Let's Call Down the Thunder: A DCS A-10C Warthog LP.

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Digital Combat Simulator: A-10C Warthog is a combat flight simulator developed by Eagle Dynamics and published by The Fighter Collection. Apparently they're called The Fighter Collection because they actually own a collection of fighter planes. Neat. The game(s) website can be found here.

This flight simulator actually began as an instrument training simulator for the A-10C, and then had the physics models bolted on, making it into something that actually could be described as a game. All of the instruments and controls are preserved, creating a wall of inscrutable dials, gauges, switches and buttons. Some of which are of exceedingly dubious utility in a flight sim, like a button that tests warning lights.

If this sounds unfun and way out of your league, fret not: you're not the one that has to fly it. Sit back and enjoy my futile attempt to make this thing work like the lumbering angel of death it's supposed to be.

I'll be resizing screenshots to half size and sticking them in spoilers so that your computer doesn't freak out while downloading the images.

I didn't record or screencap much of the first training sessions, so here's a faithful reproduction:

And that concludes the highlights of training. Next up: maybe some technical info on the plane and it's armarments, and I try to kill things that aren't drones or stationary targets.

Throughout this LP, you will probably see me engage a lot of things with the main gun; including tanks. This may sound odd, but let me put this into context:

Probably a good idea to keep training until you can avoid snapping the wings off your own plane. Prooooobably for the best.

Training doesn't shoot back. I'll get there eventually, I just need to get bad enough at dodging AAA that I get some experience flying a plane with most of the components sandpapered off by machine gun fire.

That's probably not something covered by the usual tutorials. "alright, we've installed a breakaway wing, tail, elevator, and left aileron, now get out there and fly!"

Still, at least you know you're safe until the plane literally cannot support you anymore - I've heard it's like flying inside an armored bathtub.

Never underestimate the grognards.

This is awesome and I wholeheartedly approve.

Fun fact: you can't browse through controls while a game is in progress; I don't know why. Maybe to produce LP fodder.

Well, it's already called a Guided Bomb Unit. It also has a low number, so it's probably not one of them there fancy GPS-guided bombs.

You play this game significantly better than I played its cousin as a child. Then again I believe my reaction was to utterly panic and then see how far from my screen I could run before the plane crashed.

"Fuck my life." does lose some impact when you die within the following five seconds, though. Maybe "Fuck my death." applies better.

I say, pretending I know what I am doing with these games now. I do not. I can't even steer the goddamn helicopter in GTA.

As for why a child would even play this sort of game in the first place, my brother hogged the gaming PC usually, and it had a recognizable icon whenever I had it for ten minutes. And I sucked even worse at Duke Nukem and Civilization.

Davian Korran

It's fifteen seconds from the second missile launch. I loaded up the replay and checked the clock. Time flies when your plane is disintegrating. I think trying to land a damaged plane is my favourite part of these games. Though it usually doesn't end well. Like one of the flights I didn't save a replay of when I broke my landing gear coming in too fast and the plane dropped on a load of bombs. Probably should have jettisoned those beforehand.

You can also resume control from any point in the replay, so I used that to see if it was possible to evade the second missile. The answer is no, I was pretty much screwed the moment the first hit because it disabled the plane's countermeasures. I probably should have had those set beforehand. On the other hand, I did learn that I could have ejected safely had I have been a little faster.

I used to do crazy things in the fighter jet in GTA: San Andreas. Like fly it through highway tunnels and engage other jets while flying upside down.

I think in SA my biggest challenge was to jump a motorcycle aboard the plane, not the flying bit. As long as it's no full-fledged sim with buttons everywhere I can mostly fly digital planes, but fuck helicopters to hell. I always end up veering sideways into a tree or a skyscraper.

Fifteen seconds. And it does indeed! I can't actually remember how far I'd make it out from the office when it started crashing, if nothing else because I imagine by the third time I bolted out of there, my parents would have asked me what I was doing. And the answer being "Flying planes!" might have required some additional explanation.

