Falcon BMS 4.37
EMF v1.8.0
Edit 28-01-23: Link removed due to new version, compatible with U1
Enjoy!
Falcon BMS 4.37
EMF v1.8.0
Edit 28-01-23: Link removed due to new version, compatible with U1
Enjoy!
Download EMF v1.1.8 from this link:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/3tqspepkmllkg4n/Add-On_emf_v1.1.8.7z/file
Go to C:\Falcon BMS 4.36\Data\TerrData\TheaterDefinition and open theater.lst with notepad. Add the following line: Add-On emf\theaterdefinition\emf.tdf
Enjoy!
Changelog
a) Added all updated Janhas F-16 models
b) Added HAF F-4E AUP dedicated cockpit (Thnx Manos)
c) Fixed HAF Mirage 2000 pits
d) Various bugs have been fixed
Enjoy!
Download EMF v1.1.7 (https://www.mediafire.com/file/mt1t2yta38nf5qf/Add-On_emf.7z/file)
Go to C:\Falcon BMS 4.36\Data\TerrData\TheaterDefinition and open theater.lst with notepad. Add the following line: Add-On emf\theaterdefinition\emf.tdf
Enjoy!
PS: No campaigns included
Falcon BMS 4.37 U1
EMF v1.9.0
Delete / Uninstall any previous version of EMF (i.e. v1.8.0)
Enjoy!
New EMF compatible with U1, will be uploaded later today when I get back from work.
I’ve created this F-16 quiz.
Most questions are based on BMS manuals we have.
I am gonna enrich it in the future with more questions.
https://www.fyrebox.com/play/5jjvd6kwjm77rxpzog/
I am a fun of the quiz method to enhance someone’s knowledge on any field. I think that after you have studied manuals, quiz is a quick way to check your knowledge and refresh stuff you might forgot.
As we all know, the Dynamic Campaign (DC) in BMS is one of the core aspects of this sim. Also, we are all familiar with the fact that in DC, the ATO generates lots of suicidal missions, which do not make sense. Other times, it generates missions which are not rational. The good news is that this can be changed. The bad news is that this cumbersome situation was never properly addressed in years. Finally, I managed to alter this situation during the campaigns I made for EMF theater. Below, I will describe the necessary steps campaign creators should follow to force the ATO to generate rational missions according to modern air force doctrines.
Two crucial files that affect directly the way DC operates are: a)falcon4.aii and b)mission.dat. Both are located in the campaign folder. In the former file, there are lots of variables which affect the DC engine. During the various BMS updates, some variables were tweaked and others were added or deleted. It is, beyond the scope of this thread to discuss the proper values for all those variables. What is important is that none of those updates addressed the following crucial values:
MaxFlymissionThreat=85
MaxFlymissionHighThreat=100
MaxFlymissionNoThreat=10
MinSeadescortThreat=20
MinAvoidThreat=40
For some reason, all BMS updates and even SP, FF or OF versions left those aforementioned variables in their default values. By googling around these variables, all the results regarding their meaning are rather vague. By playing around with these values and making correct changes in mission.dat, we can erase once and for all the DC suicidal missions.
So, what these values mean? These are thresholds, which represent the risk level of missions. In other words, it is a measurement of the GBAD (SAM) threat in an area. The higher the value, the higher the risk level of mission and vice versa. How the threat level is measured? It is measured by the maxalt of mission types. For example the MaxFlymissionNoThreat=10 means that the ATO will generate low risk missions. In other words, missions will be generated if and only if the SAM threat is minimal or absent. Now, the main problem is that the MaxFlymissionThreat=85 and MaxFlymissionHighThreat=100 are way too high. These values alone are responsible for the suicidal missions ATO generates all the time. In plain English, the values of 85 and 100 mean that the ATO will generate missions regardless of the SAM type in an area. So, you will find an OCA Strike or a SWEEP mission generated in the MEZ of a SA-10 or Patriot battery. Clearly, insane. Bottom line, is that if you increase these values, the ATO will generate more missions, simply because it doesn’t care about the threats, as if they don’t exist. Why these values were left too high? I assume that in the days of MicroProse the goal was to flood the skies with as many a/c as possible, regardless of the realism factor. Afterwards, who knows? Maybe they didn’t get the proper attention.
Having this in mind, we now move forward to the mission.dat file to check out which missions fall under which threat category. In order to find out this valuable info, we need a tool named missiondatutil (http://www.mediafire.com/file/rcdcd7dmeak8473/MissionDatUtil.rar/file). The tool is accompanied with a word, which explains all the mission.dat variables. It is beyond the scope of this threat to address all those values. For now, we care only to find out the Risk Level we have to assign to each mission type.
