Caesar

A-friggin'-mazing!

OK, I think I came up with a translation of this thing; bear with me here, it's kind of rough: "HEY! HEEEEEEEEEY! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEE! FANS! PARENTS! HEY! LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK AT ME! LOOK! LOOK! LOOK! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! LOOK AT WHAT I'M DOING! LOOK!" Now, I can't say this is 100%, so take it with a grain of salt, but I think it's fairly close.

Happy Birthday!

Looking great, Dels!

SG with the save - fired the v120 full install your way, Erik.

Erik, As it would turn out, I only have the patch and older versions of the full install. PM'd Spectre to see if he can update the original. If not, I can bring it together out of V1.19 with the patch and upload, but I'd like to wait on the original file if possible. I'll let you know what/if I hear back.

I re-uploaded the Update Pack, but not the full file - Spectre would do the full packs and I'd do the smaller update options, but he hasn't been around for a bit (has other projects going on). Erik, if you don't have it, do you know if I can re-upload the file, or does it have to come from Spectre?

Erik, Much thanks for all the hard work and getting CA back on its feet!

I'm not certain all of the airframes involved, but services have and continue to cross-train, so it wouldn't surprise me if Air Force frames wound up at TOPGUN exercises, just like USN, USMC and other frames participate in Red Flag (among others).

Yes. Main reason I say this with high confidence is that in "Bio" Baranek's autobiography, he mentioned that they still had F-4 instructors into the 1980's. You have to recall that the transition to the Tomcat took effectively 10 years or more, squadrons like VF-74 and -103 not transitioning until 1983 with their first Tomcat cruise in 1984. The Navy wouldn't have cut them off from Top Gun just because they weren't in Turkeys! Come to think of it, "Hawk" Smith's biography mentioned that in the 1970's they had A-6 and A-7 bubbas out there more specifically for DCM type training, and this well predated the change to NSAWC/SFTI!

