Now that the original goal of Falcon 4 has been completely achieved, it's time to tackle a new goal. May I suggest that we have here the makings of a classic strategy game that's on par with Chess or the card game Bridge. If Falcon 4 is to equal of surpass the other benchmark of hard core simulations, namely iRacing, there has to be a better way of giving a score for performance and keep people striving for better and better scores.

What I have in mind here is what I'll call "Falcon 4: The Art of War", which takes elements from both Chess and Bridge to become a great strategy game. Falcon 4 Art of War has two phases, like contract bridge. You start with two teams. Each team is given a budget to go out and buy military hardware. Each team sets up that hardware in such a way as to protect its home base. The second phase is, of course, a tactical engagement/war between the two teams. The beauty of this is that to get the maximum bang for the buck each team will have to go through the entire Falcon 4 catalog looking for bargain weapons systems. This way you'll have all kinds of interesting matchups between, say, a few advanced fighters vs. dozens of cheap older generation fighters. As with chess, you can set up a tournament and find a champion.

It's not enough to be a good with a joystick; you've also got to choose your weapons carefully before the fighting starts. This is what makes Falcon Chess a more interesting war simulation. To quote "The Art of War", every battle is won before it's fought.