Ideas for missions! and questions in general.

1.night strikes? (later on in VietNam there were FastFAC's spotting night strikes on the trail)
2.will the missions have FAC controllers giving intstructions and marking targets?
3.Will player be able to act as a FAC?
4.multi player? online? what kind of set up for missions? death match or mayhems like in EAW?
5.communications with other aircraft and base?
6. inflight refueling?
Ideas:
1.aircraft status boards, let you know which aircraft is ready for missions and general maintenance status, available amounts of ordnace and aircrew status.
2.aircraft quick turnarounds- if mission not completed or run out of ordnance/gas/whatever be able to return to base for quick turnaround without leaving cocpit.
3.next waypoint button-lets you skip long boring flights and into action (EAW does this very well)
4.inflight emergencies! non battle damage related and battle damage related. sometimes things just happen-loss of hydrolics, engine overspeed, bird strikes, airframe overstress, locked flight controls, single engine landings. electornics/avionics go down durring mission (i.e taccan goes out have to navigate with magnetic compass, radar craps out, rad alt goes out, hung ordnance, ect. ect. ect.) things crap out proir to launch (could have a cool cutsceen of crew running to a different aircraft to make launch) i think i could go on forever with this list!
5.speed of aircraft combat functions affected by experience of backseater (RIO in the F-4 responsibe for radar/radar locks for sparrow/finding ground and air targets and extra eyes in air to air engagements)
6. can fly as backseater and operate systems instead of being pilot (would be especially cool for wild weasle missions in f-105)

thats all i can think of for now!

Nice list.

this is list what happens when you've been around combat aircraft, pilots, and maintance controls too long. reading alot about aircrew's experinces helps too. hopefully i'll think of some more.

BTW, I hear the Thud modelled in the initial release will not be the Weasel version...but we can always make that ourselves. An RIO position would be great for the F-4, also.

Hi No105_Rigger,

Thanks for the suggestions!

Let's see, some random replies...

Night Missions - absolutely! We have cool dynamic light sourcing effects, it would be shame not to show them off in night missions!

FAC - maybe... we'll be experimenting with this to make sure we have something that is easy for the player to understand and have fun with.

Communications - yes.

In-flight refueling - probably not.

Next waypoint button - sure.

Fly as backseater - probably, but it won't be very useful in the initial release... we'll be automating most of the backseater functions so the game is playable by single player...

In-flight emergencies - well, generally, I don't like to put this in the game because its something the player has absolutely no control over... the player could be doing everything right, but due to some random chance, the player is unable to successfully complete the mission... that might be realistic, but that doesn't make for good gameplay, in my book... If we do have some emergencies, it'll be some function of the player action (ie, things could break when the player pulls too much G, for example).

Ajax, we have no plan to include F-105 in the initial release... you must be thinking about the comment I made about F-100 Wild Weasel...

TK
--

ah something i remembered about night combat! tracers are very visible (DUH, let me state the obvious) but also when you fired missiles or rockets you can be blinded. plus those flying telephone poles called sams burned very bright and had blinding flashes when exploding. spot lights and flashes from ground fire, flares and other light sources. will any of this be modeled in some way?