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It's been a while, so I figured I'd do 3 fights, one to get back in the saddle (F-14A vs. F-16C_B30), and two others in airframes I don't normally take up. One of the things I've been doing is adding in lines to the specific aircraft's data.ini to increase the likelihood of "chance continue" or "chance use vertical" - this was discussed in another topic, and while I'm not 100% certain it works, I will say that the F-16, Hunter and Fulcrum never did the "I give up" jink, straight, jink, straight thing some AI aircraft are prone to do when you're on their tail. To get back into the fight, I decide to go up against one of my more difficult adversaries, the F-16C, in one of my most familiar aircraft, the F-14A. It is a fight that allows the F-14A only a very small advantage at extreme slow speeds. I've got lower sustained turning, similar instantaneous turning out to 325 knots (if I follow the g-limit - egh, call it 380! I've always liked Grumman's 1973 numbers better...), and worse thrust to weight which makes vertical presses difficult. The wing-length flaps and slats help in the slow fight, and I've flown most in the Tomcat - familiarity with the virtual airframe helps a lot! If I'm in a fix, I have a few things I know I can do to get out. Loadouts - F-14A_74: gun, 75% fuel F-16C_B30: gun, 100% fuel The biggest thing I know I need to do is get above the F-16. If I can do that, the TF-30's piss-poor thrust won't matter as much, since I'll be able to have gravity aid me. Light the cans of the Ronco engines (set it and forget it!) and I pull into the F-16. The F-16 doesn't notice me initially, so I'm able to get nose on, but know that by the time I get close to him, he'll have his nose on me, too. Lo and behold, that's what happens. I've got 1.08M on the F-14 when we pass at the merge, and the F-16 dives on me as I continue my turn initially to prevent him from getting a head-on firing solution. (Recall: F-14 = BIG, F-16 = small(er) - Tomcat disadvantage in a head-on gun pass). Right after passing, the Falcon must have had a LOT of smack on, since he's pulling for all he's worth to get back around. Instead of pulling vertical, I continue my turn at about 7g, deliberately trying to get a bit slower so I don't wind up turning too wide ending with the Viper on my tails. The F-16 continues to pull into me, nose low, until he's pointing at my tails, then starts to reverse his turn, and I take this opportunity to dive. My plan is to dive towards the Viper's tail, knowing he's fighting gravity, and I've got gravity working for me. Very high g pull on the F-14 maxing out at around 9.5. We pass, and he continues his left turn. Because I haven't burned nearly as much energy as I would have, I've got enough to come back up and onto the F-16's tail, slightly high and to his 7 o'clock, nose on with lead. That said, my energy state still isn't as good as his, and I've got my flaps down now. Lucky for me, he took an ascending turn ('til I got back there), so his also isn't as good as it could be and he's not achieving a sufficient turn rate to get away. It's been a bit and I'm rusty with the gun. I fire three snap shots at high angle-off and miss each time. The Viper still can't gain energy in the turn, so we're doing this oblong turn where I get a chance to shoot about every five seconds due to the pitch of my nose, until the Viper actually starts regaining a bit of speed. The problem for him is that to do so, he levels out, I retract flaps from landing to take-off to try to accelerate (with TF-30's...). The Viper starts getting a bit of distance, but he's also allowing my own jet to speed up, and he still hasn't gotten me off his tail. The next error he makes is that he initially starts a turn into his original direction, which I begin to follow, but after only a few degrees, he rolls into the opposite direction and begins pulling more definitively. The issue for him, here, is that he had started to get away, and if he had waited, at least could have had the option of starting a scissors. Then for seemingly no reason, he changes direction allowing me to unload, and putting himself precariously in front of my gun. I've got enough speed on the jet that roll rate isn't an issue and follow him with relative ease. OK, Caesar, don't dick this one up. Get a nice lead and open up with the Vulcan. Hits to the fuselage, starboard wing, and apparently engine. Knock it off. Total fight time: 2mins 25 seconds. This is a massive improvement to my earlier fights against the F-16, which could cap out at 8-10 minutes in the F-14A. So now I've got some time back in the saddle. Rather than bore everyone who would read this with more F-14 engagements, it's time to take out some of the other fantastic aircraft brought to us by this community and TK. First follow-up fight is in the Mirage IIICJ Shahak (71). It was fought against a Hunter F.6. The thing I know about the Hunter is that I shouldn't try to turn with him. That huge wing and low loading means the aircraft can handle itself very well in a tight turning engagement. Instead, I need to use the vertical to my advantage. Loadouts: Mirage: gun, 100% fuel Hunter: gun, 100% fuel One of the things the first fight exposes is that the Hunter has no radar or RWR, so he has to see me visually to engage. I push to his 6o'clock but a bit too late, and he pulls into me. The first thing I start is a series of loops to try to use my better thrust to weight ratio to my advantage. After the first loop, I'm able to get lead on the Hunter and shoot, but no shots connect. Back up for the second one, but while my T:W is better than his, it ain't super, and I begin to run low on energy at the top. The Hunter is able to amble up to my altitude through a series of climbing turns, so I separate. As the Hunter gives chase, I pull back into the vertical, and set up a second time with a similar result, but again, I don't have a good gun solution and can't knock him out of the sky. As I come up, the Hunter has made a set of turns that put him on my tail. I don't have