Menrva

Thanks to the recent support of Spudknocker, the new Iran/Iraq terrain is in its final stages of development. I plan to release the terrain by the end of the month. In case of delays, NLT (no later than) mid-February. I will release two terrain packages, one for the Iran-Iraq war, ODS and OEF/OIF; the other terrain, post-OIF 2003, with Iraq set as Friendly and Iran as Enemy. I'm sorry for the lack of updates during this long time, guys, but RL is a PITA sometimes. Well, see you soon!

The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning crossed the Taiwanese ADIZ in a show of force amid recent tensions: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-38579559

Other real world news, East Timor this time: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38551628

I also suggest the following movies. They are all based on real stories; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_in_Gold_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railway_Man_(film) Diplomacy is a bit fictionalized, yet it gives an idea of how Paris was on the brink of total destruction (on Hitler's orders) as soon as the Nazis were in retreat. Woman In Gold is a story of justice. It deals with one particular painting of Klimt, which was stolen by the Nazis during the war and which has been at the center of a legal battle years ago. The Railway Man shocked me, it is such an extraordinary story, amazing to think it is real. It is based on the book of the same name. One of my favourite TV series is Person Of Interest. I still have to watch the fifth and last season.

Actually we can set a nation as NEUTRAL too, but AFAIK by doing so the game won't spawn aircraft from said nation. It's a function that TK could have implemented better; it would have made SF2's campaign system more similar to the great dynamic campaigns of DiD's EF-2000 and F-22 Total Air War games. @Stratos, in the terrain's _nation.ini file you can set which countries are friendly, which are enemy. You can put 'USAF', 'USMC', 'USN' as friendly together with 'Soviet' and whichever other country you want. In the Californian terrain by JSF_Aggie I made USAF friendly and USN enemy just for fun. So there is no need to mod the NATIONS.ini file in the Flight folder. As Wrench said, Greece should be put to Neutral. It appears red (as if it was enemy) in the TFDtool, but it is Neutral. Ingame Neutral airports are blue as if they were friendly I wish you the best of luck, it's a rather big project. Me and Spudknocker are also in the process of finishing the new Iran/Iraq terrains, which are a complete revamp of the ones we currently have in ODS and other mods.

That's a bit funny though, the F-22 was born as an air dominance fighter, but turned out to be a multirole jet (although to be multirole it's a must for every fighter jet nowadays). If it were up to me, I'd have more F-22s for air superiority, so those can escort F-35s in their hypothetical strike and air interdiction missions. Also, IIRC, the F-22 can carry more air to air missiles than an F-35. The F-22 still shows some limits though, AFAIK they do not support HMD visors. I simply think that the U.S. can't rely that much on the F-35 to do everything. For instance, the AMI's got the Eurofighter for air superiority (if necessary, it is multirole indeed), and the F-35s are planned to replace the dated Sea Harrier and the leased USAF's F-16s (maybe even the Tornados we have, but I am not sure about this). The F-35 was born as a strike fighter jet, let's use it for that. Uncle Sam should build some more F-22s instead, not that many though. If they are stealth aircraft, that also means they have more chances of survivability in combat-heavy scenarios. For how I love the Eagle and the Fighting Falcon, I must admit that the only way to reduce costs is to reduce the number of different airframes in current service (especially in the USAF). The F-22 and the F-35 can do what the F-15s and the F-16s do, so they can and must replace those at some time. I don't know what to think about the Advanced Super Hornet, but the F-35s can replace the Hornets as well, with all the technology of the fifth-generation. All in all, two aircraft instead of four or five different ones, the costs would be reduced quite a bit. Trump's statement comes too late, the F-35 is already in motion, now you keep it. Telling Boeing to build an alternative is another waste of money at this time. Just my humble opinion.

You made my day, EMCON360! Thanks a million!

Below I attached a package I made. It includes Russian Air Force, which starts in 1992 and uses new decals only beginning from 2010 (as in RL), automatically switches back to Soviet Air Force before 1992. Also included additional decals and nations from yakarov's helo mods. Last but not least, some small changes here and there for more realism made by me (Somali Air Force was once Somali Aeronatical Corps). Still a lot to do, I must fix Iran and other countries to make sure they reflect historical changes. Ah, for the Russian Air Force I used an alternative, smaller decal included in one of eburger's mods. It's the same blue-ish star as the one made by Nyghtfall. If you prefer his over the original ones, well you are modders after all... Happy Holidays! Decals_Nations.7z

Then I wonder why in the bloody hell Boeing's X-32 lost to Lockheed Martin's X-35... I am not against the idea of seeing the Advanced Super Hornet, but a lot of money has already been wasted on the F-35. You simply can't tell the F-35s to go f... themselves.

