An "sim lite" - Lock-On/Flaming Cliffs style, without click-pit featuring some of actual DCS modules - for "casual players".

Pfft, pass.

Same planes, just dumbed down. Once again, they took the easy route and screwed over their current customers.

"More than a quarter of a century delivering high fidelity combat simulation"

LIES!

There are so many things that makes this game not only a shallow combat game but also the opposite of FIDELITY COMBAT SIMULATION (eg. useless long range missiles, useless proximity fuze, etc..)

Problem with DCS is that it sucks as combat simulation but also as simple plain combat game.... but i hope things will DRASTICALLY change

Hmmmm, interesting.

The difficulty with DCS is I need to keep my hours up in an aircraft to know how to fly it, and I just don't have time for maintenance flight time

True, that is a very real thing aboot the high-end modules and probably the reason I do not fly A-10C since forever.
Still I think repacking the current planeset will show a mistake and give ED another section of disgruntled customers.
All they needed to arrange was 4 brand new FC3 level planes and ship them as pack #1 in MAC.
Who the hell runs that place?

(was my Canadian accent spot on?)

Actually,this interests me as I'm a casual simmer these days. However the price will have to be right. I don't have FC3 so no discount for me.

lol theOden, you horribleSwede, you are bang on! Me mom's a brit so there's that too

I don't disagree with what you are saying, eh?

regards
Horrible Canuck

Say what?
I always run your posts in google translate from French to Sveedish and it turns out pretty readable.

I don't see the problem with that. My problem is the plane selection is fairly lame, IMO. I already own the MIG-21 and it isn't that complex. My understanding is the F-5E is fairly similar. Meaning there isn't much of a difference between those and the higher fidelity models. L-39? I'm sure it is somewhat fun to fly, but for those of use who want something simpler we're more interested in the combat and the L-39 is underwhelming for that task to put it lightly. Trainers make sense for high fidelity modules, little for something like MAC. Same with the MIG-15 and F-86. Again, practically no difference between the high fidelity versions. Even worse though, there isn't much time period equipment for them to fight against...

I'd love to see a F-18C or F-16C, which are coming as full fidelity modules later, added in a sequel bundle. I wouldn't care one bit if they offered a full fidelity version of them. I'd even be interested in more modern variants of the FC3 aircraft. An Su-27SM2, MIG-29SMT or MIG-29K come to mind. A Mirage 2000-5F or -5 would also be interesting... I am sure the flight dynamics and external model are close enough to the C variant in game to modify. Main work would be a few new weapons, counter measures, and cockpit. But I'd certainly be interested in that, as it clearly isn't possible to model anything more than a C sub variant at the full fidelity level.

But the line up for MAC? Not very interesting. We'll see how much they ask for those that own FC3 to upgrade.

It seems to be aimed strictly at new customers who haven't played any ED sim yet and aren't into "clickability" anyway. Not much content for us old farts (though FC3 owners will appreciate tweaks to their planes). The concept is sound, but plane selection, not so much? I agree with Flogger. I'm not sure if it's the right time to employ FC3 sequel just yet. More coherent lineup released next year would probably be more successfull in my opinion.

My big gripe about MAC is that most of the load is on the System Modelers to get it out by fall. Resources are being taken that could be finishing the Hornet systems. ED now has a big backlog of aircraft to put out with my favorite the F-4E Phantom at the end of the line.

On the plus side, Magnitude 3 LLC should get some money from MAC for the MIG-21bis. We are also getting dedicated servers by fall. Hopefully we get some netcode improvements with that.

I'm IN! Looks great to me. Just jump in a DCS aircraft and fly without a lot of learning. Sounds like a lot of fun! I liked Jane's Strike Fighters when it didn't keep crashing.

If they 're gonna pair up aircraft from both sides, the F-5 and the Mig-21 are a ridiculous grouping. F-4 makes more sense. But then again, there's no F-4 for ED to rehash.

Meh, this just adds to the sense that they have no idea what to do with their platform. Instead of fragmenting their effort even more, I'd rather have them work more on the existing bits of DCS to make them coherent and less of a messy sandbox (and also optimise the performance...), but it really doesn't look that this will ever happen.

Wait, I get to pay for the exact same thing I already have, at greatly reduced cost, and the possibilities are endless, wow, what a deal. You DCS guys, you. I didn't know what I was doing.

You guys are looking at this from the vantage point of someone who already owns some of this stuff. They're going after the ones out there who don't. I just don't see anything wrong with that. The success of BOX should show that this is what most people want. It's a beautiful game, with just enough complexity to make it interesting but simple enough that anybody can get in and fly those airplanes. That's who they're going after. And those people aren't worrying about whether airplanes aren't matched up correctly. There's a bigger market for survey sims such as that than there is for DCS study types. This could be a real moneymaker if it's marketed correctly.
It's a buisiness, boys. And that's where the money is.

Did not mention it, but it is fairly clear from the post really over the top, that they are targeting FC3 owners, if not as their primary customer, whether you choose to read between the lines or not. If someone who owns FC3 tries to purchase it, and the server says "no", let me know.

