is perfect in FC2, and I hope it stays around the same level. DCS seems too advanced for me to get into, and I find the level of realism great in FC2. I would gladly pay more for new flyable aircraft, like a Mirage 2000 and F-16, assuming they are $10 and under each.

I agree with both of these. The first is an excellent argument. The second is exactly how I feel about this series. DCS looks interesting, but it's just too much for me at the moment. Lomac had a nice level of realism and simplification.

First of all, having just bought DCS:A-10C, I can attest that FC2 is most certainly not hardcore. It's not even close. It's not even in the same category. The avionics (the normal systems, not the 'game' mode) are child's play compared to the level of complexity brought to us by A-10C. That bar was been unmistakably raised to a very high standard and no one will be reaching it anytime soon.

I've flown JF-15, JF-18, and Falcon 4.0: Allied Force. Those three didn't even really approach the level of difficulty offered by A-10C.

But, I've discovered something. Someone at ED put some serious programming time into making DCS:A-10C one of the most scalable products I've ever had the joy to fly. I'm hoping that the guys at ED put the same time into FC3, that's all. No one was more more disappointed when Jane's A-10 Warthog never came to fruition. Wags and Elf once said that the original code is sitting on a hard drive somewhere in Maryland, I believe. We finally have a sim that is BETTER than Jane's A-10 could have ever hoped to be.

I just hope that ED makes FC3 as scalable as they did A-10C. That would make it probably the most sought-after survey sim ever made in terms of being everything any simmer of any skill level would ever need.

It would make the Strike Fighters series obsolete.

While the operation of the aircraft is easier, the 'under the hood' stuff is getting more hardcore with every iteration (so far). Missiles, guns, bombs - all have received some sort of touch ups to act more realistically for example. FC2 aircraft parameters were tuned to make the aircraft fly as close to the real deal as the SFM can handle.

This isn't like HAWX where you don't even take gravity into account - you really need to know your stuff to fully appreciate the product, especially in a competitive environment.

Hmmmm... not quite. For some, maybe yes. But not for all.

The biggest thing keeping me from switching from SF2 to FC2 is the lack of random missions or dynamic campaigns. The first flight sim I had was Graphic Sim's Hornet 2.0. That thing had 28 missions. That was it. And I couldn't have been happier with it. Korea added 28 more. Wow. 56 missions?!?! How could that ever get boring? And I knew every mission by heart...

Fast forward to now, and the bottom line is that WoX/SF2, IL-2, and F4AF have simply set the bar higher in terms of reply-ability. All three of those have dynamic campaigns in some sense. I have FC2 and got to be pretty good with the A-10 in the training missions. I went to start the campaign and got shot down on the first mission by an SA-11. Wait... now what? I just go back and fly the exact same mission and know that the first thing I need to do is hit that SA-11? I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't think it would be an issue until I tried it. I would read through SimHQ forums and think "what's with all these snobs that demand dynamic campaigns?" But then I realized I was starting to climb into the same boat. The bar has been/is being raised.

So for me, the lack of random missions and dynamic campaigns is the one thing that keeps me from spending all my time in FC2.

Plus there is a group of people (what % of simmers, I don't know) that are all about 50s/60s/70s stuff. So, of course, to completely make SF2 obsolete, FC2 would have to greatly expand it's aircraft selection and time frame. In that regard it will never top SF2.

Slightly more on topic, I own FC2, but don't have either DCS title. So if I do want to upgrade it's just the one purchase for me. But I do understand why users would be annoyed that they need to pay for separate patches for each of the 3 titles if they want to keep them up to date. As someone totally unqualified to have an opinion on the matter, it seems like a user should have to pay for the upgrade once, and then it could apply to any module they have. Especially if we're talking about the DCS titles. My impression from the start is that they would be modular and could be simply added on top of each other.

Now, whether that pricing/business model would work for ED is something I can't intelligently comment on.

+1 malibu

If you were to look at the AAR section you will find tons of SF2 AAR's with hardly any at all from the DCS series. Sure it's the most complex sim out there but what can you do with it except fly the same missions over and over. A quick look at DCS and Lock on files shows 1 user made campaign for BS and 1 for A-10. Just a handful of single player missions as well. While I own both sims, I still get more enjoyment out of F4 BMS and SF2 than I will ever get out of the DCS series. For a lot of us sim pilots it's all about immersion and feel like you are in a combat zone. Until the DCS series manages to do this, my money stays in my wallet from here on.

Not to continue to drift off topic, it is my humble opinion that if one were to take the FC2 level of avionics (slewable E/O weapons, engine start/stop, radar beam direction adjustment, etc...) and apply them to SF2...

... you would have the *greatest flight sim/game ever made*.

* - maybe exaggerated a litte, but I think it would certainly be one of the best.

To be honest my biggest issues with the SF2 series are the relatively limited ground targets (in the original) and the way the campaign missions are structured (I don't get a feeling that I'm in a realistic warzone from the current mission generators). It would also have been great to have rocket dispersion. Accurately modeling which vacuum tube has failed is less important to me Especially as it was a visual fighting era.

Crossing my fingers that FC3 gets the same Random Mission Generator that came with A10C and BS2. If this were the case, I might actually pick it up again.

To me, FC2 already does. The SF series is very limited - no MP, no mission editor, poor mission creation options, ect. It feels like a very incomplete game. I did have my fun with the few titles I bought from the series though. LOMAC just needs to be opened up more to mods... there is the MIG-21 mod which is rather nice, but that has some issues. Considering that, perhaps it is opened up plenty. If ED doesn't do it I am sure the modding community will add more flyable planes.

LOMAC's opened? you're joking? Last time I checked there was zero new terrains, zero new cockpits and no customized avionics...

BTW SF2 had now mission editor, comes with expansion pack 2 or is available as separate DLC.

It's unmoddability of LOMAC FC 2.0 that keeps me from playing it more

I remember when patch version 1.02 of this sim came out and everyone was ecstatic just to have fps tweaks so they could run it on their 256mb systems...

I have been playing Lomac and its many "updates" since the title was available for order not so long ago (well I hope it was not so long ago :-D ). Although the updates and support has been sparse and lacking at times, especially with the loss of a carrier buddy tanking with the S-3 many patches ago, the multilayer and the 3d models and flight characteristics are about the only things that have kept ,e engaged with this sim for many years.

Yes I have been playing Lomac for sometime now, but let's face it...

The gameworld is somewhat sterile.

The AI is fairly dumb.

There has been sparse developer support. (one patch and that's it)

There are no coms whatsoever (unless you are in multiplayer on voice).

No true sense of AWACs, GCI, etc.

No real separation of bad or good territory or airspace, just places where you don't fly because of S-300s.

The campaigns have no "point".

The single missions are there because???

The mission editor, although useful, still lacks a lot of basic functionality.

The list goes on and on, but frankly the only thing that has been keeping this series going has been the "eye candy", multiplayer, and "eye candy" enhancements by the sim community (which in themselves show the dedication and skill of the modders, because "tweaking" the Lomac world is worse than getting service at the DMV during lunch hour.)

No sim "code" will ever be prefect, and basic rule of thumb is you can't please everyone.

But Lomac (and a good chunk of the DCS series) will always be known as the sim (or sims) that was (were) missing "something".

There is part of me that hope FC3 may improve part of the Lomac. Unfortunately, based on precedent, I believe we may just see another minor "eye candy" update just like all previous incarnations, and to a certain extent DCS, with more convoluted menus/interfaces added and previously functioning features "broken".

If the developer were to focus on fixing or adding one feature to Lomac besides "eye candy" improvements, I believe they could take an sim with some decent and ok aspects, and make it truly great.

I suggest looking at what has been accomplished. There's no sim that doesn't have 'something' missing, but DCS/FC are sims which are improving an moving forward, and there has been a huge lot of stuff added besides 'eye-candy' (did you know by the way that flying is a completely visual thing most of the time?).

FYI, focusing on 'one feature' isn't productive for anyone.

Last time I checked people started and stopped terrain development. Here's a hint why: As the capabilities of PC's grew, and the airframes simulated were understood better, larger areas were called for, with more accuracy to the terrain modeling.

It turns out that it's quite a large task, and few people even bothered undertaking it, let alone finishing it given the huge volume of work required.

After all of these years, I have focused on what has been added to Lomac and the DCS series; however, most of what has been accomplished have been minor "eye candy" updates or superb 3rd party addons and tweaks (ie Work by the SimMod Team or GYS).


Of course, and I wholeheartedly understand the issues that developers, scripters, modders, etc. have to face. You can't find and fix everything, and you can't please everyone. They work very hard at what they do (be it for pay, breaking even, or even freeware); however, if one pays for software can they expect some sort of support or update (even paid) at a later date? Or like, leave it, or wait till the developer repackages years down the road?


Not that I minded the key and HOTAS bindings in Lomac, I had to wait until Blackshark to get a clickable and functioning cockpit.
FC2 brought some sorely needed FM and weapons improvements for the F-15 (to the anger of Russian aircraft flyers, but most of the major improvements were "eye candy" eye appeal, and visual damage model for the flyable aircraft. Now how many years was it between 1.01 and FC2 again???


Unless there are inclement weather conditions...


Exactly, which is why one can hope that with FC3 and any later DCS installments one can only hope the focus will be beyond aesthetics...

In other words, you do not actually have a clue of what you're talking about. You actually haven't bothered to make a thorough comparison. I have no idea what you're basing your opinion on. It's like you played each one for an hour and didn't bother to look further.



ED has added major features with each iteration.



Yeah, right, the 'major' improvements were eyecandy, because it isn't like we spend huge amounts of time tuning missiles and FM's on BOTH sides (although some chose to ignore this, or whine at their favorite pet peeve). It isn't like major improvements were made to the AI or the Mission Editor either, right - and hey, how about that new sound engine.



And? IMC is happens, but flying is still a majorly visual job. That's why instrument flight is considered hard.



As they have done every single time, even if you can't see that. It's ok, people notice whatever they want to notice.

I don't agree with you here. It's clearly about workflow that require hand building terrain in 3ds max. An expensive piece of software, and forgive me harsh words, but very stupid workflow.

LockOn and DCS are very closed sims when compared to others available. Take a look how many maps are made for Il2, Strike Fighters, Arma series, EECH, hell, even for such niche sim like Condor. I won't start about FSX sceneries. For LockOn/DCS there are none. We are flying over Crimea since Flanker.

It's a good sim, I have most of ED's sims and fly them very often, especially Black Shark. But come on, you can't call it 'open'. Swapping 3d meshes with prettier ones, or flying F-14 with Su-33 cockpit doesn't count for me.

I for one thought this discussion was about the linage of Lomac and what to expect with FC3 and newer DCS modules. However; if it is not, then I am ready and waiting to talk about whatever you would like good sir.


There is respecting a difference pf "opinion" and there is what you want (or demand in certain cases) the other person to say....


I suggest you take time and re-read my original post, if you would like, I would gladly take the time to you sit down and explain things. I truly do not mind, for it happens to the best of us...


Next time I log onto a server, I will be sure to bring my stopwatch and timelogbook.


Could you elaborate on some of these features?


Slammers that go 10nm before losing energy in Flamming Cliffs instead of 5NM like in 1.02, I will concede that (although another update after 1.02 would have been use before wait X amount of years to purchase a new product.)


Ahh yes, the same fly straight and pump chaff and flare intervals whenever the AI "sees" a ground radar turned on. That feature has been present since the release dating back to the days when P3 processors were in vogue.


Oh you mean, the great sound mods developed and distributed by third party users?


Never said it didn't, I enjoyed flying Walmis's or GYS's F-15s through the early morning Georgian fog as the next person, but I'm not sure what that has to do with much of anything? Nonetheless, you raised the issue, so I digress.



Duly noted...



I do apologize good sir, for I should have had the foresight to notice and like whatever is you would want me to notice and like.

I would have to agree with you somewhat here empeck. A lot of issues with Lomac (through its long linage) has been the struggle it has been for modders and developers to even add skins to the game. Simply put, when something is added to the Lomac universe, mostly functions solely was as a "swap". Modman has helped drastically, and with subsequent products the options have been expanded (ie supposedly you are able to have an infinite about of skins for user aircraft), although I am high skeptical of this.

I have had direct conversations with people who were doing terrain add-ons, and it more about the amount of work, difficulty of finding adequate meshes and reasonable textures, not to mention populating roads, railroads, buildings etc. than workflow - but perhaps I wasn't told everything.



I didn't call it open. There's always room for improvement. I think Nevada might be a hint.

Then I don't know what you're trying to say, because you're far off the mark one way or the other. LOMAC was LOMAC. FC1 and FC2 were released later, each one of them added something that people liked. FC3 will undoubtedly add more features.



Sure, do, because there's a very obvious disconnect between what you're saying and what was done.



There are changelogs. If you really want, I can go looking for them. Did you read them when the releases were made?



Missiles aren't magical. They do lose energy that fast under the right circumstances. As for the number of patches, that's really not up to the customer. At some point the money that was spent on a given game runs out and you either release something new, or abandon the project. ED has always done their best to have a very workable product with patches.



There's plenty more to them than that. I suggest looking at what people have written about BS2 AI for example. Picking one behavior to complain about isn't anything other than picking on a pet peeve. I know for a fact that the AI in FC2 are more capable than those in FC1 or LOMAC. You might not see it, but it's there.



No, I mean the new sound engine developed by ED.



I forget what the point was also in this case.



Duly noted...



No, I don't care if you like it or not. I just found that your opinion wasn't based on facts. The amount of work that went into FC2 was stupendous, and frankly I just don't recall the testing we did for FC1 or BS1 any longer as it was a while ago, but lots of things were done there also.

Hopefully making new maps will be easier with EDGE.

Yes, the AI is better, but still has massive problems that should have been fixed a LOOOOONNNNG time ago (like before LOMAC 1.0 went Gold).

Example: after carefully programming a 200ft AGL TFR route through mountain valleys and passes towards an IP, within the elaborate and very detailed mission editor, the actual flight within the mission should NOT hit afterburners and climb LITERALLY 5,000ft above the next ridgeline, before nosing-over and diving toward the next valley and it's next ridgeline ... then to do it all over again ... like some sort of heavy-metal yo-yo.

Firstly, that's not flying TFR, or even low level flight when that happens. So what is the point of the radar shadow modelling then, if you can't even take tactical advantage of it in practice?

Secondly it wastes copious amounts of fuel, for no reason at all.

Thirdly, it is not even remotely realistic - which just blows my mind, considering every one keeps going on, and on, and ooonn about realistic avionics and weapons behaviours!

The AI developers simply aren't asking themselves this simple question;

"would a pilot actually fly anything like this, in such a situation?"

It blows my mind that after 6 or 7 years, this SIM is still doing these things. I can't believe no one in all that time INSISTED these absurdly obvious major and probably simple to fix flaws be reworked and resolved. There's so much that's right and very impressive about FC2.1, and so much that makes me shake my head in disbelief, that it still doesn't work properly and tactically, at a fundamental level, after all these years, new versions and patches.

I have serious doubts FC3 will fix these very obvious major flaws. I get the impression that people developing are now so habituated to what FC2x.x does so wrongly that they've become blind to these flaws, and simply accept them, or don't even notice how ridiculous they are any more.

All the while everyone is bowing down to the golden-calf of greater realism.

I don't know how ED expects to make a western multirole fighter expansion work when it won't/can't fly or fight in a realistically tactical manner right now, or survive?

How's about we forget all about new aircraft and avionics for a wee bit, and just develop a tactical flight and fight realism upgrade - instead?

If this occurred it would totally revolutionise what you could do with FC, and with mission planning. It would be totally addictive, highly enjoyable, making tactically realistic missions, that actually make sense, and work. You simply can't do this in the current FC iteration.

As far as I'm concerned there are four essential components to any attack mission plan:

1. Fly the planned mission, as planned
2. Strike the target
3. Suffer nearly zero losses when planned right (you know ... like in real life)
4. RTB

FC2.1 is OK at 2 of these four things - #2 and #4
FC2.1 is Dreadful at #1 and #3

The FC2.1 sim and the mission editor should allow you to PLAN, and also FLY such a mission. At present you can indeed plan such a mission ... you just can't FLY it as planned ... or rather, the AI can't execute the mission plan that you very carefully created for it.

This drives me bonkers! I so want to use the mission editor, but the AI simply can't fly the missions I plan for it.

The mission editor can plan anything I want, but the AI can't execute it.

It's easily the biggest fatal-flaw I see in FC2.1

It was also the biggest flaw in LOMAC 1.0.


But why is it like this STILL?

Please post a detailed account of your problems (maybe even a track or 2) in here and I'll see what I can do.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=81721

Nate

Snip the part about AI not being perfect. No AI is perfect and there's always room from improvement.



Incorrect. In real life, you plan to have losses because the enemy isn't asleep at the wheel and they're not using sticks and stones against your planes. If they are, bonus for you. This is why multiple strike aircraft are assigned to targets. The harder the target, the more assets.
If you're not suffering losses against a reasonably defended target (nearly zero .. heh) then the defense is poor. Plans do not survive contact with the enemy.



Because AI isn't easy (specifically, it's quite time-consuming). In any case, is TFR style flight your only issue?

Guess this means the AI won't be addressed, maybe in FC 3.5?

AI has been getting addressed with every iteration.

I'll do that Nate, a track or two may be best, with a description of what I'm trying to acheive with that flight.

I said nothing to assert the AI should be, or must be "perfect".

I said there a numerous VERY OBVIOUS FLAWS that should have been fixed years ago, in early development. I also said that what is planned should be what is flown, especially if you have not yet entered direct combat, or suffered any battle damage or failure modes.

If I set the AI pilot proficiency to the highest level within the mission planner, I reasonably and rightly expect that AI pilot, sans mechanical issues, to fly my planning, almost exactly as planned, or die trying to.

You're just minimising what I'm saying, or are a bit blind to it all. In real life you may have a small number of losses if things go badly. So you plan for incremental attrition as acceptable-losses for a given target value and priority.

But you never throw forces, and scarce irreplaceable resources, into a battle in such a haphazard and uncoordinated way that a complete wipe-out is not only likely, but actually occurs (be lucky if you only ended up in prison for that). Especially when loss of the control of the air means you lose everything else soon afterwards.

A complete wipe-out of a UK Squadron would be a sign of extremely poor tactical planning, or coordination, in preparation for the strike, or poor execution due to insufficient training. (and I made that point clear with examples, over a ED's place). If you are not protecting your forces, and planning their best chance for survival each flight, but instead are leaving them open to wipe-outs, you're just a "LOSER".

Especially against well-defended targets.

This why real-world TACTICS in plan generation, and well-trained EXECUTION of those tactics, makes all the difference to survival and accomplishment. This is why nations invest in photo, radar and LIDAR recon units and Sats to develop the required intel, to exploit it tactically, in detailed planning, to avoid any wipe-outs, so that incremental manageable losses, or no losses at all, are more often than not, what results.

That IS what every professional airforce does.

Don't pretend to me that any of these are prepared to accept the moronic 'expert' level flight behaviours and resulting losses we see in Lock On. When the AI can't fly as planned, then tactical planning for achieving a strike target's destruction, and the survival of almost all aircraft, becomes impossible.

For small airforces this is absolutely essential, and much effort is put into achieving tactical surprise and control, even if using functionally inferior equipment. If an enemy can be blindsided, and you're in and out fast, the target is degraded or destroyed, and you've most likely lost no one. This is why maximising use of terrain, jamming, and concurrently destroying EW and AEW radars matters. These things must all occur concurrently, planned to the second, at different geographical locations, via detailed coordinated planning, of several flights, to take all of these down together for sufficient time, and without transmitting sufficient warning, in order to get the target destroyed, and get out -- fast.

A few tens of seconds of exposure and warning and firing opportunities, is all you should allow the enemy to have, in order to kill a target. Give them any more, and they can and will wipe you out.



And my last sentence is why disciplined TFR flight, matters so much. It stops sensors seeing you and it stops weapons getting to you, and makes it much harder for fighters to find and nail you.

And on the contrary plans DO survive contact with the enemy, the plan simply degrades. The longer the contact the faster it degrades, so you keep the contact brief as possible, so your plan can work, without too much degradation.

You are tactically managing the plan's foreseeable degradation, to be out of harms-way before the other guy can get their act together to defend EFFECTIVELY. Which means you fly so you don't get seen until the last moment, then attack fast, from several directions at once, then EGRESS - immediately. Strike aircraft rarely come back for a second-pass. One or two targets, and one or two precision delivered weapons. If you fail to kill the target, you plan another strike, you do not go back and fly around the target area aimlessly, until you're shot down.

Do you have something against making the AI work properly in Lock On?

Because I have flown other sims and used other planning systems that really can do this.

In Lock On, and now in FC, these things do not happen properly, even if you specifically plan it in detail for things to happen on time, to a multi-package strike schedule, because the AI can not EXECUTE their plans, as planned. They will not maintain the headings, waypoint fly over times, alts and speeds alloted. They take alternate routes and altitude profiles and vary speed, and climb thousands of feet over a steep ridgeline, and then end up where they shouldn't be, and can't get back on course and schedule. So it is not possible to execute a tactical plans where one thing occurs, which makes another thing possible to occur, with almost or actually no losses.

That's how a real air battle plan would be developed.

The idea with strike tactics, as with boxing ring bouts, is to hit even an alerted opponent so fast, with such surprise and insufficient reaction times available, that you land a precise blow that knocks that target out. And you thus don't get hit by the other boxer in the process. Most of you tactical moves and flights that day are purely sparring, to set your opponent off-balance so you can make one or two big hits, then EGRESS (with your own jaw intact).

The mission planner in FC is terrific, it looks impressive, it works, except it doesn't work, because the AI won't fly a TFR flight plan in a valley, as planned. It they did a SEAD/DEAD flight could safely approach and kill the EW and SAM radars, then the fighters can move in, to provide high-cover, as the strikers move in on the target (TFR) in one pass, and then exit the area immediately and RTB, to the base planned.

If you do it right, you lose no aircraft, or almost no aircraft.

They should not still be anywhere near their missed target 2 minutes after their allotted time on target. They should not fly around and around a missed target aimlessly, until they're shot down.

I think it is right and valid to be amazed that these VERY OBVIOUS FLAWS have not been fixed yet.

And I'm also amazed that there are simmers out there who don't seem to understand how silly this is. Have you not played a tactically oriented strike simulator like Tornado, or even EF2000? In those, you had to evaluate the threats and intel, and use your brain to select appropriate and workable tactics and options that if planned right, you took out the target with almost zero losses. But if you didn't plan the tactics right, or didn't pay attention to the data, or improperly scheduled or coordinated each flight, and their roles and load-outs, you got wiped out.

I want this to work in Lock On - it would be a staggering combat sim if it did work. Lock On FC2.1 is easily fixable, it's just that no one ever bothered to do it. Everyone has gotten focussed on the fine details of avionics and weapon delivery modes, that are ultimately far less important than being able to execute a tactical mission plan, as planned.

