US Navy Fighters Gold

This info is from the whatsnew.txt on the install CD-ROM

This document lists the new features and feature modifications to U.S. Navy Fighters code since version 1.1 (this was the patch diskfor the original USNF program). Many features have been modified, all changes are listed below. If you have played U.S. Navy Fighters before, you will surely find some welcome improvements.

The changes are listed in order of implementation, not any logical order.

added Japanese as a possible nationality for objects. Doing this required changing the mission file format so missions created with 1.2 can't be loaded by 1.0 or 1.1. Earlier missions can still be loaded correctly by 1.2, though.

your seeker now only gets 1/3 of the normal look-down penalty when detecting ships, because they're very large, and since they're on water, there's very little ground-clutter interference.

lookdown code now determines the pitch from you to the target.

distance grid lines on the briefing map are now drawn with a 50% dither pattern, rather than as solid lines.

added horizontal velocity indicator to the Harrier HUD. Operates when forward speed is less than 100 mph, and you're in NAV mode. Note that this indicator does NOT include the effects of wind!

improved code that determines what planes/helos can land/takeoff at what airports/carriers, and whether they can use the cat: it now checks whether the plane has a hook, whether it can do STOL/VTOL, and whether it specifically is allowed to operate from ships.

FYI: only VTOL and helos can operate from the WASP. The runway is too short for most other planes. If you land on the WASP, and your wingmen are F-18s, for example, they'll never land there! They'll also be too stupid to find another place to land, though.

on map screen, can't put a plane on a carrier if it isn't able to land/takeoff from that carrier type. (eg, can't put F-18 on WASP, or F-15 on any ship).

fixed problem where a mission that did not have any airports that exactly matched the nationality of the player would crash after the player fulfilled the mission objectives. For some reason, this only happened if the player had some wingmen - reduced takeoff climb angle of all airports from 30 degrees to 20 degrees. That seems to look better.

if in autopilot, we no longer show the velocity vector on the HUD. Also, we don't show the THRUST, G-FORCE, or VECTORED THRUST settings. Instead, the word "AUTO" replaces these three readouts.

the catapult officer's "cat launch" animation used to start when your plane started moving. Now it starts a little earlier, so his hand reaches the deck just before you start moving.

allow VTOL planes to takeoff/land on top of buildings.

gravity's effects on your plane's sideways velocity are no longer flipped when you banke.

HUD: "legal landing" indicator now registerings legal landing conditions if your plane doesn't have a hook.

no longer doing "welcome back/welcome home" radio msg if you land far from an airport.

changed aspect ratio of shapes made for 1.0.

improved accuracy of auto-aiming turrets since a plane with that feature can now be flown by a human: the AC-130.

no more divide overflow when you are exactly at the top of your flight envelope when flying the C-130.

if .HUD file can't be found for the plane you're flying, it'll use the F-18 HUD instead.

added some new explosions: bullet splash, air explosions, ground explosions.

changing stall behavior:

different calculation of how severe the stall is now:

100% at 4 seconds, or sooner if stallSeverity is high, or you're going much slower than stall speed

don't increase your drag during a stall

pitch-down rate is decreased as pitch approaches -90

- bank-over rate is decreased as pitch approaches -90 or 90

to make it easier to avoid spins while trying to do VTOL landing, we don't allow a spin if your vectored-thrust is down at least -45 degrees.

added end-swap effect if you enter a stall while going backwards. Also do this if you're pointed up nearly vertical, and going less than about 75 mph, when you enter a STALL.

in campaign, when you died, if you pressed ESC to bypass the "death" screen, and held it down, it would then proceed to assume you had pressed ESC in the "You are dead, do you want to replay this mission?" dialog, resulting in you losing your pilot. This has been fixed so that after the death screen, you must release the ESC key before it'll proceed. It also empties the keyboard buffer, just to make sure.

changed bomber AI to help preserve their airspeed during evasive maneuvers:

if near stall speed, try to dive instead of climb

if target far away, jink at smaller angles

improved feature which determines when a missile makes its final hit/miss check. Now some missiles will tend to do their checks early or late in their flight.

improved missiles whose % hit chance DECREASES at close range, when attacking a target with a large signature.

improved the AIM-54, to make it a better weapon:

increased % hit when at close range: instead of 0...50...75...0 (at 0%...25%...50%...100% of max range), it's now 25...50...50...0 against fighters, or 37...75...75...0 against bombers.

changed chance of being fooled by chaff/flare to 50% of normal.

increased radar sig of B-52, Tu-26, Tu-160 from 100 to 200.

changed joystick responsiveness curve, to better fit the way we're planning on changing roll rates for humans: more acc, more dacc, higher max bank rate.

flaps are now correct @ takeoffs.

implemented terrain masking:

if the player's target is behind terrain:

the HUD's "target symbol" doesn't appear

missiles fired at that target will not get a lock

can't select it as "visible target" (eg, with Enter)

not shown on your RADAR or IR CRTs

target range/aspect, % chance to hit target, and lock symbol,

not printed on HUD

if an obj's target is behind terrain, it won't fire, it will lose

lock, and it'll eventually forget about that target (after about

20 seconds).

changed flight code so helos are assumed to have no wings (ie, no lift from wings)

improved sorting of terrain vs objs.

