Fallon-Nevada Theater discussion
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Everything in Falcon are hard to learn!!! And even Harder to make them… For Terrain download Monters Terrain Editor aka TE and start playing with it… just have a full backup first… Ain’t that user friendly and sure u will FUBAR your Falcon setup…
First time I opened that tool (which is a masterpiece) the first thing I did was to close it… lol Frightening lol I had nightmares for weeks… :rofl:
Also join EMF’s forum to read Monster’s and Polak’s Posts…
Also have PMC wiki and read it… wow what a headache!!! u get lost there… as the Falcon Database…
Also search in this Forum…
Also buy beers…
Also buy vitamins…
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Arty,
thanks for mentioning Monster and his invaluable Terrain Editor. He is here true unsung hero because without his tool creation of the terrain would be truly difficult task. And thanks to Terrain Editor it is not, instead it is quite easy and pleasure to work.
It never cease to amaze me that after getting familiar with it it has still surprises for me and new ways to do things.All who want to try are most strongly encouraged to use it and join with comments how to improve. Sakis is always listening and ready to implement any suggestion. I can go forever ….
Same accolades are deserved by Bald Eagle and other developers and programmers past and present. Some of them are maybe little less intuitive, but very ingenious and it takes some work to really get to know them and appreciate.
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Be careful where you fly in this theater, area 51 is close…:p
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In reading this thread,I see once again how easily we get led astray……Hmmmmphf!!!
IMHO we should return our effort’s to Panama,AS a Community.MUCH to be done there.
BUT the work B4 and what is now is much easier to handle then another “NEW” Theater.
Though I applaud Toonce’s for his idea’s and effort’s.
Remember “Toonce’s” is a cartoon cat from the 50’s and Cat’s are hard to Herd……LOL!!!
On the Flip side,I\we have the original Nevada Theater,by the ORIGINAL author,on our archive’s.
Nothing SM or other’s can do about it……HAHAHAA!!! As well as many more, B4 PMC went online in 2002.I would like to see us focus on Panama for the minute.See what we can do there first.
Up to youz’ guy’s.
As alway’s,I’m here to support when I can,
demer -
my vote goes for Nevada,
Any respecting NATO/Airforce is training in programs in this area and still F4 community has no real training area (besides KOTAR)
With all the VFW this would be a nice place to test and train and even have PVP like the current RedFlag campaign with Team Archer -
Dave,
I can work on two things at once.But more importantly, I have an idea that I really want to try with Nevada. I want to see if it is possible to cull a theater down to a really small size and produce it in a short amount of time. Instead of a theater with 1000 units and 500 objectives, maybe something with 100 units and 20 objectives….
I am still trying to understand the ground war in this sim. But…I’m never going to get anywhere with a huge theater- even something as small as Panama is too big to really test things in a reasonable manner.
Let’s press with this. If it gets too complicated we can always back off and reassess.
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Please decide how big new Nevada theater is going to be and where it will be centered on.
Here are few options:
A. 32 seg theater centered on Fallon (does not cover Las Vegas and Nellis)
B.64 seg theater centered on Fallon (does cover Las Vegas and Nellis which is in right bottom corner)
C.32 seg theater centered on SOMEWHERE (does cover Fallon in left upper and Las Vegas and Nellis in bottom right)
Perhaps there are some other options including looking at Dave’s pre PMC Nevada mentioned in his earlier post siZe???) or sticking or other version 64 I have, which was given to me by (as I believe Tony of FF).
I strongly feel that 32 size theater is very tight to fly (unless maybe in variant A). However, I realize that smaller size is less terrain work and more manageable, especially if we are to go from scratch.
Version C, evenhough desired, because I have Las Vegas and Nellis tiles is too restricted on any axis except for NE and SW.Please make comments.
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Dave,
I can work on two things at once.But more importantly, I have an idea that I really want to try with Nevada. I want to see if it is possible to cull a theater down to a really small size and produce it in a short amount of time. Instead of a theater with 1000 units and 500 objectives, maybe something with 100 units and 20 objectives….
We\Mystic have already done this in BFS.Take’s sometime to remake the Path’s\Link’s correct….for the GU’sI am still trying to understand the ground war in this sim. But…I’m never going to get anywhere with a huge theater- even something as small as Panama is too big to really test things in a reasonable manner.
Let’s press with this. If it gets too complicated we can always back off and reassess.
