Brain

During installation, the user can provide the original Falcon 4 CD, a clean F4 installation (or 1.08us) or the CD's contents in a folder on the user's hard drive. Had to install Falcon 4.0 in order to install 4.33.1. Might work with minimal install but went for the full 600mb to be sure. Don't install U1 over your existing 4.33 as this is a standalone! Your old USER/CONFIG folder can be copied over, EXCEPT "falcon BMS.cfg"! This means you'll have to use the launcher to adjust your settings and reapply any tweaks (MFD resolution, FOV, server settings...) manually again. Experienced users can go in with notepad++ and do it all manually which takes about 5 - 10 minutes. ... aaaaand rotate

That's some of the greatest news in a while when it comes to sims. Quiet some publishers wouldn't have cared and shut down the BMS project. In my eyes Tommo deserves a little gratitude for making a decision pretty much in our favor. My physical copy is pretty much done for anyways so I didn't hesitate. Just like Doom, Duke 3D and other classic titles, BMS refuses to die and will be played years from now. These $2.50 (?2.30) are your best investment ever. Thx Tommo :)

I noticed a lot of people declare ground targets. Simply put a steerpoint line (right click -> STPT Lines -> add STPT in line X) close to friendly troops. Your HSD will then display the frontline, making selection of targets via FCR easy. For more information visit BMS-Manual.pdf 6-74 and 6-75

"TopGun is the movie for dogfights" ... with its (estimated) 15 minutes of footage actually showing planes :D

2.) Think about what seems to be everybody's favorite maps: Muttrah and Kashan. Take away ("capture") the assets and the AI will walk across the desert/city, ready to be picked off by any BLUFOR defenders. They will never make an attempt to recapture (read: enter) the vehicle unless it's somewhere along their path from one flag to another. It would be even more like seal clubbing. The intention is to pick off enemy vehicles and use the temporary advantage to make a push before reinforcements arrive. It's one of the few PR mechanics that translate well to coop despite the lacking AI.

Almost all installations 230miles around Seosan have been destroyed, A10s cleared the FLOT of all enemy vehicles, no active SAM left, lack of bandits and most of them grounded anyways. If one can activate autopilot for 90% of the time and not even pay attention, I don't think it's any more interesting then striking Kotar with a single AAA battalion defending it. You may have gotten lucky, but I have a partially built 1/35 scale Humvee on my desk just to pass the time whenever I fly on the server these days.

In "falcon BMS.cfg" (user\config) set this: "set g_bDoubleRTTResolution 0" My launcher settings can be found here: http://imgur.com/S9xlTmq For me, FPS are still slightly worse than with 4.32 but it's still well playable.

Had a look at the current campaign state in MC. As suspected there is barely anything left to do. Airpower was negligible almost right for the start, combat ground forces have been wiped by A10s (3000+ a2g kills) and most installations by now are bombed beyond repair. On the 'plus side' DPRK managed to sink the Carl Vinson .. little too late. I suggest restarting to day 1. Maybe it will help fill the server again.

- The most common problem with LGBs in 4.33 is not setting the laser to combat. This can be done on your UFC in List - 0 Misc - 5 Laser. Select "trng" and hit any number key to switch to "cmbt". It will flash for a few seconds but the laser should be operational immediately. - On the same page you can set the laser frequency, which has to match up with whatever you set in the loadout screen. Both should be set to 1688 by default if you want to check that. - After release make sure the TGP is not masked (INR). It's based on pre-set view angles, rather than actually something being in the way. It can be deceiving. - When releasing towards the middle of the launch bracket ("less than max range", CAS for example) the GBU has to make a larger course correction and the default 8 second auto lasing might be to late. Try 12 - 15 seconds or manually lase more than 8 seconds before impact. It's the People's Liberation Army (PLA) ;) Both Russian and Chinese ground troops are notably harder than the junk DPRK is working with. Especially Tunguskas can ruin your day as they use optical guidance, making all countermeasures ineffective. T-80 and whatever-Chinese-MBT will also pose a bigger thread to own groundforces. Quiet a nice change. The air war on the other hand has pretty much died. Yesterday, a 8+ ship AI package bombed the smoldering remains of one of the most northern airbases, ensuring none of the 40+ SU-27s will ever make a difference...lol. AI HQ has been very busy creating OCA strikes and by now there are probably less than 15 enemy planes able to do anything. In a chat I already mentioned something should be done to spice up the air war. Last time the AI was changed, Osan and Seosan got murdered. In this case Kunsan is one of the nicest airports to fly more CAP out of. Maybe this isn't so bad. From day 2 on we have been pretty much on the offensive. Having to defend would be something different. You still want to gain air superiority by OCA but it's going to be harder. A coordinated human package might be able to do some work. Just food for though.

