Falcon 4.0 AF? Anyone heard of it.
 

Hey guys just wanted to drop in a good word about a sim game thats been around maybe 6months to a year. Its called Falcon 4.0 Allied Forces. Its a modern flight simulation where you fly 3 varients of the F-16 in 2 theaters based on fictional events.

Now I will have to explain this in a little bit of detail but this is the real seller. You guys are big fans of the SH3 dynamic campgain right? Not mission based "levels" but actually having randomness involved, well this is where Falcon 4.0 shines. Your missions you fly, and the results there after (succes or failure) determines the outsome of the war. Your not the only plane out there. You fly along side or against AI that are trying to complete thier own objectives.

For example. The "theater screen" for the Balkans consist of part of italy Serbia Bosnia, and the countries in and around there. In one "operation" Serbia has taken over Bosnia and your fighting to keep them from taking over nearby countries. Day 1 6:00:00, by the way the map present the whole war IN REAL TIME! My first frag list comes in, in order of take off timeand or priority, I chose a strike mission a a key bridge along the frontlines that the enemy planes to cross. I load up my laser guided LGU-24B/Bs and prepar to fly, you can chose to start out and manualy start up the engines which take around 25 mins, or taxi to the runway, or start off right on the runway. I chose taxi. I call to the Tower and get clearance to taxi to runway 2 6 hold short. I stop just before it, get clearance to "depart", "Falcon 11 request clearance to depart". The Tower answers back, "Falcon 11 position and hold on runway 26". I pull onto the runway and stop. Tower comes back with, "Falcon 11 you are cleared for depature, departe heading 1 7 0." I take off and turn left to 170.

As I leave I here the Tower radio my wingman, "Flacon 12 position and hold on runway 2 6." As I leave the ground I hear, "Falcon 1 2 you are cleared for departure, depart heading 1 7 0." After i fly on the heading 1 7 0 to clear the traffic I here, "Falcon 11 resume self-navigation," and I am cleared to continue with my mission. I climbed to 22,000 ft and head for my objective. While I'm in there air I hear the chatter of other flights, Viper1, Snake 5, and others calling out to thier wingman and others. Then I hear, "Falcon 11 this is Sentry1 (AWACS) be advised hostile aircraft bullseye 1 4 5 50 miles angles 10." I call out to me wingman, "Falcon 1 2 weapons free." We turn to engage what appears on our RWR as Mig-29s. The planes turn tail and outrun us, so we continue on our mission.

Once I get over target I desend to 5,000 ft and use CCRP (Constant Computed Release Point) to drop my laser guided bombs on the target. Unfortunatly due to my noobism, I missed and I wingman and i were forced to abort due to SAM and a large number of bogeys heading right for us.

Once I get within 30 miles of homeplate I radio in, "Falon 1 inbound for landing", the come back with,"Good Morning Falcon 1 desend to 2,000, await vectors to final." I desend. Around 19 miles out I hear,"Falcon 11 your are number 1 to land, to right heading 2 8 0 maintan speed of 2 6 0, await vectos to final." After a while I hear, "Falcon 11 turn left heading 2 6 0, final approach, maintan speed of 2 4 0 check gear down!" SH*! i forgot and lowerd my gear and landed gentle. When I reached the end of the runway I hear, "Falcon 11 taxi clear of the runway, incoming traffic," and the AI tower proceeds to vector my wingman down. I was needless to say flabbergasted by this. Never have I seen or played or heard of a sim that has a tower that talks you down, as this one did and ON TARGET! Simply amazing. I exited the mission to the debrief screen where I saw my results. Mission: Failure no damage done to target. Down near the bottom of the screen is a Results sections. Due to your failure, ATC has organized another flight to attack your target. I reutnr to the theature screen and sure enough Viper3 was enroute to destroy the bridge. While Enroute an enemy Battalion crossed over and engaged NATO forces, forcing them to retreat. Soon after Priority A CAS mission came flooding in to add the retreating NATO forces. I had failed, and the men on the ground were paying for it.

The features on this sim are more than I can name. I can only suggest you look it up. You can only fly 3 variants of the F-16 but with all the other things you can do, why would you want to fly any thing else. There are two theaters Korea and the Balkans, each have 3 different operations inclucde. Not to mention you can change the year/technology of the time. for each from present day to 2005 to 2010!

For those guys who have to have the beautiful "eye candy" this ins't for you. The graphics are nice, but not excellent, but if your one of those guys who love to have realism in a game and are looking for a nice Modern Day Flight Sim with a real Dynamic Campgain this is the one for you!

