by Mike "von Krarr" Kovacs

  Although I did the first installment of the article under 1.08, from here on I will be using the iBeta patch version 1.08i. This patch supposedly addresses the lack of repair in the campaign and improves the multiplayer among other things.

More on RWR and Terrain Masking:

After spending a lot more time in the sim, it appears that the RWR still shows aircraft pinging you, even when they are moving away. To see for yourself, try the head-on training mission which puts you up against a single MiG-29. In figure 7 I am moving in on the six of an Su27 for a guns kill and the RWR clearly shows him locking me up on my 12 o'clock. Sad indeed. I honestly don't understand how this kind of bug lasts for one full year in a simulation of this calibre.

I am positive that this bug is part of the reason why the RWR is so active in the campaign. With so many aircraft in the air moving in various directions, every single one must be pinging you. At least radar contacts disappear when destroyed now.

The terrain masking appears to be effective. On several occasions in TE and in the campaign I have been locked by SAM sites and aircraft and have managed to lose lock by flying low. I had a particularly enjoyable mission playing cat and mouse with a flight of MiG-21s in the mountains in central Korea. Just remember that some enemy aircraft have more capable radars than others.

This hasn't been tested, but one would expect a MiG-29 with look down, shoot down radar would have a much easier time seeing you on radar than a lowly MiG-21. With SAMs I have had excellent success with terrain masking. In the past SA-2s were always the first to discover me when coming in low. This is no longer the case although it means you sometimes have to fly as low as 200ft to mask your presence.

The Campaign:

Drum roll please! This is the part of Falcon 4.0 that could make it stand out from any other simulation. It also happens that this is the part of Falcon 4.0 that was probably the most broken. In order to determine how playable the campaign is I decided to start with Tiger Spirit. All force sliders were moved in my favor with pilot and ADA skill set to veteran.

Click to continue

Figure 8

With these settings I should be able to gain momentum quickly and capture the four political objectives in P'Yongyang. The capture of these objectives (figure 8) should ensure a decisive victory for the American coalition forces. Day 1, 9:00:00 the game was immediately stopped and priorities were set to OCA, SEAD and radar to gain air superiority.

Day 1: 21:12:01

Figure 9

After approximately 14 hours and about flying a dozen missions personally, the campaign is running smoothly and a fair amount of enemy territory has been captured (figure 9). I've even managed to win two air medals in this time! I'm disappointed that after 12 successful missions and two air medals that I am still butter bars (2nd Lt.) but this may because Falcon 4.0 rated this campaign at a cadet level. The current status of some DPRK air bases is as follows:

For the sake of brevity I've not included the smaller airbases. Koksan in particular was destroyed on my first mission in the campaign and captured around day 1: 20:00:00. An engineering battalion just arrived about an hour later so I will monitor how long it takes to repair. Several squadrons of attack aircraft were stationed at Koksan and I saw no aircraft taking off from this airbase to engage air or ground targets. Hyan, the famous helicopter airbase is completely shut down.

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