Landing Penalties

In DCS v3.2.15 or later, the Apply Penalties for Failing to Land at Destination option is available. This option is not to be confused with the Enforce Pilot Landings option which is entirely separate and operates independently.

The Apply Penalties for Failing to Land at Destination option tracks where each human pilot lands (or emergency lands). If a pilot lands several times in the same mission, only the last landing event is considered. SEOW compares the location of the last landing event with the planned destination of that flight. If the pilot lands more than the Control Radius away from the planned destination, then an exception is issued. The exception triggers two things:

• A campaign notice for the attention of the relevant HQ command so that disciplinary action can be initiated.
• An extra delay over and above normal refueling delay for that particular aircraft.

Here is an image of an airbase register showing two different flights with delayed airframes. Each asterisk signifies an airframe subject to a landing penalty. If multiple airframes in the same flight are delayed, then the delays are cumulative. Only one airframe can be recovered for each elapsed mission.

We can see that Schwarm 1 of the first Staffel of 7/ZG26 has one airframe delayed. One more mission will have to pass before this airframe is recovered for action. In the meantime, Schwarm 1 has only 3 taskable airframes.

Schwarm 2 is in a worse situation. Two airframes are delayed. One will be recovered after one more mission, and the second will be recovered after the second extra mission. Right now, Schwarm 2 only has one airframe available for tasking, even though two more airframes exist in that flight (they are being repaired/transported back to base).

As of SEDCS v3.3.0, another mechanism has been introduced to delay airframes - the combat damage feature. Any airframe that records a "damaged" event in the logfile will be delayed for future tasking. Damage events are not cumulative - once an airframe is damaged in a mission, it will be delayed for subsequent missions. Multiple damage events have no effect on the calculated delay.

Warning: Not For Carrier Campaigns

Please note that this feature does not work for carrier campaigns. It should be disabled for all campaigns where carrier landings by human pilots will occur.