I'm amazed there are people around who don't understand what's going wrong with the AI in Lock On.

It's as though all the AI pilots smoked a giant AI joint before they got into the air, and now can't concentrate or remember what they are supposed to be doing, or where they are, or where they have to go, by when. Somehow the tactical plan's waypoint orders are being shuffled to the bottom of these stoned AI pilots priority list!

They've got better things to do -- apparently.

I don't call that realistic. It's not even close. It's very far from realistic

Firstly, the aircraft mostly won't fly where you tell them to fly, at the TFR speed and level you require, and to the coordinated schedule you order them to in flight planning (some will get sort of near to what they should be doing, but the longer they fly the worse they get), and because they can not fly a disciplined TFR route, they get detected much too early and get wiped out by SAMs and fighters. Thus they are unable to achieve the second bit, which is to expose themselves as briefly as possible to make a coordinated multi-axis attack. So if they survive the ingress, they arrive at the target off schedule and out of coordination with the rest of the strike package, at the wrong place, time and alt, so they again get smashed. Then the third bit come. They have failed to follow to first two parts of the planning, so instead of making a successful rapid egress back into cover and withdrawal, they fly around like idiots trying to kill the target in a totally disorganised way ... until they're all shot down or else damaged and finally they limp away, as the long range SAMs and fighters try to nail them.

No airforce does this! Pilots fly to plan, they stay in cover if making a SEAD or interdiction strike, until they can't remain hidden any more. They hit fast with one pass, and they get out of dodge ASAP.

We are not talking about CAS in a warthog over a battlefield against charging armour here, we're talking about strike interdiction tactics against fixed targets to do real damage to airfields, command centres, Comms and EW sensors and logistics supply centers.

These are tactics that the Su-25 and F/A-18C and especially the TFR strike attack capability of the Tornado should be able to routinely achieve in Lock ON FC2.1, right now.

They should have been roughly doing this in LOMAC v1.0

Instead, Lockon, despite having a detailed radar-shadow model, still does not take advantage of it tactically, almost ever, because the AI's auto-pilot will NOT do what it is told to do. The AI keeps flying the aircraft, rather just than letting the AI fly its mission as planned. The AI simply keeps randomly intervening and deciding to do something other than what the flight plan says. The AI should do nothing unless that aircraft is under a direct attack.

What is the point of having all these fantastic SAM systems and Radar shadow modelling, if you can't the Ai fly a plan that can defeat these SAMs and EW and AEW and fighters?
These are forth-gen aircraft. Fourth generation fighter aircraft are not stealthy, they are the generation of aircraft that most requires the use of terrain masking and or high altitude and speed to defeat defensive systems of the day.

To not even be able to use the core tactical flight attack modes like TFR, means the AI pilots fly between 500 feet and 20k feet routinely, and this is why we get this absurd turkey-shoot and lack of any sort of viable tactical planning for strike packages which results in the current and past iterations of Lock On.

So I rightly ask, why is it STILL like this?

Cool thanks, note if the tracks are done in Warthog or BS2, they will most accurately reflect the most current state of the AI. Also try to keep the tracks as short as possible, so I can easily highlight the issues to the team.

Nate

The AI can use some work. There were some improvements with FC3, but I hope more is done in this area in FC3. Many times the AI fails to do what I would consider simple things.

Flogger if you could detail the problems you experience I may be able to get them sorted, but no promises. The more detail the better along with short tracks would be cool.

I spent quite a bit of time testing the Wingman AI in BS2 - which i believe worked out well - I'll try to do the same for the FC3 AI, but any help I get in highlighting issues would be much appreciated.

Nate

I was referring to the AI in FC2.1, and only in regard to it's pending upgrade to FC3.0, so I'll do the tracks in FC2.1.

I made some tracks last night using SEAD Tornado and SEAD F/A-18C plus SEAD F-16C over mountains) that fully displays these problems, but these are not brief tracks, as you have to let these flights fly detailed low-level paths with about 20+ waypoints, down valleys. All the waypoints were locked to 75m (without exception) and all aircraft were set to excellent/expert pilot settings, in order to see fully what it is doing wrong.

I'll try to describe it clearly for you Nate;

1) The AI tends to attempt to jump to the altitude of the next waypoint, as soon at it passes the last one. i.e. it does not do ANY actual low level flying near 75m AGL -- whatsoever! So if transiting over a mountain spine, the next waypoint may be thousands of meters higher than the last waypoint. So instead of the AI actually flying a low level profile @ ~75m AGL, it just immediately climbs (often using burners and wasting fuel for nothing .., and keeps doing it, even if you reduce the speed requirement between the waypoints!) so it just cruises to the next waypoint at that waypoint's altitude plus 75m (unless there is an intersecting ridgeline or high-point in between), thus flying thousands of feet above ground level!

[ i.e. A FAIL OF LOW LEVEL RADAR AVOIDANCE TACTICS]

2) The second problem is separate, but occurs on top of the first problem. Notice I said "unless there is an intersecting ridgeline or high-point in between". i.e. when the AI does fly to intersect a higher peak or ridge in between waypoints, regardless of the aspect of the slope it intersects (be it 5 degrees or 75 degrees) the AI will always immediately closely approach to the ground, then it will pull-up very hard, at about 70 degrees from horizontal, at full afterburning power, then it climbs upwards literally 3000 to 5000 feet AGL! Then it will nose over at the top and enter a shallow or steep dive, towards the next waypoint's elevation, plus 75m again!

[ i.e. A FAIL OF LOW LEVEL RADAR AVOIDANCE TACTICS]

So there are two altitude tracking problems that are overprinting here Nate. But let me continue before I say what I think causes this;

3) The AI afterburning climbs that are occurring during all this nutso behaviour is quite gratuitous. The AI seems to be blind to its approaching high terrain until it has almost hit it. Then it suddenly wakes up (it 'panics') and instantly goes to full throttle, and max pitch climb. It doesn't attempt to 'see' ahead at all, to manage/regulate both the thrust and climb or decent angle, pre-emptively, with respect to the actual slope and altitude of valleys or ridges intersecting your planned flight-path's altitude profile, to achieve a smooth and efficient flight path result -- i.e. unseen by almost all enemy radars, and even AWACs or fighers.

--

Indeed, after watching Lockon 1.02, FC1.1, and FC2.1 I've come to the startling conclusion that Lockon doesn't actually have ANY genuine low-level or else terrain-following flight algorithm or capability--whatsoever!

It seems this was (somehow) overlooked in development and put on the backburner, and this is why it simply attempts to jump to the next waypoint's altitude, instead of even attempting to tracking the terrane profile along its flight path to the next waypoint.

What we have instead seems to be merely a development place-holder, that somehow became permanent.

PLUS, we have a crude terrane-avoidance knee-jerk 'reaction' occurring, and simply as a developmental work-around for the fact that there is no actual terrane-following or low-level flight algorithm.

I know that in either the first or second LOMAC v1.0 patches, a terrain avoidance 'fix' was applied, and I think what we're seeing here is this same 'fix' ... and it actually fixes nothing!

It only prevented collisions with the steepest terrane, but it also totally destroyed any chances for exploiting the radar shadow for low level tactics ... it was only done because the aircraft kept plowing into the steep terrane within LOMAC v1.0, so this fix simply made an ALREADY existing developmental placeholder 'reaction', of the AI discovering terrain close, at short notice, to pull-up even harder, and to use more power for longer, and thus to climb even higher over ridges, before nosing over at the top, to then adjust to the elevation of the next waypoint.

This is all applied to cope with the fact that there's no actual low-level terrane-following or low level AI flying capability in Lock ON FC2.1 -- at all.

The other thing is the way the AI behaves (it just dicks-around) near to the target, rather than simply striking hard and fast, then getting out ASAP. Keep in mind, these air craft were all set to Excellent expert level.

That's what's going on Nate, and I believe these problems are affecting ALL the aircraft, not just the SEAD flights, because all of these have no low-level terrain following flight model.

If this is rectified Nate it will simply totally transform Lockon FC -- very much for the better.

I believe tens of thousands of people would flock back to FC, and its sister products, if you got this low-level flight operations working properly so that what you planned tactically, actually was executable, in practice (I salivate at the planning, mission and campaign prospects!).


EDIT: spelling and layout.

Not so sure about thousands flocking to LOMAC over this Thanks for he detailed description and I'll certainly take a look at those tracks (upload them to mediafire or similar). The reason for mentioning Warthog or BS2 is that is generally the AI version that will be in FC3 and is generally much more flexible in how it handles waypoints etc.

Again I'd like to point out that I'm not promising a fix at all, it may prove to be too difficult to get working within the project time constraints, but it certainly isn't being ignored.

Nate

I'm very glad you guys are going to have a close look at this Nate. I've all the other DCS titles installed, but not had time to play them.

Been busy building an FC2.1 soundpack lately. The sound-engine is big step forward.s I've identified multiple new ways to exploit its potential. What I ended up with is stunningly close to the real thing. In fact, close your eyes and it is almost indistinguishable from the real thing, most of the time. No longer sounds like a computer game trying to sound like the real thing, it actually sounds like it might be the real thing. It's pretty damn cool and will only get better.

I'm working all weekend and (hopefully) a couple of days off after this, so I'll get some track files and a test mission link up for you by Monday or Tuesday.

And sorry Nate, I really do think thousands will flock back to lockon if it actually does work at a tactical planning and mission execution level, as planned.

You will see!

Note DCS has a selection to set waypoints "above ground level" rather than just the "Mean Sea Level" only available to FC2. This will make waypoints much easier to place and use compared to FC2. Also the latest DCS editor has copy and paste (CTRL-C, CTRL-V), so flights with hundreds of waypoints can be duplicated and repositioned easily.

In general I'll request again that you use the newer versions of DCS for tracks - the ME is better, more detailed, and the AI is the most current version. These are the versions of the ME and AI that FC3 will be based upon.

Nate

Nate, I've done this now with DCS A-10C v1.1.0

I've not patched to a higher version, and given what I saw and recorded I see no reason to do so, as it was a major Ai dud from the low-level tactical planning and execution perspective. The attempted execution of planning by the DCS was a debacle. The results recorded were actually worse than FC2.1, Which surprised and disappointed because I thought (and hoped) I might need to eat my words. But there's no danger of that. It simply made my points more clearly.

Lockon FCx and DCSx has no genuine low-level fight modellimg. This emporer has no cloths on. What is there is a disastrous series of hopelessly failing placeholders, that very inadequately cope with the lack of any genuine low-level flight capacity.

This is ED's feet-of-clay.

It's the part they should have sorted out, from the very beginning but didn't. It now undermines the evolution they've achieved so far. I don't know why it was ever permitted to go on this long, or to fail so spectacularly at what the mission editor implicitly claims it was able to do, but can't.

It doesn't work even at a basic and rather simple level.

The closer you get to the ground, the greater the planning execution failures become, and the more numerous and spectacularly stupid the result becomes.

I will say in fairness that the AI did try harder in DCS to remain at a lower level. Someone did try to make this work better. But this in fact made it's failure worse. Much of it is due to the VERY --- V E R Y -- crude built-in terrain avoidance knee-jerk's as over-reaction with full burners plus max-pitch climb almost vertically (or more!) for 1,500 to 3,000 feet AGL -- seen by every radar in kingdum-cum!

I did like the DCS open-formation, but NOT for transiting! This should only occur at the IP waypoint. As the tracks will show and open-formation transit is a major disaster for low-level flights, down valleys etc, and this made the DSC AI's overall failure more glaring. In fact, it caused several crashes into terrain, in short order.