TWO thing’s at once….LOL!!!Try SIX thing’s at once…no wonder GUAM is lagging a bit behind…HAHAHA!
I FULLY agree with starting small,objective wise.Too many year’s of stuffing “stuff” into her.We can now have “Ghost” Airbase’s,thank’s to the BMS Carrier code,that we can use for the AI.From a campain’ development standpoint this is important.
I’ll give you an example and let the Cat outta’ the bag abit as far as GUAM is concerned:These two AB’s really don’t exist for the Human Player,but are important for the AI B52’s as an objective to get to.So for them to get there,which is “WAY” off my MAP, the ATM generate’s Escort’s\HAVCAP’s for them,some of those,the Human is assigned to
It get’s QUITE busy in the Theater,quite fast, in Guam.I’ve heard from the ALPHA tester’s that ten minute’s of flight B4 you are engaged is rare.
But the WAR end’s as soon as a Team\Side reach an advantage in Airframe’s.This we could apply to Fallon and forget about a “GroundWar” for “ENDGAME”.
Though you can still have GU’s to shoot at,their importance in “ENDGAME” is NULL.Go ahead and press ahead,if someone need’s the original map I’ll provide it (Credit due to the author this time) Seem’s Ted is already on it!!!
As alway’s,I got your back if you run into trouble’s.
demer -
Ted,
Let me do some research on this. Before I arbitrarily pick a solution, maybe the best thing is to research the “real world” training areas and then build the terrain around those. Ideally I’d like to use option C encompassing both Fallon and Nellis on one map. I think the training areas for Nellis are to the NW which would work, but I’m actually not sure on that.I agree 32 segments can be tight. My preference, personally, is for a pre-AMRAAM campaign in which 32 segments is probably fine. We can build a modern campaign just for those that want to experiment with it. Ideally, though, we’re talking pre-1991 AIM-7s on all jets (or less).
Anyway, if we’re going to build a terrain, let’s take a moment to figure out how close we can get to “real life” and then work from there. Surely there are some smart Nellis guys on the boards that can help with this.
@Dave,
I have considered doing the campaign based on attrition. This is something that I’ll need to experiment with; see what’s actually fun. I will definitely need to get some help with the whole fake airbase thing….we can address that much later when it comes up. -
The second option would be a dream to fly in even as a sightseeing tour only but I assume that it involves way too many different landscapes to be delivered successfully. I applaude the idea of Nevada since it was what I always wanted in FF.
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When I was trying to build my own Fallon terrain, I was trying to make a 16 segment theater. Even option C is more space than I really want, to be honest. Option B is a non-starter for me.
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Toonces - once you have the basic "starter " area, how easy would it be to expand it outwards? There is some awesome natural scenery in that area, with good satellite imagery. How does porting satellite imagery work in Falcon, in FSX, its pretty easy, you just need loads of space, I am a bit unclear how the Falcon system operates. Once you have the basic area and some objectives and destructable objects, most of the fun can be had by building air to air TE’s etc and using the practice ranges… I guess building a complex winnable campaign, while rewarding would be very time consuming.
To me, the primary excitement of this, is new terrain - it will make a world of difference. Final question is how do you / can you make the terrain mesh more detailed…or is that not really doable easily without major coding work?
Sorry for all the questions, I have little knowledge of the inner workings of Falcon. I used to make photoscenery for FSX though…
Thanks for your work on this !
Cheers, Mark
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Mark,
I actually don’t know the answers to your questions. I agree that having a new area with super-realistic scenery would be great but I also know that anytime we go outside the box we exponentially increase development time.Right now I am more focused on gameplay than doing anything extraordinary with the terrain like Demer is doing with Guam. I like what Polak has so far…I think that will work very well for what I want to accomplish.
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@Polak,
Ted, I looked up some stuff online just now (http://skyvector.com/ …awesome website!). It is about 258nm from Nellis to Fallon; 111nm from Tonopah to Fallon.I wonder if you would humor me on this. Fallon is really the area I’d like to model, with Fallon in the NW corner and working east and south. Would you consider doing a 16 segment theater instead of 32 segments? Is that possible in Falcon?
My goal is to build a pre-AMRAAM campaign. 100nm is more than enough space between airfields, I think. I’m looking at the chart for Nellis to Fallon and it is more room than I need by a factor of 4 at least. If we have Fallon and Tonopah, I can add a couple of “Red Air” airfields and really that will be sufficient. I think a terrain that small will give you a lot of opportunity to do neat things, without it being overwhelmingly large to build, tile, and populate.
