Since Mig alley has so much more to offer in the way of campaign strats than EAW, it seems that there would be more questions, topics and general discussion, at least, on the campaign.

I will say that for me, the campaign communications and navigation makes the game a bit more tedious than it needs to be. I'm always trying to figure out how to get everyone from point "A" to point "B" and then how to get them to do something once we get there.

I mean, in EAW it's all you can do to keep your guys from engaging once they see the enemy. In Mig Alley, they just want to go home. Several missions, I couldn't get my guys to engage to save my life. They just flew off in the distance and left me alone with about 30 migs on my *** . A sim has to have a certain chemistry about it that makes people want to talk about it whether its bad or whether its good. I'm wondering if Mig Alley has it...

Soooo, I'm kinda wondering about all those "Flight Sim of the Year" awards. I guess if you're the only participant in a contest, you have to win...

It is a pretty good game, for hot shots and kinda basic flying, but that gets old after awhile. I suppose the campaign needs some work to keep the general interest level high.
Again for me, the fact that I never know when the campaign is going to lock up makes me not want to fool with it very much.

I'm welcoming some opposing viewpoint or anything to get some chatter going here.

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Objects on your six may be closer than they appear...

The thing I think cripples a sim, or any game for that matter, is the undelivered promise of multiplay. Either the netcode is totally broken out of the box like the original Unreal or BattleZone II, or it just plain does not work as in EA's Superbike or MiG Alley. Consumers are getting FED up with broken promises and are much savvier when it comes to what a sim or game has BEFORE they purchase. Along this same line, a game that has smooth as silk netcode as in Unreal Tournament , the word quickly spreads. As you can see, if you follow the game industry at all, UT is walking away with sales and awards. . .

I for one purchased MA for the control physics algorithms, I hoped the netcode would work, but wasn't terribly upset to discover it didn't.

However some careful reading can help minimise some of these problems and I'm enjoying MA more than ever now. Hengist seems to have worked out how to get your flight to behave exactly as you want them to, and Frugalsworld has gone and produced a strategy guide/manual that Rowan should definitely look at and take a hint from... The game is now set to stay on my HD for a long time.

More on the bugginess of the game... Sometimes I get a "good" install. Meaning, it won't crash half as much as some other times I've had it on my HD. Then it's brilliant and the frustration factor drops off completely. Ok, crashes aren't completely absent but doesn't that say that a large amount of the crashiness may be due to a user's system and not the game? This one appears to be an absolute stickler for a completely defragged HD, nothing running in the background and not even letting the screensaver on while it installs!

Now I can't comment on multiplayer because I've only ever played a few furball CFS sessions on the zone and that didn't inspire me to do any more in any other game. Whenever I buy a game it's for its single player element and never for the multiplayer ability. So I'll have to let other people debate this point.

However, I will bring up the distribution of the game again. I didn't realise the game had come out in England. I saw ONE copy in Virgin one week. It had a 2 games for £30 sticker on it. It was retailing for £15, which in England is almost the bargain-bin price! EAW, where you can find it, is still up at £20. Anyhow I bought it and then looked to see when it had been released. Three weeks before...

People are also put off by the fact that the wings have a slight tendancy to fall off of the aircraft if you pull too hard, or that you spin if you ignore the telltale buffeting and use "ham-fisted" stick movements. This seems to be a major "this sim's going straight back to the shop" inducer.

Anyhow, just my 2 pence.

I think it is the patch that is holding most people from visiting this or other forums about MA.

I can remember the EAW forum on Combatsim.com not that long ago and it was nowhere near as big as it is now. In fact it was around Christmas that they had posts about trying to break 10,000 posts before Y2K. And now it is March and over 20,000. But even before that EAW was all but DEAD.

I remember the way it went. A bunch of posts in the beginning when EAW was released. Most were about bugs and comparing it to WWII fighters or Microsoft Combat Fighter. Then the first patch came out and things picked up. Then died again. The Forum on Combatsim was one of the smallest around. There were very little posts and usually from the same people, Opa, Twitch, and a few others. With the 1.2 patch it revived EAW. And after awhile even the talk of that slowed down. Most posts now are about Babes or online wars or add-ons.

I doubt MA will ever be able to catch Janes F/A-18. Maybe it will but there were already more posts about Janes before it was even shipped.

