Last night ILL-DRE, CRUNCH, TRANBO and I
completed an hour plus long saved campaign
online. It was my first online (TCP/IP) 4 persononline campaign. Overall it was an absolute success, exceeding my expectations.

Four of us set out on a campaign that DRE has
been playing for a while. We must have spent 15 minutes just in pre-flight getting our load out and RECON and plan down. Two were going ahead as CAP and CleanUp. Crunch and I were DeepStrike, with Crunch element Leader, DRE Cap and Package Leader.

We had about a 140 mile ingress ahead of us and we did a lot of talking over RogerWilco and called out positions and talleys. Then one of only 2 bad things happened. When I fly in a element I like to fly close to my leader in tight formation. I warped or hiccuped in one big jump and rammed poor Crunch. He died, I didnt have a scratch. Simultaneously, Tranbo must have augered due to a sharp altitude (vertical warp). This took out
two of them. But they rejoined quickly as the
other flight and passed DRE and I who now
where the Strike team. Never saw that happen
again the rest of the mission. But for about 5 minutes after Crunch and Tranbo left and came back, I saw DRE's plane going up and down in 1000 ft vertical warps. It eventually stopped in another minute or two. Possibly as a result of F4 not letting go of the bandwidth that it should have when Crunch and Tranbo left and came back in. That was the first of two wierd things.

Ok so on we flew. Started seeing bogies and all sorts of SAM sites. But we soldiered forward. Just as DRE and I were lining up to blow up the Textile Factory/Mill there were a few flights of Su27s, MiG21s, and Su25s starting to get mad as hornets. So DRE and I laid our eggs in the basket and started heading back for the barn.

By then, Crunch and Tranbo started engaging
the incoming bandits and did a real good job
covering our exit. In the melee, I ended up back covering Crunch and Tranbo and DRE engaged up high. Crunch expended all his AAM on Su27s and called for me to get the remaining two off our noses. DRE and Tranbo by this time also were winchester and started to be overwhelmed by bogies as they egressed.

Talk about immersion,yes the virtual battle
ground was more than any other sim, but it was also using voicecomms and hearing he stress in DRE's voice calling out for help when the bandits were all over him. It reminded me of the scenes in TopGun. Being that I was further along towards home, but still had 2 Slammers left; I re-engaged and fired my Slammers at the bandits persuing DRE. Fortunately while both missed it
was sufficient to make both MiGs go defensive
buying DRE's life. DRE couldnt believe the smart move his adversaries made trying to box him in. Needless to say, DRE was able to exit the lethal range and he and I headed home together. Tranbo and Crunch were a long ways ahead of us.

Next the only other unexpected thing happened. A MiG21 popped up nearly in front of DRE and I, but closer to DRE. We think this was probably due to our setting OBJECTS down to a value = 2 inorder to save frame rate. But that popup enemy nearly costed DRE's life but his good SA soon had that badboy in his sights and he gunned it.

Finally all ends well. Three of us landed without incident and one had a belly but safe landing. Overall the mission was a blazing success, and we all survived both the mission and the internet multiplayer environment while flying a complex campaign mission. I would have to say it was the most realistic battlefield engagement I ever had in Falcon4.
The patch was a big factor, but so too were the great guys I flew without RogerWilco comms it would have been much more sterile and dangerous.

Some further thoughts. It is important to note that we had cable, 56K, 28.8K modems together. All set to 28.8K worked the best.
Note too, that RogerWilco was set to HIGH CPU
PRIORITY, and with SLOW MODEM data rate.
Also we set F4's OBJECTS to a level of 2, and
also the bubble. Other interesting facts are that I just installed V1.08 on top of V1.07, other had totally reinstalled. Some had High Res, I had 800x600 Res. Lots of variables yet it all worked out pretty well.

You can complain all you want about the
shortcommings of this patch, but this
engagement was one of the highpoints in my
multiplayer online career of over 10 years.

Tranbo is from San Fransico Area
DRE is from the Cinci Ohio Area
Crunch from the southern Florida Area
and myself from souther California Area

Pretty amazing when you think of it. The east coasters stayed up till 4:30am EST to fly this campaign.

Thanks guys, it was fun.

We did not intend for there to be 9 pilots, but more just kept coming prior to us launching until we had 8 in the game, and one acting as AWACS. There were so many of us, we had to break up the comms in order to avoid stepping on each other. The comms between flights was only done by wingleaders.

As stated above, this was one of the most tense on-line missions I had ever flown in. And with all the human pilots interacting, it made the mission all the more exciting.

I'm hoping the above will be possible with 1.08.

Fingers crossed.