I've played a fair bit of F4:AF, and while I have enjoyed it, one aspect which I hate is how your mission success or failure factors into the genral performance of every other unit on your side in the game. Succeed at destroying multiple targets but for some reason fail a mission due to a technicality? All of a sudden when watching stuff on the campaign map your sides units behave like crap.

Is there a version of Falcon 4 out there where unit abiity is not tied to your performance on flights? In other words, a tank on the 2D map fights just as well in a given combat situation whether I have failed the last 10 missions in a row, or succeeded in them all? I would like to just sit back in the general's chair and direct the campaign without having to fly, and play Falcon's dynamic campaign like a grand RTS, but the current game mechanic kind of requires that I get in the jet and personally fly many missions for the campaign to turn out successfully. Or that's the way it seems, correct me if I am wrong.

Also, what is the best version of Falcon 4 in your opinions for directing and controlling all aspects of the war, both air and ground forces? As you can tell, the dynamic campaign is what most interests me, and super high fidelity flight models or even pretty graphics are secondary.

The need for player's input is common to all F4 flavors, I'm pretty sure.
You've got to fly and do something at least every n sim hours, or your Side starts degrading
in performance - and results.

IIRC, FF or OF allowed you to augment this time threshold. But I don't remember whether it's
one of the .cfg switches common to all F4's or something introduced in past bms versions.

At any rate you may not eliminate the need for your input completely.
The Dynamic Campaign engine is a beast of software engineering, but it still needs some
kind of unpredictable discriminant to not make the overall campaign outcome predetermined
at the start. Human input was the best choice, of course.

On the other hand there were the no-less-important needs to make the player feel part of the
whole (your actions have consequences that affect the actions of others), and grant him a
sense of accomplishment (you know the war was won also because you were in).

And where's the fun in flying your missions if your Side could win or lose regardless of how
you personally fared? You wouldn't like to succeed at every assigned task yet lose the war
because a random number decided it at campaign start.



F4:AF has the best ground war. Other F4 flavors may field more ground units, but they'll
behave nearly the same they did in F4 1998. AF campaign engine was heavily modified.
It received the lion's share of the code revisions made to its source. No other F4 version
has undergone the same treatment.

Thanks for the response. I guess I'll just stick with F4:AF then, and make sure I fly the occassional misison!

I do have some questions regarding hitting certain targets in the campaign though. Specifically, hitting supply battalions. What do they do exactly? I know in real life they would supply troops with fuel and ammo, but in game, what are the effects of having them around, other than serving as targets? Do they actually resupply airbases or ground troops? What about manufacturing centers or power plants in the game, does hitting them have functional consequences on the amount of resupply generated by them? I am basically interested in knowing which targets have functional effects, which by destroying will have other effects down the line such as fewer enemy reinforcements. It was never clear to me in the past when I was playing whether those missions to hit factories actually did anything. I want my actions to have concrete effects on the course of the war, beyond just mission success aiding the morale of the troops. I already know the effects of destroying a tank battalion, or destroying a bridge, or bombing an airfield, but some other targets I am not as clear about. Will performing deep strike missions to destroy enemy infrastructure, or destroying enemy supply battalions result in less enemy reinforcments?

Personally, I would like it if my actions in flying the plane only influenced the course of the game to the extent of the actual damage I caused, not by increasing morale of every single allied unit in the game.

Not true. BMS has a massively overhauled campaign as well. Not sure about all the details as I don't care for managing the campaign, but it surpasses AF's campaign in at least some areas.



Nothing is predetermined at the start of the campaign, it evolves dynamically whether you fly or not.

Try to stay no more than 2 hours without flying.

In case you don't know already, you can take control of any viper at any time. You may jump into
an F16 about to drop its ordnance on target. And after bombing you may End the mission, letting
the AI take over (maybe ensure that your guys are out of harm's way, first).
Doing so you give your contribute to the campaign, but spend little time in the cockpit.

Airfields and squadrons do need to be periodically resupplied, or their frag order empties indefinitely.
I don't know about ground troops, though. I'd say they need supplies just as well, but I don't have
proof of it. Now that I think of it, I don't recall seeing a batallion regaining operational state after
having being crippled. Then again, it might have happened and I just didn't notice. Sorry, I'm not
being much help.
Know what? When in doubt about a target you wish to strike, trust its assigned Strategic Value.
Recon the target site, and inspect the list of available targets. Taking out the Very High value
targets will have the most impact on the campaign. Can't go wrong with that.


