By Brandt Ryan January 18th, 2000

  Problems and Limitations

In spite of the navigation systems offering a wealth of information, they have appeared to have left out some very fundamental functions. The bullseye gadget is bent. First of all, there is no display of your own aircraft's bullseye position. You have to call AWACS for this.

Secondly, the bullseye posit of your radar cursors is TO bullseye, instead of FROM bullseye -- therefore it's always 180 degrees off. This is significant as AWACS uses bullseye positions to call out threats. How am I supposed to react when I don't even know where I am in relation to bull? I have to call AWACS, and that is too much tasking. Besides, AWACS should be the one asking ME what my bullseye position is.

I've listened to Kosovo flight comms, and this is probably the most commonly asked question from AWACS to a given flight. AWACS doesn't know what my bullseye position is. All they have is a contact, around about a hundred other contacts, and the bullseye positions for each. However, they don't which one my particular flight is, that's why they're constantly asking.

The EW automatically filters out friendly spikes. We should have the option to hear the friendlies for purposes of flight integrity and SA. There is no "raygun" or "buddy spike" calls as a result. Morever, because we don't have our own bullseye positions, we can't use that either.

You can, however, get a moderately accurate readout of your own aircraft's bullseye by placing the radar cursors at the bottom of your radar. It's usually off by about 4 nm, and you have to undesignate any target you may have locked up in order to do this. If you're in A/G mode it's not availabe since the A/A radar isn't pulled up.

These are multiplayer issues mainly, and will effect squadrons who choose to adopt F18 as their sim of choice. Hopefully Jane's will address these issues in a patch and maybe reverse the colors in the COMMS menus for available and unavailable commands.

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Mission Planner/Builder (92%)

I have read the entire manual, including the chapter on the powerful Mission Builder included in F/A 18. The emphasis here is on the big picture. You can create a mission so that if your flight passes into a particular patch of airspace, it triggers a sweep flight of Mig 29's to intercept. If you don't pass through that airspace, they won't launch. "Events" trigger other things that can happen in the sim--all controlled and invented by the mission builder (that's you!)

In fact, it can get so complex that one might need to take a course in Advanced Logic in order to understand all the premises and their consequences. I'd venture to say that whatever your imagination can conjure, this mission builder can make real. You can practically set up a mission where if a SAM operator 200 miles away picks his nose, Alert 5 aircraft are automatically launched to intercept any flicked boogers :) It will take some serious time to be able to master the mission builder--but it's nice to know it's there.

I haven't ventured too far into the campaign, but I would think that all of you multiplayer co-op jocks out there will simply have to have this sim on grounds of the mission builder alone. The replayability of the sim is infinite. You don't like the campaign they provide with the software? Fine, create your own (albeit in single phases.)

NOTE: When creating Packages, and setting goals/events, you might find yourself running to the convenience store for aspirin. It is extremely complex. But hey, that's okay by me. Once you learn the basics, which may take many hours, it is all good. In fact, it's so good that I'd say we're talking benchmark in terms of what it's capable of doing. In terms of user friendliness though, I'd say we might have taken a step back.

Stand alone missions or campaign missions allow a high degree of configurability via the mission planner interface. You can modify waypoints, adjust armament on any aircraft in your flight, and even choose or alter preset targets.

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