David Hingtgen

Go slow. Unlike every other "dodge the super weapon" mission in AC, this one has really good aim. If you're blasting South at Mach 2, you'll hit it before you can even turn. Hold around 600mph. Also, fly banked---then you don't have to roll, you can just haul back on the stick the moment you see it. I often fly banked 60 degrees, and going SE or SW instead of due South. Then, when I see it, I can just quickly pull back and be pointing due South, while avoiding the laser. It will always be right ahead of you, no matter which way you're pointing. So I purposely fly off course a bit to lure it over, so when it fires I then turn due S, towards safety and away from the laser. Also, it WILL have one last shot at the VERY end, beyond the white line. Watch for it.

Ah, 15, how I hate it. But learned to master it. 1. Pick a FAST plane. Got the money for a MiG-31 or can sell stuff? Buy it. After that, F-14 or F-15. MiG-31 is worth it for this mission alone. Russian design at its finest---HUGE engines=speed. 2. The ground enemies at the start are a minor threat, but should be eliminated. 3. Nagase's location is random, but is often one of 2 spots, and usually the Western-most one. Memorize where they are. Determine exactly what stage of "finding" her will activate which enemy (like the enemy E-767) and exactly how long you can let the timer go before getting a mission failure due to not looking for her. Spend every possible second blowing up ground targets, and when you only have like 30 secs to the next stage of "finding" her, race over to where she probably is, kill the bad guy, and go back to blowing up ground targets and Super Hornets. 4. When you get the "final" finding of her, run SE immediately and kill everything at max range. An Apache cannot dodge a Phoenix, so F-14D is a good choice, though you're unlikely to have it--anything with XLAA is a good choice here. Second to the Apache is SAMs and AA in a line running SE. The third biggest threat is new planes approaching from the N, including an ace X-29. The SAM and AA that attack the rescue chopper do not show up until the rescue copter does, so you can't take them out early. The best way to protect the helicopter is to prevent the enemy from firing--that's different from killing the enemy. Now, about the only way to do that for ground targets is to kill them, but if you can just constantly buzz around harassing the enemy choppers and planes, you can stop them from firing as they're trying to evade you. If you spend more than 5 secs on an enemy but haven't killed it, break off and go after someone else. Your goal is to distract enemies enough by attacking them that they can't do much damage---unless you're lucky the bad guys won't be in the perfect place to kill them all quickly---so just keep harassing as many as possible as often as possible, killing when you have a chance. PS---wingmen! Set them to ignore YOUR target so they go and harass other enemies. I have won several times because a wingman fired (and missed) at an enemy, but it was enough for the enemy to break off from the rescue chopper while I was busy with another enemy. Or in summary--you said it only took a few seconds to go chase down enemies and kill them, but the chopper died in that time---just chase them off, not chase them down. Saves a few seconds, and that's what you need.

But they specifically said *I* was so "knightly" and fought with honor, when I was playing as a soldier--I really think that FMV should have gone with my maxed-out Knight bar playthrough.

Mostly airplane forums: Airlinebuzz.com, ARC, Model-Hangar, Airliners.net, DAC.

I'm tweaking/customizing my 1/48 Milia and while I have the nose in pieces, I was thinking about painting the radar. I don't recall ever seeing the radome opened up on-screen, and was wondering if we ever did get to see the actual radar itself? If not I'm going to paint it up like an F-14's.

Has the Rafale sold to anyone besides France itself? It's doing surprisingly poorly.

I thought it was the same place, but wasn't sure. PS---anyone else think they screwed up the FMV's in Zero? Playing as a Soldier got me a lot of "Knight-referencing" interviews, and playing as a Knight got me interviews about my strategy and observation...

