Why is my ATO is so broken - Tiger Spirit Campaign
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Hello!
I’m running into a lot of annoying problems while playing a campaign, which are starting to annoy me quite a bit already.
This is, I believe, the 3rd time I just deleted a campaign out of frustration (a bit of despair xD) and because the ATO doesn’t seem to frag missions correctly.
And I’m really struggling to want to start another one anytime soon.So, I’ve been following this great guide http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4332736 but the mission planning is yet so broken for me, forcing me to basically stay on the 2D map correcting and babysitting every single squadron in the ATO instead of actually flying - since if I do fly, when I come back the missions planned are already a mess, with planes enroute to unnecessary DEADs > 50NM north of the FLOT without any escort, and senseless Sweeps over active SA-2s and SA-3. Why is the ATO so suicidal or careless for it’s aircrafts?
I just don’t get what’s (or rather why is this) going on. Is it normal for the ATO to frag these terrible sorties even after you changed the priority settings as showed in the article up there?
Also, having a single PAK for almost the whole area North of the FLOT during Tiger Spirit doesn’t help.I don’t want sorties to take out SA-2s at the China Border, I want all the focus on the front line, helping the troops on the ground and taking out SAMs that possess a threat for my planes that are providing BARCAP along the FLOT, nothing else. No deep strike until the ground troops are not on the defensive anymore and enemy aicraft threats have became almost insignificant.
Is there a way to set it this way?Oh, and sometimes planes on BARCAP or Patrol simply have their flight plan drastically changed for no apparent reason, turning a mission by the FLOT into a hunt for a bandit that’s closer to Russia than South Korea. Lost many F-15s this way.
And lastly, there’s another really annoying and time consuming problem going on:
The barcaps fragged by AI ATO fail so hard to cover the whole border.
While there are planes covering Wonsan for example, enemy fighters and ground attackers keep penetrating the airpsace through the sea by the West, coming from NW North Korea. Meanwhile, ATO does nothing about it, neither do the planes on BARCAP over Wonsan.
Then I try fragging a F-15 flight to intercept and cover that area, but all the remaining airplanes, the ones that haven’t been shot down close to China Border after a divert, are being used in senseless missions.Am I’m missing something obvious here? Because I’m unfortunately failing seriously HARD to enjoy BMS glorious dynamic campaign
Thanks.
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Hey Archer,
The Dynamic Campaign (DC) in F4 has indeed some flaws. What you have described is known, but there are some ways to go around.
The PAK priority and the missions selected are the core of making ATO not suicidal. One thing to understand is that if you set a mission type A and there is only one target for that mission close to the border to china, if the PAK for that region is 0 (actually much lower than other regions), the mission won´t be tasked. However, if the PAK is not 0, but lets say average, the mission will be potentially tasked.
With that in mind, if you want to avoid suicidal missions in regions infested with SAM/AAA, then set the PAKs to zero (<-important) in these regions initially. Remember that the PAK priority affects ALL kinds of missions flyable in this PAK. In other words, a non-zero PAK close to the border of China will enable SEAD as well as Strat. Strike missions, but also OCA (like sweeps), leading to the situation you have described.
In general, you should focus in the beginning of your campaign in SEAD/DEAD (or Wild Weasel, if you are old as I am :-)) and OCA against airfields! Your job is to close as many airbases of the enemy as possible in the initial hours AND keep your airbases open. So, you need to set:
-Defensive Counter Air with Aircraft as tgts
-OCA with airfields as tgts
-SAM Suppresion with Air Defences.All other slides can go to very low (or even zero). Pay attention to the following: If you set a mission/tgt to very low, an aircraft that cannot fly the kind of mission you set may still be fragged in the PAKs you have chosen. Lets say, some A-10 missions will still be fragged against ground units. That is because they cannot fly the other missions you have chosen in your ATO. Try the different settings, wait some time for the ATO to update, and see what happens. You will be amazed how nice these things work.
After some hours of campaign you will then soon notice that your air force is doing a good job and you can shift your attention to other kind of mission/tgts/paks. No its up to you how to handle the air war. You can go against the ground units, bridges, etc. there are advantages and disadvantages which certainly you will figure out by yourself depending on the type of campaign.
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About the BARCAPS.
Falcon campagin engine was written with a FLOT in mind. It resembles the air war moddelling codes written in the 80s/90s and used by the USAF to model air wars.
An example of it is “Thunder”, which was used to model the Gulf War in 1991 before the air war took place.Actually, what very few people know is that the Falcon DC engine is very similar to the Thunder engine used by the USAF. Although no one admits that, someone very important in the Falcon 4 original team, used to work for the US military before he started coding Falcon 4. So, it is not suprising that both approaches are very similar, amazingly similar. Both use regions (or paks in F4), both model very poorly naval airwarfare, etc…Falcon DC, as well as “Thunder”, have the Cold War approach of having a well determined FLOT between two oposing forces. That is why the ocean side of Korea is so bad covered by BARCAPs.