Also, one DCS SEAD flight, of four, COMPLETELY IGNORED ALL OF THE PLANNED WAYPOINTS!!

Instead it simply flew from the take-off point, in a straight line, to attack the nearest enemy radar emitter! This creates an exposed approach providing enormous early-warning of the attack.

FAIL

Also, the treatment of waypoints as ASL or AGL, in DCS make no real difference, and is not an issue to consider (and it was AGL in LOMAC and FC anyway prior to DCS). The ASL option really only helps for things like looping aircraft to keep them stable in transitions over water towards high terrain, or to keep aircraft above effective MANPAD AGL and aspect. ASL doesn't matter or help for low-level flight plan execution, as then the AGL primarily matters.

Basically DCS AI added nothing useful in terms of needed solutions to past plan execution problems. But is did demonstrate some new and serious flaws within the AI's addressing of targets and it's fundamentally suicidal (and very half-a$$ed) engagement habits (I won't call these tactics).

I'll write-up some notes for each track (four of them) and post links, probably tomorrow. Basically, DCS's AI was astonishingly abysmal at low-level combat, and even hopeless at recon. It failed in every significant respect to execute the most prosaic of low-level tactical flight, plus attack, recon, target addressing, egress and simple RTB requirements.

The inefficiency and shear unnatural-ness and stupidity of flight manoeuvres and the wastage of fuel was absolutely ridiculous. These were mostly due to over-reactions, and also under-reactions to the terrain. It's nothing short of disgraceful.

What I expected to find, after about 7-years of development, is a mature evolved combat sim, in all core respects. What I found was the reverse.

I can't find words sufficiently scathing for the mess that is the DCS AI low-level tactical flight.

I will say ED has done a spectacular and successful job of mid to high alt air-combat simulation--I can't fault it for that. And battlefield engagement is well done -- not great -- but OK.

But this sim is deeply and painfully flawed at a paradigm and also structural level. To think that a helicopter and A-10C low-level attack sim has no functional low-level fight modelling ... is simply beyond my capacity for suitably scathing remarks.

The AI requires a major re-think. And also the manner in which the mission planner deals with flight performance, in terms of turn-radius's and the climb rates at a given planned speed and load, so that the mission planner itself can check the terrain profile along the track, and the flight performance of the aircraft, to determine in advance in planning, if a planned waypoint placement is going to be 'flyable', and achievable, at the speed, altitude AGL (and also ASL as pressure matters), and for the load-out configuration planned for the assigned role and estimated fuel burn rate.

These things HAVE to be a part of the mission planner, or how else is the aircraft going to be able to achieve what is planned? Or else to let the planner know in advance that it won't be feasible to do that route in that way?

This is what any real attack mission planner has to take into account - and so should the DCS FCx mission planner.

Without that, and an integrated low-level flight model capacity, that can meet and mirror what the mission planner has calculated and determined, in advance, to be achievable, then Lockon DCS FC3.0 will turn out to be yet another low-level tactical strike and multi-role engagement failure.

Of that I'm sure.

These are not things I want to say at all, but they certainly are well-past-due to be said, and in blunt terms.

As it stands, anything ED generates from here, with this rendering of the DCS AI, can only sabotaged FC3.0, via the AI's absurd-esque failures to fly literally A N Y low-level mission plan -- as planned.

The DCS mission planner and the DCS AI are fundamentally incompatible.

This can not and must not go on.

These DCS A-10C v1.1.0 low-level flight experiments were kept deliberately simple and prosaic. Nothing complicated was attempted and basically the AI takes-off then flies over a coastal plain, over a few small hills, up a steep valley and over a dam wall and lake, then over a few ridge lines connecting classic deep glacial valleys, at a suitably low-level to avoid early detection and warnings by medium range GBAD radar. All waypoints in the flight are thus set to 65m AGL (~200 feet AGL). This is a very low level of flight, but strike pilots are typically trained extensively to do this consistently. I of course realise the Ai in this program, nor any human or aircraft can fixate rigidly on maintaining that sort of height, in practice (though pending death would help). But what I do expect and what should occur is that the Ai will try to smoothly and efficiently attempt to approximate a 65m AGL within the smoother valley floors, and also to not exceed 65m AGL by much as it noses over any high ridgeline, and to be back well below it again within a few seconds.

I wanted to see if the Ai would again begin to fly over the dam lake at a steady 65m AGL, and it did, but as soon as it reached the end of the lake and met terrain again any semblance of low-level flight became a debacle, leading to crashes into terrain, and the ludicrous 'heavy-metal yo-yo' behaviour as the AI repeatedly over and under reacts to the changing contours of rising and falling terrain.

The flight plan follows the valley WNW for about 150 km and the flight emerges from terrain masking, back toward the edge of the coastal plain near the SAM site, thus unmasking from cover at waypoint 16, and either attacking, or else RECON of the SAM site, then a rapid dash back into steep terrain. I tried this exact same rout and SAM placements for SEAD, CAS and RECON modes with Western and Russian types, to see the effect of weapons on the Ai.

All the aircraft in these tracks were set to EXCELLENT AI setting, and the opposing SAMs are set to AVERAGE AI level. The tests were done with a Tornado (1 & 2), Su25T (3) and Su34 (4).


TRACK NOTES:



TRACK 1 http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?325zlbv6mj8m0cd
The first track shows a 4-ship Tornado EXCELLENT SEAD flight armed with ALARM and Sidewinders, that takes off then completely ignores the mission flight plan's waypoints and instead flew almost directly on a track to the nearest (Buk) emitter and attacked it from about 2,000 feet up (despite being set to 65m), where upon all 4 aircraft were systematically destroyed. Some of the SAM units were destroyed. There were no tactical 'pop-ups' of pincer manoeuvres used by the Ai, to find it's targets and fire, then dive back towards radar degrading clutter, and terrain-masking. The Ai RWR should sense the emitter type and thus fly an appropriate arc to avoid a direct pass over or too close approach to the SAM (Buk, with TORs and Tunguskas nearby). Instead the SEAD aircraft simply flew straight in at about 1,800 feet AGL toward and over multiple active SAM systems, in full and continuous radar view. Naturally all aircraft got wasted. Thus tactical target 'addressing' was a complete FAIL also, and thus egress and RTB observations were not applicable. FAIL



TRACK 2 http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?815j26xrrxhp2oa
This attempt worked only slightly better -- i.e. extremely badly. It is exactly the same scenario as Track 1, except this time I removed the ALARMS and other weapons and set the Tornado to EXCELLENT RECON role. So a 4-ship RECON flight takes off and does attempt to follow the mission waypoint plan this time. The usual absurd yo-yo routine as aircraft leap vertically up to 5,000 feet AGL soon develops. But it's worse than what you see in LOMAC and FC1 and 2, because the DCS aircraft fly an open formation in transit, so only the lead aircraft flies down the actual path plotted through the valley, so it the only one able to meet the time speed and alt requirements. The rest are all over the shop and the flight becomes very disorderly, disconnected and uncoordinated. Thus it can not reach the waypoints as planned and tactical surprise and coordinated time-compressed attacks are also completely out of the question with such a chaotic nonsense of yo-yo-ing aircraft. They are highly visible to any EW or AEW or even fighter radars, much of the time, thus completely defeating the point of planning a low-level undetected approach. And keeping ultra low most of the time is the only way you're going to minimise detection and break tracking by AEW and vectored fighters.

The manic yo-yo-ing finally stopped only when one crashed and the others finally ran low on fuel while still about 120 kms short of their closest approach to the recon 'target' area. Yeah, that's right, they got about 50 kms along the flight path before they ran out of fuel, caused by a combination of the aircraft not having the flight performance envelope necessary to reach the next turnpoint, due to the ridiculous afterburning climbs to avoid a ridge line that is soon >2,000 meters below!

Pure FAIL insanity - DCS - digital COMBAT simulation

The mission planner provides no feedback of the intended flight path's consequences regarding topographical profile changes directly along the planned flight path transect, and it does not calculate the turn radius arc and pitch radius arc sizes required to pass smoothly at about 65m (instead of >2,000m) above the ridgelines. The mission planning system itself needs to be forward-looking, even as the plan is being manually created, in order to anticipate and calculate to and inform the mission builder something like;

"This aircraft type at that height and temp, with that load-out, at that speed, in that flight formation, can not make the turn radius requirement to the next waypoint, or else it can not pitch sufficiently to nose-over the next ridgeline. Please manually move the waypoint further away until it can, or else allow auto adjustment to speed, load-out or waypoint location (in that order) so the aircraft can make that turn.

Do you want to auto adjust now? [Yes] [No], etc.

The mission planner should simultaneously recalculate if the aircraft is going to have sufficient fuel to complete the planned waypoint route for the attack and RTB. If no, the fuel should be increased, or waypoints edited, or else speed reduced, until it can achieve RTB at the planned base, with a sufficient fuel reserve buffer for emergency evasion needs.

I personally think an emergency evasion from actual direct attack by fighters or SAMs, or from mechanical failure and damage are the only valid reasons for ANY aircraft to autonomously disregard flight plan waypoint details. In which case a low level flight SHOULD STILL KEEP FLYING AT LOW LEVEL, and the aircraft should RTB as a soft 'mission kill'. You should be informed of its failure to achieve its planned task.



TRACK 3 http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9fyu1bah2n6p1b6
With this track I took exactly the same scenario as the first two and simply replaced the Tornado with the Su25T, and swapped the Russian SAMs for NATO medium and short range Hawk, Avenger and Chaparral units in unchanged locations. I gave the Su25T EXCELLENT CAS role, with no weapons. The track developed in much the same way as Track 2, except the combination of the Su25's lower performance and the open formation within a narrow valley led to it being more prone to collide with high terrain. But the three surviving aircraft eventually simply gave up on terrain-following yo-yo-ing altogether the moment they flew high enough (thousands of feet above a ridgekine) to be detected by the Hawk SAM radar once in range of it. Thus once an aircraft is detected by the Hawk SAM radar it then flies level at about 2,000 feet AGL!

The completely wrong tactical response!

But the aircraft that are disordered and have fallen behind due to the open formation keep on yo-yo-ing until they also are individually detected, then they too fly level at about 2000 feet AGL in view of the SAM system. Now common sense would tell a pilot this is a particularly dumb thing to be doing right in front of a Hawk battery, especially when there's a deep valley right below you.

But the DCS AI is indeed depressed, at it's general inability to fly low-level, so is ready to end it all.

Thus the remaining aircraft fly toward the SAM in lower mid-level flight, totally ignoring their 65m AGL mission planning waypoint alt level, plus they're now strung-out over a 6 to 7 km distance, due to the yo-yo nonsense. So they independently trundle towards their dooms, with the airbase's SAM defences whereupon they are one after the other blown out of the sky without further ado. Good riddance. But if there were AEW and fighters around, they would not have made it even that far anyway.

Turkey shoot = SYSTEMATIC Ai FAILURE



TRACK 4 http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?82y8dw9uy29rl8j
Exactly the same as Track 3, except I replaced the Su25s with Su34 in EXCELLENT RUNWAY ATTACK role, with iron bombs to see if they could fly any more sanely, but they were even worse than the others, with three of them crashing into terrain, and the fourth did so many afterburning yo-yo's that it simply ran out of fuel, aborted to the nearest runway. This is an aircraft with a loaded combat range of several thousand kilometres!!! But it could not make a 200km low-level attack because of the staggering inefficiency of the way the aircraft attempt to fly at low-levels.

Another sad and pathetic EPIC FAIL of low-level attack flight tactics. I considered making another track with the A-10C, but what's the point, the whole thing is the mother of all cluster effs.



