Falcon War Story

[Marvin]

Just a Falcon story for you..

About a week ago, I decided to start a campaign and give the latest builds and my install a try for stability.  I decided to really take my time and start somewhere, and try to discover why I get so many CTDs in Campaigns.  Since about FF and BMS I have been getting them almost at the second mission no matter what time of day.  So I started the campaign, decided to let HQ run the ATO, as well only do taxi starts.  I picked a squadron flying out of Kangdong which are currently flying the block 52.  I than decided to fly only missions what would keep me away from Seoul.  So right now the last 6 missions I have flown in day 1 have been sending me mostly to the North East coast of Korea.  Thus far the campaign is running smooth as hell!  No CTDs, we have also just about gained airsuperiorty as hardly any enemy flights have been airborne since the last few hours.  However, China is about to enter in the next few hours so that will change for the next day, till we cripple them again as well.  So I have decided to keep running the campaign as such and see if I can get a flawless campaign.  If I do, I will run the same campaign as I saved a copy from the first day mission, and start changing stuff.  For the next version, I will start flying missions out to Seoul where there are tons and tons of calculations and see what happens.  Next version I will change the ATO myself.  I don't care if it takes 5 months!  I know they will never stabilize the campaign, as well I know it all depends on peoples systems and style in which way they fly a campaign.  Thus if I can find what kills my campaign, I can start flying campaigns again in a more stable fashion!

Now a good story...

6th mission.. 2134 hrs..  Spring season, (thus it was black).  435nm trip to take out a factory in a city (forget the name)..  What was cool, was I flew an earlier SEAD strike to clear the area..  After bad intel, there turned out to be a secret SA-6 battery north of the target, however the radius of the SA-6 pretty much covered the city.  So my earlier SEAD strike took out a wall of SA-2s in the city to clear the way.  While egressing I was painted by the SA-6 and snapped at me, but I was too far out of the envelope to worry!  So I just scooped it, and got the heck out of dodge!

Anyway...  So for this, I new the SA-6 was still there..  We had no SEAD escort, and were only flying a two ship, so I could not bring any HARMS with my flight..  So I decided to load BSU-50s and come in low..  The night was black, and although many complain about the BMS night skies, I love it!!!  I'm sure it is realistic, and you really need to fly off your systems, which makes good practice..  The only complaint I have is the flashing and bright starts.,.  I like the SP3 stars much better!  I did not want to fly across the city, so I anchored my IP North of the city and came in hot Southbound to hit the target at the edge and get out of the city.  As we popped up at the IP my RAW went nuts with AAA an Search spikes..  So I decided to get up to angels 16 and do a high attack..  For some reason my bombs never released.  As I broke "OFF" west I looked over my shoulder, and could see a fabulous lit city and seen tracer snakes flying up all over me (must be what Baghdad looked like in ODS)...  So I performed a curve attack and came in hot again from the north making a hard target to hit for them..  AGAIN!!!  Bombs still did not come off...  Finally I was thinking maybe this is BMS bug and high drags will only release at lower altitudes..  So as my curve tactics were confusing the enemy I kept the curve going, and came in really low from the South and finally pickled!  As I broke off West to get out of the city again, I looked over my shoulder, a MASSIVE explosion and snakes scattering throughout the city!  Quite a site to see!!  Now the funny part is, after we egressed the hot zone, I ran through my flights system checks, and found out my wingman took a few hits..  I was feeling lucky, as I was the crazy one circling the target making 3 passes in the AAA before my bombs came off.  And he took the hits on one pass!

[J.A.K.]

O man, realy lucky . I'm using sp3 for now, but i got screwed it up with a f4 bms 2.0 addon. I got the sp4, but didnt had the time to install it all over again.
Hope more people post a warstory,

J.A.K.

[J.A.K.]

O.k. i just did the entire dance with falcon again. I installed Falcon4.0 Sp4+sp4.1. And did a test run(whoohoo). I made a copy of this(you never know). And i installed F4-BMS 2.0. Finally got my rudders working . What a difference in flying. But still i have some strange things going on:
1. Before adding the F4-BMS 2.0 i had a good hud resolution, now its really blurry. I changed the graphic settings, but then the hole cocpit became blurry.
2. I loaded the f14 landing(yes i know it not a f16 ). After i contacted the tower to land, i was send back to windows?
Does someone had this problem to? And does someone know how to fix it? I will keep trying to change the settings myself. That grapic problem can be solved. But the other one!?!?

Anyway, i will fly some missions. And let you hear my what where my "adventures" :wink: .