energy to climb, but with vigorous rudder work, as the Hunter tries to chase me, none of his shots hit. I actually get slow enough that he overshoots, but I'm so low on speed, there isn't much I can do. I go for the rudder again, but it isn't enough for a shot. Since about the best I can achieve is a rudder-based guns-D, while the Hunter can actually turn, I figure I'm running out of options. His two turns quickly put him on my six again, and I'm ruddering into a Split-S. He's gaining speed, too, and in a last ditch effort, I try to get him to overshoot as I come up, then cut the engine as my nose is at about 70 degrees to vertical. The Hunter doesn't run out of smack as fast as I'd hoped, and gets a shot, taking out the left wing and tail. Punch out. Time for round two! Total fight time: 7 minutes OK, so, more energy, more altitude! I already knew I couldn't take the Hunter in a turning or slow speed fight, I had just hoped my better T:W would save me towards the end, and it did not under the circumstances. The second fight started with me trying for an easy kill - without RWR equipment, like I knew from the first fight, I can get myself into his direct 6o'clock low and take him out. The problem is that the AI can see through itself, so even though I end up with about 1.22M on the aircraft with a straight on shot, the Hunter immediately begins turning as I get close to gun range. Indeed, he is turning so fast that by the time I reach him, he's already almost got his nose around at me! No chance there, so I push vertical again. Just like the first fight, the first loop results in an advantageous high position, but the gun shot isn't easy. I get some lead and fire, but none of the shots connect. Looks like I'm coming back up and around. But, I don't have enough energy again, and as I start my second loop, I continue only because I know if I do anything else (turn, Split-S) the Hunter will have me. As I get to the top, like last time, the Hunter can't reach me adequately unless I screw something up. At the top of the second loop, I can see I'm going to end up right back in the same place, the Hunter is getting close, and I'm running out of juice. I unload, inverted, and begin to run. Because the Hunter was trying to get to my altitude, he's nose up and in the 200's of knots. I quickly accelerate through 300, and keep running. In a short time I'm at .91M and in a minor ascent. Once I break Mach 1, I begin climbing more steeply again. This time, I get the bird up to 40,000 feet, with enough smack to get the nose facing the right direction. The Hunter simply can't climb that high at the speeds it can achieve and has to begin stall recovery in the 30's. I wrench on the Mirage for all it's worth and manage to get the nose back low and pointing at the Hunter, roll level, and now I'm at an advantage, chasing him down. The thin air makes his turns very shallow, and while he is in a minor right hand turn, I line him up and get good contact from the 30mm. Total fight time: 5 minutes Takeaways: Well, the same stuff I knew. Don't try to turn with a Hunter in most jets, keep energy up (which I did not do well) and keep the fight vertical. I think the biggest takeaway was just how fast the Hunter could turn! Even with over 1.2M on the aircraft, at under 5mi, the Hunter was able to nearly get his nose on me. Last fight - F/A-18C vs. MiG-29A. I chose to do this fight because the two aircraft are more closely matched. The new Bug pack F/A-18's do have some limiters on them, both mirroring RL and for good reason in-game (remember how the old ones could load 24g and tear off their wings at the merge?) Loadouts: F/A-18C: gun, 100% fuel MiG-29A: gun, 100% fuel This fight started out with both aircraft quickly turning into each other, but as I approached, I did so climbing to gain an initial altitude advantage. I pulled low into the Fulcrum, the Fulcrum pulled up into me, and we shot past each other at a very high closure rate. I held the pull, coming back up to chase the Fulcrum and it was a repeat. Well, this is going nowhere. After another loop, I decide to only pull a half-loop, and add a turn and some rudder to try to get my nose down onto the Fulcrum more quickly. It doesn't go as expected, but the Fulcrum certainly wasn't gaining any ground on ME either. What happened next was an energy circle. One of the things I forgot is that the AI will gladly push the Fulcrum into a 7-12g oscilating turn that doesn't actually burn energy, or at least not much energy, so while I am sustaining between 5.5 and 6.5g, the Fulcrum is doing a lot better. The problem is he's a lot faster, so his radius is wider, and he isn't going to be able to capitalize any time soon. Initially I go for a vertical press to break the circle after two completions of 360 degrees. The Fulcrum pulls much harder, and I can see he's probably going to go for a snap shot with his guns. I rotate the Hornet, put the stick in my lap and he goes by without getting a shot. OK, high didn't work, how about low? Push towards the ground and gain smack. I've got about an 8.5g turn available with the limiters, and the Fulcrum comes screaming down to my altitude. He's going way too fast, overshoots and has to try to miss the ground. I keep on my turn, the Fulcrum does one of it's patented AI 12g pulls to get his nose around in a few seconds, but does so after my nose is already pointed at him. I can see he's going to try for the head-on gun kill, but I've got positional advantage, maybe 3-4 seconds before he shoots. Boresight him, put the center of the pipper right on his nose and fire two bursts just before he gets nose-on. The first burst tears the Fulcrum apart and it lights up in my windscreen. Total fight time 4 minutes 23 seconds. Takeaways: The Hornet and Fulcrum are indeed well matched. Under certain circumstances, the limiters can stop you from doing what you want, but the -18 is maneuverable enough that plenty of options should always be open. Even running into them, I didn't feel particularly threatened at any point, and the aircraft was responsive across the envelope.

