by Leonard "Viking1" Hjalmarson and Bob "Groucho" Marks

  USAF Campaign Mode

Groucho: Now into the true meat- Campaigns and UME. The Campaigns in USAF are broken down into two types- Historical and Future. The Historical Campaigns consist of scripted missions that are loosely- most of the time VERY loosely- based on actual happenings over Vietnam and Iraq. These missions are not related in any way other than era and theatre and can be attempted or completed in any order.

The two Future Campaigns are a Red Flag war game over the Nellis AFB Complex near Lost Wages and a (very) hypothetical battle against those pesky Russian Nationalists over Germany. The Future Campaigns are especially challenging, as they are semi-dynamic, or resource-driven. This is a fancy way of saying that you start out with a set quantity of pilots, aircraft, and armaments and any assets that are lost or used have to be escorted in during a logistical mission that you must escort.

In the course of these missions, if you lose cargo aircraft, you lose supplies. These missions are limited to two per campaign, so your timing is critical. A quick word from He Who Has Been There- don't let your AMRAAMs run out before you have to get more stuff. Trust me. It is this added dimension of supply chain management that adds to the immersion and makes me enjoy the Future Campaigns a bit more than the historical ones.

What the scripted campaigns lack in the logistic planning challenge, they make up for in flavor. Even the "bumper music" is period specific, with hendrixian acid rock for Vietnam and synth-heavy tunes for Desert Storm. The aircraft are right for the era also- Rhinos and Thuds for 'Nam, Vipers and Eagles for Iraq. The strange mix of aircraft in the Vietnam theatre makes for some interesting problems- flying the Thud against a MiG-19 comes to mind. Let the rather impressive enemy AI suck you into a knife fight and you tour of duty will be shortened a bit.

The missions in all Campaigns and Single Missions consist of multiple packages with specific tasks (i.e. CAP, SEAD, strike, etc)- each of which must successfully carry out their assignments. You can jump easily between aircraft in the individual flights. I fact, to complete most missions I have flown, you have to.

Friendly vs Enemy AI

If the enemy AI is so good- and it is- why does friendly AI suck so badly? I have witnessed a flight of four strike package fly to its target, one aircraft drop a single bomb (that misses), an element leader fly into terrain, and the remaining flight of three initiate a RTB. That made me have to drop out of my incomplete CAP, turn the strike flight around, shack the target, and return to my now depleted CAP flight (friendly air to air skills also lacking).

IFR with an F15

In having these horribly inept squadron mates, Jane's has taken something which could be seen as a cool feature and transformed it into a liability. At the risk of sounding like a spoiled child, sometimes I don't WANT to fly air to mud! Don't wanna don't wanna!

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USAF Mission Editor

Which brings me to the very cool User Mission Editor, or UME. I don't know why, but Jane's printed documentation is very quiet about this powerful tool. For those of you who have USAF and don't know what I'm talking about, it is buried deep in your USAF folder (default path is C:\Program Files\Jane's Combat Simulations\USAF\Resource\Missions) provided you bit the hard drive bullet and did a full install. It can be put in through a custom install also.

The UME allows you to create some highly complex missions in any of the four available theatres, including the ability to script intricate "If- Then" causal events and triggers. All of the objects in the USAF world, be it user flyable aircraft, AI controlled weapons systems, or even static buildings from skyscrapers and grass huts, are available for the creation of a playground to blow stuff up in. Up to four User controlled flights can be generated, along with as many AI aircraft as you have the time to set up.

While presented in a fairly intuitive GUI interface, the capabilities of the UME can be pretty intimidating. The "Wizard" tutorial is a great help in getting ones arms around this beast. Still stuck? Excellent HTML documentation is available online. The SPOT satellite imagery is gorgeous to behold. Such info as terrain elevation is right at your fingertips, allowing you to route packages through valleys and the like. Of course, the ability of your AI flight to successfully fly your mission is problematic.

What is the truly cool thing about building your own large-scale a mission- as in the canned Campaign missions, all mission goals must be met…but you set that goal! Want to create a huge tank-plinking mission, leading a herd of Warthogs through the Fulda gap? Go ahead and build it, omitting the bothersome opposing air force. This allows you open T-80's like tuna cans and without worrying about the lobotomized friendly AI stumbling around 20k' above you flying CAP like the Three Stooges on heroin.

UME Limits and Needs

While the UME is definitely a huge "plus" that adds to the appeal of this diversion to the hardcore simmer, it is not without some very frustrating problems. I don't consider my system a slouch, but for some reason navigation on the map is a tedious affair. I'm not sure if it the graphics intensive SPOT imagery or what (though I doubt it, it still chugs in Map mode), but trying to drag your view around the theatre is an exercise in patience that would make a Zen Buddhist reach for the Jack Daniels- straight up.

Setting waypoints is similarly annoying…do I have hold of the point I want to move, or not? Must be one of the "if-then" triggers- "IF I could set my waypoint over the target THEN I might actually be able to fly this damn mission tonight". Annoying.

In accordance with the old adage about leading a horse to water, as far as I can tell there is no way to get your flight to actually take on fuel from a tanker, even when an actual hookup is performed. This is a big deal in the Vietnam theatre as there are no friendly airfields either! Note to Jane's- let's see some blue bases in the south, OK? Or, even better, the ability to place airfields anywhere a structure can.

Another problem I have with planning a mission using the UME- well, actually all missions in USAF…stealth does not appear to be modeled very well. While, as recent experience in Kosovo can attest to, there is no deterrent against the Mark 1 Eyeball, low-observable radar shapes such as in the case of the F-117 do not appear to work much better than F-15Es. Just a random thing I noticed while trying to emulate a Kosovo-esque runway denial / SEAD mission.

This may come across as "piling on" the UME, but I enjoy mission building almost- I repeat, almost- as much as flying them. The USAF UME has the potential of being one of the most powerful mission editors for a sim- period- and it's painful to grow old trying to design some really Uber-strike on the Luxor in Vegas. The ability to build a scenario in four different terrains and then try and make it happen is a powerful thing- it would be a pity to let some easily resolvable problems cripple it.

Go to Part V: Views and Graphics