To: falcon3 (Falcon3 Mailing list) Reply-To: falcon3 (Falcon3 Mailing list) Errors-To: postmaster@onion.rain.com Precedence: bulk Bcc: falcon3-outgoing Subject: Falcon3 Digest V2 : I18 Falcon3 Digest Volume 2 : Issue 18 Mon Jan 4 06:49:49 PST 1993 Compilation copyright (C) 1992 Jeff Beadles Send submissions to "falcon3@onion.rain.com" Send add/drop requests to "listserv@onion.rain.com" For an index of back issues that are available, send a message containing the line "send index from falcon3" to "netlib@onion.rain.com" Also, the archives are available via ftp from onion.rain.com [147.28.0.161] Today's Topics: Campaigns - Assigning Extra Flights white@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Brad Whi Falcon 3 vs. F-15 III [fairly long] Jay Vosburgh ------------------------------------------------------------ From: white@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Brad White) Subject: Campaigns - Assigning Extra Flights A quick question. When assinging flights for a campaign mission, sometimes if it is deep into enemy territory I assign a CAP flight to go along with the main flight. However, once I am airborne, low-and-behold there are a couple of F18's or F4's that are also flying cap !!! How can I find this out ahead of time? I could maybe use the planes for other duties or let the pilots rest. On this topic, how does everyone decide how many planes to bring along? With falcnr you could always bring 8 because who cares how many you lose or about the pilots since you can bring them back to 'life'. I dont really want to do this myself though because I think it removes a lot of realism. Any ideas? Brad ------------------------------- From: Jay Vosburgh Subject: Falcon 3 vs. F-15 III [fairly long] In light of the past speculation about how F-15 Strike Eagle III would turn out, I've compiled this sort-of list of some differences and some description, between F-15 Strike Eagle III (hereafter "F-15") and Falcon 3.01.1 Operation Fighting Tiger (hereafter "Falcon"). For purposes of this comparison, I'm using F-15 with all realism settings set to "Authentic." F-15 out of the box has all settings set to "Standard," and plays more or less like F-15 Strike Eagle II with better graphics. I've played about a dozen missions on F-15. Naturally, much of this is personal opinion. Any statement of fact may be incorrect; corrections or elaborations on anything I've said are most welcome. One such opinion you'll see is that the most interesting thing about Comanche: Maximum Overkill is the box it comes in. Graphics ======== F-15 has superior ground terrain to Falcon. In particular, it is much easier to "see" how far off the ground you are. Also, most objects do not simply "appear" when you get close enough, they gradually become more distinct as you get closer. F-15 cloud cover is visually superior to Falcon, except at close range, when it appears somewhat blocky. The "fade to white" is about the same in both Falcon and F-15. However, F-15 only has a cloud layer (which need not be solid, as in Falcon), whereas Falcon has a cloud layer and/or scattered "regular" clouds. External views of your plane are rendered in approximately equal detail in both Falcon and F-15, with two exceptions: F-15: external ordnance is displayed F-15: the landing gear and the airbrake are animated External views of other planes look about the same in Falcon and F-15 (less politely, "equally bad"), although I haven't seen more than two or three other aircraft in F-15 so far. Terrain in F-15 is the standard Microprose tabletop with polygon mountains. The tabletop has very good graphics for its terrain, but the mountains are of more or less uniform color. "Radar Detector" (Falcon: "TWI", F-15 "TEWS"): ============================================== The displays are generally similar, with the following major differences. I have no information on either system outside of the respective program manual, so I don't know which is "more realistic." Falcon: fixed radius, no indication of range, radars in search mode are displayed. F-15: variable radius (10, 20, 40 mi), indicates range to target, radars in search mode are not displayed, but shown via quadrant indicators (front, left, right, rear). Radar ===== In general, the two radars are functionally comparable (Falcon: APG-66, F-15 AN/APG-70). They do differ in many ways, however. F-15: targets may be designated with the mouse. As much as I despise the mouse, this is much better than cycling through a screenful of ground targets. Note that the "target" can be any arbitrary location on the ground, if you so choose (this actually is useful for, e.g., cluster bombs against vehicle parks). You can also designate ground targets by clicking on the appropriate location on the HUD. F-15: ground view mode is functionally superior. Roughly equivalent to a combination of Falcon's ground view and SEA modes, with terrain elevations and the additional ability to produce high-resolution maps ("HRM") of particular areas (from .67 mi to 40 mi in size), within some constraints, based on the size of the map desired, its distance from your plane, and whether or not it falls within