About This File
Well, this is my second update for the Razbam F-102, the first was pretty well recieved, to the point that Paulopanz is going to be releasing an update to his old skinpack for this aircraft, which by itself is beautiful and works very well with this release, (you just have to rename some stuff in the main ini.), gorgeous work, though. Anyway, I've been doing a little more research and it seems the F-102 was limited to the AIM-4A, AIM-4C and AIM-26A and B.* The other missles in the Razbam Weapons folder are part of the Super Falcon family and were not only physicaly larger but also looked like the ones in McGunny's Weapons Pack; I'm not sure if the stock ones differentiate between them or not. The sources I'm using also cover the Falcons employment in Vietnam in some depth, giving some insight on it's lack of sucess in combat; ie., this may have been due more to the fact that the F-4 did not have the specialized FCS of the aircraft it was designed for than the missle itself. The F-4 pilot had to manually perform a lot of functions that were completely automated when using the MG-10 or MA-1 Fire Control Systems, this and the fact that many of the missles were fired "outside of parameters" leads inescapably to the conclusion that "we" (both the SF1/2 community and TK) may have been entirely too hard on certain aspects of performance (low Accuracy, LockOnChance, Reliability, NoiseRejection, and CounterCounterMeasures values). Realistic modeling might be better realized by limiting TurnRate, SeekerFOV, SeekerGimbleLimit, and SeekerTrackRate; in other words they should probably have a much higher probability of intercept when used in their intended role against large, non-manuvering targets like Soviet bombers than against small nimble fighters. They did not have proximity fuses, being contact fused they would actually have to hit the target in order to pass their OpEvals and be accepted for use. This may sound naive, but I find it hard to believe the Air Force would have flown F-102s and F-106s as long as they did if they thought they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. When used in their intended role, fired from aircraft equipped with the proper FCS I'm thinking these missles should really be much more potent in the SF universe than they are at present. Needless to say, any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
The other thing I'm modeling here is the removal of that damn radar hood; it looks great, and it would be great if you weren't actually trying to fight from this cockpit.This is what I kinda think of as the curse of looking real; at first glance it does look real, however a real Deuce pilot, leaning forward to place his helmet visor against the Radar Hood would have seen an entirely different picture than we do even if we zoom in to the max. The game just does not give us the same view angles; no matter how close we get there is still a huge segment of the radar sacreen we can't see. This update removes the Radar Hood and lets you see the entire radar screen.
So there it is. If you don't like being limited to the AIM-4A and C, with the Nuclear Falcon for those saturation attacks, if you like not being able to see squat on your radar screen even though the real pilots could, don't install this. On the the other hand, if you want a realistic loadout, and you want to be able to fight the aircraft to it's full potential (which seems to be much higher than anyone gave it credit for, if this thing had a gun you could OWN some Migs that gave the F-4, for example, a very hard time), then by all means install this and go out and KILL SOME MIGS.
So drop the aim.4LOD and the parts01bmp. into the remaining AIM-4 missle folders, then just drop the Objects folder into your mod folder and allow to overwrite. Enjoy.
*Edit: 1/05/13. Well wrong again. The AIM-4D is now cleared for use. Seriously, the documentation for this stuff is kinda thin, and what there is is sometimes contradictory. Doin' my best, if you know of any source material, please let me know.
SupGen
1/3/13