J.A.K.

[Marvin]

JAK,

There is an option somewhere to fix your blury HUD.  I have never had that problem, however I have come across that topic several times in Frugals.

Due to a lot of the changes in BMS for multi engines, graphics, etc. there are lot of functions that will not work from the original SP3-4 instal such as TEs and AVTRs etc.  It's a trade off, but worth it!

Jody

[J.A.K.]

O.K. i will try finding it. Thanks Jody.:wink:
J.A.K.

[J.A.K.]

I pushed some buttons. And changed the resolution. Did a takeoff. Everything working properly. Only i forgot to setup the wheelbrakes on my rudder pedals. Luckely the airfield had a big field behind the strip, i made a close inspection of the fence around the base :oops:. it looked fine from where i finaly parked my plane (a couple of yard from the plane to the fence ).

J.A.K.

[Feathers]

JAK,
Don't forget there is also a small patch for BMS, called 2.1 or something like that.   You can probably find info on it at Frugals.
Jim

[J.A.K.]

Will try to find it. Thanks Jim,

J.A.K.

[Marvin]

Well, last night I flew my 12th campaign mission.  Not sure if you have read my earlier post, but I am currently working on trying to figure out what is causing my CTDs when flying campaigns.  In short, I saved the campaign on the first mission, and I am flying the first version of this campaign with out modifying the ATO, as well staying away from FLOT missions in Seoul.

Thus, far I have never seen perfect campaign since SP2 days.  I have not had any CTDs at all.  As well, letting the HQ set my ATOs seems to be working very well as well, as they are generating some cool missions.  

Last night I flew the 12th mission, which was has tasked me out all the way to PRC.  A few hours ago, PRC entered the war, and currently have the only operational base out of Shengyang.  So my flight was sent in to take out an SA-4 batter to clear for OCA strikes on the base.  This was the first time, I have ever seen a mission of this distance.  Although the mission generator has mean flying a straight line, I decided to run my route to the West coast then moving north and keeping low as I could.  I thought for sure this was going to ruin my perfect rating as I was flying in alone right in the path of the enemy flights that were trying to support the DPRK.  So the round trip was 1653 miles, making a 2.1 hour mission.  I than had to decide if I would hit a tanker, or lose the ECM pod.  So as my tanker track was only about 50nm West of my base, I decided that would not work out for me.  So I did the math, and decided it would be running to close, plus should I get into a furball with the J-11s I would be bingo to early for sure!  So I loaded my jet with 2 magnums, and all external fuel tanks.  She was heavy, but she was full!

The flight was amazing as I cruised to STPT 3 which brought me to the coast, then as we moved North we hit the deck at 300 feet.  And of course thanks to the AI my asshole wingman did not like going any lower than 500 feet.  So I said well at least hill get spiked first!  

So it was quite a long trip flying that low as we screamed over the water and south coast of PRC at about 480nm and 300 feet of the water for almost 230nm till we hit IP south of PRC.  At this point I still could not believe I was not spiked once.  Even though once we hit the IP we would be in 3 sam tracks (A Sa-5 to the East, and SA-5 to the North, and our target an SA-4), I decided I wanted to pop-up to about angels 6 to at least troll these guys so I can pick them up, as my HARM scope was naked.  So as soon as we poped I got spiked by the East SA-5, ( I told my wingman to engage) and spiked by the SA-4.  As few seconds after I told my Wingman to engage the SA-5 he called "engaged defensive" then I remembered I left the HARMs to25,000 feet in my CFG file.  Thus he was climbing to that altitude before fireing.  So I turned in on the SA-5 and sniped a shot to help out my wingman.  Then I engaged the SA-4 and took both radar platforms out.  My wingman later fired both HARMs at the SA-5 which already had my bird in flight.

So by the luck of God, or bad AI, we hit the deck again, and got the hell out of there.  After a couple mintues AWACS calls out to some inbound flight to my East.  The RAW said Mig 29s, so I knew they were J11s with way better range missiles then I had.  So we pushed the burners, and managed to get out of there with out a scratch.  it was a long ride home, but I was quite please that I managed to fly my 12th mission on the different side of the MAP without a CTDs!!!!  

Jody

[Flareless]

Awesome tale Marvin!

[J.A.K.]

AI pilots suck :twisted:

  Great story  

J.A.K.

[Marvin]

Hey guys,

As I am recently experimenting with ODS theater though I would share my views and cool mission I flew last night.