--

What I'm most appalled by is to see a supposedly dedicated low-level flight attack combat sim, in this ludicrous state of terrain following and target addressing dysfunction. This is actually supposed to be a Hi-Fi simuilation of low-level ground-attack! WTF?!

I won't dwell on that, but I suggest to the developers of FC3.0 that if a flight is set to fly below 200m AGL in the planner that formation should automatically change from open formation to line-astern formation to prevent the sort of transitory discombobulation and carnage that results from open formation transits at low level. And if set to go above 200m AGL by all means use open formation.

I would also add that the ground attack aircraft still actually need a pre-attack IP waypoint where the AI switches from a line a-stern transit NAV formation, to an open attack formation (STILL AT LOW LEVEL!!!) and that attacks should remain from 65m AGL so that a multi-axis pincer of low-level arcing/flanking manoeuvres (say 45 degrees either side of the target, from the IP), and flying brief tactical pop-ups and turns-toward the target manoeuvres to quickly find targets and fire weapons, then to pop-down into the weeds again and turn parallel away again of the beam, to minimise exposure, plus make the SAMs work much harder for their lock and kill.

The aircraft should make one or at the most two concerted attacks, in quick succession to minimise total exposure time, each with multiple SEAD weapons released, then immediately fly directly toward the next planned waypoint, at very low level to egress and recombine the flight in a line-astern formation at the next waypoint for a low-level RTB (an AEW, fighter and SAM evading withdrawal).

Aircraft should on no account swan-about @ 2,000 feet AGL, within the vacinity of defended targets. I really don't know why I nor anyone else has to explain these things or has to take the time to explicitly spell them out. If ED does not know the state of this sim's AI behaviour they are simply O U T O F T O U C H

If they know about it then why is it still like this? The Ai developers simply aren't reality-checking their output, or else are not permitted to develop them further by the Producer.


Tactics and the manner of target addressing matters greatly. The classic-case of low-level SEAD tactics being successfully used is the IDF's F-4 operations over the Bekkar Valley against Syrian SAM sites, in1982. The Syrian SAMs were almost completely wiped-out while the IDF lost zero SEAD attack aircraft. This sort of tactic is what I expect to be able to routinely plan for and execute within Lock On FC2.1 or DCS. Since LOMAC v1.0 to the present day, this series has been totally incapable of doing anything even remotely like this. Within DCS it actually got more dysfunctional.

An excerpt from: “FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL” - interview with Israeli Airforce regarding the 1982 "air war" over the Bekkar Valley eastern Lebanon (3832, Nov 16th1982)

F.I.: What types of electronic warfare were used?

IAF: You don't expect us to tell you that, do you? Electronic warfare was used all the place, all the time, by both sides.

F.I.: Was the Hawkeye effective?

IAF: It was used all the time. It can close the gaps in ground radar and lets us see the targets as they take off, never mind where they are within 200 miles.

F.I.: How did you out the SAM sites?

IAF: It is difficult to tell you, for publication. Since we've not finished the war against the SAMs, all the ideas, tactics and weapon we have for them. Knocking them out was much simpler than some of the press reports imply. If I told you it was done with conventional iron bombs you wouldn't believe me. But that is how we did it - with bombs, COMING IN VERY LOW AND DESTROYING THEM ONE BY ONE. It is true we used many deception techniques, decoys and electronic warfare to help us get in, but we destroyed them with bombs.

F.I.: How did the Syrians counter your attacks?

IAF: They have the most complex and dense SAM system in the world: SAM-6, SAM-3, SAM-2. They are three or four Gun Dishes on every battles ( Gun Dish is the fire control radar used with both SAM-9 and the ZSU-23-4 self propelled quad-23mm AAA system) plus 23mm, 37mm, and 57mm AAA. They knew we were going to attack. They welcomed it, they were ready. The only thing is they put too much faith in their SAMs. Maybe they were misled by their initial success in the 1973 war. In the first few days then, we had to fight the Egyptian armour crossing thw Suez Canal and were vulnerable to the SAMs. But afterwards we destroyed 43 SAM batteries on the Egyptian side.

IF THE SYRIANS HAD STUDIED THAT WAR WELL, THEY WOULD HAVE SEEN THAT WE KNOCKED THEM OUT WITH THE SAME METHOD AS WE DID TODAY. The Syrians have invested 75% of their defense budget on ground-to-air defense. They've got three times as many SAM batteries as in 1973. They have 80,000 of their regular soldiers on SAMs, only the best - educated ones. They have 1,000 tanks without crews as a result. I don't know … they were so sure that we'd knock our heads on the SAMs, that they would work as the Russians said they would. Maybe they were led to believe that mobility would solve their problems.

They forgot that with mobility you forsake the protection of being dug in under cement cover, like they used to be. So when they are mobile they're above ground. Once above ground, A CLUSTER BOMB WILL KNOCK OUT A WHOLE BATTERY, SO THE ONLY PROBLEM IS TO FIND THE BATTERY.

F.I.: What about the use of drones against the SAMs?

IAF: We did use drones, but not specifically against SAMs. Drone use was exaggerated by Press reports. They're in the evaluation stage. It is a new weapon. We use drones throughout the war , that we used them on the days we knocked out the SAMs too, but not specifically for than reason, mainly to locate ground forces to attack them. But we used RPVs in all kinds of ways. We used them as decoys and for reconnaissance. And we used mini RPVs (IAI Scout). But the used of drones was exaggerated by the Press . I believe that we really don't yet know what it means to operate such a weapon.

F.I.: Are SAMs too highly rated?

IAF: I've mentioned the 1973 war. I don't know if you know, but in that war the Syrians and Egyptians together launched some 2600 SAMs. They hit only 39 of our aircraft. The rest of the 102 aircraft we lost were hit by AAA. By the way, they also shot down 45 of their own aircraft. The capabilities of their SAM system were exaggerated. They were led to believe that they were defended, with a clear sky, under the SAM umbrella. That's why they invested so much in the system. But in this war they lost 100 aircraft and all their SAMs in Lebanon. I believe the Syrians in a dilemma today.

F.I.: Then Russians are also in an air defense dilemma?

IAF: Yes.

F.I.: Is it equipment or an operator problem? If Israelis had manned the SAM batteries, would the result have been different?

IAF: I don't think so. They made several mistakes but they did he best they could with the equipment they have. I believe that deficiencies of SAMs are such that, for us, it will never be a primary weapon.

F.I.: Why not?

IAF: It's a passive system. You invest money and manpower in a system which sits and waits for an air force to fly over it. An aircraft can be used for other purposes. I quoted the launching 2600 missiles in the 73 war. We launched 40-50 Hawks and killed 22 MiGs.

[CAPS my emphasis]

--


The key point above is the IDF were able in 1982 to routinely use terrain masking, "COMING IN VERY LOW AND DESTROYING THEM ONE BY ONE", through the valley terrain to take out whole SAM sites and the only complication was, "TO FIND THE BATTERY", and to blind it, rendering it ineffective.

As it turned out (and this article does not mention it) the IDF first used a very low-level approach and anti-radiation missiles, from F-4s, to take out EW and search radars, then Kfirs used pop-up "toss bombing", (possibly laser-guided and supported by special forces) from terrain-masked areas, to suppress lingering defences, that were flushed out via drones and decoys, then the IDF flew attack aircraft right in at very low levels and dropped cluster weapons on what remained of SAM site infrastructures.

--
See also: Operation Mole Cricket 19 - June 9, 1982

The Mastiff RPVs went in first to cause the Syrian SAMs to turn on their radars by convincing the Syrians that many attack aircraft were overhead. Once the Mastiffs were tracked by Syrian radar, the tracking signals were relayed to another Scout outside of the missiles' range. The Scout then relayed the signal to E2C Hawkeye aircraft orbiting off the coast. The data gathered was analyzed by the E2Cs and Boeing 707 ECM aircraft.[25] Once the SAM crews fired missiles at the drones, the F-15s and F-16s provided air cover while F-4 Phantoms attacked the SAM batteries, destroying them with AGM-78 and AGM-45 anti-radiation missiles.[26][28] The rapid flight time of the missiles minimized the F-4s' exposure to the SAMs.[1] The Syrians reportedly fired 57 SA-6s, to no effect.[29]

According to Ivry, many of the SAM batteries were on the Syrian side of the border.[2] Said Eitan, "From the operational point of view I can say that we used the mini-RPVs, long before the war, to identify and locate all the Syrian missile batteries. We then used superior electronic devices which enabled us to "blind" or neutralize the missile sites' ground-to-air radar. We rendered them ineffective to take reliable fixes on our aircraft aloft. But in advance of direct aerial attacks, we used long-range artillery".[30] The Syrians responded by launching about 100 fighter aircraft to stop the attacks.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19
--

As you may have realised, all the elements to acheive thios sort of lossless attack on sams and hardened targets is present in FC already. EXCEPT:

1) Ai has no ability to approach attack or egress in cover at low-level
2) Ai addresses and approaches the target in a completely suicidal way
3) Ai fails to egress immediately after a concerted but brief attack
4) Ai flies in extremely silly and inefficient ways, wasting fuel for no reason, and failing to RTB along the planned evasion route

Very low-level flight, in terrain masking mode, using SEAD weapons and ECM and drones is how you destroy such SAM systems. Lock On FC2.1 and DCS FC3.0 should be able to both plan and execute such very low level attacks, and suffer zero or nearly zero losses when planned and executed correctly.

All of this detailed terrain, detailed radar shadow modelling with clutter/noise degradation, and detailed modelling of SAM performances, but no capacity to use classic and prosaic low-level flight and attack tactics to address the needed target types, means you get a tactically senseless turkey-shoot every time. Not all attack aircraft fly day-or-night in any weather at low level, but those that were designed to definitely should.

At present there's no incentive to use the mission editor to plan strike attack packages as it just turns into a silly arcade-style shoot-'em-up that's not even remotely representative of actual air-to-ground and ground-to-air combat.

But if this all worked as it should then it would then be up to the individual planner/ mission commander and lead pilot to develop and use their skill and planning smarts to work out how to use what's available to best effect to destroy all of the enemy targets, and also survive.

In which case, instead of being given a finished mission plan (as FC does now in missions and campaigns) you could instead be presented with a defended primary target's location and (imperfect) recon intel, and asked to develop a tactical plan to kill the targets with minimal or no loses. This I would find vastly more engaging and enjoyable and provide an incentive to learn and get it right, because then its all down to how well you plan and fly and execute with coordinated timing.

Add a modern multi-role flyable supersonic low-level interdiction precision strike aircraft (not a mere battlefield CAS aircraft) and you've got combat sim nirvana, where any possible scenarios can be developed and planned out, and spectacular and tactically meaningful campaigns generated.

For me, if FC is not moving in that concerted direction, it's going to remain a low-level tactics joke.

This AI mess has gone far too long and I see no evidence that Eagle Dynamics has made any serious attempts to address these glaring and self-condemning deficiencies that I (and others) pointed out in detail to Matt and Karl, about six years ago. I can even provide links to the posts where this was previously discussed. They have known about these problems all along and have done nothing at all about it. It's clear to me now that ED is not serious, and has not been for a long time, about providing a realistic combat simulation. It flouts the terms DCS (digital COMBAT simulation) but it is just playing with 'techie' geekish details of avionics, sensors, comms and weapon's systems. The combat sim part itself is very much a secondary or tertiary consideration of the DCS producers, but it's actually the primary purpose for the customers.