What do you think?
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Let me really quickly sketch a campaign idea out for you. I haven’t put this on paper yet, but you’ll get the gist of my thinking.
We have a 16x16 segment theater with Fallon in the NW corner. The terrain encompasses the training areas SE of Fallon as depicted in the first page of this thread:
You have two countries- Greenland and Orangeland, as depicted in the map. Fallon is your “master base”; think of this as where the player as a Blueforce pilot will be “stationed” for his training/exercise. Since we can’t put Red Air on the same base, we will create fictional “Red Air” airbases. These aren’t real airbases as in “real world” but fictional training bases from which the adversaries are supposedly flying from. For game-world purposes we will put the adversaries there.
Perhaps we create our six countries as: Greenland, Orangeland, Blue Air, Blue Ground, Red Air, Red Ground.
We have Blue Air (you, the player) flying from the Greenland airbase Fallon. Red Air (the adversary) is flying from Orangeland airbase Red Air Airbase 1. At campaign start, Red Air is hostile, Orangeland/Greenland are neutral.
Ground forces are placed as Blue Ground/Red Ground so that we can manipulate their at-war status as we desire, depending on our campaign objectives.
The campaign objectives might look like this:
Day 1, Blue forces: Orangeland- neutral; Red Air- hostile; Red Ground- neutral; objective: air superiority.
Player has 24h to attrite Red Air/gain air superiority.Day 2, Blue forces: Orangeland- hostile; Red Air- hostile; Red Ground- neutral; objective: hit POL/conduct OCA.
Player has 24h to attrite airbases/POL/CCC sites.Day 3, Blue forces: Orangeland- hostile; Red Air- hostile; Red Ground- hostile; objective: reduce ground forces in preparation for Blue ground offensive.
Player has 24h to attrite Red Ground forces.Day 4, Blue Ground arrives as reinforcements. Ground offensive begins; campaign now runs until victory conditions are achieved (maybe capture Red Capital 1, or something like that).
This would be a low unit density fight. You write the campaign, script the changing hostility levels in the trigger file either based on attrition levels or on day. This will keep the AI focused on the task you want them focused on. So, for example, on Day 1 you are focusing strictly on air-air missions; Day 2 your first priority might be to hit the now-hostile Orangeland airbase with OCA strikes (and then you will have to figure out how to keep it out of commission); and so on.
Instead of 1000 ground units, maybe you have 30 or some reasonable number on each side. You have maybe 3 objectives between starting positions and victory conditions. Everything is taking place in the training areas…as the Blue forces player you are taking off and landing at Fallon, flying into the training range, conducting your mission, then RTB to Fallon for beers at the o’club.
That’s sort of idea for a campaign. I’d build it like I just described and then we play test it, figure out what changes need to be made for “fun” and adjust. You could build 3 campaigns easily just around this idea by manipulating force flow, hostility levels, etc with trigger files.
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So the terrain will be 16x16 segments and 256 x256 kms with Fallon in left upper corner with approx 50 miles buffer to the west and north. This will be truly unorthodox and I do not know how such a small size of terrain is going to work, but I’ll try to whip something.
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Need to make additional choice. The map of range whas ben resized , rescaled and overlayed onto the TPC pertaining to this area.
A
This is arrangement of 16x16 (red bounding square) where both Fallon and Tonopah are present (red dots)
However the NAS Fallon Range map is then cut off from the top.
B
2nd arrangement the bounding box is moved north and Range is encopassed in the entirety at the cost of loosing Tonopah
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Ted,
B is perfect. I don’t know if it will work, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t. I say we go for it. -
It is darn small. I would like to hear others opinion on the matter, however at the same token I suspect, that most , if not everyone would say … go for that, even while thinking in the back of the head…it is too small.
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I’d really like to try a very small theater. Nobody has ever tried it. I just flew an OCA mission in Panama. My target was 50nm away. Total flight time was less than 40 minutes real life, including flying the approach to landing with 9 other aircraft in the pattern. That’s exactly the kind of missions I want to see in this theater. A 3-4 day campaign with 30-60 minute missions…max; something you can fly, complete in a weekend, and then experiment with.
Beyond just being fun, I think we can learn a lot about how the campaign engine works by having a very small theater in which we can run controlled experiments.
Please, just trust me on this. It’s not too small.