As for the engaging, I find it just the opposite for the most part. In EAW my guys always stayed with me until I told them to engage. In MA sometimes they do and sometimes they just take off.

And I think one of the biggest problems with MA is that it falls in the middle between a prop sim and a modern jet sim. I guess it isnt really a PROBLEM, but what I mean is that although there are a lot of very good Jet pilots that know BFM, the majority of them dont. They rely on good radar abilities and afterburners to get them a kill. With prop fighters they know how to fly the planes to get position but I think they are content with the sims they have.

When I first started MA I was not very impressed. The only reason I continued playing it was because I kept hearing how good it was. The more I got into it, the more I started seeing that people were right. MA is a very good sim that offers so much more than a sim like EAW.

MA isnt for the first time simmer. It is very hardcore and I think some people are finding out that all of there claims to be hardcore were only wishes. Some of us see the flight models and all the other things that make this sim so good and have put up with the problems that it has.

I thought about the Sim of the Year awards and about its competition but If you notice in the Reviews of MA they cant help but talk about its advantages over current sims and past sims.

I have not gotten into the campaign as much as I could have. I have gone along ways and then restarted a few times. It is very involving IMO. I am now just waiting for the patch. MA is the first sim that I have even enjoyed playing the single missions. The campaign is just better.

I have to agree with you on this. But probably for different reasons.

I still think that online multiplay is not as big of a selling feature as good single play is. I think that single play is what is going to make or break a sim.

I think Multiplay is important for one thing, Spreading the word. I mean online players are just that, they are online. They visit forums more and talk about online play more. They generate interest because they are always bringing up topics.

I dont care either way for online play. Sometimes I do it just for fun but I could do without it. I know that some people are just the opposite of me and only care about online play.

Hengist has given me the draft for his upcoming artile for the Strategy. The immersion level goes up a couple of notches in the air to ground stuff.

I have the feeling of control of my flak/aaa that I never had before. There are some AI improvements in this patch too that help things considerably. The command "Individual targets" is now much more effective, especially in at supply depots and marshaling yards. Not to mention that now those flak/aaa sites are toast. The magic number is 3nm. You have to keep your flight 3n away from your target or they go into automatic mode and start attacking without an order. Between 3 and 4nm is a perfect distance to watch the sead flights do their thing. When they stop doing their attacks the flak/aaa is gone and you go in and give them heck. With the improvement in "Individual targets" they all pick their own target (like the way Space target works for armed recon)and they all go in pretty much at once. So they get done with their ordinances much faster with the same killing effectiveness. If you are flying the SEAD then you can used the "Spaced" commands as they were intended. Sending in only what is specified keeping the others well out of harms way without diving for the target and doing nothing but exposing themselves to AAA.

Anyway enough rambling. Its not all perfect, but much better indeed.

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Ken "KC23" Cook,
Senior Editor
Frugal's World of Simulation
www.frugalsworld.com/

You are correct about how the EAW postings would ebb and fall. I was one of those who purchased EAW in the very beginning, and added to the hew and cry for a patch to fix its problems. EAW was very far from perfect out of the box. It took quite awhile to get it to the level it is now, and it's wonderful. We seem to have a good bunch of folks ready to give us the Mig Alley addons, now it's up to Rowan to give us a game.

Maybe as you all said, it's just waiting for that patch that can bring it all together. I certainly hope so.

One of my problems is, that I don't have a ready giude to remind me of what all the orders are about. I mean, what's the difference between a spaced target and a spaced element, for example. If someone could provide a list of commands and what they REALLY do, that would be great.

I read the wingman guide by Heignst and it is great. I tried it a few times but my wingmen apparently didn't read the guide. I guess I need to spend more time with it. I love a hardcore sim, but it's got to really have it together to make it work. Here's hoping.

Good hunting

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Objects on your six may be closer than they appear...

Online CFS and singleplay MA dominate my computer gaming free time.

1) The EAW board is popular largely because of the modifiability of the sim. There's a huge community out there that's *obsessed* (and I use that in a good way) with creating addons, applying addons, and just making the game fresh. MiG Alley, for whatever reason, doesn't have much of an addon community at all. This likely has something to do with MiG Alley being harder to modify (just a guess here, though.)