I personally set manually some BARCAPs in regions ignored by the AI and leave the FLOT BARCAPs up to the AI. Works like a charm. -
Additionally you will enjoy the campaign a lot more once you realize that planning is more than half of the falcon gameplay. Fragging your packages and preparing your own operations only seems hard in the beginning, bur is incredibly satisfying when all parts come together. And something will ALWAYS go slightly wrong so you are guaranteed to have fun. On the other hand going the cowboy way is almost always a path to disaster. You will do well by putting all paks past flot to zero, this way all operations planning over the enemy territory will be up to you. On other hand consider korea 80s and ito 80s or nordic cold war theaters - less moving parts, less systems and a bit more straight up in your face action. But for those you might want to modify the files of your squadron machines - to allow the ai dropping bombs from lower altitude. I think Lorik has a very short youtube tutorial on that.
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Thanks. Very interesting about Thunder, I only wish there were more PAKs to the North of the FLOT so I could better designate no go areas.
I did find what was wrong though, I thought that for hitting targets slightly North of the FLOT (or rather, enemy units that are on their side of the FLOT) I’d have to increase the respective PAKs priority, but setting these PAKs to 0 and the first PAK south of the FLOT to 5 allows the ATO to frag packages at the FLOT somehow normally, which I thought wouldn’t happen.
I hope that this also fixes the BARCAPs suddenly turning into suicide intercept/diverts too.As for the areas not covered, I supposed I’ll have to deal with that by checking every BARCAP fragged and moving the Steerpoints or creating more if, by any chance, aircrafts are available.
Again, thanks for the help!
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Thanks.
Don’t get me wrong haha, I do love fragging my packages, setting all threats and creating a mental picture of what’s going to happen and what to do if things don’t go the right way. I love this immersion.
The only problem was having to act as the CO of every air squadron as opposed to leading my own squadron only. That’s a bit time consuming.As for Lorik tutorial, I’ll have to look into it, thanks for pointing it out.
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I think Lorik has a very short youtube tutorial on that.
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Another thing to do …. not directly related to your original question … is choose one squadron, your squadron, and deselect “Set By HQ”. This allows you one squad of aircraft, stores and sorties that you can use as your own when fragging packages, etc.
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Thanks.
Don’t get me wrong haha, I do love fragging my packages, setting all threats and creating a mental picture of what’s going to happen and what to do if things don’t go the right way. I love this immersion.
The only problem was having to act as the CO of every air squadron as opposed to leading my own squadron only. That’s a bit time consuming.As for Lorik tutorial, I’ll have to look into it, thanks for pointing it out.
If you really like to do that, give my campaigns a shot, they’re made to be enjoyed by package fraggers in particular. Operation Poseidon in Lorik’s Korea 1.10 could make you really happy, without needing a tremendous work.
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ArcherAC3, I don’t think the ATO is broke in as much as it tries to do everything at once… As mentioned in posts above, use the PAKs to point the ATO into areas where you want to concentrate your forces. In the opening days you will want to shade the FLOT deep red with lighter shades just North and South of the FLOT. Have the entire North half of Korea at lowest. Then adjust the sliders accordingly for CAPs and SEAD. As the “Wall of Migs” wanes, slowly darken more North of the FLOT and have the ATO begin fragging AI and OCA. The advice on having your own squad to fly with is good, use it to your advantage. About mindless BARCAP flights, that’s just one of those things we’ve lived with all these years… A CAP flight chasing a single SU-25 across the entire peninsula, your TARCAP taking off after some choppers, UGH!!! you get the picture…
Good Luck !!
QuasiP.S. slide the Infrastructure all the way to the left. You don’t want the AI destroying every bridge and breaking your campaign. Commit this to memory!! That’s an order!!
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Gotcha. Thanks.
I started putting those KF-16s to work covering the coast, having much more success now.
Didn’t see a single suicide mission so far (except for some barcaps over an SA-2 after a DEAD failed to destroy it xD). -
So, I’ve been following this great guide http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4332736 but the mission planning is yet so broken for me, forcing me to basically stay on the 2D map correcting and babysitting every single squadron in the ATO instead of actually flying - since if I do fly, when I come back the missions planned are already a mess, with planes enroute to unnecessary DEADs > 50NM north of the FLOT without any escort, and senseless Sweeps over active SA-2s and SA-3. Why is the ATO so suicidal or careless for it’s aircrafts?
This shouldn’t happen if the PAKS are fully off in those areas. It is possible to think they are off because they look white, but the slider may be slightly ‘on’ if that makes sense. If you did indeed click on each PAK and manually slide them all the way off something is amiss. It’s possible that if any time has elapsed on the campaign clock before you set your PAKS that missions get fragged without taking your changes in to effect. If that happens, once they are flown, or deleted, the ATO should start following your directives from that point forward.