Why is my ATO is so broken - Tiger Spirit 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.