After installing ODS with BMS I was quite impressed as the last time I flew ODS was last year and seeing that desert humid tan sky.  Although this is probably what it looks like in R/L looks like crap on screen.  So it was really nice to see a new theater looking as fine as Korea Hitiles.  However, I had the typical box type shadows.  Easy fix??  I tried running LxNormFix.exe to fix all this, but for some reason would not work with ODS.  So afte a few days I finally met up with cobracab who helped me out making a new command line in the short cut and managed to get it working.  And wow!  She looks great new!!  It is a real shame that this theater has seized development as it looks to be so close to be being completed.  Either way, it is one of the better ones IMO.

Although the campaigns are not the greatest they can be easily fixed using TacEdit to generate more missions etc.  I have been experimenting with Tac Edit and plan to update the F-16 squadron I fly as it looks like it was quickly done having multiple pilot names and all the same voices.  So when I get some time I am going to modify the existing F-16 sqaudron in the IF campaign so all the names are different and just plain more fun to monitor the progress of my squadron.

Last night I went up for my 20th mission in OP IF.  I was tasked to take out a bridge in southern Iraq where the 1st battalion Iraq Republican Guard was on defense.  Not sure if this was luck, or a good running campaign, but it appeared as though I was tasked to cut any escape route off should they retreat.  The US forces where advancing forward on them, so it seemed pretty damn realistic to me.  When I recon the IRG on defense there looked to be about 2 platoons in a spread formation and the status said they were defending with high morale!  So sine the bridge was quite small, I recorded their coords and thought I would send a happy smile there way to dampen their spirits.

While in flight an SA-10 was giving my flight a hard time, so we had to fly around it.  This is one bad thing about ODS!  It appears the option to pull up threat circles has been removed, thus I had no idea my flight was going right through an SA-10 envelope.  So now I have learned to spend a lot more time searching all the ADS on or near my flight route.

After a long trip flying around it I set my coords in my ICP and launched one JDAM and told wingman to attack as well.  So needless to say that bridge was gone.  On egrees I punched in the second coords and sent a JDAM to visit the IRGs.  

After the mission I did a recon on the IRGs locations and noticed the 1st platoon lost 6 troops when the JDAM struck. It also noted their moral and strength were considerably low!     That had to hurt!

Jody

[Marvin]

Hey guys,

Last night I decided to try out my latest updates I have been doing to the stock OIF campaign.  As I stated before when either FF3 or SP4 came into the scene it sort of messed stuff up for the SP3 campaigns as with all the block models there was no F-16CJs present, thus lacking SEAD/DEAD missions.  They were in fact all CGs..  :cry:

Anyway, I added a couple CJ squadrons to the bases from the knowledge I could find on the net what and where the squadrons were in Iraq.  I still have some work to do of course with finding proper names of the squadrons on the carriers but it is getting there.  I also deleted almost half the squadrons in the stock campaign.  In R/L I'm sure there were multiple squadrons of the same fighters at the bases however, for Falcon ATOs it causes night mares.  At least with the new spawning on the ramps anyway.  So I cut the squadrons down to one type of plane squadron type per base and have seen excellent results.  I also cut the carriers in half.  IIRC there are like 8 carriers in the theater???   Not sure if that is realistic, but I cut it down to 3 and watching the UI map there are tons of traffic in the theater so it all looks good to me.

Anyway, here is a mission I flew last night....

Mission: SEAD/Escort (F-111s target factory in Karbula)
Ordinance: 2X HARMS and 2 JDAMs
TOT: 0434 hrs

Briefing: at 0500 hrs the coalition forces were starting a major push into Iraq closing on Baghdad.  My package was tasked to hit hi-key targets in Karbula.

The F-111s were flying out of Al Udeid and would meet my flight at the push point about 30 km West of my base Ali Al Salem.  Looking through the flight route there was a couple SA-13s West of ingress route but not a real factor.  There was however a SA-10 just West of the push point, so that was my first TOO.  There were a three AAA batteries north of Karbula but nothing that would effect us.  The big one was the SA-17 just due West of the target on the skirt of Karbula.  These bastards have been quite tuff in prior missions always taking out planes.  So that was one I had to make sure was a DEAD in stead of SEAD when I left the area! :wink:

So I had a typical four ship, and decided this time to take 2X HARMs and 2X GBU-31 JDAMs.  I did a recon and got some valuable coordinates of the SA-17 launch pads hoping to take out as many of them as possible.

