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Crazycryodude posted:Oh my god did we just vaporize like half the Dictator's airforce in the west? The Tornadoes are a shame, and probably could have been avoided, but that's the cost of doing business I guess. At least the Great Benguela Turkey Shoot will hopefully make it easier to hold air superiority. Both losses were preventable. Like Yooper said, the SAM hit could have been defeated by maneuvering and it shouldn't have been north of the border in the first place (it was supposed to be helping following the eastern strike). And the Tornado shot down by the MiG got killed because Rackham Flight (the Eastern Gripen CAP) was supposed to be escorting them all the way to the target, but got pulled of to the west dealing with the Angolans -- I'd wanted Buccaneer Flight (the Central CAP) to have been doing that instead. Overall, that went very well. We showed again just how drat good the Gripens are at air-to-air work. power crystals posted:Lost a Tornado to a Strela-10. At least it's less embarassing than losing a Gripen to a J7... and godammit this is why Rohan was a terrible choice. I was hoping she'd at least try to shoot down some Angolans, but it was not to be. Hopefully we didn't kill anyone important.
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Apr 23, 2017 06:13
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All our dudes having Ace proficiency level is really paying off. That effective agility boost is pretty insane.
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Apr 23, 2017 06:15
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Did we do something to earn Ace proficiency, or is it just assumed we're all experienced pilots already?
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Apr 23, 2017 06:17
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Yooper, a bit of humble feedback. - Could you slow down a little bit, especially when stuff really starts flying? Example: That last part of the mission where the Tornadoes and F4's went after the armor. It was really hard to keep track of what was happening for me, someone just watching it. I can imagine it's far worse for you trying to control it. I don't mind a longer mission video myself. I think it'll also give you better situational awareness as to what your forces are doing, and may prevent future welps or near welps. -Please don't be afraid to take direct control of your forces. Even though those 2 F4's peeling off to fuel just as they're about to drop their bombs was hilarious, it was dumb. If the AI is acting the fool, please smack it and tell it to drop the bombs, then go fuel. Little things though, this is great so far.
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Apr 23, 2017 06:38
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Still watching the video. I'll have more comments soon... But, uh, next time can we try flying our MQ-9 at higher than 200 feet AGL?
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Apr 23, 2017 06:46
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sparkmaster posted:Yooper, a bit of humble feedback. Also wear your helmet! You need to be safe! Overall, that went fantastic. It looks like the Free State tried a push on the north and got slapped? Id love to get ahold of their kill/loss list, if anyone of them will take a bribe. Next up, I think we can focus on SEAD, clear the route to the capital. Bet those infantry are going to be advancing quite nicely. Oh and we need to kill that SAM battery that got our Tornado 
Loel fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 06:47
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My first mission I'm so excited to go out and kill some baddi- Please take manual control when the AI poops out, like those guy turning around about a second outside of firing range at the end of the mission. We could have had an even bigger bonus by being able to hit another target with that flight.
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Apr 23, 2017 06:52
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Thread worries about the morality of cluster munitions against military targets, hires literal terrorist. 
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Apr 23, 2017 07:19
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i only drop ethically sourced free trade vegan cluster bombs
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Apr 23, 2017 07:23
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Yooper posted:
Dreamsicle posted:Who was in the hotel when it was bombed? Hopefully we got lucky and most of the occupants were Dos Santos's officers. Davin Valkri posted:With a name like "Comfort Hotel and Safari"? Probably rich tourists. Worst possibility now is outside intervention on behalf of the Dictator... Bacarruda posted:I was hoping she'd at least try to shoot down some Angolans, but it was not to be. Hopefully we didn't kill anyone important. I wonder what our threat level looks like now...
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Apr 23, 2017 07:24
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As soon as everyone voted Rohan I knew it was going to result in war crimes. Should have voted Bogdan.
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Apr 23, 2017 07:27
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Upon realizing that Silent Bob is flying in the combat zone, that leaves the far more important question - WHERE THE HECK IS JAY?! Our.. Ground intel guy at the airfield is probably giving us about 95% obscenities when he makes an intel drop isn't he? wedgekree fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 07:36
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wedgekree posted:Upon realizing that Silent Bob is flying in the combat zone, that leaves the far more important question - WHERE THE HECK IS JAY?! Probably spectating the Thunderdome.
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Apr 23, 2017 07:55
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Welp, rip me. In real terms, we only made a profit of 12 million, given the cost of the Tornadoes.
