SimHQ.com - Air Combat Zone - Review: Falcon 4.0: Allied Force

We're going to fly an OCA Strike against the Maribor airbase. I have picked the default time setting of 0900 as the start time. Before we do anything else, I decide to have a closer look. I zoom in on the field, right click, and pick "Recon" from the menu that comes up. Here we see Marlboro Country, it's runway and taxiway, radar, ammo dump, fuel tanks, all that typical airbase stuff. You can rotate, pan, zoom in and out. I'm facing North here, which just happens to be my decided avenue of attack for the strike package.

I decide to add some fighter squadrons to the base, but before I can do that, I need to have the correct side of the war chosen. See that blue team icon below and to the right of the clock? I click that and it changes to red, the opposition. Then I click on the Squadron button, the fourth one under the team button, go over to the airbase, hold my pointer over it, it's name pops up. Then I click and add a squadron of MiG-29 A's. While I'm here, just for fun, I put in a squadron of Tu-160 Blackjacks and some Mi-8 Hip helo's.

OK, back to the "good guy" side, click the team icon again, it's blue now. Over at Ronchi dei legionari (oh please, say it again!), I know that for my package I'm going to need some F-16C-50's and a flock of F-15 Eagles. I make it so. Just because it seems the right thing to do, I add a Naval Carrier Group featuring the CV-41 Midway out in the ocean of all places, and then I can put a squadron of F-14 Tomcats on her at a later time. Cool.

Never the one to do things in natural sequence, I go back to Marlboro, change teams to red, and add some air defense. Again, over on the right hand side, above the Add Squadron button, is the Add Battalion, and we click that. Now would be a good time to mention that you can also pick a place on the map where you want these things, right click and the menu will let you choose Add Squadron, Add Battalion whatever, where you want them. Very handy. OK, I click on an area by the base, a menu comes up with various air defense choices. I pick a AAA KS-19 unit. The icon comes into being, but snaps directly over top of the airbase. Well, I don't want it there, so I drag it off, and wouldn't you know, it doesn't want to and snaps back. This is well known in Falcon 4 and just represents that the defenses will set themselves up where they think they should be around the installation, unless you take them a long ways from home. It does complicate things a little, having all these icons stacked up on top of each other. And you can definitely move them a ways out and they will sit, stay.

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