| JANES Fleet Command
by Eric "Snacko" Marlow |
||||
|
Realism Much has been written in the news groups about the ability to specify custom loadouts in Fleet Command. Simply put, you cannot change from within the game the default ordnance loads that each aircraft carries. Jane's wanted to concentrate on a single implementation for each aircraft to accommodate the broadest appeal. This translates to an F-14 with 6 AIM-120s and 2 Harpoons and F/A-18s that carry 2 AIM-120s, 2 AIM-9s, 2 AGM-65s and 2 AGM-88s. While the ability of each aircraft to carry the assigned load is realistic, at times it makes it a little difficult to perform a particular mission. Airbase attacks require many sorties when your only ordnance is Mavericks and HARMS. There are no AIM-54s, AIM-7s, laser-guided or dumb bombs, or any of the more advanced air-to-ground weapons such as the JSOW, JDAM, SLAM, or tactical nuke. If there is one place that shines above all others, it is in the database of the included aircraft, ships and weaponry. Not only are the ships from the US, Russian, and British navies included, but you also have access to ships and aircraft from the countries of China, France, Australia, Germany, India, Argentina, Brazil, Pakistan, Iran, Taiwan, Libya, Malaysia, and Japan. Whew! Janes also claims that Fleet Command adheres to realistic sensor detection models and object dynamics. My subjective analysis shows that Jane's/Sonalysts has done a great job in staying at the top of the heap with respect to a realistic Order of Battle. Bugs For the most part, Fleet Command was relatively bug free. I have read posts in the naval news group that stated there were some crash to desktop problems with Glide when you were inside the game, but I never experienced any of these personally. The most notable problem for me was when I would end a game's session by going back to the desktop and then trying to run the game again. About 95% of the time I would lock up when the game is trying to mode-switch between the desktop and my chosen 3D card. This happened so frequently that I resolved myself to rebooting after each time I exited from a game. Sometimes, even the reboot didn't help. After seeing similar problems in Falcon 4.0 get resolved during the patch-beta process, I understand that there are some underlying hardware-to-software issues at fault. |
 I also tried to run the game from a Windows 95 OSR2 machine (my P2 450 before I switched over to Win98). I would continually lock up when I entered my name at the sign-in screen. For some reason, I was never able to get past it. Only after reformatting my system to Win98 was I ever able to make it past the sign-in screen.
 Occasionally I experienced problems in the AI that I could not explain. When I gave the command to a flight of EA-6B Prowlers to "set speed to max", inevitably one aircraft would drop its speed to the normal rate after a couple of minutes and fall behind the pack. Since these aircraft all took off at the same time and there were no threats in the area, there shouldn't have been any reason for the one aircraft to perform differently. Ships would occasionally exhibit the same behavior. At times one ship would depart from the pack and return to patrol status after I've given the set of ships a specific directional transit command. Departure from command is something I would experience about twice in each mission. It seemed to be more prevalent the more objects there were to control. Go to Page Five
|
|||
|
Copyright © 1997 - 2000 COMBATSIM.COM, INC. All Rights Reserved. Last Updated June 1st, 1999 |
||||