Early Return on Investment

This screenshot shows how effective getting hands-on in the campaign can be. It's fourteen hours since the war started. The Red attack has been smashed and Blue has consolidated and now is launching an offensive near Kaesong. Frankly I don't recall when this would occur in previous RFs I've played, but it's fast for sure. And really, I've only been involved in putting out fires here and there. There is far more I could have done. But it's a good start to this campaign.

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Counter Air Strategy


Here are the aircraft force levels. The frontline CAP strategy has done well. We have gained air superiority and taken light losses to our own airforce. By concentrating our missions along the front and denying the ATO the ability to frag deep strikes losses have been kept low.

In the early afternoon I finally took the leash off and opened up airfield strikes with the sliders. Within a couple of hours all active bases within the starting covered PAKs except for Wonsan were out of commission. When this occurred can be seen in the graph where the Red force level, err, levels out and starts to up-tick once again. In the opening post I mentioned that I do not favor an airfield denial strategy. I would rather attrit them in the air. The reason is that you cannot destroy aircraft whose base is destroyed. They aren't all sitting out in the sun on the tarmac waiting for you to pickle GBUs on them. What this means is that while their base is knocked out they are replenishing. Once their field has been repaired, you all of a sudden have three or four near full strength squadrons taking to the air. This sudden rush can easily win local superiority if they were all to get up in short order. Your CAP will be hard pressed to deal with it.

I would much rather keep battling them piecemeal in the air. In addition, it used to be that the program used something called initiative points to calculate events. You'll get more for destroying numerous aircraft than you will for knocking out airfields. Assuming it still works this way is another reason to not go all out on airfield denial.

Further, airfield strikes are dangerous and losses more likely. If you could keep the pressure on, and destroy a newly repaired airfield as soon as it came back on line you could mitigate the effect. And knocking some out can make a big difference in the first few hours. In this campaign I timed it for when I thought the Red attack was waning, so that I could get more interdictors outbound with little fear of interception. It worked. But all things considered I would rather do this work in the air than on the ground. And quite frankly flying missions in F4 is more fun when there are Red aircraft stooging about. Empty skies is rather...mundane.

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Here is the ground unit force levels. The Reds took severe losses once they came out of their holes. Even so, it's now just about even.


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Pilot Rating and Performance

This shot shows how my squadron (36th FS Block 40s out of Osan) has done and the involvement I personally had. I flew five missions in the first seven hours. The Wall 'O MiGs was thick and I couldn't just sit by and watch so I kept fragging and flying back in to it, getting good ratings. This is important so let's talk about the player rating and how it affects things.

In F4 the program uses the player's pilot rating as a modifier to calculate the resolution of events in the 2D and in 3D outside of the bubble. So the outcome of each engagement you watch on the 2D map is affected by how well you have personally done. This could be good or bad obviously depending on your rating. Do well, and the Blue aircraft will sweep the skies. Do poorly, and you'll watch as a pair of mighty MiG-17s make short work of your 4th generation jets. It's a feature that is so anti-sim it's puzzling it's there at all, but it is and we have to take it in to consideration.

What this means is you need to score good ratings. That's not always easy to do. So if you get a bad rating, and we all do, be sure to get back up as soon as possible and get a good rating. Keep this as high as possible for as long as possible. Your rating will erode over time if you do not fly any missions. I tend to fly every 4 to 6 hours on average, more frequently early, then slowing the pace as the intensity wanes. But if you have an excellent rating, I think you would be safe going up to about 12 hours before you'll start to notice a decline in Blue effectiveness.

Be sure to fly early. Frag yourself a mission and get up in the air. Like in the first 10 minutes. Your goal is to get an excellent rating. So frag a DEAD strike or BARCAP or something that's relatively easy to score well with. The skies will be mostly empty for the first 45 minutes or so. Take advantage, get a good rating and the events that are about to unfold will be shifted in your favor due to your good rating.

There is a simple way to game the game if you're so inclined. If you fly a BARCAP you can set the patrol time to zero (it's 30 minutes by default). Doing so means you will get an excellent rating even if you do nothing more than turn around and land. You can then fly any sort of mission you want. I use this occasionally to load up with some missiles and ground ordnance and just go hunting. HARMs for radars, CBU for columns I might come across, whatever. The F-16 Freie Jagd. It's not exactly procedure, but it works, it's fun and effective.

My standard mission profile that I fly in the early hours is what I call a HARMCAP. Load the Viper with a pair of HARMS and four air missiles with bags and go hunting on a zero-time BARCAP.

This is usually what is meant when you hear other players say they Hijacked a BARCAP. They selected an already fragged BARCAP, zeroed out the patrol time and made it in to their own mission. It's a quick work around for flying your own missions with little effort in setting it up.

Note zero losses. That just isn't true. But the program has some issue in regards to tracking your squadron's losses. It works in our favor, but still, it would be better if it were accurate.

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Here are myself and my wingman, ready to roll for a daylight mission on Osan Two-Seven.


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No, now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!