DCS Questions

[♣_Spiritus_♣]

I have a couple questions that I'd like to ask here rather than the ED forums. Forgive me if this is all old news/bugs, but the game is brand new to me. All questions relate to either DCS and/or A-10C.

1) Do the runway lights at night seem drastically dimmer than what they should be to anyone else? You can barely see the lights without NV on until you get about 1 or 2 miles away if that. From my experience, (civilian and military in a fwd combat zone) you can see the runway, taxiways and obstruction lights from much, much further out.

2) I refueled mid-air in my A-10 with an S-3.

I may be wrong, but the A-10 can't refuel midair with an S-3 Viking or any aircraft that uses the basket refueling method. Without a dick, you can't penetrate. The basket/female end is for aircraft that have a refueling probe, which usually are USN and USMC aircraft. The boom/non-basket/probe from the KC-135 etc is for aircraft that have the female end, like the A-10, F-16, F-15, etc... (Pretty much all USAF aircraft, which makes sense... ) Is this a bug?

On a related note for real life, does anyone know how tankers go up... is it a mission by mission scenario where they only will be filling up certain aircraft or can they do it all? I know S-3/A-6/C130/USN/MC birds go up with baskets only but I've seen KC-135s and the 10s refuel both USAF birds who have the female end and USN/MC birds who have the male end. Is the basket hidden inside the boom and they can extend it out when needed and pull it back in when not needed?

And lastly,

3) Bird Strikes.

I love this part of the game, that and random failures but do they occur WAY too frequently for anyone else? Out of 5 takeoffs, I will have at least 2 or 3 end with a bird strike/engine fire or a random system failure. Don't get me wrong, I think this part of the game is fracking awesome but comparing it to reality it is happening far too frequent.

Anyways, hope to get some answers. Loving the game, reminds me of the late 90's playing Jane's F-15 all night long but about 10,000x better, writing down and sketching target info, comms, etc instead of doing homework/work.

[Foul Ole Ron]

1. Don't have real life experience so can't comment. Are you using 1.5 open beta?

2. You shouldn't be able to - if you can it sounds like a bug. I don't think you could refuel from the S-3 before.

3. You can turn off random failures completely and there's also an option somewhere in the settings for "birds" which you can put to zero to remove bird strikes.

[ATAG_Headshot]

The bird strikes has a slider in options. If I am not mistaken it can be turned up way higher than the percent chance in real life, so if you have the slider all the way to the right that could explain it a bit.

[♣_Spiritus_♣]

Thanks for the info guys,

Yes, I'm using the 1.5 open beta. Finally saw where the slider is, and yes it was set to 1000. Dropped it down to 500 and all is nice now. The refuel seems to be a bug. Sounds like all refueling is just point to point, and probed aircraft can refuel from the boom on a 135. Hopefully there can be a fix at some point.

As far as the airfield lights, I couldn't find anything out on the forums about them except for the occasional posting a few years ago. They look good at night through NVGs so maybe DCS has all airfield lighting set to low wattage intensity 100% of the time. Too bad they can't attach airfield lighting intensity with ATC commands because thats how it really works. We'd get calls from pilots all night long asking for different levels of intensity. You'd actually start remembering what certain pilots liked and which pilots were true prima donnas.