Next, he will resuscitate the Tomcat...

Well, actually, it is coincidence in this case. What did you expect? He opened fire at police officers. The least they could do was to return fire. And one officer got hit in the shoulder during the process. Fortunately he is fine, his injuries are not life threatening. In my country weapons are rarely seen and/or used. I too would have liked to see the bastard captured, but he drew fire on himself. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38415287

Wow, I'm impressed, very nice paintings, full of imagery and meaning. Thanks for posting this one!

They are. More RL developments on the artificial islands: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38319253

Just for historical purposes, would it be possible to upload that very same .hfd (maybe plus the old unuseful TerrainEditor) here at CombatACE?

Here's an answer on how the game will be. People need to forget about Assault Horizon real quick. That was a (sh*tty) spin-off, we are now back to good old AC-style: http://www.dualshockers.com/2016/12/05/ace-combat-7-return-strangereal-reason/ That being said, Yellow 13 was such an interesting character, a worthy enemy of Mobius 1!

Nope. Unfortunately this is a limit in TW's SF2. You can set two factions, one Friendly, one Enemy. Other countries listed in the _nations.ini are either Friendly or Enemy. My idea about the terrain was to make Iran NEUTRAL (it seems it "works", the game treats it like FRIENDLY, but spawns no aircraft), Iraq ENEMY and Saudi Arabia FRIENDLY. Iran can be set as Enemy in specific campaigns, I think, with no side effects (I am not sure how airbases will be handled though).

Yep, if you look carefully though, Stonehenge appears damaged, most likely it has remained so since the war in AC04. Moreover, Erusea was a Federal Republic, now it's a Kingdom? We'll see. Storyline should be set in the 2020s.

The latest trailer from Project Aces, just in case the AC fans here missed it: https://youtu.be/zIIoRDCmJEA Strangereal is finally back!

Exactly, an example would be Novalogic's Armored Fist 2 and 3, Comanche 3/Gold and the first two Delta Force games. They use a voxel engine, without hardware acceleration. Most of the stuff is 3D (lots of polygonal stuff), only a few 2D sprites are used for special effects and such. Even PSX games are not hardware accelerated, but that doesn't mean they are not 3D or don't use polygons at all.

Ditto, congratulations to the team, it's a very fine aircraft!

What Coupi said. Consider that flying certain heavy bombers can cause a CTD, especially if you order your flight to attack your target. I kept the amazing red cockpits by Stary. I remove cockpits which are inappropriate for some aircraft; I like to fly only the aircraft with their own cockpit, or with a cockpit very close to the RL counterpart (same plane, just inaccurate cockpit for a certain subvariant). I went crazy and probably made the biggest mod folder ever, with an objective in mind; most stuff with less space on the HD. I converted everything I could to .jpeg (without loss of quality thanks to a good software) and I even went on to remove backup files, readmes, thumbnail caches, .out files and so on. I kept it clean and small. FYI, it contains eburger's expansion packs (most of them except the Mediterranean one atm), TSF2, Falklands War, ODS, Korea, Taiwan, Pakistan/India, Crimea, Southwest Africa, and other scenarios/terrains, plus lots of additional aircraft and yakarov's helos (including the recent ones yet to be included in some mods). Everything has been tweaked and reordered to remove unuseful copies of aircraft, etc. It has become some sort of anthology of Cold War and post-Cold War history. My mod folder spans from 1948 to 2018, seventy years of aerial warfare. It "only" weighs 126 GB on the HDD.

Keep fighting, mate, we are with you. Wish you the best of luck!

Thanks Crusader, I remember the infos you gave me for the terrain. If I miss you in the credits list, kill me! BTW, I have no problem with the location of Tanajib, thanks to Google Earth and gerwin's TFDtool, I managed to be extremely accurate given the limitations of the terrain engine. I simply don't know if the USMC effectively built an expeditionary airfield near Tanajib, and if so, where precisely (of course, I guess it should be near Tanajib itself).