Yeah I hope so, its just that BMS seems to require way much more understanding for…everything….then AF ever did.
I can't say Ive played a lot of AF, certainly not compared to you guys here, and as far as I have played have been far from successful.
But in AF i felt I could play a campaign even if I'm not very knowledgable about air tactics, munitions, strategies and the finer details of what the aircrafts systems can and can't do.
In bms, i feel out of place flipping a switch not knowing in detail what it does and why its flipped.
I guess this is the charm of it all, but it also requires time that i don't really have at the moment.
In any case, since I'm an impulsive nutcase I ordered TrackIR tonight and should expect it before next weekend.
From time to time I do invest a lot of time in flightsims, and racing sims aswell so I'm confident this will turn out to be a good purchase.
It'll be a christmaspresent to myself and a good way to start the new year =)
Looking forward to next weekend!
Congrats on the TIR purchase! Trust me, once you get it, you'll wonder how you ever managed without it! I never did A-A in AF because I couldn't keep my eyes on the enemy and the "padlock" feature just confused me, but with TIR, well, I give the bad guys a good fight now, and manage to win my fair share! Being able to padlock the enemy by moving your head, then checking the HUD (speed, orientation) and then back on the enemy with just half-a-second head movement, that's when you'll see how your purchase paid off.
As for switch flicking, if you are referring to startup procedures, BMS has a really, really, REALLY good startup procedure tutorial (need to disable TIR for it though!) and Red Dog's Dash-1 manual will show you each switch and its function, so you are covered on that front. The Dash-1 manual is even included in the base BMS install so there is no need to scour the interwebz to look for it!
If you are referring to the switches you will be using during combat, then that is also easy to cover and since you will be using those on EVERY FLIGHT (vs. the startup switches as you will probably not do cold starts 100% of the time), you will learn them quick. Also makes you appreciate the importance of the Fence In step.
Probably the most confusing bit will be the ICP panel, its modes and sub pages. How to check for estimated fuel remaining at base? How to check ETA to steerpoint? How to make mark points and which SOI to check for? How to set up datalink? And so on.... I would not worry about this as I would say this is icing on the cake and is easy to teach. Heck, on multiplayer flights, I still hear a lot of "how do you...?" questions and is solved easily.
Good luck!