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Apr 23, 2017 08:12
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Well, losses and fuckups are going to happen. It's interesting to see the AI acting on its own timetable, and it looks like we've confirmed which mercs went where. At this point I'm almost tempted to try to take out harbors in a sort of aerial blockade - is it even possible to do something like that without something like a MOAB or nuke?
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Apr 23, 2017 08:17
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Tapco got to take out both artillery and tanks? Wow, those DCS hours put in India are really paying off!
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Apr 23, 2017 08:28
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Still watching, but I note that all three of our HARMs got pickled off at nothing early in the mission, hence why Yooper couldn't find them when he went looking at about the 24:00 mark. Edit: Okay, never mind, we had more HARMs. Although I don't think we hit anything with those either. And what the hell was Mobius trying to do that involved doing donuts over a SAM site until it shot him down rather than flying away and hitting it with a bomb or something? Might be worth arranging for Commander Rohan to take a nice relaxing vacation while leaving her Rafales to us. That would nicely replace our aircraft losses. Also, it looks like the mercs at S&M were more on the M side this time, because we saw a whole bunch of Golden Eagles get swatted in exchange for jack poo poo. The Sandman fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 09:32
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The Sandman posted:Edit: Okay, never mind, we had more HARMs. Although I don't think we hit anything with those either. And what the hell was Mobius trying to do that involved doing donuts over a SAM site until it shot him down rather than flying away and hitting it with a bomb or something? The radar was set to pulse on randomly. Mobius spotted a pulse and went to hit it, but it turned off again before he got into launch range. You can't very well launch a HARM without the R, so he was waiting for it to pulse on again, and just ignoring whatever it was the platoon was eyeball-firing at him.
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Apr 23, 2017 10:02
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Wow, we really did a number on them! To bad about the Tornado's though. (More like Tornadon't)
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Apr 23, 2017 10:09
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Woohoo I got to fly this mission and nothing else because I was to cautious about my fuel (yooper we need to set the refuel parameters to sub 50%) Great mission though besides the loss of the tornado's
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Apr 23, 2017 10:14
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The other lesson learnt is probably flying the tanker further east
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Apr 23, 2017 10:44
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All the Phantom haters can shut the gently caress up, both of them still flying. Meanwhile, jamming nados got whacked just like that.
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Apr 23, 2017 10:49
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Our Tornadoes weren't jamming. I don't have a clue what they were up to.
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Apr 23, 2017 11:13
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Added Space posted:The radar was set to pulse on randomly. Mobius spotted a pulse and went to hit it, but it turned off again before he got into launch range. You can't very well launch a HARM without the R, so he was waiting for it to pulse on again, and just ignoring whatever it was the platoon was eyeball-firing at him. Thats what the Tornado launched ALARM is for, if we've got any. Missile gets launched at a radiating target and it works like normal. If the target stops radiating, the missile zooms up to 13km, deploys a parachute, and waits. when the target starts radiating again, cut the chute and off we go again. Edit: Dammit, they're Ex-German Tonkas, not RAF, so the ALARM won't fit 
Anghammarad fucked around with this message at 11:19 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 11:16
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Lessons learned
Yooper, in the future, I'll try to write clearer and less-ambiguous orders to make your job simpler. e: Agreeing with Psawhn's observations re: aircraft orders. Bacarruda fucked around with this message at 11:50 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 11:21
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Kill Summary
Pilot Kills
Losses
e: now out-of-date information. See Yooper's AAR. Angolan Air Force
Other Mercenaries  Employer: The Free State Causalities: Operation First Impressions: NO KNOWN LOSSES Strength:
 Employer: The Dictator Causalities: Operation First Impressions: 1x MiG-29 Fulcrum, 4x OV-10A Broncos ' Strength:
Bacarruda fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 11:22
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Great LP! I would love to join as a mercenary, on any side of the conflict if there is no room otherwise. I will work for the highest bidder anyways, if I become a nemesis for you goons so be it. Flying planes or sitting in a SAM site staring at screens, doing some intelligence/sabotage or electronic warfare work, I don't care what I am ordered to do as long as I get payed! If you have any roles open anywhere, sign me up, please. Go team (whoever pays me)!
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Apr 23, 2017 11:25
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Added Space posted:The radar was set to pulse on randomly. Mobius spotted a pulse and went to hit it, but it turned off again before he got into launch range. You can't very well launch a HARM without the R, so he was waiting for it to pulse on again, and just ignoring whatever it was the platoon was eyeball-firing at him. Wait, is that what happened? There is a reason SEAD is done in pairs, one with cluster bombs and one with HARMs, to prevent exactly that sort of silliness.
