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5. Click the "New" button. This will bring up the "Add Flight" UI which
then gives you the options to set for the flight. Since you clicked on an
airbase, the UI should show "OCA Strike" along with the airbase you
selected. In this UI you have other options as well. If you have more than
one F-16 squadron, you can then select which squadron you want to use for
this mission by clicking in the area next to the words "Squadron" which have
the current squadron tasked for the mission. This will bring up a drop down
box that shows the other squadrons available in the scenario.
6. Click "Ok" on the "Add Flight" UI. This will close the interface and
the mission will then show up in the Add Package UI and on the map. You can
then add more flights to this package as you deem necessary by repeating
step 4.
Notice here how you can see the mission on
the map and in the schedule.
7. Click "Ok" on the "Add Package" UI. This will close the Add Package UI
and you should then see the mission in the mission scheduler.
Congratulations, you have just made your first scenario mission. The rest
is easy from here. To make other missions, just click the targets you want
to strike or click an area on the map you want a DCA or BARCAP mission to
defend and go through the same steps mentioned above. Now that you have the
basics down on how to make missions, the next decision is whether you want
to do this offline or online.
Online Flying
While offline play is challenging and exciting, many people want the added
enjoyment of flying scenarios with their friends online. For those of you
who have followed F4 from release to 1.08i2 patch, you know that F4 has made
some progress in online stability. Does this type of play work for flying
online with friends? I can answer "yes" but with qualifications. Force on
Force Prescripted works with no problems offline, but there are some issues
when you bring it to the net. Since I am not part of a LAN squad, I have
not been able to test it in that environment, but I have spent many hours
testing it over the internet. What follows is how I have been able to
achieve success over the net with this type of play.
Having made your first template, or having loaded up a template made by
someone else, it's time to find a friend and play online (I am going to
assume that you know how to connect online). Once you are connected and in
the chat lobby, the host will go into the TE module and select the mission.
In a perfect F4 world, you would have loaded up the scenario and then
started making the missions necessary to achieve your victory conditions.
In the real F4 world as we currently have it, there are problems when
players make missions online. Missions made online do not always show up in
the mission scheduler. Where do some of them go? That's a great question.
From testing, I have learned that the missions are actually in the sim
world, but for some reason the information does not update to the scheduler.
If this happened all the time then Force on Force type play would be
unplayable online, but I have found a way to work around this problem.
The work around is this. Both players upon first entering into the scenario
MUST STOP their clocks before making missions. Once the clocks are stopped,
only one person/side at a time may make missions. Let's say you are the
host and you have decided to be gracious and let your guest make missions
first. What you do is tell the guest to start making his missions and then
you sit idle doing nothing till he has finished. Once finished, then the
guest is told to sit idle while you make your missions. Remember, all of
this is happening with both clocks stopped. I have found that by doing
this, there is a 90% success rate in having all the missions show up in the
mission scheduler. If you as the host decide that you alone will make all
the missions for the scenario, then I found that you can achieve nearly 100%
success rate in having missions appear to all players.
Once you both start the clock and allow the scenario to begin, there is no
guarantee whatsoever that you will see any more missions that you make
appear in the mission schedule. You can attempt to make more missions, but
there is no rhyme or reason why some will show up and others will not.
Basically, if you decide to make missions while the clock is running, do so
at your own risk. Recently I had good success at making additional missions
right after all players returned to the UI from flying a mission. When we
all returned to the UI I told them to stop their clocks. I then went and
made the next round of missions and they all showed up in everyone's mission
schedule. Using the method described above, I played a Force on Force
prescripted mission with two others online and it worked 100%.
Another interesting aspect for online play is that you and the other player
do not have to enter the sim at the same time. It is possible for you to
script your missions while online and then have your friend go and fly a
mission. It's also then possible for you to join in on another flight and
fly a different mission as well. Both of you can go in and out of the sim
as necessary. I will again remind that if you stay in the UI while another
goes into the sim, the temptation will be to make more missions, but there
again you will run into the bug about missions not showing up in the
scheduler. It's a use at your own risk issue. I also need to remind you
that F4 is not 100% bug free and at times you still can experience crashes
when one player is in the sim and the other in the UI, but most of the time
it works as advertised. I do hope that as more people play like this, the
knowledge base will continue to grow on what works well and doesn't work
well.
Now that you have learned these basics, what's left are some comments on
tips and strategy.
In my experience and playing, I have found that the key to having fun
scenarios is to consider certain aspects carefully while designing the
template. Here are my suggestions:
1. Time. Consider the issue of how long you want to play. I've found that
most games should normally be structured for one to two hours. This is just
enough time to enjoy the scenario while making it possible for online play
in one session. Let me explain this more in depth. In setting up a
template, you have various options available to you on the victory condition
UI.
Here's an example of what you'll see in
the victory condition UI
You can limit the time for the scenario by setting the start and finish
times. I've found that one to two hours is a good time period to set for
accomplishing victory conditions. What happens when you set the time limit
is that at the end time, a victory condition box will show up and display
the final score. Of course this only will happen if no one has previously
won the scenario by accomplishing the victory conditions.