[edit]


Hi Kosmo.


Please specify.
Do you mean: massively overhauled campaign database?
Or: massively overhauled campaign Core code as well?
AFAIK only LP was authorized to modify the campaign engine source code, and was given full access
to it. I can be wrong, of course, and I'm not saying your claim is false. Matter of fact, I'm curious to
know how the BMS team had the possiblity to do the same as LP.


Wait. I never claimed that.
Please don't take my statements out of context.

Both.



The same way they had the possibility to change pretty much every other aspect of the sim. Every Falcon mod team that has the code can modify the campaign if they want. The fact that no other team would touch it except LP and BMS is different.



It was not out of context, that's the impression I got from your post, sorry if I misunderstood:

A precisation.
The source code that leaked years ago was a *part* of the whole. Not the whole.
It wasn't enough back then to grant a complete rebuild of the binaries, and it isn't enough today.
If anybody had the ability to change pretty much everything we'd be having a completely new F4
by now, seeing how that's been the forbidden wish of every falconeer for the past _14_ years and
there was no shortage of modding teams.
There wouldn't have been an F4:AF to begin, because no publisher invests money in a product
without market. This would have been the case if only the first bms teams were able to make
all the wanted changes to the original F4.
Similarly, there wouldn't have been an Open Falcon, a RedViper first and a FreeFalcon then.
And even if they were to exist, at some point of its long "development" the OF team would have
made something to seriously improve the graphics aspect of their sim version.
Conversely the RV/FF team would have done something concrete about their plague of bugs.
As for the current BMS incarnation, it wouldn't be stuck with the old terrain (out of place,
compared to the 3D pit), and it wouldn't be applying HDR effects to non-metallic objects like
trees and runways.

You see, all this could occur because nobody had the full source code to make things proper.
BMS is to be credited for having implemented lots of successful hacks, some of which allowed
for interesting breakthroughs. But there's a limit to what can be done via hex editing.
Only LP had the source code and was in a position to do anything for real. But LP was bound
by the publisher's will. It's a different story.

With that said, I won't doubt that the BMS campaign engine has been modified. Remains to be
seen the extent of such modifications and how they compare with AF. LP spent years to do what
they did on the campaign. BMS spent most of its development cycle for 3D pit, shaders and flight
model, instead. Even if the rest was built on pre-existing features, courtesy of past bms
incarnations (nothing wrong with that), they still had not enough time to match what LP did
in its own time. Least of all with hacks.
We may never agree on this, so I don't think I'll return on the subject. No offense is meant.



That's alright. Clearly a misunderstanding, and my convoluted english may well have part in it.

I was explaining...
... that the campaign wants human input to constantly influence the balance between the sides at
war. Since a player is obviously there to play the sim, it was decided that both his actions and
inactions would become such discriminant. The inconstant and unpredictable performance of a
human player was the best choice to graft something genuinely dynamic into the campaign. And the
"dynamic" campaign engine could stay true to its namesake.

And then...
... if instead the campaigns were structured in a way such that no human input was required, it
would all be ruled by cold numbers. Pseudo-random numbers, to be precise (as there's nothing
chaotic in our computers).
We may discuss the delicate matter of random sequences all day long (holy wars have been fought
over them, please nobody start one now!), but in the end these numbers depend on one another.
And if a campaign was solely ruled by a random sequence, then we could say that victory or defeat
are preordained at the start. That's what the needed player's input is meant to avert.
Hence, my statement that was misinterpreted and quoted.

I understand what you are saying Comet, but for me player input, in the form of deciding which targets to strike, the ability to cripple the enemy through good planning of missions, both those you fly and those you let the AI fly, just generally how well you direct the campaign, should be the deciding factor on how the campaign progresses. Not global morale changes that occur when you jump in the jet every couple hours, which seems very "gamey" to me, and breaks the spirit of the sim. I want a war sim, not a war game. Maybe I should be playing Harpoon instead, but I can't afford the latest version of it, and it does not have a dynamic campaign, just a series of scripted missions, which I am not as interested in. You do know that an RTS game can be won or lost on the strength of how well you plan and execute your actions. I just wish the Falcon dynamic campaign was similar. As it stands you could simply not touch the ATO, fly the jet a bit, and you would win the game necause your side would be so ecstatic that you managed to jump in your jet every so often, which to me seems plain silly. The way to win a campaign, imo, should require heavy player input both in flying missions, and in planning the right sort of missions both for yourself and the AI. I'd be fine with a campaign which is set up at the start to favor the enemy side if you did nothing, but if you moved your units and planned missions better than the ant brain AI which controls the ATO, you can turn the tide of battle. Or a campaign set up to favor your side, but you want to see if by controlling the order of battle you can end it sooner.

