mikeszekely

But that's the whole point... it's not a jack-of-all trades. It can carry a larger payload and has a greater range than the F-16, and that was first and foremost what it was supposed to replace (David can tell you better than I how it stacks up to the F/A-18 and the Harrier). The Navy and the USAF have the Super Hornets, Raptors, and upgraded F-15s for other roles. Only the Marines want to use it in heavier, close-combat role, and they can mount all sorts of external weapons on it, as they're less concerned with stealth.

I heard the same story. The USAF brass thought black planes were more badass so F117s are black instead of a more low-viz purple or blue. Actually, if I recall correctly, the USAF brass didn't believe that a stealth aircraft would work, so they had it painted black so that it only would fly at night. Now they're probably changing their minds since the stealth concept has been validated.

What happens if a Valkyrie gets both of its legs blown off? It would lose both reactors, wouldn't it?

As noble as that might sound.... it would be hard to take 2 stablished franchises and simply fuse them together. Remember, Abombz, that you're talking about the company that fused Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada and got away with it for this long. Considering how little attention Southern Cross gets, and how seperate MOSPEADA and Macross are, I would say you are incorrect. Look at how many continuity questions are constantly brought up by Robotech fans. Harmony Gold did a horrid job. I never said they did it well or correctly. I'm saying they did it, and got away with it for this long.

As noble as that might sound.... it would be hard to take 2 stablished franchises and simply fuse them together. Remember, Abombz, that you're talking about the company that fused Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada and got away with it for this long.

Not really, we're too busy watching the most feverent Macross fans go ballistic over finally getting some proper Macross toys, with the original spellings, characters, and colours... and then complaining about it. I can't speak for the others, but the majority the posts in this thread have simply made me laugh harder than I have in weeks. "Whining: The Official Sport of Macrossworld" indeed. At least HG/Toynami are putting the effort to make little nods and caveates towards the original shows and their fans. These DYRL superposables. The special edition SPs in the SDCC. The Mospeada-style Legioss fighters. Personally, I think this is a great thing for Toynami to be doing. That's like giving nods to the shady guy on the corner selling fake Rolex watches out of his trenchcoat. I mean, first, you shouldn't praise someone for illegal activities, and second, you can't try to sell an inferior product and expect your market to be happy about it when they know damn well there's better to be had.

The Marines and Royal Navy will get the STOVL version. The Navy version isn't STOVL, but is supposed to have the ability to be easily converted to STOVL. Where the forward lift fan is on the STOVL version, the Air Force and Navy versions will have an extra fuel tank.

I think the main thing that changed the speed agility equation was when an in service Soviet fighter tiped it's nose up and flew backwards at the Paris Air show. In hindsight it was just an air show stunt with little tactical value, but it sure had people sh*ting bricks at the time. So while the F-22 had some changes to the wing sweep (along with changes to all the other leading edges to maintain stealth) and the it's cockpit moved foreward; all the YF-23 needed was a new fuselage. IIRC a YF-22 with GE120s would beat a YF-23 with PW119s by a couple of mach points. I thought I read that in Bill Swaetman's book but I can't find it right now. The YF-23 was the faster aircraft though (at least according to Northrup's estimates), but the difference was quite small when using the 119. This doesn't make sense, nearly all the sources I have say that the F-22 only has RAM applied to it's leading edges and other critical areas, it seems strange that it would be covering the entire underside of the plane. From your description it sounds more like maintnence on the deeply buried engines of the F-117. The plane sits that low for a reason. Almost all of the access panels are at chest hight for ease of maintnence. There's no need for a specialised "pit" for loading or maintnence, weapons are loaded with the same standard loader that the Air force is curently using. Basic history of aviation: nothing spectacular ever comes of slow, steady progress. Be risky, take leaps and bounds. B-47, 747, F-4, F-14, SR-71, B-2----the really good stuff is always very different from what comes before, not just an improved version. Well the F-22 is hardly an incremental improvement. Maybe not as huge of a leap as the YF-23 (I'd argue it is, just in a different direction) but still quite huge. Exactly... even the strongest supporters of the YF-23 grudgingly admit that the F/A-22 is still probably the most superior of all the air superiority fighters in or going into service. It has a distinct advantage in BVR combat, and equal or better in a dogfight. All that, despite Knight26's concerns about the compromises of a passive stealth design... As for the JSF, we really can't keep using the fighters we've been using since the 70's. Especially since the F/A-22's production orders keep dropping and since the Navy decided to use Super Hornets instead of buying a new fighter to replace the F-14. And while the F-35 might not blow people away with its performance, the end result of the program was a fighter that's more than capable of replacing Harriers for the Marines and the Royal Navy in its STOVL configuration, and a fighter that can perform equal to or better than the F-16, but with a much greater range and payload, and again that distinct advantage in BVR combat. It's true that the F-35 is at a disadvantage when dogfighting against fighters like the Dassault Rafale (not to single out the French, but they are a little more liberal when deciding who to sell fighters too), but that's not the F-35's job. That's for the F/A-22 and the F-15E. Stealth, passive or active, is a reasonable focus for American fighters for the time being (as long as we can maintain air superiority in WVR combat, which the F/A-22 does), because Americans are the only ones focusing on stealth right now. That gives us a major advantage in BVR combat, and that helps minimize American casualties. Unmanned recon is okay, but unmanned fighters are a bad idea. There's no substitute for the human element. Worse, without the threat of loss of life, war becomes a game.

