Action vs Sim in flight simulators

Post by **RogueIce** » 2004-11-23 01:20pm

Which do you prefer?

I'm more of an action guy myself. Sure, it's nice to have the cool cockpits, realistic controls, feel like it's the real thing, and so on and so forth. But too much sim just gets annoying. I don't want to spend my time trying to figure out which damn keys I'm supposed to hit in what order just to drop a bomb. I'm playing it for fun, not to qualify!

In this I have my own little comparison: Jane's USNF 97 vs Jane's F/A-18. In USNF 97, switching between stations is as easy as pushing a button on my joystick, and selecting targets is a mouse click away. In F/A-18...well, I never could figure it out. I never did get to drop my lovely laser guided bombs because I could never select the damn target, or change my active hardpoint to them.

Anyway, what're your thoughts?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-11-23 01:26pm

How about... both? I don't recall them being mutually exclusive.

Post by **RogueIce** » 2004-11-23 02:11pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:How about... both? I don't recall them being mutually exclusive.

I guess it's my way of saying "simpler vs more complex". As in, straight to the action vs fiddling with buttons.

EDIT: Well, technically Lord of the Farce kinda said it first. But whatever.

Post by **weemadando** » 2004-11-23 06:45pm

Action is fun, but I like the feeling of scrambling around my keyboad/joystick queuing up a target for my next batch of Mavericks, while desperately pulling evasive maneuvres to try and avoid those fuckers with Strela's on the ground.

*deedledeedledeedledeedle* Missile Launch *deedledeedledeedledeedledeedle*

*reefs A-10 hard over and drops to ground level (like dodging cows kinda ground level) while leaving a huge trail of flares and chaff behind me*

Cmon, where the fuck is that armour? *sees AAA fire streak across my bow* FUCK! *apply airbrakes and swing around to go head to head with the AAA which is trying to correct fire* Gotcha motherfucker *rapid select clusterbomb check the CCIP - close enough - and release, push it to WEP and blast the fuck out of there with another stream of flares in my wake*

*deedledeedledeedledeedledeedle* FUCK *just exposed myself to the SAM site again, so roll it back over and go to ground level once more - again with a fireworks show.*

After about 5 more minutes I'll generally find the armour and clear then out. Half the time however you'll hear me say: Shit I coulda sworn I had a wing there a second ago...

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-11-23 09:37pm

I liked space action, my hardest part is actually making a landing without crashing....

Personally my second favorite is Blackbird which is more chess in the sky, or plotting your moves over the target zone so that you can get good photos without the baddies ever being aware you were there...

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2004-11-24 12:10pm

Story beats them both. Simulators are notoriously guilty of lacking an involving campaign, or producing a terribly lame story if they do make an attempt at it (Sub Command comes to mind, with their "Ha-ha! Ve evil federal russians vill attack ze imperialist american pigz!" briefings that had me going WTF, because they didn't explain a fucking thing about the background of the conflict)

I want defined, involving characters. I want drama. I want something more than generic missions, goddammit! If dumb action games can pull it off, sims should be able, too.

Rant over. Signing off.

Ma Deuce · Post by **Ma Deuce** » 2004-11-24 12:41pm

Story beats them both. Simulators are notoriously guilty of lacking an involving campaign, or producing a terribly lame story if they do make an attempt at it (Sub Command comes to mind, with their "Ha-ha! Ve evil federal russians vill attack ze imperialist american pigz!" briefings that had me going WTF, because they didn't explain a fucking thing about the background of the conflict)

Or if they're dynamic campaigns like that of Il-2: Forgotten Battles (my all-time favorite flight sim), they cannot by definition have an involving story: the objectives and scope of FB's campaign missions are realistic, but the story and involvment of the missions are limited by the fact that they aren't pre-scripted but have to be generated by the computer based on a set of parameters. On the upside, dynamic campaigns have much higher replayability than linear ones because no two campaigns (even with the same side and aircraft) are ever the same...

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2004-11-24 03:36pm

The Wing Commander games tried to mix the two.

Not always entirely successfully, but WCII was a damn good stab at it.

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2004-11-24 03:44pm

Vendetta wrote:The Wing Commander games tried to mix the two.

Not always entirely successfully, but WCII was a damn good stab at it.

WC games aren't much of a sim, really. Most "action oriented simulation games" (eg. arcade shooters) have a story, or at least an attempt at one. Crimson Skies comes to mind, as well as the Wing Commander series.

It's the hard-core, realistic sims that lack in that regard.

P.S.

Oh, sorry. I though you were commenting on my rant, but you were actually on topic

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2004-11-24 03:49pm

I was replying to Ma Deuce's track about stories and evolutionary campaigns...

If you want an attempt to chop action and sim together, I-War had a go, it wasn't very Sim, but it at least had inertia and stuff.

Lancer · Post by **Lancer** » 2004-11-24 04:26pm

Definitely Action.

Freelancer has me hooked because of the mod capability out there. A lot of stuff's built into the game that's not really active, like rolls or vertical strafes.

Action game interfaces can get convoluted. Making it "realistic" only increases how bad it can get.