In the absence of actual detailed developments aimed directly at addressing these crucial low-level air-combat simulation failures, as a fundamental core realism issue for ED, rather than just giving us more cheap vague verbal assurances of potential but nebulously inexact evolutionary progressions to come one day ... in a galaxy far, far away ... that's all this is being "considered" or else "seriously looked into", ... but alas, ... how sadly, ... it may not make it into this particular patch, or into this upcoming rendition, called FC3.0, due to production schedules, priorities, commercial constraints, and resource limitations ... oh blah, blah, f@cking-blah ... !!!

I've heard it all before.

I can even provide links to where such reassurances were given in the past when these things were discussed with ED. So no offence Nate, but I've heard these fob-off lines before, they amount to zip. Apparently that's the normal response that issues from ED to any real criticism of the state of things, when Matt in actual fact has no intention of ever doing anything about it. Firstly, you get a professed shared-concern, and collegial sincerity for getting these issues looked into and dealt with, but hey, we don't know precisely when this will occur, but do have faith in us dear customer, its already in the developmental pipeline, or soon will be.

Except that it isn't, and it never has been.

ED just says they're looking into it but they don't. Been there and done that Nate. So I'm rather cynical and out of patience for what Matt and ED spokespersons say, especially when they're always hedging, and failing to produce any improvement to the underlaying Ai catastrophe, but keep making 'new' sexed-up versions of the same underlaying dysfunctional tactical krud, with a few more ancillary (nice to have but non essential) baubles. The mission planner keeps getting expanded and reviewed, but the AI is never able to do what the mission planner can plan.

I can imagine how demoralised the mission editor programmers must feel to see such a system fatally hobbled by an AI that's incompatible with executing planned missions--and it's NEVER fixed!

Given all this, and the time that has elapsed I see no compelling reason to buy another Eagle Dynamics product as I see no evidence ED is in any way serious about creating a realistic tactical air combat simulation, with the core tactical aspects of low-level strike and interdiction combat.

I distinctly remember the first time I read the feature-list for LOMAC v1.0 and thinking - WTF?! No multi-role strike aircraft are on this feature list? What?! But we were all assured that plans were in the works toward that end, and all in good time little grass-hopper, al in good time ... well that time is well and truly up Matt.

$hit - or get off the potty!

In the low-level flight multi-ship package attack regime you only produced a shallow spectacle of generic air-battle 'cheese'. Actions not words Matt, because nothing you can say at this point is going to convince me you mean a damn word of it, or will deliver. ED is apparently pre-occupied with launching more and more high-brow commercial plans for this same underlaying broken-a$$ Ai, resulting in the usual tactical drivel with a new specular gloss. While everyone is still apparently cheaply quelled by the logical 'necessity' to go down this path, rather than make what exists, actually work properly. It's ridiculous, and it has gone on for far too long.

No more slack-cuts or giving you the benefit of the doubt. You've comprehensively blown it and will have to work very hard to get any of my money in future.

And to the DCS FC3.0 Beta testers;
I just want to convey this; If you're not going to hold ED's feet to the fire to create a tactical combat sim that actually functions and fights in realistic tactical ways, what exactly are you doing?

Does your definition of combat 'realism' mean you're prepared to agonise over avionics modes and such, whilst just accepting this absurd situation of a protracted thoroughly unrealistic tactical low-level combat that is almost completely dysfunctional?

I would hope not but why is it like this then -- still? I don't want any clever excuses. You're just being fobbed-off repeatedly by Ed's commercial production process and decision-making, that prioritises the development of ancillary gadgetry, that's all ultimately irrelevant if the underlaying tactical sim itself develops the air combat fight in a totally unrealistic and fundamentally porked way. You just passively accepting this absurd situation. Why are you content to let this sim remain in a complete mess like this? What's in it for you? So inside track news on the next version? So sense of collusion and attachment to these growing failures?

Look at those tracks and try telling me I'm wrong if you dare. What are you letting Ed off the hook so easily, giving them a free ride? Competition of ideas leads to excellence, not fawning sycophantic behaviours. It's necessary for creative and passionate people to push improvement for it to happen. If you don't push for it nothing will change. And almost nothing has changed in 6 to 7 years in terms of the parlous state of the low-level tactical combat, as described above1. Face it, Ed has gone stale, lost the creative spark, and so have you. You are simply not militating to add pressure for action to get these things addressed. You are being fobbed off by superficial small concessions and verbal gestures and flattery by ED.

And that's in part why it's STILL in a god-awful mess. You may even mostly fly on-line, and think the Ai is not so important to you, but even those SAM systems and ground forces are all Ai, and many of your opponent's attack flights are also Ai, and they can't execute low level plans, so you are not experiencing a low-level combat sim, but just the shabby appearance of it. So even in on-line play these systems can not and do not operate in realistic tactical combat modes, or roles.

Don't you want ED to fix this tactical mess? Why work on a 'new' version that doesn't fix any of this? I put this sim aside when FC1.1 was released because I was so disappointed by how it was performing. ED had basically ignored all of the issues discussed above, during FC1.1 development, even though these had been discussed at length openly prior to FC1.1 being even announced. Still, I regularly checked back on development to see if or when things moved forwards and matured, and was hopeful from reading glowing one-eyed reviews about FC2.1 that things had finally actually improved a lot.

But they haven't.

It's the exact same dysfunctional tactical Ai mess as LOMAC 1.0 and FC1.1, with almost ZERO significant improvements. Yes, there are minor but welcome tweaks here and there, but it's still completely porked as a tactical combat simulation. The lack of applied pressure is, in-part, why ED is still selling multiple versions of the same underlaying lemon to people who don't even comprehend how absurd it is in a low-level flight regimes and tactical employment regards, because they have not even known any sim that actually worked properly in those areas, or else are now habituated to the unrealistic stupidity that is FC and DCS.

Have a look at those tracks, or better still, make some yourself, then act on these observations. Be direct, don't just play-nice with ED, to avoid ruffling feathers. These guys need to be ruffled up as they aren't going to get the message loud and clear any other way. They have no passion for it any more. You know as well as I do that this comes down to ED's executive producer being out to lunch on these issues. He's clearly out of touch, or else blind to it all. He apparently thinks that the fact that a large chunk of the sim doesn't even work, is no biggie, no obstacle of selling more of this fault-ridden rubbish to more unsuspecting punters.

I won't respect or defer to that.

You may just see yourself as a beta-tester, of whatever ED condescends to provide to you for testing and reporting back observations, but you're collectively in a strong position to vigorously discuss and push ED to pull it's finger out, stop making the same lame old excuses and deliver a fixed Ai, and a low-level terrane following flight mode, capable of executing what's been planned so that stealthy strike attacks are both do-able, and survivable.

After all these years, do you still think ED (or Matt in particular) will EVER just get all this sorted out, one day, by themselves via making cumulative sequential "the right" commercial decisions and playing it safe?

What bollocks.

It just isn't going to happen via that route--and so it hasn't. Matt will of course always come up with the next excuse as to why ED can't fix it right now, but will continue to offer the just over the horizon possibility of it eventually occurring ... in some great celestial commercial whet-dream time scenario ... in the fullness of time.

It's a fob-off.

ED's producers have by implication demonstrated that either they totally fail to grasp what's fundamentally wrong, or else, and I this is very much more likely, that Matt Wagner simply does not give a toss whether this 'sim' does not work, in any realistic tactical manner. His multi-year lack of prioritising the necessary resources and action to make it work, so that a mission plan is executed as planned (WYSIWYG missions), is self-evident and standing proof of this.

As are the tracks provided. I'm tired of endless excuses for this total failure and all the idiotic justifications for why it needs-be so, and I'm too peeved by the almost complete lack of forward progress after so many years, to be patient any more. Nor to buy into any more of this fetid promotional titillating swill coming from ED about how FC3.0 will make a significant difference to Eagle Dynamics' underlaying feet-of-clay, and the notion that it is a combat sim, par-excellence.

New blood ED.

Eureka Nate!

A very promising breakthrough / discovery.

I found an aircraft that does fly low-level in terrain-following mode, as planned, and it does it very well.

The B1-B

TRACK 5 http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?j7ar0c8a570foae

I set the B1-B to PINPOINT STRIKE with EXCELLENT AI (although I suspect the role and Ai level does not alter the low-level flight behaviour, but need to check).

It all works for the B1-B, flies just like I want, as planned, and as I expected it could, and should.

I discovered this with FC2.1, and then tried it also in DCS and it works equally well in both sims.

I suspect it may even work for all of the heavy bombers in each but have to check that.

It may even work in LOMAC 1.02, but I've yet to try that.

This demonstrates that there is fully-functional low-level flight code in FC2.1, already, but the other aircraft are not using it.

Or rather, they are not using it properly.

I then studied the F/A-18C, using the exact same mission, and waypoints, and determined that these also are in fact using a terrane following code, but they're massively over reacting to the terrain.

i.e. the terrain sensing parameter and reaction trigger is simply set way to sensitively for fighters and attack aircraft.

The next track #6 shows that they are in fact trying to do the same thing as the B1-B, but they are just constantly over and under reacting to the terrain map. They react much too late, and when they finally do react, they massively over-react with pitch and power, then are much slower to cut power and nose over, like the B1-B does.

That's what's going wrong with it all Nate.

If this is fixed it will solve most of the problems, then it is a matter of refining the way the AI addresses the targets, with attack and egress tactics that are realistic, and it may all work.

You need to get your guy to isolate the code for the B1-B's terrain avoidance then macro apply it to the other aircraft, and there's a good chance this will be the necessary solution to this low-level flight disaster.

F/A-18C

TRACK 6 http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?c7yq5cp3qumwh6d

Only ED informal feedback on these issues thus far:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1354374&postcount=136

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1354730&postcount=144

--

Naturally, imposition of trade sanctions has become necessary.

I hope there is a 3D mission editor (like Jane's USAF). This way I can see if the flight I placed is directly in front of a mountain. Or as zzzzspace pointed out, there should at least be some indicator telling us the height of the terrian. I've very many times placed flights that fly straight into a mountain as it was impossible to evade due to the spawn point.

There is - observe the status bar on the bottom of the ME.

I agree, a 3d editor would be cool.

Nate

FC3? Do you have the link?

Thanks gx007

GOT THE LINK.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=81589

I have A-10, FC2 and BS2 already and I see that they are trying really hard to make them compatible. Up until this moment for every new machine we had to install the game again. It is a waste of disk space and time. I wonder why they are not making a base package with graphic engine and map and then make it possible to buy separate add-ons to the core package in the form of maps, flay-ables, etc.

And the core package should only have the reaper drone flyable

I suppose it's a wee bit of a cash grab. If I get FC3 I will have purchased the sim 3 times. That being said I probably will. Oh and BS2 2 times. Hard to make a living in the Sim world. Must support the hobby.

It would be a cash grab if there were no new features compared to FC2. Now whether these new features in FC3 warrant your cash, it is for you to decide. Note however, the Full FC3 feature list hasn't been published.

Nate

I'm just cheap Nate, in these tough economic times (lost my job after 15 yrs.)... I didn't mean to come off Harsh. I own all the DCS products and will be supporting DCS as best as I can. Now that I don't have the expendable income I used to have, I wish these upgrades were free. All I can do at the moment is be patient and wait for sales to arrive.

I'd love to see the new easy avionics mode in A-10C and BS2 make it into FC3.

I can't imagine that'd be too hard to do.

I'd guess the decision to make an FC3 in the first place was a tough call on ED's part. Since they're effectively adding a old product into a newer one (i know FC3 is much more than that though). How many developers put this much effort into an old product (whether charging a fee or not)? I think its great that ED doesn't forget about the other half of their community and made an effort to keep everyone playing on the same battlefield.