2) A good 1/4 to 1/3 of the EAW posts are from a handful of guys posting "Babe of the Day", and others replying with "Oohlala" and "Park that under my hanger" :)... as well as other daily posts that have little to do with EAW.

3) There are FAR more fans of WWII and modern aircraft than there are of an air war that lasted less than a year :). The only ones that play MiG Alley are the ones (like us) who happen to have a love for historic, exotic, and Korean War sims. Also, many people know hardly anything about the Korean War.

4) We're mutants. Just like some people enjoy fruit cake, we enjoy stalling at the mere tap of the joystick :) haha... I mean, enjoy Korean War sims. There are few like us who can enjoy an early-jet-age sim. When people ask where we'd prefer to be shot down... we say "Korea"! :)

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Ken "KC23" Cook,
Senior Editor
Frugal's World of Simulation
www.frugalsworld.com/

I do agree though, that a solid multi-play in MA would do wonders for the popularity of the game. It certainly doesn't look like it's going to hit critical mass anytime soon, so anything that can help it along the way is a bonus.

Cheers
Teapot

We've all just been playing the damn game lately.

What do you expect in number of fans about flight sim that is centered around the korean? Even the history books dont care about that war. In most high school history books nowadays, I reckon that the print dedicated to the war is probably down to a page or less. Anyone on these forums in an American high school right now? When I was in high school it was a good solid 3 pages I believe, if that.

Most people cant really draw on any real feelings when you mention the korean war. Some people in my family did fight in that war, I'm lucky I suppose. I know a lot more about the korean war than most people from personal initiative in my research.

when campaigning i make sure i save my files every step of the way..if CTD does occur no biggie.

BTW i reinstalled w98se dx7a and only what i need to make my pc play games and it runs like a champ...very reliable and very quickly.

i am gonna install either NT4 or w2k and all my nongame apps in that OS in order to maximize perf. & minimize crashes and have a dual boot setup. I know this may sould like a lot of work to someone who has little PC or os traing and it aint right. Wanna blame someone, send a letter to Redmond WA.

AT any rate MA is the most fun I havew had in a sim in recent memory.

WHat i wold like next..Vietnam 1967, Navy Planes F8, F4, A4, or f105s and f4's escourting BUFFS, these planes had radar's but low resolution would hopefully not be to taxing on CPU cycles. How about some stuff for linux, a faster & more reliable OS than anything from microsoft.

maybe WW3 1967...flying from alaska write it as a post nuke blow out, No ICBM's or nuke subs but intercepting bears escourting b52's and b-58's...hey throw in the B70 now that was a beautiful plane. Make it an interesting story w/ good graphics and dynamic campaign. We are just pretending (playing) so historical accuracy really aint required. How about a knck down slugfest against the evil liberals from Canada? Let them take control of few bases in north dakota to have nuclear parity, and some b52's f104,105,102,106 (f101 w/ unguided A2a Nuke missiles yahoo!)...ect and we fly and fight form plattsburgh AFB dicing over the catskills and adirondacks...

No offence to any Canadian folk..it would be cool to fight in our own yard rather than 1/2 round the world.

just a few rambling thoughts.

blit out (of my mind..so its been said)

have fun, it's time 4 a MA, new spring offensive campaign

cya round

I read an interview with Oleg Maddox on Il-2 Sturmovic and stopped reading it when it came to his views on Dynamic Campaigns. In the interview he said something about whenever someone says dynamic campaigns he thinks it is a joke. That pi*sed me off because I love Dynamic campaigns and I thought he was being rediculous. I made a post about how I thought HE was a joke. Then he responded back and explained how he felt. Then I felt like an Idiot. He seems like a good guy really interested in consumers opinions of what they would like in a flight sim.

Anyways I asked him about Why they were making Multi-play the most important feature in a single player sim. He responded by saying something like if we dont have good multi-play then simmers complain about it so they are making it work first.

Just thought I would let you know, incase you didnt already that at least this company has the same idea as you.

I will buy a sim without a dynamic campaign but I will usually wait for the price to drop because I dont usually spend a lot of time with them. I still completely disagree with Oleg Maddox on his views of what a dynamic campaign has to be but Il-2 looks pretty good to me and I will probably get it as soon as it is available.