For that reason, I limit my "realism" to FPS games. (FarCry's pretty good about it, until you get to the mutated, john-woo style rocket-shooting guys who take multiple headshots w/ a sniper rifle to down.)

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-11-24 05:20pm

I always like the idea of a completely realistic combat flight simulator, which has an unlimited ammunition option and an enemy's x5 option.

Guy N. Cognito · Post by **Guy N. Cognito** » 2004-11-24 08:35pm

I don't need 100% realistic, simply because there are so many keys that you have to take care of. I like the flight complexity of independence war 2, with it's simple interface. (Everything can be accessed through the hat and keyboard to spped things up). I would like to have more control over countermeasures though, and perhaps just a bit more involvement with the ships layouts.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2004-11-25 01:02am

While realistic is fine and dandy, alot of the time its just not fun, Freespace is a good example betweent he 2, enough controls to feel good, not enough to slow down the game hunting for a key.

Terr Fangbite · Post by **Terr Fangbite** » 2004-11-25 01:35am

I love a good sim as much as the next guy, but I've played demos of flight games which might have been very cool if it wasn't for the need to go through flight school to understand how to fly. I like a game which can vary the amount of realism you can have. Red Baron had something to this effect and when I started, I had fake everything, but as I mastered the game, it was like I was flying a WW1 fighter.

Anyway, if I wanted to be very realistic, I'd join the airforce. Games are to escape reality for me, not run into someone else's reality.

Post by **weemadando** » 2004-11-25 07:30am

Sure, there has to be a balance of action and sim - its why there are such things as scalable settings and time compression. I love sims as much as anyone but I ain't gonna sit at the computer for 5 hours just to get to my target.

And for me, immersion is absolutely vital, its why Total Air War still rocks my boat - it has the most amazing dynamic campaign I've ever encountered. I love dynamic campaigns, I really really hate it when you put so much effort into wiping out every last installation in the area only to have them pop up again at the start of the next mission (yes even full airbases rebuilt in a matter of hours). Shits. Me. To. Tears.

PeZook · Post by **PeZook** » 2004-11-25 10:56am

weemadando wrote: And for me, immersion is absolutely vital, its why Total Air War still rocks my boat - it has the most amazing dynamic campaign I've ever encountered. I love dynamic campaigns, I really really hate it when you put so much effort into wiping out every last installation in the area only to have them pop up again at the start of the next mission (yes even full airbases rebuilt in a matter of hours). Shits. Me. To. Tears.

To be honest, TAW's AI campaign commander was as dumb as a ton of bricks. If I wanted to win a campaign, I had to stray from my CAP route (for some reason, the AI always sends it's most advanced aircraft out on CAP instead of, say, bombing the shit out of the enemy...) and bomb some of the most basic targets that should've been taken out right at the start by AI pilots.
Oh, and mission goals were generated by a really, really dumb algorithm. So what that my plane got damaged and I was forced to land at another airfield? I massacred a gazillion enemy installations and completed my goals a hundred times over!

But then I get degraded, because I returned to the wrong airbase.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2004-11-25 11:33am

Sim > action. I like action games, mind you, but sims have greater depth for me.

Post by **weemadando** » 2004-11-25 08:15pm

PeZook wrote:Snip

But still better than the vast majority of other "dynamic" campaigns - look at MSCFS:3. I take out an entire Panzer group, divisional HQ, local HQ and the train bringing forces up to the front ALL IN ONE MISSION- and yet they still manage to stage a MASSIVE offensive in the VERY NEXT TIME PERIOD! When theoretically anyone who survived the rocket run on their HQ should have still been picking themselves out from under the rubble.

MIG Alley had a pretty good dynamic campaign, not to mention wicked gameplay - crack and burn raids on Commie supply depots NEVER GETS OLD.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2004-11-25 10:30pm

I like sim games; indeed I don't see the point in playing a 'real world' (ie, WWII, modern jet etc) flight sim unless its realistic. I don't want to whack off over my F-14 killing everyone, Afterburner, style; I'd rather scratch my head over radar modes and drag coeffiencts. Shooting someone down, or hitting your target with irons, is more satisifying when its hard

Fictional flight games, like Freespace and shit, can be as non-sim as they like. I don't like games that use the superficial trappings of realism to cover a extremely shallow game. Like arcade flightsims and CS

Cal Wright · Post by **Cal Wright** » 2004-11-26 12:10am

I'm probably an action sort of guy over sim when it comes to flight games. I prefer the Rogue Squadron games over the X-Wing games. I've tried some more realistic flight games and probably due to a steep learning curve I never really get the hang of them.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2004-11-26 12:29am

I was just remembering one of the more mortifying moments from being part of 3 couples+kids who went to see Shrek 2....

Gas to movie theaters for my little car: $16
Dinner for me Sarah and Roo: $30
Two Adults 1 child: $16
Popcorn+drinks+natchos: $25
Roo asking me for $5 for videogames, no problem

Theater Management getting on my ass because the boy spent it all on the $2.50 jumbo jet simulator reinacting 9-11 in San Francisco (poor transamerica building) -Priceless