Falcrack- I agree with your sentiments to a large degree. Falcon is both a 'flight simulator' and a 'tactical war simulator' and it's fun to explore both aspects. If the pilot flys really well once every two hours he can win the campaign without being involved in mission management. It will however take a long time, sometimes 28 days or more I believe, sometimes less. So there is a reward for flying really well, and that in itself doesn't seem like a bad thing to me. With partial mission management efforts, the campaign can be won in time frames of 7 days if combined with good mission flying. (these time frames are general)

At these levels of involvement you're not yet satisfied, and actually neither was I. Rather than look at it as a win or not win situation, try to think of it (as you mentioned) as a challenge of how quickly can you win the campaign by totally managing the campaign.
I have found that if, at the start of a new campaign, you turn off both 'set by HQ' in priorities, immediately stop the campaign clock, open ATO to show all packages and delete or RTB all flights and from that blank state of affairs begin to manage all aspects of the campaign that you can win any of the AF campaign in 24 hours. It is however quite a challenge to pursue, but one that I think will interest you.

I have done this with the 'no player play' penalty set at the default time of 2 hours, so I did jump in the jet to fly, but should you desire, you can change the time to a much larger number so that you won't be penalized for not flying. I have not tried it this way but a little so I cannot say how well the campaign will go, but I would guess that if you manage it well it will progress well.

The way to increase the no player penalty is to create a file using windows notepad. Write this one line in it:

set g_nNoPlayerPlay 120

This will make the penalty apply at 120 hours of no flying. Of course you can choose some other hour amount for this file.
Name this file

BFOPS.cfg

and place it in your Lead Pursuit>Battlefield Operations folder.

To confirm that it applied, enter Falcon main UI, exit and navigate to the Battlefield Operations folder. Open the file BFOpslog.txt and see if the change is applied.

You perhaps should create an alternate logbook when using this change, especially if you do fly in the campaign a bit, as you may receive some credit that you wouldn't necessarily deserve. Just a thought, proceed as you see best, as it may actually be that it is more difficult to get a win without the weight of the penalty present than it is with it. As I mentioned I've only ran it the one way, with the penalty at default.

Good luck, and btw, Allied Force is the one to use for this type of intense management (to the best of my knowledge).

Nope, it was the whole code. If you search a bit you might still be able to find it and see for yourself.



That's what BMS is, or as close as you can get to it. I mean, there's no point in trying to change everything, in that case you might just as well start from scratch.



It's really just a matter of time and resources, some things in the code are incredibly complex to change, like the terrain or the object materials. That doesn't mean they can't or won't be changed, just that it would require a tremendous amount of time to do while there are more pressing priorities at the moment. By the same logic, if having the code was the sole limitation, LP who undoubtedly had the code would have improved the graphics and terrain as well.

Just a sidenote on OF, there was no development there, not a public one at least. OF was just a leaked early beta of what later became BMS and it was just the one version. The very few updates that followed were data edits by the community.



As I said, no hex editing, in fact any of this would be humanly impossible to do via hex editing. You can't hex edit a game to DX9 for instance.



Here's some more info here on some of the changes in BMS (relative to other flavors which have untouched campaign code - this excludes AF):

Campaign Control

Campaign Management



None taken and same here



Agreed.

Closing, we've had this discussion before, I just want to say again that if you have an original F4 disc you should give BMS a try, see what all the fuss is about and judge for yourself. We even had one of the LP guys register on the forums to congratulate the team on their work.

Because you're nice and polite, I shall bite my tongue and refrain from spitting venom.
But know that I have BMS 4.32 Update 3 currently installed.


DISCLAIMER: To all, potentially shocking content ahead.
STOP reading if you are soft of heart OR if you are easily offended by disagreement OR if you
think to possess the right to tell me what I should and should not like.

Could you be more specific? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts/wishes. We can continue via PM if you want, we probably have already derailed this thread enough.

Comet, I would like to know what you don't like regarding BMS Update 3 as well. I've never delved into AF as much as I am doing now with BMS, so I really have little to compare it to, so would be cool to know your thoughts.