Black Sea Crisis Campaign

[FETCH2015]

I've been Playing the 1996 Black Sea Crisis Campaign, BLUE, flying an F/A-18. And I was wondering has anybody been able to complete it ? I can't even get past the first mission without being shot down. I've been Playing this game for years and this is nutty. The Su-27s just come out of nowhere, never show up on the Map, and decimate everything. After 15 first mission failures I went so far as to go into the Campaign ini file and tried setting random chance to 50% for all Red Aircraft … but still there's just no way.

[FETCH2015]

I was able to make it through a couple of missions, but I had to change the game settings to "start in air near target" and quickly achieve mission goal, and then quit.

Starting at the Carrier and running a mission is still a long shot … a really long shot. But I am still wondering why even after targeted or visually spotted no enemies are showing up on the in mission map ???

[FETCH2015]

I never noticed it before, but the enemy Planes NEVER show up on the in flight mission map. NEVER. I went and ran a few single missions and had them all around visual spotted within 2 miles and closer …. Nope. Went into Instant action and was flying circles around a bunch of enemies … Nope … they just don't show up on the Map.

[FETCH2015]

I've started fishing around to try and find what's different in this Add-On, from all the other Add-Ons and standard games, in the hopes of fixing the Enemy Planes never showing up on the in mission Map … I was wondering if someone with more knowledge and experience could point me in the right direction.???

[+EricJ]

Doesn't the game announce when you have bogies incoming though? As for threats and the amount it's just what it is. I'd like to help further but I don't mess with campaigns at all. I notice this when I've played Red aircraft, I'd get jumped by F-15s and get shot down quickly, but that was only singlemission. You can try editing or removing but that would just tell the game to spawn another aircraft.

Also, if the contacts are called out, hit R and you can padlock in that general direction of incoming fighters. 

Edited September 28, 2019 by EricJ

[FETCH2015]

Thanks for the response EricJ,

Yes everything functions as normal, the Tactical calls out Bogeys, and Bandits like it should. And on a certain level it makes the gameplay a little more realistic … but … it would be nice to hammer this problem out, and get this Add-On to function like all the other Add-Ons and standard games.

[+EricJ]

Well unfortunately I can't help with campaign issues as I don't fly campaigns. But as far as spawning you may want to try setting the Su-27 to RARE which may help with that as that's a bit unrealistic even to me.

[+Wrench]

I'd bet real money one of the inis that got installed has been edited to REMOVE enemy icons from the in-flight map. You're going to have to go through them one by one, starting with the Options.ini, and run it down.

[FETCH2015]

I would not take that bet, because it had to be done, that is a straight copy from most any other source with the usual changes, would render the same function as is common in all other games and mods. It was not probably an oversight. I'm going through them one by one.

[+1977Frenchie]

From my HUDDATA.ini :

[MapLabels]
EnableLabels=TRUE
LabelFriendlyAir=TRUE
LabelFriendlyGround=TRUE
LabelEnemyAir=TRUE
LabelEnemyGround=TRUE

 

Check if you have that. If not try it :) I have then showing on map (not red plane icons, but at least i have the plane type)...

[FETCH2015]

Getting closer … 

in all the other Add-Ons there is either no HUDDATA.ini, or it is TRUE ,  …. now I'm looking for the actual RED plane Icon in standard game and going to see if it has also been removed. OR maybe how and where the association is made. Somewhere in here the friendly Planes have that still in place … OH Boy when I hammer down this nail I've got some Su-27's to settle up with

Thanks

1977 Frenchie

[+Wrench]

look in the /Menu folder,that's where the icons would be stored, if a replacement one has been provided. Otherwise, they're all stored in one of the cat file, in "stock" game.

Hiding the enemy icons has been done on a shitload of mods, going all the way to SFP1. I just can't remember exactly what the change(s) are.

[FETCH2015]

Quote

 

I found them in the stock game. they are 4 or 5 .BMP files. In the MenuData.cat file

I 've dropped them into almost every file in the Add-on but nothing yet. It would seem that in a unique file was created within the Add-On for a unique path the "Friendly" .bmp's would be there. I will continue to look for them. And keep dropping these "enemy" ones in each folder until I crack this nut.

[TempestII]

It's certainly one of the trickier campaigns to survive, I plan to play it again soon but I've never made it all the way through - the 1994 one I got deep into with the F-15E. I switched it so all Red missiles were SAHM rather than AHM (apart from some used by the MiG-31) so that my RWR could at least tell me when I was being targeted at long range. If I let them get within Archer range... Well that was my own fault and I should have either shot them down first, avoided them or ran away.

[FETCH2015]

this is actually kind of funny

after running around in circles, and I really did copy and paste the 5 actual .bmp icon file into EVERY LAST folder hoping to buck shot a solution...

I thought why not just google

"Strike Fighters 2 how to remove enemy map icons"

and the first link on top was this

so it brought me back here and the fix is just so easy … it's like turning the lights on and off ….boy I feel stupid.

But I know Combat Ace will still be my friend no matter what.