the blind zone (a narrow wedge directly along your flight path). The HRMs are very, very useful (I've still blown up a lot of camels in Iraq, though, "just in case."). F-15: radar ranges are limited if your aircraft is flying too low. I don't recall if Falcon does this; I don't see a mention of it in the Falcon manual. For A-A radar modes, altitude coverage also varies with the attitude of your aircraft. F-15: the radar mode can be adjusted even when the radar is off. Instead of the radar scan, the word "SNIFF" is displayed over the display for whichever radar mode. All radar controls work normally. Flying ====== I'm not an expert on the tidbits of how a real F-15 or F-16 performs, so these are just sort of my vague impressions of how F-15 "performs." As indicated in the manual, when loaded up with various bombs and whatnot, F-15 does indeed fly like a "pig." As ordnance is expended it perks up quite a bit. Roll response varies with the load (as, I believe, it should). Unladen roll rate is about the same as Falcon in "Complex" mode, maybe a little more. However, even unladen, I don't think the performance at altitude is right. At about 45000 feet, with no external stores, full afterburner tops out at about 350 knots. This seems somewhat on the low side to me. F-15 seems to manuever just fine, but is much touchier about red-out (from negative Gs) than Falcon. It takes very little to cause a full red-out. One very serious omission from the F-15 flight model is the lack of a stall warning. I'm also not sure that stalls occur the way they should. The manual does mention stalls and what cause them, so I'll defer this to somebody who knows better than I. F-15 lacks both rudder control and flaps. I don't know for sure that the real F-15 has flaps, but I'm fairly sure it does have rudders. F-15 does have running lights, though. Also, the ILS only functions with the landing gear extended. The autopilot cannot land the plane, although in Easy mode you don't need to land, just overfly the airbase (you don't get to take off in Easy mode, either; you start airborne over the base). Landing in the more difficult modes is not hard, though. The ILS is inferior to that in Falcon, but still adequate. Note: in the "Standard" mode flight model, the autopilot is able to land the plane (or so the manual claims). Weapons ======= Guns: In "Standard" mode, the gun in F-15 is, indeed, the lance of death that most people expect from Microprose flight games. However, in "Authentic" mode it is almost passable. The cannon appears to be properly ineffective against most ground targets, but can take out small objects. E.g., I got a ZSU-23-4 AA gun without a lot of trouble (two passes, ~125 rounds), but half a dozen passes at a random ship produced no visisble result. On the down side, air targets are far too easy to hit. The ordnance selection in F-15 and Falcon is comparable, with each having a couple of items the other lacks. Overall, they're probably about equal. F-15 has several air-to-ground attack modes that Falcon lacks. Off the top of my head, there is CDIP (equivalent to Falcon's CCIP), CDIP LASER (laser guided weapons, distinct because the laser on your LANTIRN pod only tracks through 180 degrees, so if you overfly the target before impact, the bomb goes ballistic) AUTO (CDIP that even drops the bombs for you), AUTO LASER, GUIDED, and GUIDED "lock after launch" (two weapons can acquire targets after launch via their own FLIR: the GBU-15 bomb and AGM-84E Standoff Land Attack Missile). Explosions in F-15 are quite spectacular, and ground targets burn for quite a while. Flying through such a tower of black smoke produces the expected black-out. I do wish that F-15 had more than one "size" of explosion, though, since destroying an oil well produces the same explosion and subsequent fire as destroying a camel does. The manual mentions that you should be wary of being damaged by your own ordnance, but it hasn't happened to me yet. Documentation ============= The F-15 manual is quite good, being marred chiefly by needing some more proofreading. The numerous typos and misstatements are not difficult to understand, though. Nevertheless, the Falcon manual is, I think, better overall, what with the lessons. One notable part of the F-15 manual is that one entire section (the "meat") is entirely duplicated. The first copy is for all settings in "Standard" mode, and the second is for all settings in "Authentic" mode. The latter section also includes a description of what each realism switch does. F-15 also includes a quick reference chart, which is quite useful. It includes all of the view controls, flight controls, training mode controls, caution light layout, radar controls, HUD controls, and (my favorite) TEWS radar codes (the numbers in the squares and diamonds), plus a table of range vs. altitude contstraints for various radar modes. Miscellaneous ============= F-15 has no mission builder. In F-15, you are supplied with only three waypoints: Your base, and the primary and secondary targets. You are given no opportunity to edit your waypoints, or examine a close-up map. F-15 comes with three theatres: Korea, Panama (shoot the canal!) and, of course, Persian Gulf. Falcon has six today, but, in defense of F-15, Falcon originally came with three as well. F-15 has only one type of mission, "Go forth and destroy this thing, then destroy that other thing." The variety of things appears to be quite good, though. The manual lists a fairly large selection of "non-threat" aircraft, but the only one I've seen thus far is the KC-10 tanker that many missions begin and end at. You don't get to go through airborne refueling, it just "happens." Handling of external fuel tanks is better in Falcon, where they may be jettisoned seperately from other external stores. In F-15, all stores go at once. Also, Falcon has a mechanism to determine when the external tank(s) are empty; F-15 does not (although F-15, like Falcon, appears to use fuel in external tanks first). Alas, the capacity of external fuel tanks in F-15 is given in gallons, not pounds (why this is a bummer will be made clear in the next paragraph). Fuel management is, overall, about equal in Falcon and in F-15. Basically, each has things the other lacks. F-15 displays (for each engine) the throttle setting, fuel flow (in pounds per hour), fuel temperature, oil temperature, and the engine nozzle position. I'm not really sure why the last three are supplied, since the engines are not individually throttleable, and there is no manual control over engine shutdown in case of damage. F-15 gives remaining fuel in hundreds of pounds (there is both a gauge and a numeric readout). F-15 also includes what it calls "Bingo Fuel," which is the amount of fuel needed to fly from your furthest target directly back to base, plus an unspecified reserve. On its side, Falcon has separate indicators for external fuel tanks. Out-of-cockpit views are roughly comparable. F-15 lacks "look left" and "look right", instead having a "look out and pan around" setup, much like how Jetfighter 2 works. I'd like to have a left and right, but the existing system makes looking for enemy aircraft fairly simple. Interestingly, F-15 has a "padlock mode," which is just the "look out and pan" view that tracks. The sun does not appear to exist in F-15, although sunsets are very nice. Arming is simpler in F-15, but Falcon allows more control over the weapons load. In particular, F-15 allows only a full load for each weapon/hardpoint, e.g., the wing station will hold six (as I recall) Maverick missiles on each side. This is the only number of Mavericks that can be loaded at that station. Falcon allows any number, as long as the sides balance. Post-mission review in F-15 consists of a map, on which your flight path is tracked, and your various "encounters" (attacks, hits, etc) are shown. There is no VCR-style playback at all; a significant lack in my mind. The AWACS in F-15 will give heading and range information for other aircraft, along with simple designations (either "BOGEYS", meaning unidentified aircraft, "SNAP", enemy aircraft, or "CHICKS", friendly aircraft). ECM (called, generically, "jammers") in F-15 is semi-automatic. The 'j' key toggles the jammer on and off, but it only actually activates when it needs to. Enemy AI ======== Since I've used primarily Easy mode (the easiest of four), all I can say is that the Easy mode enemy pilots are exceptionally stupid, and AAA gunners are fairly bad shots. About the only positive thing I can say about the computer pilots at this level is that they can be hard to spot, since they rarely turn on their radar. Campaign ======== I have yet to play an F-15 campaign, but the basic situation in F-15 is "you vs. the world." In modem play, however, you can apparently have two F-15s. I have yet to see any allied aircraft at all (I suspect that they only come into play during a campaign). Bugs ==== The only bug I've seen so far in F-15 is that with the radar in SNIFF mode (i.e., turned off), it is still possible to generate a High Resolution Map of an area, evidently without the radar turning on (at any rate, the radar emission light doesn't turn on). Summary ======= At present, I don't think I've got enough time on F-15 to really say if it is "better" or "worse" than Falcon. However, I have enjoyed it sufficently so far that I intend to get enough time. What would make it better than Falcon ===================================== Well, ok, naturally, nothing could ever make F-15 better than Falcon; I just said that to get your attention. Nevertheless, I think the following things would vastly improve F-15. - Give it a decent VCR. - Give it a decent mission builder. - Computer wingmen, and other assorted allied planes and forces. And finally, as a sort of general observation, I've sent email to both Spectrum Holobyte (numerous times about Falcon) and Microprose (once, about the Gunship 2000 expansion), with various bug reports, questions, suggestions and so forth. SH sent numerous personal replies. Microprose sent no response, not even a form letter. I consider it unlikely that I will report any bugs I find in F-15. -J --- -Jay Vosburgh, Sequent Computer Systems, Inc; fubar@sequent.com ------------------------------- [[ End of digest Volume 2 : Issue 18 ]]