LOMAC - what's all the fuss about?

[Beery 0]

I bought LOMAC a year or so ago, but its linear campaign made me lose interest in it after just a couple of missions. Yet I often see it listed on forums even now. So what's the deal? What is it that makes LOMAC so popular and so long-lasting despite the lack of a dynamic (or even random) campaign - which I see as a fatal flaw?

[Growler67 0]

Eye Candy. Without depth of substance, that is the only thing left. Gives people something kewl to look at and fiddle with to distract from the flaws and limitation od the original product. No offense to the community of modders out there, as there is some very wonderful work out there. I'm just stating things as I see and have experienced them with this title.

 

Don't know how it'll run on a newer Dual-Core rig, but the LUA script it was written in requires a Cray to run entirely smooth. They bit off too much IMO when they used a new script in conjuction with the heavy eye candy. The AI falls far short of the mark and you have to buy an add-on that wasn't originally intended for the western markets to get the fixes to some of the more prevelant of the bugs after the second (free) patch.

[+streakeagle 865]

Some people never play campaigns. Personally, all I am interested in is quick and dirty dogfighting. So I could care less whether campaigns are dynamic or not. I prefer the variety and low-tech of SFP1/WOV (I am a Phantom Phanatic), but being a fan of the F-15 and Su-27, there is no better sim for flying these two aircraft than LOMAC. Falcon 4.0 doesn't do much for me since I never cared for flying the F-16, so I actually prefer LOMAC and have more hours on it than Falcon 4.0 despite the fact the Falcon 4.0 has a lot of great features going for it.

 

In principal, I don't like the idea that known bugs were not fixed for free. In practice, I bought Flaming Cliffs anyway and thoroughly enjoy the improvements it brought. LOMAC is not all eye-candy either. Name another game that models the weapons systems of the flyable aircraft to this level of detail and realism. If it just had clickable cockpits, I would easily call it the equal of F4.0 and Jane's F/A-18. Why they would go to so much trouble to make such a detailed sim and not bother with clickable cockpits is beyond me?

[Growler67 0]

LOMAC is not all eye-candy either. Name another game that models the weapons systems of the flyable aircraft to this level of detail and realism.

 

Can a man-pad still survive a Mk84 within 15 feet and still shoot you down? Can the Aim-120 still get spoofed by chaff more than 70% of the time with the 'Missile Effectivness' selector in the middle?

Edited May 10, 2006 by Growler67

[+streakeagle 865]

Can a man-pad still survive a Mk84 within 15 feet and still shoot you down? Can the Aim-120 still get spoofed by chaff more than 70% of the time with the 'Missile Effectivness' selector in the middle?

 

All sims have flaws. Name one that doesn't have flaws comparable or worse than these. Combat flight sims are really just detailed mathematical physics models and as such have plenty of room for errors. As it is, I don't know of any published data on the effectiveness of older missiles versus ECM environment, much less the AIM-120 (and I don't mean brochure claims used for sales and lobbying). Game developers have a lot of lattitude when it comes to modeling ECM functionality. I have never even seen an air combat sim that models ECM to the publicly available standards. In the absence of hard data, the developer gets to fudge the numbers as he sees fit. You may not like the 70% failure rate of the AIM-120 versus chaff, but that does not make it incorrect.

[Growler67 0]

From a Hornet pilot.

 

"The Slammer also has an astonishing record in both flight tests (once proper sofware was perfected) and in combat. For example, in one test over White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, one F-15C Eagle ripple-fired four AIM-120A's at 4 QF-100 drones. The drones were performing evasive maneovers, releasing chaff, and were also equipped with jammers. All 4 AIM-120's hit the targets dead-on. This and other tests earned the nickname Slammer (One F-15 driver compared firing the AMRAAM at targets to being like clubbing baby seals), as well as other nicknames such as "The World War III Shot". Some people have even taken to calling the AMRAAM the "Go Get'em Fido" Missile. The Slammer has been fired in combat on 3 occasions. On the first, which took place on 27 December 1992, an F-16C patrolling the No-Fly Zone over Iraq destroyed an Iraqi MiG-25 Foxbat head-on at medium range. Later on 17 January 1993 another F-16C shot down an Iraqi MiG-23 at closer range, at the limit of the AMRAAM's no-escape zone. The third kill in AMRAAM history took place over Bosnia when a Serbian tactical fighter, flying in a terrain-hugging profile, was hit by a U.S. Slammer. "

 

"You may not like the 70% failure rate of the AIM-120 versus chaff, but that does not make it incorrect."

 

Perhaps not, but everything (unclassified or declassified) I've read to date would suggest very much otherwise.

[Ruggbutt 45]

Can a man-pad still survive a Mk84 within 15 feet and still shoot you down? Can the Aim-120 still get spoofed by chaff more than 70% of the time with the 'Missile Effectivness' selector in the middle?