Best campaign engine I've ever seen in a game, the beauty of it is that all events are handled statistically until they are in your vicinity, allowing it to handle more than 50000 units in real time...
(Tip: always try to cut the enemy lines of advance at the begining of the campaign, blow up as many bridges as you can,ignore the mission objectives, it'll be less score, but it'll help you to win the war.)

Ref

I have always been interested in this game but i hear it is near impossiable to get used to the controls. How easy is it to get into this game? Is the flight model give you alot of options so you can ease your way into it?

my friend was obsessed with the old falcon series..2.0 i think. I love flight sims but I haven't really qualified myself in a super realistic one like falcon.

Hey, I am NO fighter pilot,i don't know much about modern planes radar RWR and the likes of that. But I decided what the heck and jumped in at 100% realism, the flight model is alot more fogiving than say I-L2 because the computer is also making adjustments in the flight.

You can make the game a simple or as hard as you wish, you can easy into it with simplified radar and flight model, or do what I did and jump right into it, there are a number of options to set and match to your skill level, it is for hard-core and soft-core gamers alike.

As for learning the ropes, I've had the game since Thursday of last week, and I've pretty much got it down pat. There is a 716 page manual you can print off that covers EVERYTHING, ever single switch in the pit is listed and given detailed explanations to it. I printed off the section about Radar and read it before I went to bed and had a better understanding of what it is I had to do.

It is an AMAZING game the thing is it can be an interactive RTS game as well, you can create your own packages (flights) with thier own objective. When you select a mission you are given a Time of takeoff usally at least an hour away, i find myself sitting there watching all the fireworks, the blue planes flying in after the red planes. There are even some news videos about special events during the war, but i ahve not witnessed on of these yet.

If enemy bombers or fighters get near you base, a message pops on screen scrambling fighters to intercept you can chose to fight them off, you may win you might lose.

The game is hands down my favorite flight sim period, I got it for 35$ at Bestbuy, I recommend it to just about everyone here. You guys like pushing button, after i take off I'm looking through the pit find various switches to flip, on time I jettisoned all my stores (ie A-AM and A-GM)......another time I switched on the fuel dump......there are some many switches its mind boggling, there are like 6 diffrent A-A radar modes, that just for A-A<<<<<

From what i understand the radar modeled in the game is modeled after one of the older radars that have been "declassified" I don't know much more about it.

You HAVE to try this game, but don't believe me, look around for reviews, try simhq.com they have a community review which pretty much sold me.

God i feel old!

I play Falcon since the firs days! The best and most complex Flight sim ever programmed...no wonder Microprose bit the dust!
I love that LP made the most stable version with AF.
A good modding Community, Good Support from LP and a lot of good Virtual Pilots an' squads out there!

ACE setting all the way Baby!:rock:

Is Falcon 4 AF a community Mod (gone pro) or an update by the orginal developers?

Sort of - A lot of the RP modders formed a company and hooked up with the legal copy of the actual source code. They fixed many things and added many more. Best graphics are still in BMS 2.0 and there are little things in BMS 2.0 like radio channels instead of words that is more relistic, but overall, F4AF is a better product. I like both, but F4AF fixes things like screen resolutions, adds some more up to date graphics capabilities, and even supports things like multi-CPU's.

-S

Best forum for F4AF is here:

http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/

-S

I've tried getting int Falcon 4.0 but all the mods (and importantly how they interact (or don't interact)) just put me off. I might giv falcon 4.0 AF a go.

For the free mods you only need SP4.2 OCI - that means: one-click-installer. One download, one installation, one deal.AF adds slightly better graphics, some additonal functions, and is said to massively increase MP stability. But it does so at the cost of many issues and broken details, some of them are real showstoppers for SP. I now have tested the latest patch 1.7, and it still does not solve several major issues. While some functionality may be lost in SP4.2OCI, I prefer it for single player, and every time so. It simply is far batter patched out than AF. And after one year and the expectation that they cannot afford to support a several-years long flow of constant patches (it'S a commercial product), I think, they will not get AF under control.If you are single player, stay with SP4.2OCI. It is free, mission play does not suffer from so serious showstoppers like AF, and it is stable. If oyu are into MP, then you might want to try AF. But for non-MP game I fail to see any massive argument why one may want to buy AF. I have again shelved it, for the third or fourth time after trying new patches. Imo it is no imrovement, but a step several years back in the history of Falcon evolution. An additonal default theatre does not change that, imo.

I disagree with that assesment. I don't have any issues in F4AF. I also have both. BMS 2.0 with SP4.2 however has better (in my opinion) graphics in areas though, and is just slightly more realistic. SP 4.2 is basically F4AF since it is created by the very same people.

