Building Fear & Making Loathing Over The Crimea

  OK, by now it's pretty much official: Flanker 2.0 has THE flight model for combat sims. Shoot an ILS approach through solid overcast with one engine shedding parts of the finest socialist workmanship and tell me different. Complete sim nirvana. Those who don't agree with me will be shot and sent to Siberia- or perhaps the other way around!

Oops. Maybe I've been playing F2 too much.

As I was saying- you've heard about the truly amazing FM, the steep learning curve, and how avionics coolant is best enjoyed on ice with a beer chaser. There hasn't, however, been a whole lot about the F2 Mission Editor.

I think there's a pretty huge disconnect here. When the point comes up about the fact that F2 doesn't have a dynamic force v. force campaign system like the capitalist tool Falcon sim does, the defending argument has usually been "Yeah, but at least it works. Sniff." Ooooh- there's a zinger. I'm avoiding this persistent, pointless little pissing contest- this simmer prefers to take the overpass. Let's take this one on now- I really like both, OK?

OK, let's get the system stuff out of the way:

• Pentium III 500MHz OC'd to 533
• 196MB RAM
• Voodoo3 3000
• A Big Plastic Box with Blinking Lights
• Thingies That Go Whirr

F2's lack of a dynamic ground environment has soured some on this sim - for the most part people who haven't flown it or even held the box in their hands - and that is unfortunate. I must admit that I was a bit down about that, initially. It is true; land units don't and can't move (unless you count the AAA turrets tracking your complacent ass - they move just fine, thank you very much).

Once you start prying into the Mission Editor, however, the static ground units irk you less and less. The AI, both bandit and good guy, is both motivated and formidable. The catalog of stuff you can blow up and that can shoot you down is downright extensive. Besides- this ain't Panzer Commander- this here's a pilot sim.

Learning how to use the Mission Editor is almost required in a sim like F2 in order to get more than a couple of weeks of fun out of it. There are only so many canned missions and only one branching campaign, but in using the ME you can stretch out the freshness of the sim until The Next Big Thing comes along. So get over it- let's go beat on this Mission Editor thing and see what falls out, shall we?

The Scenario

Before you can build your little corner of hell, you'll have to dream up a scenario. Who's shooting at whom, and over what? Are you one of those guys (like myself) who can lose all enjoyment for a movie because the Japanese "Zeroes" are really T-6 Texans? OK, so maybe it's only me. Anyway- the details have to ring at least semi-authentic for me to really enjoy a movie or, indeed, a simulation.

  This is true for the flight model and is especially true for the general scenario for a mission- why are these guys shooting at each other, and with what? This was always one thing that bothered me and thus dampened my enthusiasm for DID's F-22 ADF and TAW sims- the plausibility of the Sudan fielding cutting-edge fighters and equipment seemed more Dr. Seuss than Tom Clancy.

So, why in the hell are the available countries (Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, and the US) fighting over some obscure peninsula? It's obvious why SSI picked it- now it's up to you to figure out what everybody is tangling over. Here's the Briefing General Situation I came up with for my example mission.

As the brutal Russian crackdown in Chechnya grinds on and the economy stumbles aimlessly, anti-Russian sentiment has reached a fever pitch in the Ukraine. Even with this sentiment in the air, a swift, bloodless coup of the Ukrainian centrist government by a military-backed coalition has caught many off guard.

Russian nationals who have not already fled the country are being arrested by both Ministry of Internal Affairs militia troops and by self-proclaimed paramilitary squads. Caught on the ground and put under house arrest in his vacation dacha in the seaside town of Yevpatoria is Russian Admiral of the Fleet Grigori Velichko and his family.

A task force is assembled quickly and quietly to get him out. With Kunetsov carrier group (with AWACS support) off shore supporting a Marine Infantry unit that has taken and is holding the airfield at Saki, SPETSNAZ Special Forces enter Yevpatoria to free Velichko and his family. The plan calls for the SPETSNAZ to take down the small guard garrison and transport Velichko's entourage to a waiting transport at Saki Airport.