SA-7, SA-14, and SA-16 (ie, sam-launching men) are now easier to kill.

changed AA-8 to have only 30% penalty for head-on shots, rather than 100%.

PRO MISSION CREATOR screen now returns to that screen after you play a mission from it (and reloads the mission you just played), rather than returning to the CHOOSE ACTIVITY screen, and forcing you to load the PRO MISSION CREATOR screen, then load your same mission.

added new keyboard command ';' to set your target to NOTHING (ie, clear current target).

carrier landing ratings for the player are now given properly. They used to just say "fair landing" all the time.

changed F-18 radar track range from 45 to 50 miles, and Yak-141 radar track range from 20 to 25 miles. This was because the radar CRT window's range increments are at 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, and 150 miles, and if your plane's track range is even slightly smaller than the range you select, your radar mode is set to RWS rather than TWS, making you unable to lock a target. This basically means that players in an F-18 can now lock targets at 50 miles rather than 25.

also changed Su-27/33 IR seeker track range from 9 to 10 miles

PLANE_TYPEs were getting their maxAlts from the envelope for G==0, which really isn't fair to human pilots. Changed to ignore the G==0 envelope. Now, their maxAlt will probably always be the max alt in the G==1 envelope.

your HUD now only prints RANGE, CLOSURE, ASPECT info if:

your radar is on, and the target is within the radar's FOV and range

- or, you have an IR seeker, and the target is within its FOV (note that an IR seeker is ALWAYS assumed to be ON)

improved the distance hazing effect on the textured water/sky.

added new command "Ctrl-F" so users can tell what their frame-rate is.

This prints the current frames-per-second count on your HUD.

after an obj is killed, its secondary weapons, and chaff/flare, no longer continue firing.

changed how keyboard does paging in VIEW PILOTS:

pg up/down no longer wrap past start/end of text

added Home/End keys to go to first/last page of text

PILOT files (.P) have a different format now. All old-format pilot files in the current directory are automatically converted to the new format when you run the game.

improved missile hit % code with respect to jamming.

planes missile firing A.I. is improved so they only check for missiles fired by THEMSELVES.

changed effect of ALT-E (engage my target): Used to tell plane to engage a target, but ALSO tell him to be aggressive towards ALL OTHER TARGETS of the same class. In other words, if you told him to attack a particular tank, he would attack it until it was destroyed, and then start attacking any other tanks he could find. This has been changed so this "keep attacking that target's class" behavior is only done when you tell him to attack a FIGHTER. He'll kill the assigned fighter, and then start attacking other fighters. If you tell him to attack a building, for example, he'll just kill it and then return to formation.

obj -> target, target -> obj views that are nearly vertical now don't jerk around (as) weirdly.

HARM missiles now can home on an obj if its RADAR JAMMER is on, but its radar is off.

HARM missiles can now maintain a lock on any ground target moving less than 25 mph, even if they turn off their radar.

ground objs can now attack other ground objs!

doubled tank hit % when attacking ground objs

in order to let a vehicle MOVE, it MUST be given at least one waypoint. Otherwise, it'll turn toward its target, but NOT move toward it.

added surface to surface weapon (SA-N-9) for Sarancha

added AI program for Sarancha to attack a ship

when planes (computer, or human with autopilot) approached their takeoff point (eg, the catapult), sometimes they would miss it and keep turning around it but never reach it. This should no longer happen.

increased lifetime of AGM-65, and some other A-G missiles, because it was too short to let them reach targets at some otherwise allowable distances.

can now interrupt a video sequence with ESC or SPACE at any time, and either will cause all succeeding SEQs to be skipped.

better missile % hit calculations.

ZOOM setting now saved correctly in the CFG file.

Pop-up windows settings are no longer lost when you eject, and they're also saved in the CFG file.

changed CFG file format.

impoved side firing weapons in the PROJ code that caused them not to fire properly for NPCs.

select weapon proc now takes weapon damage into account when selecting which weapon to use (prefers to use the most damaging weapon).

fixed some calculation overflows in movement (especially projectile movement) when 8x time-compression was on.

improve the HUD target symbol so target symbol is displayed as long as the HUD is not more than 90 degrees off your view.

no more invulerable enemy airplanes.

used to reduce your speed by 25 mph when you touched the ground. Decided not to do this anymore, since it seemed to interfere with rolling takeoffs from hills.

autopilot takeoff now automatically raises your gear and flaps

AV-8 with no ALQ-167 will not get "ECM damaged".

improved damage code in general.

can no longer get "afterburner damaged" message if your plane doesn't have an afterburner.

succeed if finished waypoints now works for humans: it requires you to get within 3 miles (ignoring alt differences) of each of your waypoints.

added turbulence effect for planes at low alt, or when closely following other planes.

quick mission screen now lets you use the ARMING SCREEN before your mission. Click on the button that says "You are carrying the standard weapons load" and select instead "You are carrying a custom weapons load," and you'll see the ARMING SCREEN when you press OK.

the ukraine "nuclear reactor" quick mission no longer has several objs specified as "success if alive" when they shouldn't have been.

when you create a quick mission, it is now saved as "QUICK.M". Therefore, it's now visible to the player if he wants to select it as a Single Mission, or load it into the Pro Mission Creator. It shows up as "QUICK" in the file list.

player's plane no longer moves around on WASP deck after landing and stopping.

waypoint radio messages were saying what the RECEIVING plane should do (ie, climb vs dive). They now say what the SENDING plane will be doing.

when player unloads weapons in the ARM PLANE screen, or they're unloaded due to "air combat guns only", it now clears the ptr that indicates what's loaded there, so they no longer show up in your WEAPONS window as "0 AIM9", etc...

SHIFT-E now says "This aircraft has no ejection seat" if it doesn't have one.

no longer says "Let's get this guy" or "He's closing" until the target is less than 20,000 ft away.

no longer says "Break", "Do some of that pilot...", etc, if you're pulling greater than 3 G's (ie, you're ALREADY doing some of that pilot shit)

improved target-selection algorithm to prefer attacking targets that other planes in my wing are NOT currently attacking. This should help split up dogfights into one-on-one engagements. Also, primarily, this was put in so when you tell your wingman to "engage class" (eg, "engage bandits"), he should NOT attack the plane that YOU are targeting (unless there are no other planes within about 2 miles...distance also plays a part in the preference).

to keep autopilot-controlled planes on the carrier deck better, I now STOP them if they're more than 45 degrees away from the direction they're trying to turn.

player's chance of getting rescued when he ejects in enemy territory reduced from 85% to 35%.

RWR symboloy changed: a DIAMOND now indicates a PLANE using radar, while a BIG SQUARE means a ground-based radar, and a SMALL SQUARE means a missile (ie, the last two are same as before).

added new cmmand SHIFT-D: prints the last few HUD messages that you got, again, in case you didn't get to read them when they first appeared.

fixed problems with campaign's weapons stores, which caused weapons loss.

JAPANESE nationality wasn't a choice in the QUICK MISSION screen. Added it.

did not cycle through waypoint goals correctly when a waypoint was close to an airport, and you had an assigned target at that waypoint.

improved behavior of AIRPLANE SELECTION screen when there are too many airplanes to show. Also changed airplane parking positions on the NIMZ background screen to show more planes.

made hotkeys for CHOOSE ACTIVITY screen available in release version:

s = single mission

q,u = quick mission

p = pro mission

l = last mission

n = new campaign

o = old campaign

h = config hardware

i = vehicle info

r = view pilot records

KRIVAK's collision boxes didn't include the shape's origin, causing missiles fired from its side to often miss.

increased bullet visible dist from 5000 to 8000 ft

in cheat mode, no longer allowed to load internal-gun type weapons anywhere else.

corrected problems with the CTRL-F8 view.

faster deceleration when plane hits arrestor wires.

landing grades are now getting assigned properly

AC-130 crew no longer says "EJECTING".

changed AT-2 to text to be shown as optically guide.

all weapons pages in ARM PLANE screen are available when cheats are on.

added speech for waypoint letters G,H,I,J,K.

moved OK button on some of the CONFIG HARDWARE dialogs so the OK button is in the same place on all of the dialogs.

added testure for joystic config dialog box in 1024 x 768.

select next missile button on CH PRO and FCS sticks now selects the next GUN also, if you're out of missiles (or, like the AC-130, don't carry any).

slightly increased amount of secondary explosions that result when you destroy something, and how long they take to happen

increased % change of a system being damaged when you take a hit (max was 60%, now 80%).

implemented "collateral damage" due to explosions: when a projectile hits something and explodes, nearby objs can be damaged also (though not nearly as much). You generally have to be within 1000 ft for anything to happen, and within 300 ft or so for any major damage. This applies ONLY to missiles, bombs, and rockets. When an obj is killed by gunfire, there is no collateral damage. Also, AI objs cannot be harmed by collateral damage from their own projectiles.

now greying out menu items for COCKPIT, MIRRORS, and BIG WINDOWS according to your screen res, so options that don't matter for that res aren't shown.

your plane could get very damaged in a campaign and end up with less than 100% damage to fix. Now limited to 100%.

Miscellaneous per-mission damage in a campaign is calculated differently.

bogus "LIFT FAILURE" HUD messages that happened when you had "Pull Extra G" cheat on have been fixed.