So, after Semler's last post it got awfully quiet around here so I thought I should have a look what is going on. Everything went smooth until later that day, when the server was starting to lag and ultimately hung up. It was about one week into the war so who knows how long the server had been up at this point. I did some more flights after that and the only issue I encountered was a tanker "jumping" to a certain airspeed when clearing me for contact. Few days ago, Cobalt jinxed it by pointing out that many problems still persist. I saw the odd AI behaviors again: rolling, warping, runway slalom, FML. I must have been very lucky...? Came back yesterday (day 6) for quiet a long flight and again had no issues at all. The air war is pretty much won and the 5 Hornet squadrons more than make up for China and Russia bringing in a lot of Flankers (haven't seen a single one yet). Ground forces on the other hand seem to include a few Chinese units already and more modern Russian equipment (T-80s, 2S6) can also be expected. Did take just a few shots of the refueling to show the stable AI. Excuse the lack of FSAA, I like FPS. http://imgur.com/a/0CtvC My love hate relationship with BMS continues ;)

You may need to forward ports 2934-2937 to your PC or the server will keep rejecting your connection. A minimum upload speed of 1mbps is required. Do a speed test to Kansas and see if your connection is fast enough. Also, please make sure you understand how to create and join flights properly before you enter the VG campaign. You're likely to run into problems or break things if you don't!

There WAS something wrong with your connection. The factory reset may have wiped the update as well and that's what got updated. Anyways, it works, don't touch it. Remember how I didn't trust that router? ;) BMS Manual, Bandwidth The value is used to help manage network traffic on your connection to avoid flooding, while keeping the throughput as high as practical. As a general rule of thumb, enter the upload speed of your connection minus 10-25% in kilobits. For example, if your tested upload capacity is 1000 kilobits per second then you would enter 750 in this box. Try to maintain a minimum of 500. That matches up with my experience when we had issues with 'invisible' objects. Figure that out. It's itching everywhere already and the cougar summons me. ;)

CS is what people mean when they talk about "dubious" connections in the F4 BMS world. The code has tried to make a direct connection between a player with a "CS" label on their connection and for some reason been unable to do so. Thus, it has fallen back to sending everything via the server to all other client sessions; i.e. every position update will take two hops to reach other players instead of only one (well, with the exception of a player who's session _is_ the host that is ). The fallback _may_ work much of the time. There were rumors about "(P2P)" being a bad thing and by accident I stumbled across this. It's a quote from a BMS dev and I just wanted to share it to finally clear things up. Also found some few hints on how to set up a BMS server but we've done everything suggested there already. So, sorry, nothing really new or helpful. Minrah and I just had a long session trying to figure out why he is unable to connect. In the end it turns out his connection is deemed "dubious" by BMS and thus refused after the initial handshake (tested by hosting my own server). He appears to have a proper P2P connection so the issue is somewhere else. It seemingly started after replacing the motherboard with an identical one so this might have caused something to break. Some faulty server along the route may be another cause but it would be a strange coincidence. I usually know how to fix things, but when it comes to networking issues I reach my limits. But that's just for the record because... ...conducting some speed test showed both of us getting less than 1024kbps up stream. I hover around 960. Playing by the books I will not be joining any more flights on VG, at least until I can get this changed by my ISP. It's really pissing me off but I'm not going to be one of those guys who doesn't give a ... and breaks things. I'm sorry if I caused issues, but with an 120mbps connection I assumed to have far more BW available. However, the problems we are currently facing have been consistent, regardless of BW settings (I stayed at 500 while the rest already changed to 1024). Not that it matters since we established observations are mostly meaningless. *shrug* After talking to some people it seems I'm pretty lucky with the availability of high speed internet in Germany and it makes me wonder how many people actually get the required 1mbps if I don't (remember: 120mbps). Everybody should do a speedtest and see if they can still fly with VG. Then there is obviously the problem of reaching out to certain players and the fact that we have to rely mostly on trust. Well, I don't feel like trusting at least half the people I've seen on the server since my registration. The more observant regulars among you might understand why. Until the server is more reliable, progress is being saved and all the black sheep are under control, flying BMS on VG isn't an option for me. Being forced to take a break combined with this aggravating crash today was the final straw. I'll still be checking in here regularly and offering support where possible though. You guys are awesome and I'm looking forward to the next (hopefully successful) 4-ship ;)