 

It's evolving. Black Shark is gonna be sick and when they release their F16 sim with realistic avionics it's gonna be just what the community always wanted.

[Growler67 0]

Inclusive with StarForce? If so, no sale......and the sentiment is growing.

[Ruggbutt 45]

It's your choice to not purchase. I've had SF on my rig (the d/l version) since Flaming Cliffs was released. So have 9 other people in my squadron. No issues. From what I'm seeing the d/l version has far less problems than the one that does the CD checks.

 

I have 2 Windows installs, one has a RAID 0 partition with XP Pro, my games and all services turned off (which gained me 120mb of free RAM). The other is my standard install with all my programs such as Photoshop, Vegas, etc. I decided to do a test with SF, cuz people were swearing up and down that SF killed or hampered optical drives. I ran Nero Drivespeed on my drives and benched them. I then installed LOMAC/FC (with Starforce) and benched them again. There was no difference whatsoever in drive performance. Mind you, I was using Nero which the naysayers claim will not work with SF installed. Additionally, I'm running 2 virtual drives with Daemon tools on my gaming install and both the WoV and BF2 ISO's work. I made the ISO's with Alcohol 120 and my legal copies of those games. SF is supposed to hose your system if you have Daemon Tools or Alcohol installed. Most of my squad has these installed and haven't seen one whit of performance problems.

 

The above wasn't posted to change your mind about SF, it's clear how you feel about both by posts in other forums. I found that in our squad's case this is how things are. Cali from the 169th is a real life buddy of mine and he states his squad reports the same non problems with the d/l version of SF that is used on Flaming Cliffs. Being a member of a dev team that is doing a factory sponsored game using Crytek's CryEngine 2 (Crysis engine) I can respect that ED doesn't want their stuff stolen. When we released a mod for FarCry we had several things stolen from people doing other mods. A quick letter from our attorney fixed that, but it shows that people don't respect intellectual property.

 

There are no working cracked copies of Flaming Cliffs available on the net. SF stopped that. If you look at F4/AF there was a copy available several days before LP released it. There's alot of theft going on and it's a shame that LP is getting hosed for the monies involved with that. I hung out w/several of the great guys at LP at E3 this year, and it kills me that good peeps like that are being ripped off. It's their descision on what type of CP to use though, as it's their product.

 

One only need take a look at Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and it's Securom 7 protection to see that some of the alternatives are worse than the SF protection that was originally intended for it. People can't install the game with brand new optical drives. In fact, there are the same complaints with SR7 that there were with SF. All I can tell you is that 5 of the 9 people in my squad have had issues with SR7................

[Growler67 0]

I too have had some of the issuses with SF that are commonly mentioned in various forums. I do not want it on my machine anymore in any incarnation. I have had no personal misgivings with CD checks or dongles or many of the other forms of verification. I didn't even try to figure out how to mod files to attempt to make my LOMAC experience marginally better. I don't pirate nor do I have any inclination to learn how. I don't even have BitTorrent on my system.

 

I do wish at the very least that the industry would require labelling on the package to inform consumers of what (if any) CP is used. On the package before it is bought and taken home to find later a covert install was done without knowledge or permission. That is one of the biggest failings of SF. It just seems so underhanded.

[Ruggbutt 45]

What is it that makes LOMAC so popular and so long-lasting despite the lack of a dynamic (or even random) campaign - which I see as a fatal flaw?

One of Growler's squad mates made a mission randomizer called LMR (Lock On Mission Randomizer). Once you figure out the idiosyncracies of making a mission for it, it's an indispensible tool. I have started several people on using it and have released a mission pack for it. I love it, I even spoke w/Chizh about ED buying it from Shadow to include in Black Shark. It's that great of a tool. You can play the same mission over and over again and never have the same air and ground units show up in the same spot at the same time. It's brilliant.

 

Growler, I agree with you about SF. Developers are gonna use some sort of CP for sure and ED are still using SF. They see how bad piracy is first hand in Russia so I imagine they're gonna continue to use something intrusive like that cuz it does work. The good news is that SF is starting to take a hit because of the bad press, and another game developer dropped them the other day (sorry, I don't recall the name).

[JediMaster 451]

CDV just dropped SF. They're a publisher, however, like Ubisoft, not a developer like ED.

 

As for LOMAC, I like the planes it models. Of course, there are 2 levels to it. There's the A-10/Su-27/F-15/MiG-29, and then there are the 2 Su-25s. Flying those are harder than F4.

 

 

The Jedi Master

Edited May 25, 2006 by Jedi Master

[Ruggbutt 45]

As for LOMAC, I like the planes it models. Of course, there are 2 levels to it. There's the A-10/Su-27/F-15/MiG-29, and then there are the 2 Su-25s. Flying those are harder than F4.

Wait till ya fly the chopper...................