-S

PS - Skybird - One thing you may not know - all the same tweaks for SP 4.2 work for F4AF by the way. Things like removing the the little square around aircraft when in padlock mode, etc. You just have to add the appropriate files.

As i understood it, the guys who did the SP series are separate from the ones who bought the rights and put out F4AF. Otherwise AF would likely contain most everything the most recent SP had, and it doesnt.

Perhaps my biggest worry about the long term survivability of AF is the fact they arnt letting anyone mod it (other then stuff like cockpits, hi res tiles, and other graphics). As once the company gets sick of working on it, we will likely be stuck with it as is. Also since this company owns the rights to F4 they have put the kabosh on any future mods for F4 as well.

As for the issues with F4AF yes they are there, though SP4.2 has its own too (related more to the core issues with F4 1.08 which they have spent the last several years trying to fix).


Anyhow as for realism, F4AF is about as real as it gets for a commercial sim game. No other sim ever even comes close to it. The learning curve to fully learn the game is very very steep, dont be surprized if it takes months to fully learn everything (or more if your totaly newbie). Its just like trying to learn the real 16. Though if you have a hard copy manual its alot easier to learn (working with a pdf doc while in a sim complicates things).

Btw as for the original post, sounds to me like you dropped your bombs in dumb mode, ya gotta arm your laser designator, and use the bombing mode which is similar to firing maverics (either using ground radar, or the ground stabalized box) to lock up your target which when locked gives you ccrp bombing mode for release, set up your bomb ripple, then toss or fly over while pickling. Also avoid high g turns, dives or climbs, and if you must turn as i remember, turn right (as left i think has a blind spot that the laser designator cant pivot to). In the manual there is 2 graphics showing the angles the laser can cover and not.

I am nopt about tweaks, Subman. I talk about Wingmen not followung commands, or going vertically into the ground. Wingman colliding into a tnaker, or never tank until running out of fuel. Wingmen that never take off the ground and still got glued onto the taxiway when I have come back. wingmene that return home when being given attack orders. All this is said and promised to be solved with 1.03. 1.05. 1.06. 1.07. It all is still there, for me and quite some others, too. There is a reason why seeveral old Falconeers have tried it - and returned to SP or BMS or whatever.I have been with Falcon in general and Falcon 4 in special from the very beginning (my callsign derives from the very first Falcon for Amiga, a girlfriend has given it to me when seing me playing it so often). I may have forgotten quite a lot of the old tweaks and things one has to take care of when doing this or that in F4 since the realism patches 3-5, but the basics of wingman handling, for example, I still remember, no matter if I am flying F4 only rarely these days or not. I am not talking about mishandling, or tweaking existing functions like during the days of falcon4patch. I am talking about srious bugs and showstoppers. some AF-fans even today stay with 1.03, since later patches made things worse for some. The picture is not the same for all. some people do not see these issue. Some only with some patch levels. Only logvial that those who had goivemn up never raise their voices in the AF forums. I do not visit the AF forum at Frugals, too. Why should I, if I don't play it. when I said AF is a huge step back, then I mean that the free mods already had been gone beyond the stage of such massive patching and repairing needed that still has to be done for AF. I have no intention to wait another couple of years and experience a second time what I already have had years ago.I did not expect new things in AF, and no drastical improvements, and since a lot of the old stuff got implemented into it, I thought I would be safe to expect that at least what had been achieved in the years before would be there, and reliably, and functional, and easy to install. Instead they threw the patching standard back by several years. One year has passed, and concenring the showstopping issues it staill is no match for SP4. Seems my minimum expectation of keeping what had been achieved was wrong. Single players are better off with SP or BMS or a combo of both, I think. MP should try it, due to the better online stability. Dutch asked, I gave my view on it. That's all.

Well, i must be one of the lucky ones. I have yet to have the wingman issues you talk about. I've not once ever had them not take off with me. Never had one crash into a tanker (Though I rarely tank unless flying from way out somewhere so I may have not done it enough times to see it happen). They always attack whatever targets I assign them and they are way more advanced over the wingmen in SP 4.2. An example is they will all approach their assigned target from a different angle at the same exact time, totally confusing AA defenses. In SP 4.2 - they are much dumber and fly like a robot. I have seen an issue or two however where they don't always follow my orders and do their assigned bombing run which requires me to manually select it for them, but at least I can get them to attack every time. The wingmen do have an issue or two, but for the most part, they work as designed.

My biggest annoyance was the radio volumes not working with a prior patch, but that was fixed in 1.07.

-S