I was somewhat surprised to receive an email from the team at YAP. You may remember that long ago, YAP released a series of missions for Strike Fighters Vietnam 1 and 2 by Thirdwire. I found the missions to be generally good, as well as the aircraft models and ground objects, however, the package was somewhat costly. I purchashed all missions for SF1, but only ended getting the first 2 for SF2. I just lost interest, and quite frankly, there is a freeware mod out there that does it just as good, if not better overall.
So, what is YAP up to now? Modern day middle eastern conflict...it looks like it may be potentially interesting, but I just feel like the day of this sim has passed. Also, these are just one shot mission scenarios, and although they may be put together well, there is no dynamic campaign or anything.
Anyway, here is the info from the site. Any thoughts?
Quote
Strait of Hormuz for Thirdwire's Wings Over Vietnam
Persian Gulf Terrain
Iran is the mortal enemy of Israel. Iran was rushing to create nuclear bombs when the world stopped them with sanctions. It is impossible for Israel to accept a nuclear armed Iran. Those are the facts. Twice in the past, they have attacked facilities feared to be making atomic bombs, in Iraq and in Syria. Now, negotiations are being held between world powers and Iran to end their nuclear program and rejoin the community of nations. In the end, it is Israel who must be willing to accept an agreement and trust it to be vigorously enforced forever. Forever.
We contend those negotiations will fail to satisfy Israel security needs even if they placate an oil-hungry Europe and American politics. On a day in the near future the Israeli Air Force will take to the sky at night, refuel somewhere near Lebanon and turn east to the Persian Gulf. Whatever route they take, they will arrive at their targets at dawn; Arak, Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow.
Israel does not have the ability to sustain a long distance campaign and can only set the Iranian program back, some say making the rush to a bomb a certainty. This would lead to an arms race in the least stable part of the world. But Israel will have to attack and attack alone. They can hope that the United States will bring its power to bear against Iran but that support is no longer certain.
But with or without friends, they will attack and with their usual creativeness, they will succeed for that one day.
Iran will respond. Possibly they will fire missiles at Israel. They might make good their threat to fire missiles at American installations in Gulf states. But their most powerful weapon is to attack shipping and close the Strait of Hormuz. Doing that will throw the world's economies into a free fall. It will activate the United States' long term commitment to Freedom of the Seas. The US Navy will commence to reopen the Strait with overwhelming firepower. Iran will not be a pushover.
Strait of Hormuz is an add-on to the Thirdwire game, Wings Over Vietnam. The 60 missions included are the logical first days of that event. We use the exact units in the field and at sea the day of game release, October 31, 2014 at dawn, Persian Gulf time. We use their serial numbers and bases and ships...for both sides in the conflict.
Make no mistake, militarily Iran will lose as you will see in SOH. But we present only 6 days. We do not know how it will end as wars are very easy to enter. As General David Patraeus stated about Iraq, "Tell me how this ends." We do not know. We think this is how it will begin.
Aircraft:
Iran: F-14A, MiG-29A, F-4E, F-5Em, F1QE, F7M, AH-1J, C130E
Israel: F-15i, F-15C, F-16i, C-130E, MV-22, KC-707
US: F-22A, A-10C, F-16C/40, F-16C/50, F-15C, F-15E, FA-18E, FA-18F, AV8Bplus, , F7M, C130J, C17, B1B, KC-10, EA-18G, MV-22, CH-53E, AH-1Z, AH-64D, MH60R, MH60S, HH-60, UH-60, AH-6E, MH-6E, X47B, MQ9.
Ships: CVN-77, LDH-5, LSD-44, LPD-15, LPD-22, DDG, CG, FFG
This link has all the mission lists and briefings. The briefings look like they use some pretty cool maps pulled from google maps and the missions are pretty varied over a theoretical 6 day air campaign.
http://yankeeairpirate.net/strait-of-hormuz-mission-list/ (http://yankeeairpirate.net/strait-of-hormuz-mission-list/)
I have no doubt that a lot of work went into creating this stuff, but $49.95 still seems steep. An aging sim is an aging sim, no matter what you add to it or how much work you put into mission design. Additionally, a bunch of the stuff included in the package is freeware created by other people. I can only presume it is included with the blessing of the maker, but still, it irritates me that these guys use and then charge for what someone else made for free.
Man, I had to read that twice...it's not even for the SF2 series. I don't know if SF1 will even run on Win7. I know that Thirdwire locked up a lot of stuff in SF2 that made it less mod friendly which is probably why YAP is using it as a base, but still.
If I was really into Strike Fighters, and had a burning passion for that theater, and I...lot's of and's. $50 is kind of steep. 60 missions will take a while to get through but I think I'll stick with BMS Israel and such. Going back to SF1 would feel really regressive at this point.
The screenshots look sexy, though.
Then again I've been seriously considering trying very hard to get into Jane's F/A-18 one last time, so being retro is kind of a bullshit reason to bag on a product.
There are so many free mods out there for the Strike Fighters 2 series, I don't know why someone would pay for one (that doesn't even include a modded dynamic campaign).
I still enjoy playing SF2 on occasion. Just need to finger out how to expand the "player bubble" draw distance switch to Lo-Res terrain. Think it takes XML editing or some such but I dunno the finer details on it. Wouldn't bother me so much if the resolution switch distance was a long distance off but it's glaringly close to your plane. Makes for a terrible contrast in a single abrupt line. It may have helped reduce the load on PCs when the series first came out about 12 years ago but it's trivial with modern ones.
Quote from: Toonces on November 02, 2014, 08:32:12 PM
Man, I had to read that twice...it's not even for the SF2 series. I don't know if SF1 will even run on Win7. I know that Thirdwire locked up a lot of stuff in SF2 that made it less mod friendly which is probably why YAP is using it as a base, but still.
If I was really into Strike Fighters, and had a burning passion for that theater, and I...lot's of and's. $50 is kind of steep. 60 missions will take a while to get through but I think I'll stick with BMS Israel and such. Going back to SF1 would feel really regressive at this point.
The screenshots look sexy, though.
Good catch...didn't even realize it was for SF1. That is a deal breaker for me.
this patch:
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flyingtigerssurplus.com%2Fproduct-images%2Flg%2FP600_lg.jpg&hash=6db1bffec968c817e4889dc38c3f5ec73686c635)
I has it. :)
Quote from: GDS_Starfury on November 02, 2014, 08:46:15 PM
this patch:
I has it. :)
At least it's not a patch of Herpes Simplex.