Hey there Syonco and other newcomers,
this here might be a little bit long, but maybe other newcomers will “hopefully” read it too. And hey, you are no “player” if you want to fly complex simulators… that’s the first thing to understand. You want to handle almost real stuff and situations here.
I wish I’d be in your situation right now! Believe me, the first steps is the first real fun you will never experience again once you learned all the things. But you need to know how, to get all the sweets out from it, no matter if it’s about Falcon 4.0, DCS A-10 etc. … you can more destroy the fun with an arcade like approach to such things. I still own the old Falcon 4.0 (box, manuals, charts etc.) I got in the age of 14… and now I’m 27, many things changed and I’m still using it from time to time. I suggest you look in eBay for it or print out the Falcon 4 Allied Forces manual because it’s in PDF format.
Just start your way from the beginning, nice and clean. Forget about dogfights, radar symbols and campaigns. The tutorial missions are described perfectly in these manuals. The basics in there, will seem boring for you, but you really have to know how the F-16 behaves in different situations because… if you don’t… it doesn’t make sense at all to even fly towards a dogfight. Optimal turn-rates… what happens to my curve rate if I just pull hard G’s till the F-16 got no energy left and starts beeing a sitting duck for all the other fighters with no altitude left to exchange for speed. If you move your nose, you already give energy away. You will need these infos later, if you want to know, how to evade incoming missiles. It’s about the same thing.
Believe me, your brain will take all the notes and you can use it in every simulator. Starting from the middle… your brain tries to jump to the next level too fast by skipping all the basics. But your brain needs the tools before he can understand more advanced subjects. To make things more interesting, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND watching “Art of the Kill” which came in Falcon 3.0 Gold?, (from wikipedia =>)
“A video tutorial that teaches aerial dogfighting basics - _“Art of the Kill” - used Falcon 3.0’s built-in ACMIrecorder to reconstruct engagements, explain tactics and counter-tactics. Falcon 3.0 was also the subject of dozens of aftermarket books, some written by actual F-16 pilots.”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=956634374962818858 All in one.
In several Parts._ The Pilots name is Pete “Boomer” Bonanni. He actually wrote many chapters in the Falcon 4.0 manual, the tutorial missions, some things about himself and the simulator. The “Art of the Kill” is all the Falcon 4.0 Tutorial Missions except to all the new ones (which came with all the Mods), just in video format.
Give your brain the tools he needs for flying this simulator. Instead of making it boring, make the learning process sweet! (printed Manual in hand while making some training, watch the Art of the Kill… google a bit for info… experiment a bit (radar modes, missile modes)… and after you made all the basic tutorials… watch some youtube videos for more complex and detailed stuff and THEN… take the ultimate challenge in campaigns.
Did you know, the AI uses different air defence tactics with ground radar, by going on- and offline, pinging you from several radar sites and then suddenly a SA-2 comes online under you? (I never saw the AI handling such real-life things in other simulators.) It happened several times, before I could speak out that a missile under a friend of mine suddenly went straight up… he already went down in flames.
Or did you know, that every enemy you see in the campaign map you only can see because your allies are tracking them at the moment or spot them earlier maybe on a recon mission (by sight, by radar etc.)? Transport choppers actually fly to the target and transport soldiers over there, which you can later see on the map, or having them spot other enemy units, everything is in movement. All this you will learn later and believe me, there always will be an WOW-effect and an addition to fun.
Greetings,
Cabal