Funny enough, I was in the same predicament a few days ago. Most effective way against the Tu-22 I noticed was to make high speed diving attacks or high-angle-off horizontal attacks. The final bomber I believe I hit with more than 100 rounds of my gun, but it was my wing man who actually brought it down with his own. It took him one burst after the bomber had been peppered with two sidewinders and my gun. Interestingly enough, I actually shot off its cruise missile which prevented it from launching, but the Hawkeye wouldn't clear us until the bomber itself was dead . That said, the stinger in the tail is a royal PITA, and it can do some damage to your fine American war machine! Like those others here have said, don't do it unless you have no other choice, and if you do, stay away from that back gun! Head-on works all right, diving and angle-off turns are OK, but you have to calculate it right, or else you will miss.

...buy Ace Combat: Assault Horizon for your PC. With the Steam Sale going on, I figured spending $8 on the game would make the play forgivable. I was wrong, and I wanted to report my findings to anyone who possibly might buy this at reduced price. CA had a discussion on this game back when it came out, and I had spoken about how terrible I felt the demo was. The full game only served to reinforce these feelings. It is nothing short of awful. It took me a moment to notice where I had seen the gameplay before: Tomcat Alley for the Sega CD. TA was like most "interactive movie" games, where you had a pre-rendered video sequence but with the ability to do things like shoot, dump chaff, etc, and if you didn't hit the right thing at the right time, you got killed; kind of like a slightly more free-form Dragon's Layer. Although not as unforgiving, the elements are undeniably similar. The game is unwinnable without going into what Bandai-Namco has dubbed "dogfight mode" or "DFM" - a mode which initiates the "rail shooter" portion of the game. In essence, you fly around freely, waste your ordnance trying to hit enemies outside of DFM killing one or two, and then realize the only way to win, especially with boss-type aircraft/objects, is that you MUST use DFM to shoot them down. This includes, at one point, an ICBM. Because I shot it with AIM-54's at long range, which hit (I don't need to tell you what happens to a rocket when a massive explosion occurs right next to it), but because I wasn't in DFM, it didn't die. Going into DFM, the rocket maneuvers as if it were a fighter with a better than 70deg/sec turn rate - oh by the way the rails put you right into the flaming exhaust of the rocket. Anyone see the Proton-M accident recently? Rockets don't do well under 'g' - something else that goes without saying, but if you want to see for yourself, hit that up on YouTube. Only by flying in the searing, metal-melting heat of the rocket engine, firing AIM-9's and your gun can you shoot the thing down successfully. This makes sense on every level imaginable. This is the standard for the majority of boss and "Target" aircraft; no DFM = no kill, with the exception that "Target" (but not "Boss") aircraft CAN be killed, just with a hell of a lot of effort and misses. There is a reason for this, of course. By going into DFM, you have the ability to gaze at all the amazing scenery the team rendered, because you don't actually have to control the aircraft at this point. Oh, MAN! Did you see that friggin' building explode!? Those effects are SOOOO AWESOME! Oh, wait, they aren't! We've seen them in every action game for more than the past 10 years! Let's go ahead and take interactivity OUT of a game, because that's what we want! We don't want to have the player to PLAY the game, we want them to watch the totally (not) AWESOME VISUALS! And oh man, when the planes blow up, it'll be just like KRRRRSSSSH!! LOOK at the thing falling apart! It's like the plane is alive and being all shredded up! All that black oil just like BLOOD! (Again, no). It's like a Michael Bay production without the so-bad-it's-good storyline. Don't get me started on the yaw, pitch and acceleration rates used to initiate DFM, either (a dude can be well behind you, nose at angle off of near 90 degrees and in roughly one second ZOOP! He's on your tail - you can watch it on your radar, it's pretty impressive). This also means it doesn't matter what aircraft you're flying, save for its damage resiliancy. An A-10 can take a BEATING, but once you're in DFM, you're on the rails with extremely little influence (yes, you can lose DFM, or break free on your own, but it takes EFFORT) so you could be flying an F-14D, or a Su-37, F-22 or a MiG-21 and have effectively the same fight on your hands, regardless of the opponent. And yes, the enemy goes into DFM on you, too! A high-g spiral breaks out easy enough, or you can use a "Dogfight Maneuver!" to get on your opponent's tail (either a high yo-yo, Cobra, or apparently a pitch-pulse in some circumstances). The controls for the PC are fine for aircraft with a stick and throttle, but damn, if you are flying the AH-64, you're pretty much screwed. You basically need a game pad - turning is controlled by the hat switch on the Saitek X52, alternatively the mouse, but the mouse is way too sluggish to effectively turn the bird in an acceptable span of time. The parts with the bombers and Blackhawks are tolerable with a mouse. The game's story has been played out in Tom Clancy titles before (rebels manage to gain control of a certain percentage of Russia, acquiring a new weapon and it's up to YOU to stop them with the loyalist Russians and NATO - are you a bad enough dude to rescue Russia?), and it isn't terrible, but that is one of the few saving graces for this game. Graphics? Fine, but that's entry level stuff. When you have a production team as big as a Hollywood movie, you'd better get the visuals right! For that matter, I'd degrade the "Fine" to "Fair" since it is not much better, if at all, than AC6, in spite of being 4 years newer. Gameplay? Attrocious. Absolutley attrocious, and the main reason is the reliance on DFM to show the absolutely par or worse visuals that have no purpose in an air-combat game. What is AC:AH, then? It's a movie. It is a rail shooter/movie which attempts to bring in new audiences through visuals and a storyline set in the real world instead of the former Ace Combat universe. You want more fun? Grab a friend and play Combat on Atari (this comparison may sound unfair to Combat - understand I love Combat, great game, really holds up 36 years later) or maybe play After Burner II on a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Better place to spend $8? Probably any single other entry available through Steam, hell, blow it on chocolate at your local BX/PX! Any of the former is preferable. If you're considering buying this, you've been warned. If you disagree, hey, that's great, enjoy the game. But I for one can say this was actually $8 wasted. Please don't waste your $8. V/R, "Caesar"