Follow the steps and convert your mission.dat file to mission.csv one. Open the latter file and scroll to the flags column for each mission. Each mission type will have one of the following variables: a)AMIS_Nothreat, or b)AMIS_Highthreat or c) none variable regarding threat. To save you time, this is the result below.
You can see that in the AMIS_Nothreat category fall missions which make sense to be generated in areas where SAM presence is either minimal or absent. It makes sense that HVA like AWACS and Tankers orbit in safe areas, far away from A2/AD bubbles.
You can also see that in the AMIS_Highthreat category fall missions which, rationally, do not belong there. You can’t generate and OCA Strike in area covered in full with A2/AD SAMs like SA-10. First, these SAM must be targeted with dedicated DEAD/SEAD missions. Once the area is clear of high threat GBADs, other strike packages can follow.
All the other missions which do not have any type of threat variable in the flags column, fall under the MaxFlymissionThreat=85 category, which is a risk level between the Nothreat and HighThreat values. Let’s say missions of medium risk.
So, what should we do to eliminate the suicidal missions and force the ATO to generate rational missions? We should do the following steps:
Leave the variable AMIS_HighThreat only in two missions. These are SEAD Strike and STSTRIKE (Stealth Strike). Perhaps, leave it in dedicated ECM missions too. But it is obligatory to include it in SEADSTRIKE & STSTRIKE. Remove the AMIS_HighThreat variable from all other missions, which have it by default. This way we tell the DC engine that only dedicated DEAD/SEAD packages will enter areas covered by A2/AD GBADs (high threat areas). Also, only stealth a/c will penetrate these areas for purposes other than DEAD. This rationale is on par with modern air force doctrines as well. You will observe that once SAMs are eliminated by DEAD / SEAD, packages, then the ATO will generate missions which fall under the MaxFlymissionThreat category. Once you done that, save your mission.csv file and by using the missiondatutil tool, convert your .csv back to mission.dat
Go to falcon4.aii, and use the following values:
MaxFlymissionThreat=20
MaxFlymissionHighThreat=85
MaxFlymissionNoThreat=10
MinSeadescortThreat=15
MinAvoidThreat=12
By having a MaxFlymissionThreat=20, all the missions in mission.dat which fall under this category (i.e. SWEEP missions) will have a low to medium ALR (Acceptable Risk Level). Thus, no more SWEEP flights in the MEZ of SAMs. It doesn’t make sense.
By changing the variable MinAvoidThreat from the default value of 40 to 12, the AI a/c will try to avoid more SAMs. Previously, they pretty much didn’t avoid any threat at all. By how far away the AI a/c will try to avoid the SAM, depends on the value Airpathmax. Currently, I am playing around with this variable to check if there is any tangible effect.
All the aforementioned values work perfectly in my EMF campaigns, given the EMF database. Play around with these values, but bare in mind that they should be close to the ones I provided.
EDIT #1
To elaborate a bit more on the threat values, the default code states the following:
ls = ScoreThreatFast (mis->tx, mis->ty, GetAltitudeLevel(MissionData[mis->mission].minalt*100), mis->who);
hs = ScoreThreatFast (mis->tx, mis->ty, GetAltitudeLevel(MissionData[mis->mission].maxalt*100), mis->who);
if (ls > MIN_SEADESCORT_THREAT || hs > MIN_SEADESCORT_THREAT)
targetd |= NEED_SEAD;
if (mis->priority > ATM_HIGH_PRIORITY && ls && hs)
targetd |= NEED_SEAD;
if (package_flags & AMIS_HIGHTHREAT)
tar = MAX_FLYMISSION_HIGHTHREAT;
else if (package_flags & AMIS_NOTHREAT)
tar = MAX_FLYMISSION_NOTHREAT;
else
tar = MAX_FLYMISSION_THREAT;
if (ls > tar && hs > tar)
{
if (ls > MAX_FLYMISSION_HIGHTHREAT && hs > MAX_FLYMISSION_HIGHTHREAT)
return PRET_CANCELED;
The general idea here is that we must assign a TR value which lower than the minalt & maxalt of the mission types we want.
Nonetheless, as Mav-Jp and Dee-Jay stated, this kind of tweaking is for campaign & theater creators who know their stuff and want to introduce a more realistic risk factor into their campaigns.
Hi,
Sorry to miss some posts. This version was deliberately deleted by me because it is obsolete. A newer version will arrive in the near future.
