| Falcon 4.0 LAN Report II
by Dan "Crash" Crenshaw and Jeff "Rhino" Babineau |
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Friday night, tech issues were quick and petty, so flying was going to happen early in the meet. We found out immediately that we didn't have to wait until the flight was in the air in order to avoid moronic AI pilots taxing through us, being set in the middle of a field somewhere, etc. We were able to all click on FLY and drop into our cockpits as fast as our machines would let us. We would get clearance to take off, pull onto the runway and go. There are still some ATC issues, with the controllers giving clearance and then reprimanding you after you follow their instructions. But since the code we are testing is strictly network code laid over 1.06, I am not overly concerned. I expect we will be testing 1.07 with this new network code by next fly in and will see improvements in all these areas. Ten Little Vipers Our first few missions were flown with ten human pilots and one acting as a severely handicapped AWACS station. (We hope in the future that a real AWACS interface can be developed but in the interim we desire some useful AWACS info like the "F10" view info in Flanker 1.5.) We initially all chose the same squadron to work from, so we were able to choose flights that would be close together in time and target area with ease. We started off emphasizing attacks on air defenses and SAM sites. Having all humans flying made these attacks very effective. Unfortunately many of the newer and less experienced pilots had some difficulty evading SAMs and air attacks. A few quick lessons and we were able to teach most of the others how to break and dive for the deck at SAM launches, the most effective SAM evasion tactic we have found. Radar masking is still not employed due to the huge CPU hit it would bring to the game, but at least it appears that flying low will not allow SAM gunners a target and of course, missiles cannot fly through a mountain. |
LAN Meet. As for the air threats, we decided we needed to support the strike packages with ESCORT flights. When they were available, I would grab an ESCORT flight that was supporting one of the STRIKE packages. With anywhere from one to three pilots on my wing, the STRIKE packages did much better at getting in and out alive without getting jumped by enemy aircraft. The SAMs, however, were still a problem. After a few flights, we were getting a little tight on available aircraft. When you have twelve humans, and three or four lose a plane per mission, after three missions you're running short on hardware. We got a re-supply at one point, but it was only a temporary stop gap. Come Home, Boys! Our biggest problem was that we had learned some very bad habits. We were used to just flying until the game crashed and at least we could have some fun. But then we noticed something, we now have FAR more humans in the game than we ever did and the game is NOT CRASHING! All of a sudden reality set in and RHINO, our illustrious CO, insisted that the group pay far more attention to bringing the aircraft back than how many tanks we killed. "He who runs away, returns to fight another day." Ok Not real brave but at 25 million a piece, why waste your Viper to kill one more $40,000 T-55? GET HOME, your family loves you and your Squad needs the hardware! Saturday we started a fresh campaign. We decided to try a little twist and split up the pilots among 2 squadrons. This gave us 40 planes to start with instead of 20. This also allowed us to test a feature we never thought would work or we had previously overlooked. By splitting into two Squads we now could have half the guys (the guys on the carpet in the bunker) fly for the 36th FS while the other half (men on the concrete) fly for the 80th FS. We should be able to sustain a campaign much better and still fly cooperatively AND competitively as the inter squadron "esprit de corps" could now come to full fruition. The fresh campaign started great. Again, I was flying and serving. Go to Page Three
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