After the Illyushin is safely out of Ukrainian airspace, the SPETSNAZ will load up with the Marine Infantry unit on the waiting landing craft and retreat to the open sea- under the protective cover of the Kunetsov if necessary. Things seldom go as planned, however, and the SPETSNAZ team has been slowed down by stiffer than expected resistance. The sun is about to come up over the Crimean Peninsula as the team and entourage aboard confiscated IKARUS buses drive south down the narrow causeway, and the locals are getting restless...

OK, so Dale Brown has nothing to worry about, but you get the idea. My lust for realism could just be a personal problem. Nothing is stopping you if your scenario is a Turkish attack on Russia and the Ukraine, even if the end result would probably be the ability to clean Istanbul with a tanker of Windex and a squeegee the length of a football field. But it's a simulation, right?

The Mission Editor Interface

Firing up the ME, you see that the GUI is Windows-esque, very functional and businesslike, with nothing flashy. Pop-up windows and pull-down menus abound, and windows are available by hitting ctrl key modifiers. I love the clean design of the interface here. You can actually drag your cursor around easily, unlike the slow, stuttering, frustrating pointer movement of the Jane's USAF UME application. Another improvement over the USAF UME is the map view.

The theater map of the Crimea is full screen, and the windows are transparent. This allows the widest possible view of The Big Picture, while it is also possible to zoom all the way down to the unit level. Brewing up a good briefing is made a bit difficult, however, by the lack of place, city, and town names on the Crimean map in the Mission Editor. I like to know where I'm at, even if I don't have the slightest clue as to how to pronounce the name.

Good maps are available on several of the Flanker related web sites- I would suggest downloading one to help you navigate. Another feature that would be nice is a terrain elevation readout under the cursor like USAF has; this would make low-level flights through the mountains easier to plan.

  Causing Trouble

OK, now that we have a general idea of what is going on from a geopolitical standpoint, let's kick some ass. Regardless of your initial action, a pop-up menu inquires as to what side you will be fighting on. A very basic question, that. This window allows you to form coalitions between the four possible belligerents, or just pick on vs. the other. In our mission here I've selected to be Russian, primarily because they have the carrier.

Pull down the Briefing window and set the mission Start At / Till time at the top. This does NOT define when you want the mission to start and end, as I had thought. This drove me nuts. If you've got a specific time that you want to launch, as I do for this mission, the Start At & Till times are set the same. Otherwise, the mission will start at a random time between the two, regardless of the waypoint set times for your individual aircraft.

A Tomcat Lifts off the Deck

I know, it's in the manual, but it completely drove me up the wall trying to figure out what was wrong. At this point, you can also enter in your scenario under GENERAL SITUATION in the Briefing window. Now that we've got the general picture, let's go stir up some trouble!

Placing Units

Placing units on the map is as easy as selecting the picture button on the Planning toolbar and clicking where you want them. A couple of clicks, and we have the Kunetsov carrier group off the west coast of the Crimea, ready and waiting to get our Admiral home. When you click the ship placement cursor on the screen, a pop-up menu prompts you to specify which ship you want to go there.

Static objects are placed in a similar fashion, and while there are no waypoints to set, obviously, you can set their orientation. This is especially very important for the carrier; crosswind short field landings at sea are a whole new kind of hairy.

Now, here is as good a place as any to air my biggest complaint about the ME: F2's excellent Encyclopedia reference function is not accessible within the Mission Editor screen. This is horribly inconvenient- I consider myself a pretty astute plane spotter, but hell if I know the difference between a S300V 9_82 and 9_84 SAM launcher variant or what a Bobruisk is.