I have to agree. I own most of the Study sims, but I just don't have the time to study, become proficient and stay proficient in even one study sim anymore. I probably won't buy any of these dumb'ed down modules because I need to upgrade my computer to use DCS with good (I love the eye candy) results. Honestly I have pretty much stopped using DCS because of the spec requirements, but if I can ever afford to upgrade again I honestly probably will buy some of theses, especially if they offer a discount to me. To those that can maintain being proficient and have fun with one or more of the study sims, my hat's off to you in respect, but I don't see any reason to shame those that can't or do not want to anymore for whatever reason they might have. As Pooch said,"The success of BOX should show that this is what most people want". Once my intial Track IR and HOTAS are set up I'm off to learn the FM and characteristics of the Sim and in relatively short time I can achieve decent proficiency and maintain it rather easily. I think there are probably a lot of customers out there that want to fly the modern stuff but don't really care to sort through 5 different radar modes, scan at different altitudes and pre-cool the seeker heads on the missiles before they can find a target to engage, if they find it at all. Again, my hat's off to all that do, you are better pilots than I am, but I believe ED has seen the huge potential market that did fly Flaming cliffs 3 and would buy in to be able to fly in DCS again at that level as the time and effort needed is easier to budget into RL. This is IMHO of course. Carry on!


S!Blade<><

In case anyone still wondering why ED started to sell FC3 modules as separate modules, it's because they didn't want you to buy FC3 but get more revenue when planes are bought separate and oh if you did buy them as separate, you will not get a discount from MAC.

I'm looking forward to it. I own FC3 already, but would like FC3 fidelity versions of the other modules that are being included.

+1

And what happens when MAC owners want to venture online?.........can they only play on servers with other MAC players due to balancing and fairplay because ED are making changes to already released aircraft! There is a real danger here of yet another dev branch and split player base.

They started it with a couple of FC3 aircraft with updated flight model, then a number cruncher or community manager came to the conclusion that

"we are losing money on this by giving free updated models to FC3 owners, how about we bring out a new addition and charge EVERYONE for the flight model updates, not just those who do not own FC3"

pretty much bang on with what actually took place behind the scenes with this new MAC version. To get it over the line, they added already released aircraft, 75% of those released are by Belsimtek. You know? the guys who do 75% of the work on all modules marketed by ED

I recall somewhere over at ED someone in a high place confirming that the FC3 aircraft would eventually be updated as was the F-15C with a new flight model, this proves that FC3 will now remain completely untouched in it's current state.

When has that even been shown to be a concern?

Incorrect. FC3 aircraft owners will still get any updates, such as the PFM for the Mig-29, for free.

Yup. MIG-29 PFM is coming the end of this year if I recall. All the FC3 aircraft have the new cockpit, external model and other enhancements. All that is left is the MIG-29 PFM. Even if they wanted to bait and switch, it is too late because 90% of the updates have already been released for FC3 owners.

Reality is a sizeable number of players wanted another module like the FC3 aircraft. Except ED has no interest in making these modules anymore, and apparently neither do the 3rd party developers. So they took some of their already released, and rather simple aircraft, and made the controls behave more similarly to FC3, as well as some other avionic simplifications I assume. The aircraft they chose were simple enough as it was so I can't imagine a lot of effort will be spent making them simplified. Essentially they're throwing a bone to FC3 players. It is better than nothing, but not exactly that exciting. But it seems no one is interesting in investing the time and money for a medium fidelity aircraft. They all want to chase cockpit clickers which raises the price (and development time/money) and limits the aircraft selection further.

A large reason LOMAC/FC was popular is due to the aircraft choice. The extra aircraft in MAC are fairly uninteresting. A basic F-5E which can carry two air to air missiles and a a few rocket pods? Not that exciting. Trainer aircraft? Really only interesting to the cockpit clicker crowd. F-86 and MIG-15? Same, they're simple enough that I can't even image there is much of a difference. MIG-21BIS is an okay choice, but it is an aircraft you'd do after the more interesting ones are done.

So it is certainly better than nothing, but many of us won't be that interested until they do an F-18 and F-16 or similar. From the sounds of it, that will not be happening.

Well, it's clearly a concern now when you join a multiplayer server and there's FC3 aircraft spamming the skies with simplistic missile launches. This surely only adds to the fun, or lack of it.

Here we go again, yet another repackaging of what is basically 2003's Lock On. How many more times are they going to try this?

I anxiously waited for the original Lock On. When I finally got it, i didn't like it. I bought Flaming Cliffs willing to give it another try. Still didn't like it. I bought A-10C. Didn't like it. Even had the super expensive A-10 HOTAS.

I bought Flaming Cliffs 3 after thinking maybe I would like the simplified stuff. Nope, didn't like it. After that I said "never again" to buying DCS sims, even though their flashy videos always tempt me.

My point here is basically "Are they REALLY going to attract many new people to the series with this?" I lived and breathed flight sims for the first 20 years of my life. I played every single one I could get my hands on. It was my absolute favorite genre of game. I'm not going to touch MAC. If they can't get me into the game, I can't possibly see them getting people who have grown up on first person shooters, and maybe flying aircraft on ARMA or Battlefield into the game. If it is on Steam, I predict they'll sucker in a few people with the sweet looking video, who will then get into the game and realize it is nothing like what the video shows, and refund before they hit the 2 hour playtime mark.

Wasn't FC3 supposed to do the same thing? Draw in more casual players with simplified planes? That didn't really work, did it?


Sure was a beautiful video though. Credit where credit is due, the graphics are very pretty overall.

You can simply upgrade, no need to re-purchase the older planes. Now how much will the upgrade cost for the other five aircraft? I'm not sure, but I can't imagine it will be cheap.