Just wanted to say thanks for keeping Falcon alive all these years.
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I have to hand it to this community. I’ve just come back after a couple years away and am just blown away by the progress I have seen with BMS over the years. I have owned every falcon game over the years since they came out, the first being Falcon A.T on my 286 AT and EGA graphics card. Then Falcon 3.0 on my 486 and Falcon 4.0 has had a place on drive since the day it came out on the shelves. I flew all the mods that were integrated into Allied Force and bought and played Allied Force for years. Played early versions of BMS and then, as these things work, left for a few years. Then I come back and redownload and find this full BMS 4.33 Update 3 and thought, WTH. Let’s try it, I was blown away!
Some recent experiences:
My jaw dropped the first time I took off and got a little shake and startled, looked behind me and saw the wings flexing up and down violently. I have been playing flight simulators my entire life, and I can’t ever remember one that had wing flex animation. Scared me to death, thought the aircraft was going to shake apart so I lowered speed. Hillarious. I flew all kinds of different maneuvers for a good while just watching the wings flex lol
All these years I always hated North Korea’s ancient air defense system. So thanks to the handy editor in the launch menu. Kim got an upgrade. SA-2’s became SA-11’s, SA-3’s became SA-15’s and SA-5’s became SA-10’s. AAA Battalions sported a battery of 2S6 Tunguskas. Suddenly Kim’s antiquated IADS which would allow a modern fighter jet to cruise at safety above 30,000ft with jammers running became the most heavily defended airspace in the modern world. The Pyongyang Corridor became a meat grinder and when played with the DPRK Strong scenario. Riding into North Korean airspace is a nightmare risk that requires great skill at planning and executing packages. Now missions require extremely careful detailed planning and multiple squadron packages to succeed against heavily defended targets. For example I’m used to knocking out every airbase south of the Hwangju-Koksan-Wonsan axis and establishing absolute air dominance within 6-8 hours of starting the campaign with barely an aircraft lost and using little 6 ship packages.
By contrast, with Kim’s new IADS and BMS outstanding AI tweaks. I was able to only knock out Haeju, Ongjin, Taetan, Kwail, Hwangju, Koksan and clear Pyongyang corridor of SAM sites and AAA at the cost of 12 aircraft and that was by 1pm on Day 1!!! Koksan is a NIGHTMARE. Anywhere near Hwangju and parts north are impassable without a very costly and time consuming SEAD effort and a full squadron of escort fighters and these packages are guaranteed to take losses. There is something downright disturbing about watching with your breath held, eyes locked on your RWR as you watch your escort flight get jumped by 8 or 10 J-11’s and watch their little green 16’s wink out one by one, leaving 3 or 4 J-11’s to eat me alive. LOL!
I haven’t had any trouble from SA-10’s but SA-11’s and 2S6’s are hellish machines and I tell you, I feel sorry for any American pilot who would have to face a modern IADS made up of these weapons. Also, I have read about how stupid the SAM AI is, but my experiences compared to every other past version of Falcon are light years ahead. The AI makes great use of the SA-11’s and 2S6 Mobility and I have found them in some very formidable positions. I took an SA-19 directly in the canopy when I was flying down a valley at 400 feet between two mountains and looked to the right and saw something parked on a cliff on the reverse slope of the mountain as I was screaming down the valley. I said to myself “WTH is tha…” when I saw the thing turn and saw the missile rack and though “Oh sh-!” when I saw the missile leave the rail and zip across the valley and take me in the canopy right in front of my face. There was no ejection. lol I was flabbergasted. Never before had I seen such a thing. There was even a dust plume on the ground around the SAM when it lifted off. I got a front row seat to the developer’s work, no doubt.
So yeah, BMS is some amazing stuff and I just want to send my thanks out to the developers, modders and players who have kept this old beast not only alive, but ahead of the competition for almost 2 decades. I’ve been so spoiled on BMS’ campaign and other aircraft to fly that I won’t even consider DCS.