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Apr 23, 2017 11:26
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So, finished watching the mission and then editing my thoughts. My immediate reactions are in the first section, and then post-mission comments in the second section. I think I prefer having your webcam in the corner of the map, not the corner of the full screen. I like being able to see the database picture and the other information in the top sidebar window. I found this mission harder to follow because of that. -Can we fly our MQ-9 at higher than 200 feet AGL? I know it was set to 2000 feet, but that was 2000 feet ASL without the “terrain following” option checked and the terrain altitude was above that. (If you’re worried about the MQ-9 being a bit OP, then we can start adding cloud cover.) -I was getting nervous when our Hawks were doing strafing runs while a flight of Phantoms was coming in with 2000 pound bombs. I think it’s actually possible for splash damage to frag friendly planes if they get too close to the explosion. -There was a mechanized platoon with two vehicles remaining… and eight bombs incoming.  I really don’t trust the default WRA setting of “Target’s missile defense value” and this is why. I think we’re going to have to explicitly set this to one or two bombs, especially for the 2000 pound monsters.-The MQ-9 was buddy lasing for the Phantoms, which is pretty neat. We might have to take advantage of this in the future if cloud cover starts getting in the way. DSM had an 89% chance of either spoofing or dodging that missile. Pretty good, but we don’t want to be letting our Gripens take too many of those chances. We might want to set WRA in the future to not waste Meteors on helicopters. It’d suck if our Gripens couldn’t defend themselves in BVR combat after they’d spent all their Meteors on something that can’t shoot back. We should have prosecution zones for SEAD and AAW patrols in the future. Mobius-Pegasus were off chasing targets deep behind enemy lines since they had a SEAD mission with no limits to how far they were allowed to go. Same goes for DSM and Hot Pants. Actually, wait… Bacarruda had already defined ROE in his mission proposal! This should have been translated into an exclusion zone and prosecution zone. On top of that, I sorta didn’t like DSM and Hot Pants chasing off after those Mig-23s when they only had a pair of IRIS-Ts each. Whiskey Delta 69, Ventura, and Unicorn nearly got into trouble during Operation Max Profits in this exact situation... But this can be on us, because they’re obeying their Winchester ROE since they’re going “Shotgun: engage WVR targets of opportunity.” They also got confused and stuck around that no-navigation zone. They really could have used some extra help getting unstuck, Yooper. I would have been very frustrated if they or someone else had gotten shot down because of this. I have no idea why Mobius was flying at 12,000 feet ASL while trying to hit an enemy SAM with its HARMs. This is something I wanted to avoid in Lhasa and is why I explicitly told the SEAD flights to conduct their mission at high altitude. At this point I also don’t know why they weren’t able to fire. Maybe because the SAM’s radar was turned off, or maybe because it hadn’t been positively identified as a SAM site yet? There was a furball brewing in the east, and our Phantoms turn back to refuel while still at ~75% fuel and at least 10-20 minutes until bingo! I am really going to have to experiment to figure out the rules for automatic tanking because this has now officially become a problem that has got our pilots killed. We are going to keep losing planes in the future because half our pilots turn chicken as soon as their fuel gauge even twitches! …yep, turns out that if you keep circling around a SAM site at low altitude then eventually the guys on the ground get off their asses and do something about it! Who'd 'a thunk it?  Ideally, a Tornado on a SEAD mission armed with anti-radiation missiles that have a 70 nautical mile range should never even find itself in a position to be shot at by infrared AA like that Strela-10! Mobius basically committed suicide with his piloting there.At least I now know why they weren’t firing on that SAM site. They were smart enough to know it was some kind of AA, so because they were on a SEAD mission they went to try to engage it. But, as it turns out, Strela-10s don’t have fire control radar, and anti-radiation missiles can’t do poo poo to something that’s not radiating. So they were stuck in a perpetual loop of trying to engage the target with weapons that could never lock on to the target. I think if someone had managed to ID the target as "no radar" then they would have given up; I guess their Mk. 1 Eyeballs failed them because they were at 12,000 feet, and the SAM was a tiny little Strela-10 vehicle. Yooper, you let one of those Mig-29s that had just shot down Grouse-Rokkit fly right past another pair of Tornados during high time-warp! Our Tornados were RTB, so they had their blinders on and would have done nothing to try to defend themselves. If those Migs hadn’t been RTB then we could potentially have lost all our Tornados! … Just saw that our MQ-9 is off, forgotten, still circling the destroyed rocket battery at 200 feet, all alone, despite his mission orders to RTB when the rest of the strikers were egressing. We’re lucky a second wave of planes never took off, because it’s just a sitting duck. I guess MEAT was piloting the UAV, but he left his seat to see what was going on in mission control and then got distracted by everything that was happening? wait wait wait what the gently