That replay feature sounds pretty neat, actually. That's something it'd make sense for a game of this sort to have, but not necessarily something you'd think of. Usually in sims they don't put in that much effort, but then if this began as a training simulator it'd make sense you could go back and see what you should have done or if you could have done anything or, if the situation were to arise whilst in a real plane, it'd be time to say your prayers before your ass was about to get fried.

I first discovered that feature trying to access a controls menu while grabbing screenshots for this LP. I thought it was a little odd that the "control" button in the Esc menu didn't do anything, and that the replay seemed to be bugging out and my plane was off track from what I remembered. Shortly after my plane slammed into the ground, it occurred to me that it wasn't a control menu.

Oh, and for the record none of the stupid stuff I've done so far has been me doing things for gags. Yes, I really did accidentally open the cockpit. You see, "C" is HOTAS China Hat Switch Up, while "Ctrl-C" is Open Cockpit.

we are here FOR the pretty pictures. Resize them if you must, but stop putting your entire posts in spoiler warnings, it's pointless and frankly a bit irritating.

I am an awful, horrid, terrible person but the last three screenshots made me laugh out loud for real. Goddamn Ruskies and their quicksand.... grass? Quickgrass?

It keeps the page from jumping around while it loads pictures. Among other things it means the "go to last read post" functionality actually works.

This. It also helps slower computers load the pictures without the browser trying to claws its own eyes out with images going blank everywhere. Considering everything I think clicking a tag once is a lot less annoying than having to cross fingers every time the page loads on my bad pc, let alone a phone browser.

I guess another option to fix the page jumping around would be to make a 1x540 (or whatever your vertical size is) blank spacer image compressed as tiny as it gets and insert an instance alongside every actual image. Xenforo only seems to have trouble when it's loading and resizing posts for a long period of time, so if you tossed in a spacer that loaded fast it would probably size the page and jump to the correct post just fine.

Speaking of which, I tossed a linked index into my first post.

When I was in Basic Training, we spent a few days camped right next to a Warthog range. I only saw a couple, and at a distance, but you could *hear* them all night. Those cannons in the nose are just *incredibly* loud. It's as though someone took the sound you hear in-game and put it through Spinal Tap's amplifier.

Romance that Jeep...that sexy Jeep


Also, I hope this can be useful:

I need to update this, I actually have something recorded, I just haven't had the time to write it up.

The sangry grognards will reward you with "likes" if you do.

Nice work, Sheepherder! I'm a little surprised, though - the game lets you identify yourself as Canadian even though the US is the only operator of the A-10? That's something I didn't expect.

It's one game in what they intend to be a series, including ones for ground vehicles. I'm guessing they did all the gruntwork of putting all the nations and decoration they want in but didn't bother to limit people because they have relatively few human operable vehicles at the moment. Either that, or they enjoy the though of a Turk secretly posing as an American pilot as much as I do.

And I chose 410th because:

1. They're a training squadron at the moment.
2. They used to fly Bristol Beaufighters and De Havilland Mosquitoes in combat.
3. Cougars!



Also, I need to replace the profile picture (not shown), it looks lind of doofy.

I LOVE YOU!

Also, be careful and don't blow up houses! Kids and doggies live there! Think about the dogs! D:

I assume the spacer is supposed to take up space on the same line as the image? In the Flexile Dark theme, it just pushes the image down to the next line. Don't know what other themes people are using, but just thought you should know.

Damn, I thought I had a bulletproof solution for the issues Xenforo has with large numbers of images. Oh well.

Also, I saw this avatar in my alerts:



I laughed really, really hard.

If it works for everyone else, don't stop on my account!

I've accidentally blown up civilians. I didn't know there was a highway right behind that group of military vehicles until I saw the missile streak past them and blow up a random passerby I had accidentally locked on to.

There's a reason they don't trust just anyone to fly these things.

I removed the spacer image already. It's too bad XenForo doesn't have BBCode for tables as I could probably fix your problems with them and still have the spacers in. But I know a lot of people use non-default themes so it's probably not just you having issues.

You are going to be so disappoint.

I played a mission last night, it's coming.