Sorry, I love AC4's story. The letter from the kid to you, it's one of my fave plots in all games ever. It doesn't have 1/10 the dialogue of AC5 or Zero, but it is simply "deeper" IMHO. And I find the missions and stages very memorable, more so than all but a few of 5's. Have you looked at Whiskey Corridor? Really closely? It wasn't a desert just a little while ago--it was destroyed by one of the asteroids. It's a harbor. Or it was. Look at the ruined docks, the broken oil tankers, etc. At first glance it's "Desert Storm III" but take a close look, and it's a ruined land like the first mission, just in a very different way. It was wiped out so fast they couldn't even move the boats out to sea, and now it's just a dry wasteland. Plus that's one of the missions where you come across that same group of ground troops--I had lots of fun defending them throughout the game, listening to their chatter, etc. If you really look around, AC4's world shows even more "geographical" destruction than AC5 and Zero combined. Also it seemed to do better than 5 in how the missions related to each other--the first part is desperation----save the last airbase, knock out their radar to evacuate the troops, defend your emergency HQ, etc. You're on the run, and the territory you control shrinks mission by mission on the map. Then you start a counter-offensive--knock out their oil supplies to spoil their naval plans, then go after the Navy itself, then Stonehenge, and work your way back to their capital. AC 5 had you all over the place reacting, rather than a good solid war plan. A lot of people seem to miss how hard Farbanti was hit too, and I believe its destruction is a big part of the cause of the war in AC4.

Is the exact pronunciation "we" or more like "wheee"? The double-i spelling makes me want to lengthen the sound...

Final Boss Spoiler: (highlight to read) I thought YF-19 w/fold booster too. X-02 looks like YF-21 only because the YF-21 looks like the YF-23, and the X-02 is made from YF-23 parts. I actually found Hard easier than Normal, just ROCKED against the final boss this time. Going through on Expert, going for Mercenary this time (though it might take a while, my bar was maxed out Knight last time--got the "Supreme Knight" medal for winning with the bar maxed out)

I like 4 and 5 a lot better, music and plot-wise. No question/contest. 0's story really never "grabbed" me, and felt more like I was watching the story, rather than being in it. By mission three in 4 and 5 you were really "in" the story, I was at mission seven in 0 and was wondering "when does it get good?" Honestly it reminded me of AC 2, mission-wise. "Go blow this up. Then go blow this up. Now take out this place". Stage design was boring too, IMHO. Generic city, generic fields, generic mountain. 4 and 5's stages all seemed "memorable" just by how they looked. I found very few themes/melodies in 0's soundtrack, can only even remember like 3 mission's songs, despite having played twice now. Ironically mission 1 has among the best music. Replays? I don't see the slightest bit of difference. Follow yourself, wingman, or target, and select front/back, 360, etc.

This might be the solution: The hatch for the head that also has the little "hook" fold out (BP-9) should be in a different position for battroid mode than it is in GERWALK/fighter mode. Push it further in/down that it goes for fighter mode. It should actually be BELOW the surrounding surface--locked in place, not simply laying there. There's two little tabs that hold it in place there. That'll affect the angle of the whole backpack.

I'm very surprised/pleased with Prime. Complete opposite of Astrotrain IMHO. Will probably buy it, unless he looks much worse when good pics surface. Wonder if we'll get a trailer this time, or will he be like MP Prime... Though seeing all the people on the forums call it a "flat-front" truck irritates/annoys me to no end. No different than calling a jet a "whoosh plane" as I heard once. (Because it makes a whooshing noise to fly) Those types of trucks are called cabovers. CABOVER. Or C.O.E. Not "flat-front". I swear that term was invented on the 2005 boards a few years ago, and never existed prior to that. When something already has multiple specific terms existing for it as well as nice simple abbreviations for those terms, there's really no need to make a new 3rd-grade-vocabulary equivalent term. PS--they're generally just called "roof fairings", sometimes "aero fairings". Definitely not a spoiler, as no truck has downforce or lift issues at all due to their shape. Even though some are quite spoiler-shaped.

Went through on hard, and ended up using the F-15C AGAIN to win! Started "expert" and just now bought the YF-23. Annoyingly I opened up the F-22 just before the final missions on the first play through, but have found you can't buy a new plane before the "inside the dam" mission--you can switch planes by going back to the title screen, but no purchasing. Similarly, I had unlocked the YF-23 but couldn't use it until the next play-through. Have shot down various ace X-29's, still no X-29. Is it flyable? It's going to be a LONG time before I have every plane, they're expensive. Still no F-16C nor Super Hornet, though I got the F-16XL.