I'm excited about the FC3 and the JTAC add-on can't wait to see what they bring to the table.

I too felt it was a pity that FC2 was fading into history much too soon with the advent of BS, A-10 and the new future plane. And I too was content to see concern towards keeping FC alive in FC3.

I'm hoping they will add some decent features with FC3, the just having the triggers of A-10C in FC is fine by me. However, I am somewhat worried that without some improvements to the avionics of FC3 aircraft that the sims won't mesh well together.

Take the radios for example. Radio frequencies matter in DCS. You gotta tune to the correct frequencies to contact ATC, JTAC, to hear (or not hear) AI flights, and so on. FC2 had what is considered to be "easy radios" where everything is tuned to the correct frequency automatically. So with AI flight to communicate with the player there is bound to be a constant and unavoidable noise of AI chatter. Granted it all depends on the number of AI in a scenario, but having no options to switch frequencies would really suck.

I'm just glad they're supporting it.

There was enough of a difference between FC 1.1 and FC2 that it warranted me paying for it.

There is already enough of an indication that there is significant differences to warrant me paying for FC3.

You ain't lying,I have had it for about a year now and am still loving it.I'm really hoping for mfd extracting and maybe few new aircraft in fc3

I'd love to see if they update the area around Sochi with some of the stuff for the Olympics in a couple of years... I was just thinking about this the other day. But I'm with PFunk about any update being a good update. Especially from DCS.

There will be new features, at least where the ME is concerned as you have guessed. Possibility for anything more isn't being discussed publicly for now since nothing has been nailed down (that I know of, I don't make the decisions).

I wouldn't worry too much about the avionics. The FC series serves the crowd that isn't into exacting operation, but there's nothing wrong with meshing DCS and FC. Basically, if you consider facing off with a fighter, an FC fighter and a DCS fighter would appear to fight about the same; in fact a DCS fighter will likely have advantages in avionics.

But in the end, it all depends on how you want to fly, and so you'd join an appropriate server or crowd I imagine

The Dynamic Campaign is the Holy Grail to so many sim fans. Even those who dismiss the concept as a simple illusion fooling ignorant players who don't understand the tricks under the hood must appreciate the swell of pent up desire for a F4-style DC. I've recently been playing on the excellent 74th VFS server, in both the BS and A-10. Tyger's mission is the best MP mission I've ever played in DCS. But after 3 flights I knew most of the spawn points. (yes there is a huge amount of random AI placement but the linear flow of the mission is impossible to avoid) It becomes almost comical when we on comms act surprised at those vehicles that just popped up east of "Flick". I ask you, Is this more real than the aggregations and deaggregations found in the F4 Campaigns??? I LOVE A-10. I just hate building sandboxes for it. And without a dynamic campaign where players can chose their packages, targets and loadouts and return day after day to see how the war progresses, Naveda is just another sandbox.

Yeah, a dynamic campaign would give thse titles everlasting appeal. I mean just look at Falcon 4.0.

I play 100% online now so a dynamic campaign doesn't interest me unless it has online functionality. Besides in my experience a well designed mission beats a DC generated mission almost any day. But to each their own I do know many play solo offline so the desire for a DC generator is big.

I only fly online also, but with F4/BMS DC even if you fly sp it feels like you are flying online. Flying the same missions is boring and it sucks. How fun is it knowing where everything all the time, basically whats going to happen. FC3 needs to have the UI that BMS has, meaning you can change your waypoints, change your weapons and set up flights. If you merge BMS with DCS then we would have a very good flight sim....having the best of both worlds.

Any idea when the list of features/changes/enhancements FC3 will have is going to be announced?

BS2's "well, it's here, check the readme" method was, shall we say, LESS than ideal.



The Jedi Master

No. Other than pretty certainly ME features found in the A-10C/BS2 will be transfering over (and more, I'm certain, as well as MP compatibility, and compatibility with CA and Nevada) I don't think the list will be released for a while still. It may not be finalized or, to avoid problems with features that were desired being pulled (happens every time, don't sweat it ) there's an aversion towards releasing details until development is reasonably far along, as decided by whoever decides these things.

I would guess a new F-15C 3D model would not be a bad bet, but that's about all I could guess from publicly available material.

Hopefully it gets released this year, so it can breathe some life back into FC.

I suspect that almost everything that is part of A-10C/BS2 that isn't directly related to the specific aircraft will be implemented into FC3. The resource management stuff they hinted at in the announcement could be a nice touch. Not sure how many are aware of it over here, but they put a little file within the mission that appears to keep track of airbase resources. I'm curious if the A-10A will get any added benefit aside from the new 3d exterior model. Perhaps it will field the new CBU 87/97, but can't change the weapons settings. Honestly, the one thing they can add that will make me incredibly excited about the sim would be extra flyable aircraft. There are plenty of single seaters out there that could make for a great addition to the sim. Otherwise if its the same old aircraft lineup of the previous iterations, well, its gonna be a little long in the tooth.

Part of me is okay with the same lineup. It's like putting on an old pair of boots that have just recently been resoled. It's still your old pair of boots, but they're way more comfortable.

I agree there, but at the same time, I'd LOVE to see expanded A2G capability for the Russian fast movers.

The ones modeled in FC2 simply do not have such features. Maybe if ED decided to model newer aircraft, then who knows.

Agreed. Nothing broke my heart worse than the first day I bought LOMAC and realized they took everything that was fun about Flanker 2.5 out.

However, that said, the Russian a2G is much better now than it used to be. You can hit a building.

And they took away our Kh-41 from the Su-33. It was unrealistic, but damnit I had alot of fun flying missions with it.

I could read all the pages of this post but since most of the stuff in middle seems to be about anything but FC3....... Anybody have any news if all the flight models get an update. Love the su25 and su25T, the rest.....eh....ya.

I thought there were some tweaks made in FC2. The A-10 certainly felt a bit different from FC1, but I never did a real test to see how.
If you're talking Su-25-style AFMs, I think it safe to say that's not happening. My guess is FC3 will just be the planes from FC2 brought into BS2/A-10C's terrain and GUI with various updates of a more minor nature.



The Jedi Master

Unfortunately even then it still would not make the grade, because the low-level flight in FC is farcically dysfunctional, and there is no sign of it being fixed.

The people who's job it is to make FC work as a sim apparently don't give a toss about real-world low-level combat tactics as they continue this dismal deluded charade that fourth-gen air combat, that apparently only occurs above 2k feet.

The reverse is the norm for 4th gen attack, strike, bomber and CAS aircraft as they can not survive long if they're not using terrain masking to the absolute maximum possible extent.

In FC these aircraft simply don't use it, because they can't, the terrain following flight mode is completely pooched, has been for the best part of a decade! So realistic tactics and attack plans are rendered a hopeless farce. It has been like this for the previous three renditions of this deeply-ruined combat 'sim', and I see nothing so far to suggest render #4 will be any different.

[admin edit: no personal attacks]

Some might regard saying that as pooping in the party punch-bowel, but so what. Unfortunately I'm also horribly right, and one of the few that seem prepared to say the Emperor is butt-naked. It's well past due for some straight-shooting and actual blame to be placed at the feet of those who are most responsible for this never-ending low-level flight debacle, that I keep being asked to pay good money for, under a false belief and pretence that its all better ... this time for sure!

And each time I find that the ED 'Producers' have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to remedy it.

FC aircraft were supposed to have a terrain following flight mode? Thats news to me. I don't really think the lack of it is much of an issue as A. The A/C that are flyable don't really need it. B. Flying incredibly low isn't that difficult to do manually. I'm not defending em, I just think there are more important issues to complain/worry about.

zzzspace,

I haven't read all the background on your points. During Desert Storm low-level was abandoned based on the fact that AAA and Manpads were a greater threat than suppressed Medium and High Level SAMS. I believe low-level Tornados suffered some of the highest casualty rates. During Allied Force nobody went in low-level again for the same reason as Desert Storm. Iraq and Serbia are the two examples, I can think of, of large scale penetration of modern IADS. Libya, which arguably had a less robust IADs, was attacked from Medium to High altitude. The other example is the Israel attack on Syria a couple years ago. This was against some pretty modern Russian SAMS and it was done from high altitude by F-15Is.

This is not meant as shot but what examples of modern Western aircraft using low-level tactics. Since the 90s Western forces have moved up to mid to high altitudes. I think the last time any one considered low-level tactics would be during 80s, 30 years ago and not in the time period of FC.

SD

ZZZ this is getting tiresome - I told you previously I'd look into it.

Nate

Eagerly awaiting your perfectly designed and executed combat flight simulation.

Pure non-sense!

The allies did not (and never have) 'abandon' low-level attack tactics.

It was always PLANNED, as an attack STRATEGY, to use the TACTIC of low-level strikes to demolish the most dangerous and organised elements of the Iraqi IADs, then to move into a mid-level (above MANPAD) bombing mode of attack.

They did not suddenly discover MANPADs might be a bit of problem in 1990 you know. It had been a tactical problem for decades, and took no one by surprise.

It's like this, an intact IADs with operational high-alt SAMs detects early forces the high flight-level attacker to dive ... into the more numerous mid-level SAM area, which again forces them to dive for the deck, to get out of the line of fire (if they survive), but because the enemy is now fully alerted, they then also face an effective vigilant MANPAD network.

That is a very dumb and suicidal tactic, and one that is routinely performed in FC, and of course the aircraft are slaughtered, but only because low-level ground-hugging flight simply does not work in FC for the attack aircraft.

(I won't say 'terrain-following' because some other nutter will lamely say such aircraft mostly don't have terrain following radars and auto-pilots, in order to stupidly ignore and discount the valid points being made)

So in order to avoid that, and in the absence of large numbers of stealth aircraft with precise stand-off weapons, and very high-speeds combined with very great altitude (i.e. F-22A), then you have to go in fast, at very low level. you have no other choice on Day-1, regardless of a MANPAD threat (which were surprisingly ineffective BTW, and the hits they made were usually not resulting in kills, and the aircrew were not even being injured).

This is what the Tornados did, and most of them survived, and their targets were mostly destroyed, and effective resistance ceased rather quickly as a result.

Because the PLANNED LOW-LEVEL TACTICS work.

Besides all that factual stuff, Iraq also had very poor topographical terrain-masking relief and cover, within its most populated and military target-rich central valley area, hence there was higher than normal exposure to abundant ground fire. Indeed, the most effective and dangerous weapons were not the SAMs at all, and certainly not MANPADs, but the numerous RADAR and IR guided AAA. In a European context, which this STANDARD low-level TACTIC, and aircraft, was primarily developed for, the terrain-masking opportunities are much greater, and the alert times available for a MANPAD team would have been even less in a European theatre context.

FC is set in a quasi-European theatre context, and its terrain cover is virtually ideal for exceptionally effective low-level attacks.

On top of all this, the Tornados suffered significant losses only because they had the most dangerous jobs in the opening days of the air attack on the Iraqi IADs. If the Tornados had to do this from mid-level altitudes, it's likely few would have survived, or escaped hits.

i.e. you attack at low level or preferably with stealth, at stand off ranges (hence F-117s and AH-64s kicked off the EW, comms and headquarters take-downs in the first hours whick made the Tornado attacks viable with so little terrain masking available).

LOW-LEVEL TACTICS work, and the more terrain you have, the better it works, it provides you stealth and surprise, when you have no stealthy aircraft, but most of all, it provides VERY HIGH SURVIVABILTY in a high air threat context (such as is routinely seen in FC).

In 2012 there is not an airforce on Earth that does not train to use low-level attack tactics, routinely, especially with regard to the 3rd and 4th gen aircraft in FC.

