Flying Corps Gold Navigation
By Cas141
This little piece is an appeal really for any of you fellow FCG fliers who may have fathomed out the intricacies of Rowan’s logic about the navigation/waypoints of this sim. Because I’m blowed if I can properly understand it!!
In any of the missions, including mine, I may want to deviate slightly from the route, and then to return to it. The most common example is if I get tied up in a dogfight and then, when I have finally dealt with the foe, I wish to, say, by-pass waypoint 2 and go directly to waypoint 3. I do not know how to confidently do that. It is something to do with F4 command or is it Ctrl F4 command?
When flying missions I tend to use the "tab" accelerater. Try it, if you don’t already. It’s a timesaving little cheat in that as soon as you start off, you press tab and then the map comes up and you see your progress along the route UNTIL you meet an incident, usually the enemy and then it drops back into the cockpit – hit padlock enemy, there he is and off you go into battle. If you survive, wherever you finish up, you press tab again and (if you no longer have the enemy around – see later** !) off you go again along the map route ‘til you hit the next incident.
Now, this is one of the annoying things- Say you engaged battle just after waypoint 2 – the chase/battle may have taken you almost next door to waypoint 3, but when you press tab you see yourself go all the way back to waypoint 2 before then proceeding along the route as programmed. So - can this be avoided? Can you start heading for nearby waypoint 3 and then drop into tab mode and carry on towards that waypoint? If so – How??
F4 or CtrlF4, or one after the other, or something else?
According to the manual BOTH are for "Padlock next waypoint". As you American friends say - Go Figure!
Looking at the context of the Views table in which this is printed, it does seem that it might be a typo and that what is meant to be is
Padlock nearest waypoint – Ctrl F4
I shall try this out in a mission or two to see if there is any enlightenment.
As for ** above - I have noticed that if you have the enemy around and wish to leave and you press tab, then the information bar tells you you are in combat and will not let you drop into the map to accelerate away. So, a tactical withdrawal (or s--t scared run away J ) is not allowed. You have to finish him off.
Or do you? Anyone know different?
Having said that, in my mission Cas7, The flight early on came across a lone spotter and my wingies started to attack when I wanted to ignore him and carry on to the more important brief of the mission. I gave the "R" command and they did rejoin me and we were a unit again – OK, that is clear from the manual but we couldn’t leave by acceleration, and I got lost when trying next waypoint commands.
Will someone who has got all this sussed, submit to Ursus a little explanation(in words of one syllable J please- at least for me!).
I think it might help a number of us!
Happy flying
Cas
Good flying to you all,
Cas141
November 14, 2001