Gentlemen.
https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/thumb/9/9d/Gentlemen.png/180px-Gentlemen.png?t=20110419200524
If you're not familiar with Team Fortress 2 memes..

The admins and myself had a bit of a brainstorm recently and one of the things I thought I might try my hand at is doing a little bit of a weekly/as appropriate update spiel with news and information on what's going on in our F99th: World.

So, a little outline of the topics I can think to cover at the moment include the following:

• 16th AGR Match Reschedule
• F99th FRAWGSMOKE (name subject to change if anyone thinks of anything better)
• Leatherneck Splits
• Normandy 1944 Map/Assets Pre-Order

Please feel free to respond with questions and comments or to introduce your own topics of discussion if my list is not entirely exhaustive (which I'm sure it isn't). Again, as long as I have time for it, I plan to type up these posts on a weekly basis or if news is slower, maybe every 2 weeks or whatever it may be. I hope you'll enjoy it.

16th Air Guards Regiment Match Reschedule

Thus far there is no date set yet for the rescheduled match, but I have suggested either of the next two Saturdays (3/25 or 4/1, same time) if 16th AGR is available. Just waiting for a reply. Also, Tr1gg22 inquired about enlisting our help in stress testing their East Coast server sometime, so if that crops up at some point and you're online I may jump in your channel and bother you for a moment, if you're willing to lend a hand of course. If you have not signed up for this event, please do so here as we may be forced to limit the number of participants in a given match and we'll only be able to include those who have registered for the event. If you have no idea what I'm talking about and are scared and confused by my mention of this, see this thread about the event and this one about the mission and know that we tried to run it last week and ended up getting reacquainted with DCS's penchant for network lag and crashes whenever you're trying to do something extra awesome.

F99th FRAWGSMOKE Event

Yes, it's a play on "Hawgsmoke" for the Su-25 Frogfoot. Cygon_Parrot and I discussed the idea of putting together a little bit of a SEAD challenge for "The Outriders," but of course anyone that would like to take a shot at Su-25T glory would be welcome. The mission build is in early stages and Cygon and I will have to establish the scoring guidelines, but at this point I wanted to let you guys know that it's in the works. No promises, but I think I can get the mission finished by midweek and then it's just a matter of Cygon's, The Outriders', and the rest of our mutual availability. I expect to put together a dedicated thread when we get closer to putting the actual event on (and it may just be something that we'll fire up on an "as-interested/available" basis, not one specific set date).

Leatherneck is No More! Welcome "Heatblur" and "Magnitude 3"

That's right, the makers of the top-notch Fishbed and Viggen modules have split along those same lines (the MiG-21 dudes are now "Magnitude 3" and the AJS-37 dudes are "Heatblur"). See thread on the subject here on ED's forums. The bullet points so far as I'm concerned are:

• F-14 is still expected to release this year.
• Heatblur took ownership of the Viggen and Magnitude 3 the Fishbed and will continue developing modules independently of each other.
• Other expected modules like the F4U Corsair and an Iwo Jima map have been split between the two companies as well, but have not been directly discussed as to who is doing what. I think M3 (my shorthand for Magnitude 3 henceforth, Heatblur will be HB) is taking up the F4U and Iwo Jima, but don't quote me on it.

Other than that, if there was any juicy inner-circle drama behind it we'll probably never know, but I welcome any conspiracy theories you guys would like to share or develop in this thread. I was excited about Corsair too, but as long as I get my Tomcat I can live with whatever happens between the former Leatherneck-ers. But I did like the name "Leatherneck" better than either of the two they came up with. HB is remarkably generic and M3 is just kind of terrible. I suppose all that matters is the quality of their modules though, and I expect they'll both live up to their Leatherneck standards in that regard.

Normandy 1944 Map and Assets Packs (they're bundled so they can charge full price for the map*) Pre-Order Now Available
*Opinions expressed by pyromaniac4002 do not necessarily represent those of the Fighting 99th Air Wing and certainly should not lead anyone to sue F99th for defamation, and hopefully not pyro either but he doesn't have any money for you to take anyways.

I know many of you hold zero interest for any of the World War II-focused content in DCS and consider it an obnoxious distraction from the only real 3rd/4th generation combat aircraft simulator for the last 10 years, but to hell with y'all because some people do like it (including me) and it's happening anyways. ED held a livestream of (I'm sure Wags again, I didn't catch it myself) flying on the map and the pre-order went up on ED's store Friday ( here ). Even if you don't count yourself among those who appreciate this map or the modules it caters to, you've got to admit they made a hell of a good looking product. A couple of steps beyond NTTR. I couldn't tell you if Normandy will be totally friendly with the non-WWII modules (I think runway length would be a problem in many cases) but if you've got anything piston-powered in your collection I'd say it's shaping up to be a fantastic addition. The "assets pack" strikes me as a gimmicky (especially if Normandy does turn out to be newer-aircraft unfriendly) idea to collect a full-price purchase instead of the $40 ED is used to receiving when everyone pre-orders their stuff at a 20% discount. The price point with the current discount is $47.99 which I think is plenty fair for a map of this quality, but once it goes off sale I think they're going to see a lot less asset pack purchases. Claimed/expected release is scheduled for "late May 2017."

And that's all I have to say about that.


Cheers, F99th-ians and friends. Here's to a good week ahead!

Thanks for the detailed post! I'm curious to see how Normandy will do, I personally think it will take years to get a flyable B-17 and even then the game will slowly die out.

Why do these companies insist on making aircraft like the L39, Hawk, C101. I never see anyone flying these aircraft. A goal of a business is to make money and listen to your customers and an aircraft like the Hawk was a stupid move to make (I think).

Glad you guys liked the post!

I don't think they have any plans to make a player-controlled B-17 of any sort, at least from the snippets I've read over time. I think they mean for it to be strictly an AI model for the purposes of placing in missions for Allies to escort or Axis to intercept. Which is still cool I think. Actually taking the controls of some part of the B-17 would of course be several orders of magnitude cooler.

The Leatherneck breakup seems like a clean split along the lines of who was working on the F-14 vs. who wasn't, so I think they may not be losing any progress or development muscle. Plus, when the Viggen started being offered for sale they also included it on the Heatblur store that everyone was like "uhh, idk why, but okay," about. I think I saw that Vampyre actually pointed that out on the thread on ED's forums and how in hindsight it makes much more sense; this was something they've planned to do for a while. I think whatever delays may happen are those that still would have happened if they remained Leatherneck.

Frawgsmoke is intended to be a SEAD-specific competition, so anything you might be killing is something that's meant to effectively shoot back at you. It's a bit of a balancing act designing it though as I want to get Cygon's input, but I want him to be as blindsided as anyone else who hops in to log a score. Either way, it's just something different and I think it'll end up being fun. Something we can post up as a leaderboard-type of deal.

This. Even stuff like the sabre. There is no rhyme or reason behind the aircraft that get released. Half of them you fly a couple times and then you're like "ok, now how do I make a mission that accommodates this thing?" And then you see, oh.. I can't.

As a sim it's great, as a game it falls flat pretty bad sometimes. My hat's off to the mission makers who take that mess and turn it into something fun.

lol, I guess an F/A-18C version would have to be called Bugsmoke? Hornesmoke? If it's the same format it would be specific to the Hornet so it would merit a related name. I dunno. We don't have to cross that bridge for a while yet, so time is on our side.

If in the future we get appropriate modules and it becomes open to multiple airframes then I'd go more generic. Maybe "Weasel Ball."

Great report/summary, pyro. If you could manage to do that once a month it would be great for those of us who can't do all the detailed following up of what's going on in ED and the F-99th, and still hope to have a bit of time left to play DCS every now and then too, LOL! If you can do it weekly it would be fantastic!

Thanks Cygon! Yeah it'll be a "play it by ear" thing, but what I'm aiming for is "a week's worth of material" and sometimes during those slowdowns it might take 2 or 3 weeks to get to that point. Hopefully between ourselves and whatever happens in DCS/our other interests in the near future those will be few and far between.