Guys. I’ve abandoned EMF theater, because I am working solely on 4.38 and the new theater HTO (Hellenic Theater Operations) with the New Terrain engine. The Greek theater is ready and is, well, superb. It is smaller than EMF though (1024 x 1024, same size as KTO) due to some important constraints with 4.38.
One of the drawbacks of abandoning EMF is that I didn’t really paid too much attention on the EMF back up files I had. Unfortunately, the parents got corrupted. I’ve acquired them from another source but then again they were corrupted as well. Something went fubar in the recent past that got unoticed.
Probably not, because I am working on a better BMS-Greek theater project for the future. The latter, will include campaigns…
Hi Kyros. Correct, however, there will be no campaigns for EMF at all, because my focus, time and energy when it comes to BMS is on 4.37 theater development atm and to be honest I don’t want to invest time on the old terrain anymore.
A small fix to HAF F-16 BLK50 cockpit
Go to KTO theater
C:\Falcon BMS 4.36\Data\Art\CkptArt\F-16C-50 HAF
copy 3dbuttons.dat file and paste it to the EMF one. Let it overwrite
C:\Falcon BMS 4.36\Data\Add-On emf\Art\CkptArt\HAF F-16C B50
Kudos to Spooky for reporting it
An updated EMF version is already ready. It will be released with the new BMS update.
First post updated with a quick and small hotfix for missing trees.
Extract and move the three (3) files to the following destination:
C:\Falcon BMS 4.37\Data\Add-On emf\Terrdata\MiscTex
CMS Left is for the IDIAS system. For USAF CCIP F-16, it is CMS down. BMS includes two different ECM systems. It depends on which F-16 you fly.
For the next update, all Janhas F-16 models are updated, plus many bugs are fixed (including the Mirage)
East Mediterranean Front (EMF) v1.0.7
BMS 4.35 U2
Installation:
1. Remove any previous EMF version.
2. Download EMF v1.0.7 from https://www.mediafire.com/file/knx6230swqhtxng/Add-On_emf.7z/file
3. Go to C:\Falcon BMS 4.35\Data\TerrData\TheaterDefinition and open theater.lst with notepad. Add the following line: Add-On emf\theaterdefinition\emf.tdf Enjoy!
1\. Fixed Dalaman AB (LTBS) elevation.2\. Fixed Araxos AB (LGRX) dds error.
3\. Retouched Andravida AB (LGAD) Runway dds.
4\. Fixed CTD with Russian battalions selection list.
5\. Added JanHas HAF F-16C/D Block 30.
6\. Added JanHas HAF F-16D Block 50 new version.
7\. Added JanHas HAF F-16C Block52+ CFT, Zeus Demo. (Only 1-ship flight can be selected).
8\. Lower res of JanHas ALW 5.0 to gain some FPS.
9\. MFD boot time 24 sec instead of 2 sec in HAF F-16s and in some other F-16s.
10\. Added Luke777's Tu-22M.
11\. Fixed light flickering on tarmac.
12\. Added optional higher res textures (8500-8515.dds) for Souda AB (LGSA). You can select them by choosing "Higher Resolution Textures" in BMS Config.
13\. New skin for Tanker / Cargo ships.
14\. Added external light to most Shelters. Added more lights to most airbases.
15\. Added high resolution soldier textures. Choose "Higher Resolution Textures" option in BMS config.
16\. In EMF/Docs added .jpg of airfields info for kneeboards.
17\. Fixed Task Forces (naval) firing missiles while following Waypoints.
In near future, Raptor will provide new HAF cockpits (per RL) plus some other goodies.
I am posting this as a request to anyone who can make it happen. Just in case…
In CPM (low altitude) flights, especially when you fly with TFR, you have to know the RAA (Route Abort Altitude) of your route in case things go wrong. For instance TFR Failure. Then you have to go above RAA.
Furthermore, you have to know the MSA (Minimum Safe Altitude) of the target area in order to perform an appropriate Safe Escape Maneuver. If you pickle < MSA then you have to do a CLM (Climb Safe Maneuver). If your MRA > MSA or you pickle > MSA then you do a TMLT (Turn safe escape Maneuver). Also, you never use paddle < MSA. We have to always know our LEG MSA (10NM corridor), Target MSA (5NM radius) and RAA. Target area MSA = highest point within 5 nm radius around release point, round up to nearest 100’ and add 1000’.
'Till now, I use an online tool -which more or less- does the job. However, is applicable to the real world and you cannot insert your route in it in order to get instantly LEG MSA, Target MSA and RAA
This is the tool
http://www.heywhatsthat.com/profiler.html
If someone can create such a tool for BMS it would be excellent.