by Dan "Crash" Crenshaw

Q· How are victory conditions tabulated and how do they effect the overall outcome of the campaign? As an example - in the real world destroying an enemy's CCC, leadership, and logistics have a tremendous impact on the war.

CN - There are primary and secondary targets that can be assigned. There are no points or tabulation of score. You either accomplish the mission or you don't. In the campaign mode the effects of one Phase can transition to another phase in a multitude of ways. At the end of each scenario or Phase, there is a Debrief that shows information about targets destroyed and ordnance expended.

Q· If my ATO says to attack a convoy, but I destroy the bridge that prevents the convoy from reaching the front, how does the campaign system recognize this? Will I get credit for a victory, or even a partial victory?

CN - The designer of the campaign would have to recognize and condition the status of the bridge in the scenario.

Q· Do the missions have multiple conditions to meet that equate to full, partial, or no success rates?

CN - They can be set up that way by the Designer.

F15C in Flanker 2

Q. You have referred to "the designer" several times. Can you tell us what his responsibilities are and what resources are available for him? What does he control and what will the game assist him in controlling? Is there any form of AI involved in the control of the scenarios?

CN - Flanker has always been a product that has thrived upon the creation of missions from the user base. There are thousands of Flanker missions available for download on the Internet. Flanker enthusiasts around the world have created these missions.

As with Su-27 Flanker V1.X, Flanker 2.0 provides a full-featured Mission Editor that will allow "the designers" out there in Flankerland to create missions to their heart's content. Both the Mission Editor and the Campaign Editor Tools provide the designer with a large Order of Battle, target designation, weather control, task assignment, and the Crimea to play in.

As far as AI is concerned, each of the tasks assigned (such as escort, anti-radiation, ground attack, combat air patrol, etc.) has a particular profile that AI controlled units will utilize.

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Q. Multiplayer is planned, tell us the maximum number of players you are planning for.

CN - On the Internet we are specified at 32 for a transfer rate of 512 k/sec or greater, but state that we recommend 16 or less with a transfer rate of 256 K/sec. For LAN play with 10MB rate we say you can have up to 32 players with marginal performance but again, we recommend 16 or less.

Q· What different types of multiplayer are being planned? (H2H, coop, campaign?)

CN - Head-to-head or Cooperative in individual scenarios. No multiplayer campaign at this time.

Q· Will we be able to put multiple players in the same mission without each machine having to create the way points etc.?

CN - Not at present. Each player has to place their own aircraft. We are going to look into revising this system later in the year.

Q· The Delta Hawks were able to get 14+ human players in a mission in the 1.5 version. But as we added AI units, the amount of humans that could enter reliably dropped substantially. Has this been addressed in 2.0?

CN - Your performance all depends upon the size of the scenario, number of units, capacity of your network, the type of machines being used, and many other factors. At the recent Big Bear II meet in the Netherlands, they had little problem getting a large game up and running.

Q. ACMI - does F2 have it?

CN - No ACMI. We have the Track file system that lets you record missions to be viewed as videos later that have the ability to be re-flown or edited at any point.

Q· If so, will it be full screen?

CN - Tracks are full screen.

Q· Accelerated via D3D or Open GL?

CN - We use D3D. No Open GL support at this time.

Q· Are we able to record MP missions?

CN - Yes =).

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