Whoa, hold up guys... while a lot of people feel that Northrop was robbed, and while the F/A-22's cost soars... I didn't think anyone was sorry that the F-35 won the JSF competition? Buddhafabio... are you saying you actually prefered the X-32? Because the F-35 is actually a relatively low-cost fighter, and the X-32's design is... well...

Well, it's a little Gundam-esque... Apparently, there are people living in orbital space colonies. They form a group called the Orbital Citizen's Community (OCC). For whatever reason, the OCC became more technologically advanced than the Earth, and decided they wanted to take over. After getting their butts whooped for awhile, the remaining nations on Earth formed the Earth Defense Aliance Force (EDAF). Desperate for manpower, the EDAF will take anyone who's willing to fight. Some of the most troublesome are put together in one squadron, codenamed Delta. You basically play as eight of the nine Delta pilots (I have no idea why you can't play as Pedro), and you're fighting the battle to beat the OCC. Actually, one of the gripes I have is the fact that the OCC are really nasty facists. One of the things the Gundam series have always done well, and to a lesser extent Ace Combat 4, was show that there are good and bad people on both sides. It's just unrealistic that every enemy ace you meet in AFDS is a nasty pr*ck... well, then again, so are half of the Deltas...

Actually, that's basically what they do in Macross. That's why in fighter mode, for most VFs, the head lasers point behind the aircraft.

I've heard that case, too. Another one I've heard is that the 119 would be cheaper to build and maintain. I think the case between the engines and the case between the fighters are very similar... there are a lot of excuses flying around, but the bottom line is they picked the more conventional fighter, and they picked the more conventional engine. I'd say changing mentality with the powers that be are forcing a "play it safe" approach. You see that same mentality in the flight controls on the F/A-22... it limits the angle of attack to 60 degrees, although the fighter could in theory do better. A big part of that mentality is that during the Cold War, people felt they needed to do whatever it took to stay ahead of the Soviet Union. But after the Cold War ended, suddenly people are looking at the military's budget and saying "No way are we spending $86 billion on this thing!" They're cutting funding and cutting the production orders for the F/A-22 like nobody's business already. If they had something as unconventional as the YF-23 with the 120 engines, they might have eliminated the program altogether.

I thought it was radar-absorbent paint. Nope. From what I read, an IR absorbent paint developed by Boeing, who was one of Lockheed's partners during that competiton. Okay, so it's true that some of the solutions used to reduce IR signature wouldn't apply to a valk in space, but my point is still valid. If the UN wants to make stealth a focus in their next-gen variable fighters, they're going to develop technologies to make stealth work. And with everything else that they've done with overtechnology, it's feasible to believe that they used OT to reduce the IR signatures of fighters like the VF-17 and the VF-22.

Right, so the YF-23 is faster. I never wanted to contest that. I just wanted to point out that they had the same engines, and just because the F/A-22 wound up with the 119s, doesn't mean the YF-23 had the more powerful engine. Just the YF-23 with the 120. I was given to understand that they decided to use the 119 because P&W had more experience with thrust vectoring. If that's the case, even if the YF-23 beat the YF-22, it might still have been fitted with the 119.

