The only units reasonably close that could have had a detect were the drug runners. Having something to work from I ... managed to catch the detection

 

(The following remark is completely gratuitous:)

 

Except for the whales, which start right under the carrier. I suppose we can thank God that they don't have through-water ESM and long-range radio equipment.

If we can blame it on visual spotting by the neutrals, then I'd like to know if Joe only experiences this phenomenon only when neutrals are involved and a chance of them spotting or detecting his units.

 

If so, then Joe gets some vindication, finally! And we get to squash (I hope) a bug that I had thought we had dealt with quite awhile ago.

I don't have the demo installed but I used 2009.53, 2009.54 (the bug fix) and the latest 'experimental' 2011.01

In 2009.53 I flew low to about 30 nm from drug runner, loitered for ten minutes, climbed to high and interceptor came out every time (did about 3 trys).

Flew to a spot about 100 nm away, but closer to red base, did the same and no reaction.

Did same in the other two versions, and no reaction... so I'd guess the bug had been fixed but in the putting together of the 2009.53 (my understanding is that is a fine tune of 'Ultimate', and not with all the beta changes since the previous patch [2009.42?]).

...

Anyway I think a good team effort

Continuing Joe's report:

 

From 9 left until 8:30 left, there are a number of potential visual detections. Since we now know that visual detection for planes at low simply does not happen outside of 3 nm, there is no reaso to expect to detect any of the Vietnamese fighters cruising at low.

 

The only AI fighter that could reasonably have been detected is YXR. This unit is in fact detected, but it isn't clear exactly when. These are MiG-17Fs. They fly quite slowly and do not have missiles. The Hawkeye that got shot down could have easily been saved in several ways: by running away, or by being supported by friendly fighters. Once MiG-17Fs are located, they can easily be killed outside of dogfight range.

 

YVR (MiG-21s) never turns on its radar, as can be seen in SS4. Thus this unit could only be detected by visual means. It never gets within 40 nm of the nearest Hawkeye, which is at high. The fighter is at med, so the Hawkeye detection range is 40 nm. It never gets within visual range of the Vigilante, so yes, the first evidence the Vigalante has of this fighter is missiles up the tailpipe.

 

Incidentally, SS5 and SS6 appear to be identical.

 

The final fighter-fighter interactions are really too unclear to be able to properly analyze. However, as a general rule, searching by radar with these fighters can't be expected to do much. For one thing, the actual range against these targets is only 8 nm. The AI fighters will close from outside radar range to firing range within one detection cycle. There may also be LDSD issues. And the Phantom has only directional radar. With the MiGs coming in from behind, as the screenshots show, they simply cannot be detected.

 

I am not prepared to make any statements about the combat results, because the data is insufficient. I would expect that 3 or 4 missiles would be needed to kill each AI fighter, but that's under ideal conditions, and conditions in this test are clearly not ideal.

The final fighter-fighter interactions are really too unclear to be able to properly analyze. However, as a general rule, searching by radar with these fighters can't be expected to do much. For one thing, the actual range against these targets is only 8 nm. The AI fighters will close from outside radar range to firing range within one detection cycle. There may also be LDSD issues. And the Phantom has only directional radar. With the MiGs coming in from behind, as the screenshots show, they simply cannot be detected.

 

I've got a piece of advice for JoeK and his 'MiG invader' problem. Turn on your ships' radars. You don't give up much to the enemy in the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario by doing so, and you potentially gain a better chance of spotting those Nguyen Van Coc wannabees.

 

A further note about Vietnamese People's Air Force (VPAF) aces. Did you know there were sixteen of them in the Vietnam war? Did you know most of them (13) flew the MiG-17? Many American pilots were taken by surprise; some of them never saw the MiG coming.

Well, I tried to reply to the several questions asked or implied in response to my submitted info, but after previewing my reply, it would not allow me to post my reply (saying I have no permission to post to this topic) - even though it showed I was still logged in. So, I tried to copy the text of my reply and then logged out and back in and tried to paste it into a new reply - but the text is no longer available to paste... Ugh!

 

Anyway, I don't time now to re-type all of that, so I guess it's lost... and I'm not sure I recalled all of the questions anyway. If there is anything in particular that I need to address, let me know and I'll try again later.