Well my idea of reducing squadrons on the bases worked great thus far as I was able to make my TOT with about a minute delay.  Once we got at altitude I did my fence check, made sure we were in formation and committed past the FLOT.  I hit my crus page and noticed my ETA for the push was about a minute and half delay.  My radar was looking right at the push and there were no contacts.  I checked in with AWACS and asked for vectors to my package.  The F-111s were also in delay and were bearing 155 @ 30 miles.  Now this is a first for me!  I have never flew a mission where the AI planes were late??  :?   I personally thought this was cool, as I am sure at times this happens quite often.  At this time the sun just started coming up.  And I must say it has been a while since I flew at sunrise or dusk.  I almost forgot the great work BMS did!!!  As we approached the push sure enough the SA-10 spiked us.  I locked it up on my HTS and told my element to engage.  It was only a matter of minutes before the called there Magnums at which point I told them to re-join before they waste their JDAMs.

As we did our second orbit of the push I called into AWACS for another vector and there were due South of us @ 18 miles.  So marshal time, and off we went.  the entire flight route to the IP about 128 miles was quite uneventful besides spikes here and there.  The sun was coming up and looked just gorgeous!  My cockpit was starting to light up, so I went out of Aeyes amazing night cockpit and back into daylight.  It was still dark enough to keep my MFDs brightness down a bit.  (Which I would like to say makes the MFDs look so realistic when they are turned down a bit as it tends to makes the lines thinner.)

As we hit the IP 25 miles from the target area we got spiked by the triple AAA batteries north of our target.  I picked one of the search radars and assigned the other two my wingman and fired off a HARM.  Once again as soon as my wingman called "Magnum" I told him to rejoin.   At about this point I heard the F-111s (Cougar) call a spread formation so I knew they were at the IP so time to play the duck and call out to the SA-17s. We were at about 10 miles from the target and still no SA-17 spike.  DAMN IT :evil:   So I started waving my plane and strangled the music for a bit, all the sudden there she was.  I quickly locked it up and fired off a shot.  MAGNUM!!!  At about the same time I heard my # 2 call defensive and looked over my shoulder to see him break left and dropping chaffs.  All the sudden my cockpit lit up like a christmans tree!!  LAUNCH!! LAUNCH!! LAUNCH!!  I broke right with full burners and looked over my left shoulder and saw several missiles in the air.  Which was tracking me??  Either way I tried to fight them with aspect and hoped my HARM would hit their guidance first!  I then tried to remember if SA-17s are HOJ or not??  Damn I wish I would research before I fly?  :wink:   Anyway, the hell with it..  As the missiles were getting close to my altitude I just started to turn into them, and that was when my RWR went cold and quiet..  I watched the missiles as they gently passed.  Not sure if this was realistic or not?  But hell I take it!  

Well now that the airspace was pretty much clear it was time to hammer the launch pads.  I called up my JDAMs I was already well within range of the SA-17, so I pickled off a JDAM.  I then called up my GM radar mode and assigned a couple targets to the AAA battiers north of Karbula while my # 2 and I took care of the SA-17 site.  As I flew an orbit searching for A/A threats (which I know will never be any in the OIF campaign) I heard the Cougar flight calling their hits.  I looked over my right sholder and saw the most amazing light show in low light condidtions as 4 F-111s carpit bombed a factory.  I was quite impressed with how they appeared to be hitting different areas of the complex scoring a 89% kill rate!

On egress as the area looked pretty much clear and my flight was winchester anyway I decide to fly a close formation with the F-111s for some fun.  

Unfortunetly I had to abort my landing and use the ESC key to end the mission as at about 3 mile final my base started getting all screwed up as the runway textures were flashing and appearing all broken and in the vertical plane.  I have seen this a few times before and can quite pin point what causes it.  But I think it has something to do with base traffic. (not sure) it seems to vanish as the time progresses in the campaign.

Hope you enjoyed this read as my as I enjoyed flying the mission.

Jody

[J.A.K.]

Jody great tale again. A story with a interesting beginning, fierce mid section, and a strange plot :wink:
Always a great time reading it all,
J.A.K.

[Sherlock]

Hey guys,

***Snip***

However, I had the typical box type shadows.  Easy fix??  I tried running LxNormFix.exe to fix all this, but for some reason would not work with ODS.  So afte a few days I finally met up with cobracab who helped me out making a new command line in the short cut and managed to get it working.  And wow!  She looks great new!!  

***SNIP***

Jody

Marvin (Jody)
Can you share with me what CobraCab fixed you up with? I'm trying to do the same thing and I have the same shadows...

thanks!