caress there was an Igla section there the WHOLE loving TIME!? It’s an absolute loving miracle that our MQ-9 wasn’t shot down too! loving hell our Phantoms turned back for fuel again. ...Aaand the other flight of Phantoms RTBd without dropping their bombs at all because of tanker woes. At least we finally got to see the power of two-thousand pound laser-guided bombs. Just two bombs killed all three tanks left in the platoon. ====================================== Overall impressions… to be honest, the mission was okay. The mission success was tempered by some mismanagement. Those two losses were preventable; the damage to Monongue, likewise. To be honest, we got lucky that we didn’t lose even more planes. I think Bacarruda is vindicated by wanting more Tornados and not leaving that much of a cash buffer in his purchase proposal. Now we only have two Tornados, and about a hundred million doing nothing by sitting in the bank. I wish we could wire up K&P and get a rush shipment of as many Tornados as we can get. Here are my final thoughts for the mission: 1. This has popped up in pretty much every mission so far: Yooper, the attack order in Command is not like traditional RTS games. In most RTSs, units follow their last attack order and ignore everything else. Here, a simple F1 order adds the target to the priority target queue. If you had already designated a target with F1, they’ll attack that first, and only go onto the second if the first target is destroyed before they’re Winchester. (If they blow their load on the first target then they'll never get around to attacking the second target.) So when you want some planes to go after a new priority target, often you have to order them to “Disengage All” (CTRL-E) first to clear their automatic and priority target queues, and then you’re free to give them an attack order. You might try enabling drawing “attack vectors,” so you can see which target a plane is really going after. To be honest, sometimes even that isn’t enough. If they think they have something better or higher priority to do, then they’ll do that first and only get around to your targets when they get the chance to. It can sometimes take a bit of extra investigation to figure out what a plane is really trying to do when it doesn’t appear to be following your orders. I can accept that stopping everything you're doing to debug plane behavior can be really hard to do “live” and on-camera, though. 2. Please please please, Yooper, if you see planes doing something stupid like loitering around a known hostile position at low or medium altitude without doing anything, getting confused because of a no-navigation zone, flying RTB right past a plane that had just murdered their buddies, or turning back to refuel while bandits are bearing down on their friends even though they’re already at 75% gas, intervene. I can accept that you don't find it fun to go full-super-spergtastic-micromanagement-Shift-F1-targeting-everything-while-constantly-dragging-waypoints-around, and seeing you do things mostly with the mission editor and scripting with a tiny bit of management is really cool. But, please, do something if our pilots are suffering from a very obvious case of poo poo-to-the-brain. Both Tornado losses were avoidable, and it’s a miracle that the MQ-9 and the other two Tornados weren’t shot down as well. 3. We’re really going to have to figure out what the gently caress is going on with air refueling. This is the third mission in a row that it’s given us grief, and the first time we’ve taken casualties because of it. If we don’t get a handle on the rules then it won’t be the last time we take casualties, either. 4. We have also got to figure out the WRA for air-to-ground weaponry. Nuking the gently caress out of a mechanized platoon may be satisfying, but it meant that we had to rely on quick turnaround to finish off the entire force in the west. 5. I can accept the MQ-9 being a bit overpowered if you let it loiter at very high altitude and use its super powerful IR optics to detect and classify absolutely everything within a hundred mile radius. To be honest, I kiiinda suspected this would be the case even as I proposed buying it. (Modern planes with really good FLIR and IRST systems, like the F-35, also have this same “problem”.) If it’s getting to be too much, then just add some cloud cover at medium altitude; please don’t kill off our Reaper by flying it at 200 feet near an Igla platoon . (I dread adding weather, though, since cloud cover will really gently caress with our current fleet and make it very hard to take out SAM sites, especially after losing half our Tornados. Clouds block laser-guidance, so our Phantoms will have to dip below the clouds just to hit anything unless we take advantage of buddy-lasing.) 6. Bacarruda did set some ROE in this mission that could have translated to exclusion zones and prosecution zones. I’d like to see those more in the future, and I’ll try to remember to include ROE and defined engagement zones for CAP, CAS, and SEAD patrols. If we lose planes because they’ve disobeyed the ROE, like arguably what happened on this mission, then that’s really frustrating. If we lose planes in the future because we’ve hosed up our ROE, well, that’s on us and just adds hilarity .7. I apologize for my frustrated tone and constant nitpicking. Obviously I'm the kind of guy who puts a crazy amount of attention to figuring out the rules of a system. When I run a CMANO mission it ends up progressing not much faster than real time due to constant micromanagement! (Not helped by it barely chugging along on my laptop.) You really are doing an amazing job with this LP.