"Kevin pending message" means you successfully contacted the server but you're not getting the expected response in time. Usually this indicates a hung server but could probably be a sign of a bad connection. Have you set up port forwarding for BMS? EDIT: After a nice chat with Cobalt it seems like it doesn't matter what we actually observe. No matter how long it has been since restart, how many players are on, how many TEs are going on ... :-\

More bandwidth will not solve anything. We had these AI issues with 300 and we still have them with 1024. I reported it to be fixed after server restarts (more than once i believe) and Cobalt's post from Saturday seems to confirm this, as he had no issues only 5 hours into the campaign. At this point I'd like to know if this was an issue with the 4.32 VG server as well. Anyways, I just got a reply and it made things very clear: As long as people are dicking around the server will never be stable. At least that's the short version. No matter what we do, in the end we need to be confident everybody plays by the rules. We either reach out to the 'black sheep' (which has proven difficult so far) or we start banning IPs. Until then we'll get the same problems over and over again.

I just contacted Archer at FO, briefly describing the two major problems we have: - crashing server - erratic AI All we have to work with are observations. No log files, no server specs ... I felt pretty dumb asking for help with these technical issues and having the equivalent of a crayon drawing in terms of solid information, but it's better than running in circles for another month. Cross your fingers and hope for the best. Then I thought "how about banning people hosting their own campaign?" I want to bet part of the response I get will be that this and maybe even TEs are one probable cause. In the end there has to be a reason why it is forbidden at FO, don't you think?! Figuring out how to set up and play BMS requires some knowledge of the English language so I can't imagine how anybody could not understand something as simple as "Do not create a campaign". It's usually the same few people and if they care that little and never even join the VG campaign they are adding nothing to our little BMS community. Oh, and we may want to scrap this topic and divide it into 3: Technical issues, gameplay questions, "server just crashed"

There is no Sinai for 4.33 yet and although the old version seems to work (according to some YT footage) there is no guarantee a campaign will run stable. It's also no longer available on FO. Balkans is on it's way however and might see a release "in 2-4 weeks" (as usual). I'm not sure if Sinai would be lighter on the server anyways. The new KTO seems to have more and larger battalions compared to .32, making it more on par with the FO theaters. For the weather, I believe it only addresses the cloud plain you usually get between angels 25 and 30. Could be wrong though as I never did pay that much attention to it ... yes it's stupid but I still carry on with LGBs even if I can't even see the end of the runway :D The AI (apart from its buggy behavior) is damn stupid as far as I can tell. They do know a few new tricks (radar snoozed, GCI, ambushing...nasty) but I can't tell you how often I dragged all kinds of MiGs into friendly AA. Rarely will they fire a missile even with full AA loadout and perfect firing position. Also they don't seem to care about any defensive maneuvers making BVR kills VERY easy. I suggested reviewing the difficulty setting some time ago but TBH I didn't mind testing out the new toys around the FLOT and using the same save for testing made sense anyways. I have to admit though flying directly over an SA-2 site and not getting shot at is getting old :) Resupply does happen according to the active war production on each side. It has something to do with generated supply points that get spent after a set amount of time ("time to next resupply") but I still don't fully understand how it works. The amount of available aircraft might be calculated with their airfield's status in mind. In some cases a single repaired runway could mean 40 aircraft are suddenly operational again and there are quiet some engineer battalions driving around. ... Whatever might be the exact case I don't mind the resupply at all as it keeps the airspace busy for both sides and the campaign interesting. We have to see how it plays out in the long run and if it turns out there is no air resistance at some point we should even consider increasing the DPRK airforce level. Depending on the actual change it makes and how the campaign commander reacts to it it may increase the difficulty early but keeps things interesting later...we'll see, probably thinking too far ahead. With so many squadrons NOT set to HQ it's mostly up to us planning and executing missions to help the war effort. Infrastructure, supply, supply routes, morale ... even if not immediately apparent it all does make a difference and helps pushing north eventually. Just to give you one example: taking out the bridges north of Seoul (Ryes?ng River?) forces DPRK to take a long detour, causing exhaustion and lowering supply. The result is a large push to the east about 12h later but some CAS will lower their numbers and morale, forcing a retreat or at least giving friendly troops a better chance of repelling the attack (or retreating if necessary). In the end it delays the DPRK assault on Seoul by a few days and with the campaign's main objectives in mind I feel this is highly rewarding...and it's just one plane doing 4 missions up to this point! I was also very happy when I saw a HMMWV battalion (towed guns I believe) retreat after I repelled a heavy tank push pinning them down. We are not simply pilots, we are also making a decision every time we select our objectives. Sometimes it might not seem we're making much progress because we are just looking at the icons on the map, not the status of every individual battalion or the big picture in general. It's all about working towards a long time goal with smaller victories in between. Restarting just wipes the entire progress made so far even if it seems like nothing has changed since day 1...we are also missing the surprises that may come in later... That's what makes BMS so special and we should take full advantage of it. Restarting the same scenario (Day 1, 5:00) "every few hours" is what DCS servers do and doesn't come close in terms of long time motivation. If everything is stable I'm all for using saves at least until I have to move my FLOT line considerably to the north ;) Damn ... just wanted to make a simple point and then ... be glad I don't have a collapsible spoiler BBtag or it would have been worse! :D Well, hopefully it was as encouraging as intended. I promise I'll shut up now and get airborne again these days ^^

