Direct is the way to go, I agree, if only because Update A frequently breaks stuff in DCS, and Update B (which fixes it, and may only break things you don’t care about) comes way faster on the direct download version than via Steam.
Well I just put in a request in the DCS wishlist forums for Middle Earth terrain, including elves, orcs, dwarves, and most importantly dragons. I’ve very curious to see how that post will be received.
Dang how cool would it be to have a flight of Hornets tasked to take out an Orc army while going against wizard fire, red dragons etc. Idea direct from Game of Thrones thread on this forum.
Not until they rework the mk-77 napalm canister. But I like the idea!
I’d settle for a working Phantom II.
We are missing an entire chunk of monumental combat aviation history without it. I mean, having the Turkey is going to be sweet, but I’d prefer an aircraft that did more than shoot down a couple of hapless Libyan Su-22s.
Direct. Stuff releases more quickly there.
Belsimtek had that one in their pipeline before ED gobbled them up and forced the viper on them. A thousand nerds raged in futile anger.
Y’all catch Heatblur’s turkey stream just now? It was cool, they flew a strike/barcap. Cool to see the thing in action, and cool to see I’m not the only one who sometimes lets the thing get so slow that the turn into finals is too much and stall out, spin in, CO writes a letter to a grieving widow. Happens to me in the MiG-15 all the time.
Another reason to go direct is that the modules in their e-store get better sales than through steam. Right now almost everything is 50% off which rarely happens, by the way.
In order I’d like to see for planes:
Lightning II (I know will never happen)
Intruder
Raptor (Another I know will never happen)
Tornado
Phantom
Aardvaark
Black Widow (has any sim done this one?)
Falcon (I mean, we already got a Hornet and BMS)
Falcon (viper!), Intruder and Phabulous Phantom are happening sometime this century. Licenses are negotiated, research is being done and preliminary coding/art has been produced.
Lightning II (the F-35? that thing needs an unofficial name, I vote reuse of the F-111’s pig) and Raptor will never happen officially. Far too classified. Also potentially very boring. They might happen as unofficial community mods at or below FC3 level.
Tornado and Aardvark are interesting in that they are very much specialized airframes. What made the 90s tornado game so great was not how interesting the tornado itself was, but it’s awesome strategic layer and mission planner. I think true strike aircraft such as the F-111 and Tornado need that to be interesting. Else it’s just an hour long NAVEX with a pickle halfway through.
Black widow… not a chance in hell. Perhaps someone will build one as a mod one day, but modding DCS is pretty hard. The A-4E took about five to nine people three years.
The ones I always really wanted are the F-14, the Phantom and the Mi-24 hind. Those are all happening. Another thing we all really badly want is also happening and that is that they (ED) hired an RTS game programmer to build a dynamic campaign game layer for us.
Get your study on, because there’s gonna be things that need bombing in the near future.
I’ll believe it if/when ED actually release it, probably around the year 2028 :)
Also, if we’re sharing wishlists then somebody make me an AH-64D module please!
Really. Panther. Guess they find it more badass than we on the sidelines do.
No way. I wouldn’t doubt the systems are super advanced easy to use with pretty colors. I imagine like a video game :) The stealth profile would make for some varied interesting and hairy missions. The interlinkage would make for some great strategy, etc. F-35 with VTOL also would be fun.
From certain angles, the F-35 can even look good. Same with F-22.
@NuclearWinter I think the Apache was in the pipeline at one point. Not sure if they will pick it back up again.
Man, what I’d give for a sim like Jane’s ATF/USNF with modern graphics and slightly improved flight/instrument models.
Oh god yes please.
Amen!
Completely unrelated and mostly irrelevant, but check out these tunes:
It’s DCS’s composers’ soundcloud. Ripping tunes if you are into the zimmer movie soundtrack thing (i am)
My milblogging buddy and I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, news consistently fails to make the F-35 look good. On the other hand, people like the Israelis and Japanese, who really can’t afford much in the way of defense procurement missteps, are all over the thing, and they probably know something we don’t.
If flying DCS has taught me anything, pilot skill and situational awareness are way more important than airframe aeronautic capability. Hell, my Hornet’s been taken out more than once by freaking prop 109s.
The F-35 allegedly does a good job reducing enemy SA with stealth, while increasing own side SA with a good electronics package. A freaking flying golfball would be victorious with that advantage. It’s not like the missiles fly like pigs. (Does an Electric Panther fly like a pig, or is it reasonably agile?).
I seen one live twice, once at an airshow. Actually it aint half bad. First off, it’s far smaller than photo’s suggest. It’s tiny. That is good in air combat. It also rolls right snappy, and seemed quite snappy in the onset of it’s G. That translates to “agile” in human terms.
So panther might just make a whole lot of sense. Lot’s of power in a small black package. Yeah.
On the ground it looks dumpy as fuck. Not at all a graceful piece of industrial art like the viper. What did strike me looking closely at it is it’s incredibly smooth plasticky skin. In smoothness it compares to the F-16 like the F-16 to a MiG-29. And let me tell you, that one looks downright agricultural up close.