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I think some of the newer videos on youtube demonstrate BMS’ new features very nicely, I’m thinking of “don’t stop believing”, “this is why we fight” or even the standard BMS 4.33 launch trailer (and countless others), which have fantastic shots that have you collect your jaw off the floor.
I don’t know why but esp. that 2-ship MiG flyby in the “don’t stop believin’” video never fails to make my room very very dusty all of a sudden
Thanks for sharing your thoughts & experiences.
Enjoy BMS,
Uwe
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this sim is the mother****ing shit, and I think it should live to be 1000
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You do not fly with the F-16, but it flies you !!!
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Recently getting back into it. I’m really quite bad, but am going through the manual and training missions. This is an utter work of art. Frankly, its mind blowing. Thankfully one no longer has to do the supapak install!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Recently getting back into it. I’m really quite bad, but am going through the manual and training missions. This is an utter work of art. Frankly, its mind blowing. Thankfully one no longer has to do the supapak install!!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Good old SuperPak. Kept Falcon alive through the lean years until Allied Force came out.
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What did you guys do the AI? lol I just experienced the greatest airbattle in any simulator ever!
I watched 2x 4 ship MiG 29 flights come head on at my 12 ship package and just obliterate it to the last man.
First they screamed head on into the 4 ship escort flight and wiped it out in less than 2 minutes. Then they moved on down the package one flight at a time and took out 3x 2 ship DEAD flights in a row before coming to me and my wingman, loaded down with bombs for an OCA strike. By this time there were just 2 MiG 29’s left. They came straight for us. They must have only had one radar missile left between them though though because after ordering me and wingie to jettison A/G ordnance. We dropped just as we got into BVR range. Wingie took enemy wingie. I took lead. We fired. Enemy lead fired at my wingie 1 missile. My missile hits lead, he goes down. wingie missile misses, the merge comes up and Archer that lead MiG fired takes out Wingie.
Unfortunately, I lost track of him after the merge because I was still swearing at the sight of wingie’s parts fluttering over the North Korean countryside. I turn the aircraft 180 and scan for him but he’s just… gone. I hit the padlock(which I keep on enhanced) and I spot him just in time as he comes in from my 10 oclock high, rolls inverted mere feet from my canopy so that for a moment were were staring at each other through the canopy and bled off enough energy to drop around into my 6 oclock high and then stuck there like glue no matter how much I manuvered. I was good enough to stay just off boresight enough to prevent him from firing and it turned into a nasty turning fight straight out of Top Gun or Iron Eagle. It was cinematic. I need to start turning on the ACMI to catch this stuff because it was like in Top Gun! He fired 3 IR missiles at me over the course of a 3 minute turning battle and each one I flared and shook it off. The 3rd one got me. I died in a fiery explosion, he went hom a Sole Survivor.
Cool is just an understatement. lol
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Usually ain’t no surviving a mig with a head cued archer anywhere near your six. You lived longer than you should have. It’s hard to shake a mig when you start behind the eight ball, in a low energy or reactive state. Fighting a 29 in close is like trying to ignore a hungry cat after a long day at the wharf. He’s all over you. Terrain is your best friend in this AI environment- the AI managed energy state in relation to the fight but not the environment, in other words study vertical energy tactics and how to pull max gs at the bottom of a high g pushover.
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Yeah, in truth I probably only last a minute or so, but it felt like 3 minutes that’s for sure. It was just so ODD seeing one up close like that because 99% of the time my fight is against the missile rather than the aircraft that fired it and all I usually see in victory is a distant puff of smoke and debris. This is the first time outside of Furball an AI MiG’s got aggressive like that and closed to that range. He was almost too close for even IR missiles.
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I cannot push TacView enough. I’ve learned so much from it and watched so many cool stuff on it that it’s become a sub-hobby
What went wrong with that fight? Did my missile track and he just counter-measured it or was my shot off in the first place? Where did that last missile come from? Am I evading correctly? Did I get too slow?
Watch your ACMI and find out! -
GOTS.