That, in turn, sounds like it was inspired by After Burner Climax - the arcade game came out in 2006. Depending on the path you follow, you have to fly through a nuclear bunker, avoiding or destroying blast doors, then gunning a set of 3 ICBMs (no particle cannon shooting at you in this one). As you leave the cave, you wind up having to shoot down a stealth bomber and its cruise missiles. At least you don't have to do it in DOGFIGHT MODE! I think that the discussion helps to illustrate the point that control and presentation are a big factor in enjoyability. Every Ace Combat game heretofore has had a ridiculous enemy or end boss that you'd have to kill by supreme flying skill, many times bringing your jet through an underground corridor, or flying through tight spaces, or sometimes it would be an impossibly big airborne aircraft carrier (including Air Combat/Ace Combat on the PS1). It's a fantasy world, I get it. But when I was under those circumstances in prior games, I could kill the boss with total freedom. I didn't have to find a point on a map, enter AIR STRIKE MODE! with "only one chance to get it right" and flying on rails, or entering DOGFIGHT MODE! so I could watch TOP GUN, rather than play the game. There is no doubt that certain enemies in prior games had more than over-the-top physics busting skills, like the cruise missiles and ICBM of AC:AH (especially "drone" aircraft, like the ones that help target the super weapon in AC6), but they were few and far between. It took effort to kill them and there wasn't a cheat to get around it. Think about the fight against the Yellow squadron in AC4; all flying Su-37's with the "quick maneuver AAMs." That was a tough fight, and it took you the player to out-fly and defeat your opponents. It took you to play the game. Even ridiculous scenarios can be enjoyable, and the AC series has shown this up until AH. With the reliance on DFM, and turning the game into a railshooter/movie with unnecessary, repeated and not particularly impressive visuals, they screwed the pooch. I'm hoping whatever the next entry is returns to the older, better format.