Doesn't being in the pit count toward flight hours? If so you might want to take note before each restart to see if it's a timed thing. Still thinking it has something to do with the flight being cancelled and bumping the server back. No idea how to prevent it though. You are still using the same old day 1 save so you should be getting the same flight in the same conditions as well. By the way: does BMS write any kind of server log? On the other hand I was wondering what happened when we use an auto save after restart. It would throw off testing conditions but we know already that AI goes nuts after a while. Would they behave normal (at least for a while) after loading or is it the campaign that breaks? Don't know what else everybody is up to but I'm running out of ideas what to do. Would need some coordination so somebody can hop straight in and see how things look.

I broke it! Just as I'm talking about things are fixed I'm missing a whole airport. In this case Onjin Airbase. I got shot down and after watching the ACMI I think the launches look valid, however I could visually see the launchers but not the missiles/smoke itself. When I exited the sim the server was gone. Crap, can I get a hold of that crashlog maybe? :(

I agree with Cobalt, 500 should be solid for clients. 4 players basically in one bubble around the FLOT didn't seem to cause any issues...even with moving mud and tons of artillery fire going on. Anybody still missing objects regularly (airfields technically only consist of many objects btw) should do a speed test. A bad connection to the host can't be improved by changing numbers in BMS. It sure sucks for those affected but we can't do anything about it unless we spend millions on improving the network infrastructure in certain parts of the world...needless to say not really an option. Broken AI seems to be a totally different, server side issue that occurs over time. I didn't keep track but can somebody confirm crashes happen more often on weekends? If so the total amount of TEs being played is suspicious. There must be a reason why FO doen't allow hosting of any TEs.

I'm in GER and never had problems with US based servers (unless some intermediate server fails ofc). Connection is also pretty beefy. This game is driving me nuts...as soon as you start noticing a pattern and post observations, something happens that doesn't fit in...Broken Mess Simulator 4.33 :D I noticed there are times when quiet a lot of TEs are going on. Just a few hours ago there were like 5 games with 2+ players each but I didn't encounter any problems. However, it makes me think about "restart BMS to prevent possible memory leaks". What if those TEs don't get "closed" properly and eventually lead to a memory overflow? It's weekend and it's possible there were some TEs going on. Just some more food for thought. And just to get it out there: I don't actually know stuff as some might think. I just craft theories based on observations and my basic knowledge about game logic in general. I call it "video game forensics" although I usually prefer really bad games ;)