You are correct. I for one have very little knowledge of the Korean War. I always knew the time period and stuff but never knew much info about it.

It wasnt until MA that I even got interested. And I only got MA because I wanted to fly the F-80. I didnt even care that it had the Korean war setting. I've just always been interested in the early jet years. Thats why I want a sim of a fake war at the end of WWII.

Are you the Gizmo that waxed my behind in a couple of RB3D dogfights about a month ago? If so, I just wanted to let you know that you're an excellent pilot!

But maybe I was just having an off night!

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Objects on your six may be closer than they appear...

"Hot Shots: An Oral History of The Air Force Combat Pilots of the Korean War"

The pilots tell their stories about flying mustangs, sabres and shooting stars and there are many never before published pics.

On the cover, there's a fantastic shot of an F-80 pilot, flight gear ready, standing infront of his ride.

ISBN# 0-688-16455-2
Publisher: HarperCollins
Editors: Jennie Ethell Chancey (daughter of the late Jeffrey Ethell, Warbird pilot and editor of some fantastic books himself) and William R. Forstchen

Highly recommended!
AxA

I bought Rowan's hype about Mig Alley, tried it, had a hard time getting into it, read all the posts here and at Frugal's, and so have put it on the shelf until I see it is fixed or I suddenly have a lot of time to kill.

It's not the Korean period that is the problem. In fact, I was drooling to have a go at the commies. It's the game as delivered that is the problem.

If Rowan had a brain, they would open the code and let the hackers fix the game for them. Then maybe there would be some interest from more people.

Now you have got me curious.

I havent checked out the EAW forum in awhile. What is it that hackers have fixed?

Also what was it about EAW that you didn't like when you bought it that hackers have fixed? I really wasn't aware that they fixed anything. Infact I didn't know there was anything that needed to be fixed.

I will say that I am a big EAW fan and IMO it is one of the best sims I have ever played. When I first tried MA I did not care for it very much. I actually forced myself to play MA just to try and understand why people were saying it was so good. Well after a couple of days MA was getting equal playing as EAW and after about a week or so I just couldn't stop playing MA for EAW. After putting a little time into MA it becomes clear as day that MA is superior to EAW in just about every way possible. The only things EAW has over MA is the number of flyable aircraft.

I'm befuddled why publishers and developers release games with broken net code. It seems especially stupid for a critically praised, but relatively low selling sim, such as MA would screw around this long with the release of a working net-code patch. What better way to spread the word that you have one of the best, if not THE best, overall flight combat sim on the market?

Makes no sense.

Amen to that. I'll never understand while they keep under estimating the importance of net play. I'm not even that big of an online guy, but I at least understand the importance in the marketing. EAW doesn't have a good working net code and it was kinda okay popular ... 1.2 hits and suddenly its hugely popular a year later. Why does this seem so hard to understand? Oh well.

Perhaps B17-2 will get it right ... a great dynamic campaign with great net play? We can only hope.

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Ken "KC23" Cook,
Senior Editor
Frugal's World of Simulation
www.frugalsworld.com/

In stating your preference for Mig Alley, you hit the point on the head. TIME!! Each different sim requires a steep learning curve for me, including programming GameCommander and my joystick to even have a chance of playing and enjoying it. I don't have the time to give MA. I wish I could transplant your MA experience in my brain, but I can't.

Here's how it worked out for me and EAW. Having tried many popular shooters and strategy games, but not playing many of them well (and being turned off by the teen-twitch set) I decided that I would invest serious time in WW2 prop sims to develop enough skill to play them enjoyably. I loved the history and machines from WW2, and it would satisfy my need to shoot things and see them blow up. eg. Take care of my kid factor!

I started from scatch with CFS, WW2F, and EAW when they came out in late 1998. I dumped CFS immediately. My initial impression was that EAW was behind the curve at 640x480 resolution with mediocre graphics and sound.

I stayed with WW2F for a long time simply because the graphics, sound, and game presentation were so good. I didn't know enough about flight models and campaigns at first, but I kept reading on the forums that EAW was much better. Meanwhile, I was also reading about MA and Panzer Elite, and bought both when they came out to see what they had to offer.

Anyway, I finally realized that I had to focus on one sim and stick with it. I was falling into the trap of trying to play too many different sims with too little time to learn them adequately. So I re-installed EAW with all the new changes I discovered on the web. I was most pleasantly surprised at how EAW now fits my interests (good solid WW2 flight sim with good graphics and sound).