Admittedly, it sounds harsh, but there wasn't really any other way for me to put it. Heck, what I wrote was tempered back from what was on my mind! The bad massively outweighs the good, and even at the reduced price isn't worth it, at least in my opinion.

"The drone is 63 feet long, rising to 16 feet high and officially weights in at 30,328 pounds." - yes, this is because it was a fighter jet at one point, converted to a drone after its operational service life ran out. Comment: "Holy crap - drones are 30,000 pounds and 63 feet long? Maybe we should rethink flying them around sporting events and cities." I half wondered if anyone reporting on this story, or reacting to it, had any clue about historic military aircraft. That's when I read further in the comments section and came to the realization that no, no one commenting there does. After about two entries I got depressed, and by the third, I got depressed and angry and had to stop reading them.

Well, in the Tomcat Super Pack, and I believe the original file from 2010, the Horizontal Situation Display (HSD) has three modes, NAV, Radar and RWR, which mimics the real-world HSD. The RWR mode is fully functional, but it is redundant due to the pit being based on the F-14B, which had the ALR-67 display. Short answer, RWR can and has been put on a non-dedicated display. How to get it to work in the F-117, however, is uncertain to me. In the Tomcat, it's the bomb ripple interval buttons that change the HSD modes, while the bomb ripple quantity changes the VDI. Might be one of those commands?

Well, it's that time again, Caesar's headed West into the Colorado Springs area late this year (at least they didn't send me back to the arctic!). Anyone stationed out there recently? Know of any good diners, dives etc.?

Typhoid, Sent some specifics in a PM.

Lucky for me I avoided HQ, know a few folks over there and it doesn't sound like much fun. I'm headed to Schriever, but I noticed it is fairly nearby the Springs area (at least based on Google Maps). I'll be there around December. Sounds like The Airplane Restaurant is going to be on my "to visit" list.

Just ran the patch myself, it didn't break any of my installs.

I saw this with some of the other CGOs out here at the labs and not a single one of us liked it very much. The reasons varied, but for me personally, the reason I was so frustrated with it is that it is so mediocre. Nothing stands out about it compared to other superhero movies, but it certainly wasn't bad either. It is that which made me hate it: the fact that I couldn't dislike it for poor quality or poor acting (since the quality was good and the acting was fine), but that I couldn't like it either because it was like every other superhero and/or giant robot movie I've seen since 2005. The CGI is, of course, top notch, but I don't really care for that because every modern blockbuster movie has excellent CGI. There's a fight sequence in which most of a city is destroyed - been there, done that with Transformers, Avengers, every other related movie (Iron Man, Hulk, etc.), and the trend continues with the upcoming Evangelion/Big O combo movie "Pacific Rim" which has also advertised gratuitous city destruction in the previews. It's getting old. I don't think fans of Superman will be disappointed with this. Like I said above, the acting was fine, the story was, well, another superhero origin story, and it is flashy with big explosions and city destruction like a comic book. For me, I don't think I'll be checking out any more superhero movies anytime soon.

Excuse me! Do you have a cup of sugar? Don't move! He can't see us if we don't move! Aardvark headed to the TACTS range

Affects both Ops and Ops Support worlds, lot of cuts in the R&D sector too.