I personally hate advice like "get a new rig then" but if BMS 4.32 is already to much I don't know what else to tell you. Sorry! If it's any help: I'm running BMS 4.33 on a shitty 2.5 ghz quad - 4GB Ram - HD57?? and had to do some tweaking. It's suboptimal for sure but sufficient and mostly playable. All of it is REALLY outdated so you should be able to find something even better for just a few bucks. My knowledge about hardware ends there as I lost interest in those things (f...ing gaming industry) so I can't give you any advice on what to look for. Sadly it's all I have to offer for now assuming you tried tweaking everything already. If you love F4 consider upgrading .. playing with just a few people online is so much fun ... IF the server behaves itself ... everybody is working on it ;)

I don't know why you're hoarding all those files and what you're thinking of doing with them. Unless FF 6.0 broke something it should have made FF 5.5 obsolete. Also this branch of F4 mods has been discontinued since 2013 and unless there is some dedicated community left to play it you're pretty much on your own. I never played FF so I can't judge it but with BMS still in development and dedicated websites like Falcon-Online it looks like the better way to go. If there is something about FF you like more it's worth reevaluating and possibly switching to BMS. In the end both are very similar in that they are based on F4 with focus on the F-16 so focusing on one of them seems like a good idea. Transferring shouldn't be an issue. In the end it's an old game and old tricks might just work. Use regedit to export the whole Free Falcon branch in .../SOFTWARE/ (exact location may vary depending on OS, just search for falcon or something until you find it). Import the .key file on your new PC, enter regedit there as well and find the FF branch again. Look through all the "subfolders" and see if there is a path to the game somewhere. If there is edit this value and make sure it matches the actual location of the game. No guarantee it will work with FF but it does with BMS.

I think anybody can confirm the AI will do such things. I had F15s chasing a Frogfoot forever at stall speed, using their ABs just to keep airborne and tanks reenacting Tokyo Drift. Interestingly the lead plane (when not engaged) will always behave just fine (AFAIK) but any wingman would be going crazy just to stay in formation. Shortly after the last restart (Day 1 - about 5:30) I didn't notice any kind of odd behavior at first but soon some MiG-23s (was just observing them, no factor) would start glitching all over the place .... I dug through a lot of plain text files later, originally looking for a way to change the package composition for AWACS. No luck so far but found something interesting in "atc.ini"! Quote: This is the amount of time in minutes the player has from the time he enters the sim to get off the ground or get bumped back to the UI (...) PlayerBumpTime = 50 If this isn't an inactive left over piece of code Viper would be back to UI just 50 minutes after entering 3D. Now that we know 2D hosting isn't supported it might explain why the AI (or BMS in general) will behave so strange after some time: In 2D you will always see just a flight lead, never any of his wingman no matter how far they stray off...they are counted but don't exist if that makes any sense. When a flight enters a player's bubble the server will still compute the lead plane but struggles with wingman AI as they don't physically exist in 2D. In combat things get worse because the leader isn't simply following his flightplan anymore and combat AI doesn't work properly. I think we're getting closer to making this server great and stable ;)

I did some testing on AWACS and I found the issue. Offline I created a new campaign and set up different scenarios. The final result is kind of hilarious. The moment you create your flight and the waypoints show up on the map you are assigned the earliest fragged AWACS plane in the ATO, landing any time after your take-off. It's not his earliest take-off time but literally the order in which the packages were created determines it. As long as this plane shows up in the squadrons frag order you will have AWACS support, even if the flight will depart 2 hours in the future. It's a small oversight you normally wouldn't notice. So, as long as the campaign AI keeps fragging at least one of these flights there should be continuous AWACS support ... which leads to the problem: It doesn't! See...4.33 changed the composition of AWACS packages to include about 6 fighters. Since the majority of F-16s are no longer set to HQ there simply aren't enough planes available to put these packages together! If I understand Semler correctly he has disabled "AWACS required" and the ultimate question is why it doesn't make a difference. It's a client, not a server setting. AWACS should work 24/7 for everybody who has it unticked in his/her launcher. I obviously had it ticked and spent the better part of the day looking for a bug ... it was kind of fun though :) @Sinu: Try recording an ACMI during your attack run. In my case TacViewer showed my weapons only damage some targets but they would blow up just a moment later. Not getting credited for it sure sucks but you're still doing the damage you'd expect and in the end a mission well done is a mission well done!