Almost none of this evolution came from the publisher Micropose. It came from the EAW community who had sufficient tools available to make EAW what it should have been. To its credit, Micropose stuck with EAW a few months longer than Jane's and EA, (who must have set some kind of record for abandoning a product that was just released and had great promise). Jane's also locked up the WW2F code, so nodbody else could fix or finish the game. Stupid. I was completely disgusted at being duped.

So EAW is where I spend my time these days, waiting for B17-II and IL Sturmovik (see, I still buy the dream).

You asked what the hackers fixed in EAW that makes it so much better than it was after patch 1.2 made high resolutions possible. Here are my favorite EAW community add-ons available for free on the web. New sound effects (Meatwater and others), lots of very cool skins from several talented artists, more detailed terrain that changes with seasons (they even imported the highly touted CFS terrain), new clouds and weather effects (Pretzel), many new planes to fly that were not flyable or included originally(Enemy Coast Ahead), new and improved flight models (ECAOnline and others), new theaters of war in North Africa, Russia, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific, complete with new planes, skins, and beautiful terrain sets to match. To top it off, EAW Stab is a user program to manage it all. It truly is a whole new sim.

This is not your father's EAW. I'm not the easiest guy to impress, but I must admit EAW now has what it takes, and more is added constantly. All because Micropose released some code, and a ton of free expertise from around the world went to work. I presume this extraordinary effort benefited Micropose, who sold a few more games and had their reputation for quality enhanced for free. However, Hasbro has crushed even that.

Sorry to go so long with this post. Your question just hit a nerve that released the frustration I have with game developers.

BTW, I stopped by CompUSA and Best Buy today. Neither had Mig Alley. Very bad sign for a game with so much favorable buzz. (EAW disappeared months ago, but Jane's WW2F is still on the shelves for $20)

I hope Mig Alley does do better because I think there is a lot there to admire. But the consumer polish is missing in action, and volunteer reinforcements seem limited. The guys at Frugal's supplemented the manual, but apparently they can't fix the game as it stands at present. What a shame, but I'll keep watching what develops.

Cheers,

Jake

Hey, didn't mean to hit a nerve. That wasn't my intention. When you said that hackers should fix MA like they did EAW I thought you were refering to bug fixes and stability fixes. I always thought EAW was pretty much bug free after 1.2 patch so didn't understand what you meant.

I will say that I do not totaly agree with your opinion of people fixing EAW though. I enjoyed EAW from the first day I played it. All the new terrain and skins are nice and do add to the sim but the gameplay was already there. It is the gameplay that I feel is what makes a game good or bad along with how much depth a sim has. I'm sure that most people would agree with me. If I don't enjoy flying a mission in EAW then I don't care how many new skins are made for my plane, I still will not enjoy flying the missions.

EAW was already considered a better sim than WW2 Fighters by most even before the 1.2 patch that fixed multiplay and with the paintpatch that allowed users to edit the skins. WW2 has always had better graphics than EAW and always will but EAW will always have better gameplay and be the better sim.

Also I wasn't stating an opinion when I said that MA has so much more to offer than EAW. There is no argument there. It is like comparing a 10 gallon bucket to a 5 gallon bucket.

I know what you mean about sticking with one sim and learning it. I have so many fricken sims that just set on a shelf in my closet. I have tried them all and the better ones get played and the rest just collect dust for the most part.

Again I wasn't trying to strike a nerve with you. It just looked like you were having the same experience with MA that I had when I first tried it and thought I would let you know that it is a lot better than it first appears to be.

quote:

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Originally posted by oneway:
Lawyer

..snip...I ended up getting very close to him and noticed something weird so I paused to take a look. From nose to tail the mig was full of holes. I dont mean little bullet holes, I mean big chunks were ripped off all over the place. My bullets were definitely doing damage, just not in the right areas. This is just one example of so many little details that MA has that you could never see unless you put time into it.

---

I am severly missing a "padlock target to player" view to admire this sort of visual effect. I know that a "padlock target: is kind of a cheat, but it is fun to admire stuff up close.

I did not miss it did I?

Bleeding @#$%&^ MA manual....