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Apr 23, 2017 11:29
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We really need to put in more conditionals into our plans, there's no way we should have been sending those Tornadoes up against Fulcrums with a less-than-stellar Phantom escort, if the airspace isn't clear the strike shouldn't be going in at all. Also the HARM carriers on the SEAD mission should be standing off as far as possible and waiting for the target to radiate, I don't know if this is achievable with the mission plan and might have to be done with micro-management of patrol zones when a site is detected. Blowing up an entire air wing was awesome however, and the production values remain top notch. Nice combat sweater Yooper
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Apr 23, 2017 11:41
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Good to see that our Tornados held up the finest traditions of the type by becoming smoking holes in the ground.
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Apr 23, 2017 12:47
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On the one hand no one wants to see aircraft lost due to errors but on the other hand we are a merc unit so mistakes happen. I'd rather take it as part of the game and learn from what happened and try and change a few things. I think if Yooper had to pause the game to make changes in real time it would lose some of the production value. Just my thoughts. Also Rohan did no wrong, she did exactly what she said she would and I find no fault with that.
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Apr 23, 2017 12:58
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What kind of civilians are hanging out at a dictator's hotel by a lithium mine in a warzone, anyway? Hopefully not white ones. Or Chinese. E: From Wikipedia, quote:Use as space launch platform 90s Cringe Rock fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 12:59
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90s Cringe Rock posted:What kind of civilians are hanging out at a dictator's hotel by a lithium mine in a warzone, anyway? I don't think we could actually make China any angrier.
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Apr 23, 2017 13:19
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90s Cringe Rock posted:There's got to be something Hired Goons can do with this. Any F-104s still on the market? Off hand, I know there's a display team in Florida that operates them called (unsurprisingly) the Starfighters. Most of theirs are former Italian ones, though there's a couple Canadair ones with them too.
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Apr 23, 2017 13:27
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Echoing the great production values of this LP. I'd like to sign up as a pilot when a slot comes up.90s Cringe Rock posted:What kind of civilians are hanging out at a dictator's hotel by a lithium mine in a warzone, anyway? quote:The safety record of the F-104 Starfighter became high-profile news, especially in Germany, in the mid-1960s. The Federal German Republic initially ordered 700 (instead of the French Mirage), and later another 216, a total of 916 aircraft.[65] Deliveries started in early 1962 and before the end of January, the first of no fewer than 262 German F-104s had crashed. In June 1962 four F-104 crashed on the same day. 116 German pilots died[65] during peacetime between 25 January 1962 and 11 December 1984. Grieving widows sued Lockheed from 1969, and by 1975 more than thirty of them had received 3 million DMs each.[66] Hence the F-104 became known as Witwenmacher ("The Widowmaker") in West Germany. Some operators lost a large proportion of their aircraft through accidents, although the accident rate varied widely depending on the user and operating conditions; the German Air Force and Federal German Navy lost about 30% of aircraft in accidents over its operating career,[67] and Canada lost 46% of its F-104s (110 of 235).[68] The Spanish Air Force, however, lost none.[69][70] Looking forward to seeing these in the goon squadron.
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Apr 23, 2017 13:38
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I guess there was some hope that Rohan would be driven-angry instead of indiscriminately psychotic-angry but yep we gotta get rid of her asap.
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Apr 23, 2017 13:42
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It was one of the first cases of massive grift by LockMart and the Germans were using a plane that is supposed to be a high altitude interceptor as a low level bomber. At least that's what Cold War thread taught me.
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Apr 23, 2017 13:43
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Just look at those wings, though. The only thing hotter is the tail end of an English Electric Lightning, or possibly a red-headed quartermaster's anger at procurement decisions. Also Rohan's fine, she's just getting used to a new environment. We don't drop goon pilots the first time they keep running away from combat to urgently refuel when their buddies need support, do we?
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Apr 23, 2017 13:45
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Also, any rich person caught in the hotel bombing deserved it. Sky communism now!
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Apr 23, 2017 13:59
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