Corgis are more durable. They're simply "heftier" than Dragon. Most of them aren't as "finely cast" though. Also, they are much more difficult to deal with the gear and gear doors etc than Dragon. Weapons are usually permanent, drop tanks removable.

Beat it today, going through again. Trying to determine what gets what. First run, opened Mig-21, Mig-29, Su-27, Su-37, Su-47 (big Russian kick apparently, and that's almost all I used), as well as F-15C, F-14D, Mirage 2000, EA-6B, A-10, Tornado Gr4, Gripen, F-35, X-02 (from AC4 save I think). Second run, got F-18C, F-20A so far. I really didn't like how my first run went---most of the planes sucked for what I needed, I never got a decent multi-role besides the Gripen (which was too expensive and not good enough A2A for much of the game). Having no F-16, F-18, Rafale was a serious hurt for the early/mid part of the game. I used the MiG-29 for most missions (with rocket launchers, because it's about all I could afford), then switched to the Su-27. Found final dogfights way too much effort (XMAA and XLAA utterly worthless), and so bought the F-15C with QAAM for the end, and won with that. Strangely even the Su-37 seemed to suck at the end, as its XLAA won't hit ANYBODY, and sheer agility is worthless when enemies seem to have super-chaff or something to dodge 95% of missiles even when they're just sitting there and you've got a perfect shot. I hate Gault. PS--really can't explain some plane stats. EA-6B notably more agile than F-5E and generally better all around? F-14D slightly superior to F-15C in ALL respects? Should be slightly inferior in agility and speed, slightly better A2A and WAY better A2G. (though transonic acceleration should be much better, but that's too specific for the game)

Whoops, got my systems mixed up. I always think of Ultra 64 as being the official JP name, since it came SO close to being and you saw so many things written that way. And especially since every SNES game was "Super xyz" and so many N64 games were the sequel "Ultra xyz." What other project names do we know? I recall Katana, Dural, and I think Neptune, for the Saturn/DC/DC respectively. X360 was Xenon of course, and I noticed DOA4 even has that in the backgrounds.

AIM-54's were designed to be launched supersonically I would assume, since their primary use is emergency high-speed interception of bombers/fleet defense--which means the F-14 is running as fast as it possibly can when it launches. Phoenix has one neat aspect I rarely see mentioned---when used at long ranges it follows a ballistic profile like an ICBM. It goes WAY up, then dives down at tremendous speed. Most pilots aren't used to dodging a ballistic projectile from above, and they're used to watching for smoke trails etc from below or the side---if you're flying along at 35,000ft, you're probably not watching for missiles from above that had their motor burn out long ago.

It strikes me as "lets make every single piece a different shade of grey with no pattern or reason". That's not camoflage, that's when 20 different people paint their part "grey" and then you assemble all the parts.

Late model Phoenixes (Phoenixi?) can be launched on inertial guidance only, having no radar guidance until they turn their own on at close range. This might be an option only with the F-14D only when using the AIM-54C+. This is so you don't give someone a warning they're being locked on from 100 miles away. Almost all Phoenix launches involve several modes of guidance, switching between inertial, semi-active, and fully-active.

Just plain stupid IMHO. I mean, even the N64's codename (Dolphin) would have been better for a final name than that. What's next, Puu?

Sorry for yet more clarification---so is Set 1 only say the first half of the eps of the series, and Set 2 is end of the eps, the OVA, movie, and everything else? (because I'd be happy with just having the last eps and all the other stuff)

LERX---best guess we can make on what to call that thin grey part right ahead of the intakes. The F-5, F-18, F-20, and Harrier II have LERX's. Leading Edge Root eXtension. (I say Flankers have chines, like an F-16, not LERXes) But since the VF-0's actually comes from the intake, and is inboard and ahead of the wing LE root itself, I don't really know what to call it, and there's no exact real-life equivalent. I personally would probably call it an intake lip extension.

Mislovrit--I posted a photo of an F-8 flying with wings folded, so I'm quite certain it can. The question was whether the folded wings had to be in the raised position to do so, as otherwise the flaps and slats would be retracted. No other plane has to worry about if the wing is up or down, in addition to and independently of if the tips are folded or not.

Quick follow up--so is "Set #2" a 2nd version/release, or like only the 2nd half of the series?