For goodness sake even stealthy missiles like a JASSM try to maintain a terrain-masking and clutter dominated flight profile in their terminal attack phases, in defended airspace, else they will telegraph an approaching attack, and probably won't make it to their target, as modern Russian SAMs now seek to prosecute targets like cruise missiles as low as 10 meters above the surface.

When Lock On was first released many years ago, ED stated they were attempting to model the state of air warfare from about 15 year prior, i.e. the end of the cold war, and that period was dominated by low level attack doctrine. The mid and later phases of the cold war the LOW-LEVEL supersonic STRIKE attack via use of terrain masking, to take down EW, IADs and rear area high value command nodes was TACTICAL DOCTRINE de-rigeur.

It is simply patently absurd to take a position that suggests that FC's low-level planned TERRAIN HUGGING flight profiles should not even work, and it's no biggie if it never does. It should have been the FIRST thing fixed after the LOCK ON V1.0 was released. In fact it should not have even been put on the market in such a wretched state of tactical planning dysfunction.


Shameless.

I suppose you have never used a Sim where it actually works then?

I won't dignify your post with further.

What is actually extremely tedious is buying multiple versions of this same piece of tactical you-know-what, after having described the nature of the low-level flight problems, multiple times, and had ED's Rep of the day repeatedly say they're, "looking into it", when they do nothing at all. Indeed, they all used that very same line on me previously, so I'm calling BS.

I don't believe it, [admin edit: no personal attacks]

With good reason.

I don't particularly care who you are either; just pointing out that you don't know enough to make the judgements you think you're so brilliantly making. Perhaps you should consider that calling the whole game a failure and people clueless because of your own little pet peeve is the disengenuous thing.

I have bought five versions of this sim and they are all broken in the low-level terrain-hugging flight planning department.

That is the salient fact you need to focus on.

Do that next 'product' review.

Zzzspace,

This is from Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign, by Tom Clancy

"Italian and British Tornadoes suffered loses - all, save one, the result of low-level, low-altitudes tactics. In fact in the first two days of the war approximately two-thirds of our loses were suffered by aircraft flying low-level tactics, even as the majority of sorties were being flown at medium altitude."

"The Tornado, which flew more low-level tactics than any other aircraft, had a loss rate nine times the F-16s and over six times the slower A-10."

You assertion that the plan all along was to start low then move to med-high tactics is wrong. After the first days couple a Coalition working group got together and decided, based on the loses suffered at low-level, to move any group flying low-level to medium/high altitudes.

Tornadoes did not strike Iraqi IADS. They mainly attacked Iraqi airfields.

F-117 never flew low-level.

AH-64 flew low-level because they are helicopters and literally cannot fly higher 10,000'.

Day 1 no one goes in low-level except cruise missiles. Stand-off weapons from Aircraft, subs and ships lead the first wave. Followed by LO-aircraft with heavy EW support. Then followed by everyone else at mid-high level. Fighters fleets that used spend lots of time training for low-level have pretty much have given it up for two reasons. First, its not used. Second, it is very hard on airframes and shortens lifespan. Only a small part of training continues at low-level.

Why did Allied Force feature no low-level tactics? It is as you describe a "European" context. Why did Libya feature no low-level tactics?

The salient fact you need to focus on is that it's just your pet peeve. There's room for improvement in a bunch of areas, and yours isn't any more important than others. ED doesn't spare effort in improving their product - but that doesn't mean the effort will go exactly where you want it to, period, end of story.

Nate already said he'd be looking into it, along with everything else that entails, some of which you may be privy to, and most of which you will not be. In light of that, you're now doing nothing more than trolling.

Er, airbases are actually key elements of any modern IADs, the Tornados were attacking and degrading the IADS. QED

I never said F-117s flew level or low? Show me where I did?

I said this though which you seemed to hurry to ignore and discount:

--
" ... Iraq also had very poor topographical terrain-masking relief and cover, within its most populated and military target-rich central valley area, hence there was higher than normal exposure to abundant ground fire. Indeed, the most effective and dangerous weapons were not the SAMs at all, and certainly not MANPADs, but the numerous RADAR and IR guided AAA. In a European context, which this STANDARD low-level TACTIC, and aircraft, was primarily developed for, the terrain-masking opportunities are much greater, and the alert times available for a MANPAD team would have been even less in a European theatre context. FC is set in a quasi-European theatre context, and its terrain cover is virtually ideal for exceptionally effective low-level attacks. ..."

"... On top of all this, the Tornados suffered significant losses only because they had the most dangerous jobs in the opening days of the air attack on the Iraqi IADs. If the Tornados had to do this from mid-level altitudes, it's likely few would have survived, or escaped hits. ..."
--

Have a look at a detailed topographical map or Iraq then have a look at where the Tornados were involved in low-level airfield strike. Notice the distinct and obvious lack of terrain masking opportunities? Low level tactics are only meant to work with reliability and high survivability where there is terrain masking, or else a high level of ground cover and electronic support.

No terrain = no masking = earlier warning = easier to target = easier to shoot down

Not complicated.

Which means they were relying principally on ground-clutter and electronic means to degrade radars, and provide an extra degree of protection, which very arguably proved insufficient - as I will make clear. Your quote above takes the tactical situation out of its full context and ignores the absence of terrain to mask approach.

That is not the case in FC's terrain before you rush to formulate another load of nonsense.

The low-level runway attacks in the almost flat central and southern Iraqi context was necessitated due to the use of the LAAAS Low-Altitude Airfield Attack System, otherwise known as the JP233, which was designed for use in a more terrain-masking European setting, against Soviet union era air bases and their defences.

But no aircraft were even shot down due to this!

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JP233

--
"...Deployment

Deployment was rather frightening for the flight crew, since it required the aircraft to fly low, straight and level over an enemy airfield, and when over the runway the pods would dispense their payload. During the Gulf War it was widely reported in the popular press that Tornados were shot down by AAA fire and MANPADS during delivery of the JP233 munition,[2] but in fact none of the losses occurred during the attack phase of a JP233 mission. Only one aircraft was lost carrying the JP233 munition when Tornado ZA392 crashed into the ground 16 km (9.9 mi) after delivering the weapon at low level; enemy fire was not reported and it was believed that this was an incident of controlled flight into terrain.[3]

What did alarm the crews of British and Saudi Arabian Tornados using JP233 however was that the aircraft was brightly illuminated at night by the exploding munitions.[4] Attacks using JP233 were suspended six days into the Gulf War, as the Iraqi Air Force was effectively flying no missions.

With the increasing availability of stand-off attack munitions capable of the same mission with little risk to the flight crew and aircraft, and the British entry into the Land Mines Treaty (which declares the HB-876 illegal), the JP233 has been withdrawn from service. ..."
--

Thus low-level flight tactic prevented successful engagement of the Tornados flying straight and level, right over the top of a heavily defended airbase!

Low-level attack tactics work. QED

Again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panavia_Tornado

--
"... In 1991, the Tornado made its combat debut in the Gulf War, the British military activities in which were designated Operation Granby. Nearly 60 GR1s were deployed by the United Kingdom to air bases at Muharraq (Bahrain), Tabuk and Dhahran in Saudi Arabia.[76] Several Tornado ADVs were deployed to provide air cover, the threat of their long range missiles being a significant deterrent to Iraqi pilots, who would deliberately avoid combat when approached.[147]

In the early stages of the coalition's military action, the GR1s targeted military airfields across Iraq, deploying a mixture of 1,000 lb (450 kg) unguided bombs in loft-bombing attacks and specialised JP233 runway denial weapons. Six RAF Tornados were lost in the conflict, as was one Italian Tornado. Of the RAF aircraft, four were lost while delivering unguided bombs, one was lost after delivering JP233, and one trying to deliver laser-guided bombs.[148] On 17 January 1991, the first Tornado to be lost was shot down by an Iraqi SA-16 missile following a failed low-level bombing run.[149] On 19 January, another RAF Tornado was shot down during an intensive raid on Tallil Air Base.[150] The impact of the Tornado strikes upon Iraqi air fields is difficult to determine.[151][152]
--

They were thus being used "in the early stages", as part of the initial attack on the Iraqi IADs, contrary to your assertion that only cruise missiles and stand-off weapons are used "Day-1".

And again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Granby

--
"...The first part of the Gulf War air campaign was directed against the IAF. Early on January 17, the RAF's Tornado GR1s flew into Iraq, with tanker support. The first targets were Iraqi airbases, which housed a variety of defence systems and aircraft. These attacks were co-ordinated in Riyadh by the Joint Allied Headquarters, with Wratten now leading the British command; aircraft were almost totally integrated into a single coalition force. Support aircraft in raids, therefore, could be from any coalition power. Within 24 hours, a hundred sorties had been run. After seven days, the RAF's focus, like the rest of coalition air forces, was moved to targets related to the support of Iraqi forces in Kuwait. These included oil refinery and strategic bridges over the River Euphrates. During operations, civilians were killed when the sophisticated guidance systems on the weaponry used failed, and buildings close to these bridges (many in populated areas) were hit instead. On the whole, many pilots were frustrated by the lack of combat.[3]

In every combat role, the RAF was second to USAF involvement, but ahead of other members of the coalition. Of the around 55 Allied aircraft lost, six were Tornadoes and one a Jaguar; these aircraft types running a total of 2,500 sorties. Five air crew were lost in operations, and three in preparations. ...[3]"
--


So, that's 2,500 sorties and only 5 aircrew lost! But only 2 of these were actual combat operation losses, none were from enemy fire, and these 2 fatalities were caused via controlled flight into terrain. Whilst many Iraqi airfields lay shattered, unable to respond.

i.e. The low-level attack tactics worked, even in terrane conditions that were very far from ideal for it to be effective. Properly planned and executed low-level attacks still worked.

You alluded to Israeli attacks on Syria, and I did not bother to take you up on that, because I already dealt with this in detail in an earlier post (which you did say you had not read, so I left it alone).

The F-16s etc were not required to make the NECESSARY low-level attacks over flat terrain against heavily-defended targets, they were in completely different roles, so why are you comparing apples with oranges, and acting like the conclusions are meaningful or valid in comparative or absolute terms?

How many Tornados and Jags do you think were lost?

Over flat terrain like that no one should be using low-level attacks --> UNLESS <-- it was unavoidable and necessary. And that was the case, in the opening days of the attack on the IADS airbases.

What this has to do with the fact that the low-altitude AI flight and tactical planning in FC does not work at all is lost on me. It's just nit-picking which seeks to ignore the parlous state of FC as a tactical combat flight sim.

--
"Why did Allied Force feature no low-level tactics? It is as you describe a "European" context."
--

Because it was the first air attack in which the B-2 with PGMs participated and the F-117A was also used extensively. i.e. other delivery means and weapons were available to negate the IADs, and demolish airfields, as well as to attack 'rear area' high value targets. There are no B-2s full of JDAMs etc in FC.

--
"Why did Libya feature no low-level tactics?"
--

Really?? ... did you notice the Libyan 'IADs' and its air farce and 'navy' were a joke? Why would you fly low-level if there is no reason to, and when some backward undisciplined yokel with a big new bang-stick will happily shoot at anything that moves?

Again, you're citing air battles that are 10 and 25 years removed from the era modelled in FC, what does it have to do with the fact that FC low-level flight is broken, and that low-level tactics were de-rigeur in the period being modelled? Or with the fact that the FC terrain environment is ideal for it, and also is full of EW, SAMs, AEW, fighters and AAA?


But at least you tried to make worthwhile points that were interesting and constructive so you get a thumbs up for that.