To dig this info up you need to save the mission, close the ME, launch the Encyclopedia, get your info, close it, and relaunch the ME. What this does is take a potentially very useful tool and turns it into interesting yet next to useless fluff. Hopefully, SSI will look into doing something about this.

Tasking your aircraft, selecting pilots & wingmen and weapons load out is pretty straightforward in the Airgroup planning window. The choice of available stores is defined by the tasking of the aircraft, i.e. aircraft flying CAP are not given the choice to carry bombs.

While this makes sense in the example I've just given, this can be a bit restrictive. Since my flight is tasked to take out a runway that is defended by SAMs or AAA, it would be very advantageous to life and limb to have the choice of slinging an anti-radar missile under me in addition to the concrete busting rockets.

Unfortunately, such fine-tuning of your stores is not an option- and I don't have easy access to a Russian Naval Aviation armament tech so I don't know if this reflects reality or not. You would have to task another flight to fly SEAD. My solution to this quandary was to select only Shilkas near my target, and not fly straight and level for very long while over Indian country. Ah, the beauty of building your own missions.

  Setting Waypoints

Setting waypoints is simple, a point-click affair. Once again, this is vastly better than the chore of seting waypoints in Jane's USAF. Actions for these waypoints are set in the Airgroup planning window, with time over waypoint (ETO) obviously a factor of launch time and whatever speed you've set. Once again, make sure that your Mission Time is set correctly in the Briefing screen. I still have knots on my forehead from beating my skull against the desk over that little jewel.

Altitude is always AGL, and I have yet to see an AI aircraft pull a Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) a'la Jane's USAF AI pilots. Unless, of course, they are on fire. The manual tries to make this point clear, but let me reiterate it from personal experience: be sure and set your "Attack" waypoint far back enough to allow the AI to set up for the "Attack a Target" waypoint. If you don't give 'em enough room, they are instant flak bait as the AI switches into Stupid mode. Trust me.

My tactic is to cut my wingman loose with the, "Do your thing then regroup" command almost immediately after passing through the attack waypoint together as the AI is really quite good, almost no "babysitting" is required. The AI skill level set for the various units really comes into play here, and there is a substantial difference in both the AI ability and aggressiveness depending on the level set. This applies to SAM and AAA units as well as aircraft.

Throwing Wrenches in the Works

Here's some of the extra "spice" that F2 throws into its mission planner that is missing in other combat sims: the Met Report and the Failures options. The Met Report is a powerful weather generator, with the ability to set cloud cover, fog, wind, and even turbulence variables into your mission. These factors can and will obviously affect everything from attacks to landings. There is nothing quite like an unguided rocket attack through the fog to hold your attention for a spell.

Clouds are also just rendered so well in this sim (in my opinion, only the clouds in Fly! are better) that they can just make nice eye candy, in addition to being a tactical challenge for close-in knife fighting.

The Failures option is also a trick thing. In addition to being a handy "what if" tool to practice such emergencies as avionics failures and perforated engines, it can also be used on SAMs and radar installations of either side. The list of possible things that can break is quite extensive, and is a fun and challenging addition that can change the flavor of even a milk-run mission very quickly.

Go Kill Something

Well, that's about it for basic mission building, comrade. The manual is a pretty good guide, and hopefully this article helps motivate and/or help a bit. The mission I've included with this article, The Hell Outta Dodge, is Classified as a Pilot Mission. This means you are locked out- you cannot change anything. You are simply the grunt pilot who must fly as ordered. Enemy units are hidden as is intended.

If you want to get under the hood and see how all of this works, however, go to Edit and hit Declassify. When prompted, the password is "groucho." Hit Ctrl+H and select all, then hit Hide again. All of the units are there, ready for inspection and/or modification as you see fit.

That's it for now, but The Hell Outta Dodge is intended to be the first part of a Campaign. Stay tuned for Part 2 for a walkthrough in the wonderful world of if/then branching campaigns and Mission Conditions. Until then, dos vedanya, and pass the avionics coolant.