TIGERMERCS DOGFIGHT SERVER

Short fights. Clear results. Competitive BFM.

The TigerMercs Dogfight Server is a new BFM-focused multiplayer concept currently being developed and tested by the TigerMercs community.

The idea is simple:

Two pilots. One arena. Three minutes. Get the kill — or let the fight tell the story.

Unlike a traditional public Dogfight server, our system does more than simply wait for one aircraft to be destroyed. During every active fight, the server continuously evaluates the tactical development of the engagement.

A kill remains the primary objective.

But if neither pilot achieves the kill within the three-minute fight window, the server calls:

KNOCK IT OFF

The fight then ends with a BFM-based score instead of being discarded.

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HOW A FIGHT WORKS

Each Dogfight Arena is designed for two pilots.

Both pilots first check in through their respective READY zones. Once both are ready, they enter the combat area and prepare for the merge.

When the required start conditions are met, the server automatically announces:

FIGHT’S ON!

From that moment, the pilots have three minutes.

A kill ends the fight immediately.

If no kill occurs before the time limit, the fight ends with KNOCK IT OFF and the server evaluates the BFM performance of both pilots.

The system supports several independent arenas, allowing multiple fights to take place at the same time.

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THE KILL STILL MATTERS

TigerMercs Dogfight is not intended to replace the importance of the kill with an abstract points system.

The principle remains very clear:

The kill wins the fight.

A kill result is scored:

100 : 0

Only a kill counts as a Kill in the leaderboard.

A KIO result does not declare a winner. Instead, both pilots receive points according to the positional advantage they created during the fight.

This allows a fight without a kill to remain meaningful without pretending that a positional advantage is the same as shooting the opponent down.

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WHAT DOES THE SERVER MEASURE?

During the fight, the system evaluates several BFM-related factors in the background.

These include offensive positioning, time spent in the Control Zone and situations such as forced overshoots.

The result is not based on a single snapshot at the end of the fight.

Instead, the score reflects how the engagement developed over the full three-minute period.

That means a pilot who controlled most of the fight can still receive a strong score even if the engagement eventually reaches KIO without a kill.

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THE LEADERBOARD

The TigerMercs Dogfight Leaderboard is intended to show more than just a list of accumulated points.

Each pilot is tracked with:

Kills | KIO | Fights | Points | Average

The ranking itself remains kill-focused:

Kills first — Points decide ties.

The additional statistics provide context.

A high total score may come from flying many fights, while the Average shows how many points a pilot scores per fight.

This makes it possible to distinguish between activity and consistently strong BFM performance.

Example:

Pilot A
Kills: 12 | KIO: 8 | Fights: 24 | Points: 1687.4 | Avg: 70.3

The leaderboard therefore tells a little more of the story than simply:

Who has the most kills?

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PERFORMANCE TREND

The Average value also includes a small personal trend indicator.

🟢⬆️ — the most recent fight was clearly above the pilot’s previous average
🟰 — the result was roughly within the pilot’s normal range
🔴⬇️ — the most recent fight was clearly below the previous average

Small fluctuations are intentionally ignored so that the trend indicator only reacts to meaningful changes in performance.

The trend is designed as a simple indication of recent performance — not as an additional ranking factor.

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DOGFIGHT PRESETS

In addition to the standard Easy / Free Fight, the system is being developed with several structured HABFM-style setups.

These presets are intended to give pilots different starting geometries while keeping the actual fight itself unrestricted once FIGHT’S ON is called.

• Easy / Free Fight
• HABFM — Abeam
• HABFM — Head-on
• HABFM — Blue Low / Red High
• HABFM — Blue High / Red Low

The exact setup values are still being refined during testing.

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CURRENT DEVELOPMENT STATUS

The core system is already operating successfully in multiplayer testing.

Fight detection, automatic start, three-minute timing, Kill/KIO handling, BFM scoring and Discord result processing are all working as one connected system.

Current development is focused mainly on parallel multi-arena testing, special cases such as disconnects and slot changes, HABFM setup refinement and final balancing of the user experience.

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WHY TIGERMERCS DOGFIGHT?

There are already many excellent Dogfight and BFM servers in the DCS community.

TigerMercs Dogfight is not intended to copy them.

Our goal is to experiment with a slightly different format:

Short fights.
A clear objective.
A meaningful result even without a kill.
And enough data to understand how the fight actually developed.

FIGHT’S ON! ⚔️