Introduction

We are proud to announce that the second round of the DCS Top Gun BFM competition will start on Saturday 14th of November 2015. Top Gun R2 is at the name implies a guns only PvP competition meaning that the only weapon that the jets will be allowed to carry is the cannon.

This event will be hosted by TAW crew (The Art Of Warfare) on their dedicated servers running the latest 1.5 version of DCS world. TAW have been contributing in many ways to the success of our past events so we are glad to see them evolving into official partners alongside the 104th Phoenix and the 51st PVO.

The mission itself is a courtesy of 104th_Stuge and we would like to thank him for his top quality work in putting all the pieces together to come up with an accurate and professional DCS mission dedicated to dogfighting.

Only PFM-equipped modern fighters will be used, i.e, The Su-27 Flanker and the F-15C Eagle; the competition will also feature two separate draws: 1v1 and 2v2.

This is an SA-sanctioned PvP competition and as such it will count for the DCS air-to-air rankings.

Match Protocol and code of behavior

All players and teams must connect to respective TeamSpeak “check in desk” on or before the times mentioned above ready to fly with exact same name used when signing up for this; they should then wait for the referee to drag them into the match channel. 15mn will be allowed for people running late; once 15mn have passed, a player maybe called from the “reserve TS channel” if available, otherwise, the opponent will be granted a Walk Over victory and will advance to the next round; a reserve pilot should be accepted as a substitute only for the first round matches and must not have a higher SA ranking in the A2A category than the player meant to be replaced. The referee must load the server but keep it paused until all the players have spawned in before unpausing for the round to start. All Players must be and remain on the same TS channel as the referee for the whole duration of the match and report back when spawning in and when finishing the round. Once the round is over and a winner declared, all players must notify the admin and report the score; the admin will then restart the mission for the next round until a player/team reaches the minimum number of rounds won to claim match victory All players must fly by the rules defined below in the section SETUP and ROE Mutual respect and sportsmanship is to be observed by everyone throughout the competition

Setup and Rules of Engagement

The competition will feature two draws: 1v1 and 2v2 The minimum number of pilots for the 1v1 competition to kick off is 8 with the maximum being 32. The minimum number of teams for the 2v2 competition to start is 4 with a maximum capacity of 16 teams. The competition will run on weekends (Saturday/Sunday) starting from the 14th of November. Matches could still be scheduled on weekdays if both pilots/teams are available. The map will be restarted after each round and will be paused until all pilots have spawned, then the round will kick off. Every match will be best of 7 rounds, i.e, first pilot/team to win 4 rounds will be declared winner. The Final fight will be first pilot/team to win 6 rounds (best of 10). Brackets will be based on either single or double elimination format depending on the number of participants. Single knockout means exiting the competition as soon as a match loss occurs while double elimination means each pilot/team will have to loose twice before getting eliminated. One squadron can field multiple teams in 2v2 but each player must stick to the same team throughout the competition. A player can be substituted by another player but only before the first fight occurs and the sub must not be part of another team in 2v2. Players/teams will be seeded according to their respective SA air-to-air ranking, which will determine which bracket they will be put in. Also note that brackets will be populated so that teams and pilots from the same squadron would face each other in the latest possible stage of the competition. Pilots/teams will spawn head to head and airborne at exact same speed and altitude and having exact same fuel burn time [Su-27 = 4512kg = 48%] and [F-15 = 4333kg =71%]; this has been measured using sustained turn at sea level with both planes experiencing engine shutdown after approximately 5 minutes 20 seconds. Of course, actual endurance will vary depending on one’s flying style and fuel management abilities. Pilots will spawn in a 50km diameter combat station (bubble); the goal is to destroy the opponents of force them out of the bubble. A warning message and sound will alert pilots when getting within 5km from the borders. A trigger will blow up any unit flying out of the combat zone if there is still an opponent flying. If all opponents are down, exiting the bubble will declare you winner of the round. All fights will occur on flat terrain for a pure BFM contest. If the hosting server crashes before a winner is declared, the round will have to be restarted. If a client disconnects upon or after the first merge, it will count as a loss. if a client side disconnection happens before the first merge, the round shall be restarted. ; only one client-side disconnection per pilot/team and per match (not round) is eligible for a round restart; any further disconnection will count as a loss regardless of when it happened. External views will be off and all settings set to Simulation mode Pilots must use the same aircraft until the match is over but can fly a different one in the next match Firing while merging with the opponent is allowed Fuel dumping is allowed Print screening is forbidden, server will notify admin when someone is print screening; this is a serious breach and will result in an immediate round loss; any further print screening will result in a disqualification. If all players run out of ammo while able to fly, then the round must be restarted Ping Limit is set to 400ms. Players/teams with pings above the limit can not make warping-related claims. All participants are requested to test their pings on the server prior to their match. If a player/team feels heavy warping of the opponent affected significantly the course of the round, they can notify the referee and submit an ACMI/Track right after the end of the round. The referee must watch the evidence straight away to decide whether the warping affected the course of the fight or not then take a decision to either restart the round or let it stand. Once the decision is made by the referee, stability measures like resetting/rebooting the routers must be taken by the host and the players and a fresh session must be created on the server. If a player/team submits an ACMI/track that shows no warping or a very mild one then they will be denied making further warping-related claims for the rest of the match. Players can swap sides after each round In case of a dispute, tracks/ACMI’s will have to be provided. The admin’s decision is final. Tracks from participants may also be required whenever deemed necessary; failure to provide a track when asked for will result in the loss of the round.

PICK THE WINNING PILOTS/TEAMS FOR TOP GUN R2

This competition can be watched almost live by the community as we intend to provide Tacview recordings of every fight as soon as it finishes for you to enjoy and maybe learn from as well, we are sure we will have plenty of interesting duels and a lot of good action can be expected. But this is not it, we will also host a fun prediction challenge where anyone can try to predict how the brackets will evolve in both 1v1 and 2v2. The one that comes up with the closest (or perfect) prediction will win a DCS: Flaming Cliffs 3 licence . More details will be released as to how to participate in the Prediction Challenge, so thanks for staying tuned.

Prizepool

On top of the rankings points that will matter for the end of season SA trophy, we will also have this time around a 200$ worth prizepool made of several DCS licences for the best performers proudly provided by both Situational Awareness and The Art of Warfare

Here is the complete breakdown below: