Aircraft prices in campaigns

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

Hi everyone. I recently picked up SFP1 and I'm pretty much addicted to it. I'm currently playing the campaign, and I noticed that each aircraft I could potentially upgrade to has a set value. For example...

A-4E: $47000

F-104G: $60000

F-4B: $155000

And after adding a few third party planes, I noticed one from the Mirage Factory show up...

F-5A: $65000

 

Anyway, my question is, how are these prices assigned? And, will all add-on aircraft integrate into the campaign with their own price tag like that? (Or just the ones with a fancy self-installer?) I've looked everywhere in the knowledge base and older posts and can't find anything related to this, but forgive me if it's a noobish question.

[Silverbolt 104]

Price?

i never heard about it in SF series and i don't know if it's possible

[eraser_tr 29]

The default burning sands campaign in the original strike fighters project 1 allows you to fly for a mercenary squadron, created and paid for by the prince (or whatever he is) of the made up nation of Dhimar in the spirit of the AVG "Flying Tigers" in China at the beginning of WW2.

 

As for prices, the game automatically assigns them to all planes no matter who made them or how they are installed. How, nobody seems to know for sure actually, but I've heard it's based on the aircraft's range. It would certainly explain crappy prop planes being more expensive than high performance jets in many cases I've seen.

[+WhiteBoySamurai 1,094]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that I'm flying as a merc. I like this mode; it adds an interesting demension to the campaign.

 

Anyway, it seems you're right about aircraft range being an issue. I did some testing with the F-5A's NormalMissionRadius and MaxMissionRadius values, and found this--

Radius 798/898 : $65000 (original)

Radius 598/498 : $60000

Radius 398/298 : $57000

Radius 198/098 : $54000

 

That's as low as it will go from MissionRadius changes. Price seems to be unaffected by Celing, CruiseSpeed, ClimbSpeed, and most other FlightControl values. However, MachLimit has a significant effect. With MissionRadius still at 198/98, I changed the MachLimit value from 1.40 to 2.40, and the F-5 jumped to $71000.

 

I don't know if any other modders will find this useful for anything, but I think it's interesting to figure out how game mechanics really work.

[arf16 0]

Wow, this is useful information. I've been wondering about this for a LONG time.

[Jams 0]

The major problem with using third party planes is that later planes get extremely expensive, F-14D is about $220000 and if that ain't bad enough your mission payment probably won't even cover the cost of your missiles.

[+Spectre_USA 7]

That is one thing I played around with, early on, that is mercenary campaigns.

 

I thought it gave a certain Strike Commander, an old DOS game, feel to it. Not to mention the ability to mix aircraft in a flight.

 

I do wish the premise hadn't been abandoned, and would love to see some exploration of the inner workings, maybe to a point of re-incorporation.

[+GrinchWSLG 24]

I played around with mercenary campaigns a lot when I first got the game, it was part of the reason I purchased Strike Fighters. Unfortunately its one of those components that TK really doesn't support anymore. Every once in a while a patch will improve it ever so slightly, but never to the point where its a usefull system.

 

I was afraid that the range would determine the value of aircraft, and your testing has proven this. Perhaps we should ask TK to give us a value in the .ini file to determine price instead.