I'd have to guess that it is longer than Ace Combat 4. AC4 wound up with less than 20 missions, right? I think I read somewhere that there's over 60 in AFDS, but I'm sure that some of them count those "Mission Intercept" battles and what not. Sorry, haven't done the space missions yet. I'm stuck on this mission where there's these glowing diamonds. They blink on and off like Christmas lights. When they're off, you shoot them, and part of the enemy defense grid goes down, so you can try to shoot the core. Unfortunately, you'll die if you pass through when the diamond is on, an ace by the name of Pierre is trying to make sure you die anyway, they're buildings and laser grids that limit where you can go, and if you fly to high, you'll hit the enemy's plasma shield and die. Yeah... you definately die more in AFDS than in AC4. Oh, but the kicker is that the mission is timed, too.

That can be a disadvantage as easily as an advantage. Like for example, if I as mine what she wants to do, she'll say "I don't know" and play solitaire. She only decided to be affectionate whenever I'm getting into a videogame, and really don't want the distraction.

That goes without saying I would imagine. However......I would think that Overtechnology would give man the answer to the super-conductor and that would significantly reduce the heat signature. The heat's still got to go somewhere. Most of it straight out the back of the plane. There's really no way around it that I can see, aside from flooding enemy IR sensors with a bigger heat source. But you're talking about the same sort of challenges that today's modern stealth aircraft face. The F/A-22 uses IR absorbent paint, uses fuel to cool its leading edges, and has two dimensional nozzles that create a flatter exhaust plume that dissipates heat quickly. Now, if that's what we can do with conventional technology, I'm sure OT can come up with a few better. Black is fine for being hard to see in space, but what about in an atmosphere? One of the reasons the Raptor is usually a mottled blue-grey is that it's harder to see in the sky.

Mmmm... cushion... *drools*

That's an unfair statement. One prototype of both the YF-22 and the YF-23 used the GE YF120 engines, and one prototype of each used the Pratt & Whitney YF119. It's true that the more conservative YF119s were the final pick for the F/A-22, but that didn't guarantee that if the YF-23 would have won, it would have got the YF120 engines. I'll give you that the YF-23 was faster becasue it was sleeker (you could tell me it's lighter, too, I'd believe that), but you can't tell me that the YF-23 had more powerful engines if it was using the same engines as the YF-22.

Well, bearing in mind that I'm only comparing it to other console air combat games, not games in general, I'll give it a 7 out of 10, with 10 being Ace Combat and 1 being the truly crappy Top Gun. Like I've said before, AFDS has some interesting missions (and from what I've been reading, a TON of missions), more cool planes than you can shake a stick at, and adequate gameplay. I mean, if you've played Ace Combat, you can get into AFDS. It's really just that Ace Combat is so much more refined... you play AFDS, you handle it the same way you do Ace Combat, but it's just not Ace Combat. But considering that there hasn't been a decent air combat game since Ace Combat 4, AFDS is a nice change that will keep me entertained for awhile... at least until Ace Combat 5. AFDS is waaaaaaaaaay better than the Lethal Skies series. Well, a lot of the missions are your typical air combat fare. Several dogfights where you have to at least down the target aircraft, a few dogfights where you fight for the time limit, a mission or two where you have to destroy enemy ships, and one where you have to destroy an enemy fueling station. I've had some interesting ones, though. I've already mentioned the one where you have to take out the enemy subs that are hiding in ice flows. There was another high altitude mission where you had to hit these enemy transports. It was unusual because you couldn't go under the clouds (the operator said that high winds would break the fighter apart), but the transports were huge, and would dive beneath the clouds, so it was kind of like whaling. There was another stage where you have to defend a train, but there's a ton of other tracks with enemy trains that are shooting your train. And the most interesting one I've done was your canyon mission. You know the ones, you can't fly higher than the canyon walls? Except this one had these huge tires rolling through the canyon. The most memorable moment in that level was when you have to dive into this tiny ditch at the bottom of the canyon to escape being crushed by two rollers in a row.

I don't want you to run out to the store too fast, David, but I found this pic on the AFDS website...

According to IGN, here's some of what I'm missing. Apparently, though, they're going to list more in another article, so it's still not all of it... Jian-Ji 6 JIN Su-20 Fitter C Su-27SMK Franker B A-10A Thunderbolt A-4M Skyhawk X-29A F-20 Tigershark MiG-19PFM Farmer F-104G Starfighter Jian-Ji 7 MG Buccaneer S2D Su-27LL-UV(PS) HiMAT MiG-23ML Flogger G F-108 Rapier F-5A Freedom Fighter F-117A Nighthawk A-6E Intruder F-14D Tomcat MiG-27K Flogger J Jaguar GR1 Sea Vixen FAW2 MiG1.44 MF1 F/A-18C Hornet X-31A MiG-25PDS Foxbat Jian-Ji 8 Finback A F-16XL F4D-1 Skyray X-32A Su-30MKI F-16C Block 50 Fighting Falcon Tornado GR1 On Konomi's AFDS website, they have pics that add the following- F-2A F-15E Strike Eagle Jian-Ji 12 S-37A Berkut Eurofighter Typhoon IL-2M3 Sturmovik Spitfire Mk-24 Su-37 TSR2 Yak-141 Freestyle F-1 Su-34 They don't have pics or any info confirming or denying that these are in the game, but there's a disclaimer about Konami using the folling under license from Lockheed... F-102 Delta Dagger F-111F F/A-22 Raptor F/A-35B X-44 YF-12A

Oh, you're still fighting against modern jets. The P-38 was slow, but very maneuverable. And they added rockets to it.

Yup, you are correct, the Japanese release name is "Air Force Delta - Blue Wing Knights', not Blue Sky Knights, my mistake. I was thinking of picking this game up, but might hold off now. Does anybody know if this game features the Eurofighter Typhoon? (my favorite modern fighter). Graham Aside from what's on my list, the only aircraft I know for sure that's in the game but I haven't unlocked are the F-117, The X-32, the F-16XL, and if I assume from the cover of the game, the Berkut.

Why's everyone so hard on Ace Combat 3? Because of a few totally fictional planes, and the rest were at least loosely based on real ones? You guys gotta get past that, because Ace Combat 3 had some of the most original missions, like chasing the train and bombing the virus thingies. As far as magazine/internet reviews go, you gotta remember that air combat games are one of those things that the average gamer (or the average reviewer) just doesn't get into. Basically, if you like Ace Combat, you'll get some enjoyment out of Air Force Delta Strike. You just gotta set up a custom control scheme similar to AC4, and then it plays strikingly similar, and yet somehow not as good. You do learn to tune out the radio chatter during missions, but it gets old between missions, and it's really annoying to have that guy chew you out everytime you fail a mission. But I do have to give credit to Konomi for coming up with some of the most original missions since AC3. The mission I'm on now, for example, is tracking down and sinking enemy subs hiding inside ice flows. Sadly, for every cool mission you get to do, there's two or three dogfighting missions... which would be fine, if dogfighting was more like Ace Combat. For some reason in the Air Force Delta series, enemies tend to cut 180s and nail you while your wingmen just fly around like idiots... Okay, now for cool planes, I can't say too much. Seems that there's 134 aircraft in the game, but not all are playable. The game counts a lot of helicopters, bombers, and AWACS aircraft in that 134, although I still feel confident to say that there's over 100 playable aircraft. I'm still fairly early into the game, I think, and I can tell you what I unlocked. I can only guess what the others are. Anyway, here's what I got. I'm typing it exactly as it's listed in the game, so any discrepencies or unofficial code names, don't blame me, blame Konami. F-5E Tiger II MiG-21bis Fishbed N Su-20 Fitter C MiG-29SMT Fulcrum C YF-17 Cobra Su-24M Fencer D F5D-1 Skylancer Jian-Ji 8IIM Finback F Su-7BMbis Fitter A F-106 Delta Dart FC-1 Figher China P-38L Lightning Lightning F6 T-58VD Flagon B Yak-38 Forger A A-5A Vigilante F-105D Thunderchief Su-25A Frogfoot A-7E Corsair II RF-4C Phantom II P-3C SH-3H Sea King Ka-52 Hokum 8 Mi-35 Hind E AC-130H Spectre B-1B Lancer B-2 Spirit C-5B Galaxy SR-71A Blackbird U-2R E-2C Hawkeye E-3C Sentry YAL-1 ABL Tu-160 Blackjack M-17 Mystic A-50 Mainstay