ValAstur's What-if Hangar

[ValAstur]

Hey folks

I'm new to this forum and my specialty are what-ifs from existing planes I create inside the indie flight-simulator game "Strike Fighters" from ThirdWire Productions.

For all those who don't know this Flight sim system... I'll explain it  :)

Strike Fighters was initially launched in 2002, consisting of a conflict between two fictional countries in the middle-east, the Kingdom of Dhimar and the empire of Paran during the the 1960s and 1970s. The successors were Wings over Vietnam, Wings over Europe and Wings over Israel, representing conflicts in each of the namegiving countries. All those games were compatible for Windows 98 or XP.

Since 2008, all games received a mayor upgrade making them playable on Vista and following OS'. Latest addition on this series was Strike Fighters 2: North Atlantic.

The biggest advantage of this flight sim is its capability to be fully modded with only drag&drop.
All modifying files have only to be dropped into the designated mod folder and the changes take effect instantly. The biggest community of modders for this sim is over at combatace.com.

Strike Fighters 2 Europe Main Menu


Single Mission Selection Screen


Another advantage is the ability to simply create a what-if by only choosing another air force in the Service Dropdown menu... for example a south-korean A-7D

[ValAstur]

Vought F-8S Cisne (Swan), Spanish Navy Air Arm, 1977

[ValAstur]

Grumman A-6S Pelícano, Spanish Navy Air Arm, 1978

[ValAstur]

Douglas A-4FZ Skyhawk, South African Air Force, 1971

[ValAstur]

AF-29 (MiG-29K) Fulcrum, Brazilian Navy, 2001

[ValAstur]

Vought A-7R Corsair, Argentine Navy, 1983

[ValAstur]

Backburn Buccaneer S.2F French Navy, 1984

[ValAstur]

Northrop Grumman YFA-5 Tactical Tiger, US Air Force, 2011

[ValAstur]

GD EF-16 (C-17) Halcón (Falcon), Spanish Air Force, 1984

[ValAstur]

Mitsubishi F-2H Viper Zero, Greek Air Force, 2012

[ValAstur]

MiG-19G German Farmer, Deutsche Luftwaffe, 1961







More still to come!

[Cliffy B]

Oh wow!!!!  Could you post a list or some screenshots showing a full list of available aircraft and countries please?  I can see this being a wonderful and fast source for ideas here.  Thanks for sharing!!! 

[ValAstur]

Some of the aircraft shown here are not included in the game and are from 3rd party modders such as the F-5 and the Viper Zero.
Almost every nation in the world, that has an air force, is represented in this game.

This is what the standard aircraft folder would look like using a clean installation with all released games from Strike Fighters 2:



Many of the aircraft are not flyable at the beginning such as the MiG-19, but with some easy ini-editing, it can be made flyable.

[GTX_Admin]

Some great ideas there!

[PantherG]

Amazing work 

My "job" is only "doodles".... 

[Cliffy B]

That's a rather nice list!  I'm going to have to root through it and post some requests later, thanks!  :)

[Vuk]

Now, that's awesome ValAstur!

Those South African Skyhawks and Brazilian Fulcrums look so natural!... and welcome!

[ValAstur]

Thanks for the welcoming!

I still got lots of examples to post...

How about about some "Kitty" time?


Grumman F-14I "Petten" (Cobra), Israeli Air Force, 1994





This plane was one of my first repaints so please don't mind the slightly erratic camo positions  :)


Grumman F-14S Tomcat, Italy, 1995

Air Force




Navy



Grumman F-14H Tomcat, Greek Air Force, 1994

The greek Tomcats are able to carry AG-armament  :)










Grumman/KAI KF-14A2 Tomcat, South Korean Air Force, 1998






Grumman/Mitsubishi F-14J Tomcat, Japan, 1996

Japanese Tomcats are also AG-capable 

JASDF










JMSDF

[ValAstur]

Hispano-Suiza HS.304 Trueno (Thunder), Spanish Air Force, 1975

At the other forum, there is a thread called "Masquerade" about aircraft, that pretend to be something else. That's where this one has to be placed in.






Just in case somebody wonders, why there are so many spanish aircraft...I'm a spaniard 

[ValAstur]

North American F-100DJ, Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, 1971

[ValAstur]

Dassault Mirage 5S, Italian Air Force, 1976

[ValAstur]

Lockheed Martin F-22J Raptor, Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, 2022

[elmayerle]

Gorgeous work!!  Do you have any Italian F-15s?  Export F-106s?

[GTX_Admin]

I really like the first Italian F-14. :)

[dy031101]

Almost every nation in the world, that has an air force, is represented in this game.

Due to the quality of the stuff displayed...... is there any ROCAF (Taiwanese) what-if in the line-up you have?  :)

[GTX_Admin]

A Taiwanese F-106 would look great.

[Jonesthetank]

Is it just me, or does that JASDF F-100 look absolutely beautiful and absolutely right....?

[ValAstur]

Italian F-15s shan't be a problem. Gimme some time.

For creating a F-106 of the ROCAF I'd need to have both the aircraft and template for the creation of the mod.

Which aircraft would you like to see in ROCAF outfit?

[dy031101]

For creating a F-106 of the ROCAF I'd need to have both the aircraft and template for the creation of the mod.

One (labelled as up to the newest Strike Fighter 2 standard) is available on CombatACE forum.  I've downloaded a copy if no-one else has an account or wants to go through the trouble of registering.

Which aircraft would you like to see in ROCAF outfit?

I have a few ideas (all in air superiority camo unless specified otherwise)- first, the "kinda plausible" ones:

• Mirage IIIC
• Harrier (unless you have Sea Harrier in your library; in both air superiority and maritime camos, the latter camo scheme for anti-ship bombing over South China Sea)

Now veering into the "outright crazy" category:

• F-14A
• F-15A
• PLAAF B-52D (the pre-requisite for ROCAF F-14A or F-15A to happen)

Attached is camo templates for F-104G (air superiority) and S-2E&T (maritime) to derive the patterns from.  Colour palette for air superiority camo is on the top-right corner of F-104G sheet; S-2E and S-2T templates are from the internet, but while S-2E sheets don't have colour palette, S-2T sheet does.

I was going to ask if you have Mirage 4000 in your line-up, but then I found out that one is WIP on CombatACE forum, too, so I guess my request on that one will wait until it's done......

[raafif]

Can you change the aircraft itself in that program ? ie put an F-104 T-tail on a Phantom etc.

A quick mod to ValAstur's Corsair-II for an upper-ventral intake .....

[Weaver]

Those look great: well done.  :)

You may find this thread interesting over on What-If: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,18821.0.html

[ValAstur]

Due to the quality of the stuff displayed...... is there any ROCAF (Taiwanese) what-if in the line-up you have?  :)

Not yet, but there is always the possibility to change that  :)

Can you change the aircraft itself in that program ? ie put an F-104 T-tail on a Phantom etc.

A quick mod to ValAstur's Corsair-II for an upper-ventral intake .....

It is not possible to change ingame aircraft...you can add things, but not change 'em.

One (labelled as up to the newest Strike Fighter 2 standard) is available on CombatACE forum.  I've downloaded a copy if no-one else has an account or wants to go through the trouble of registering.

I'm registered to that site with the same nick, but due to technical trouble with ISP, I'm not able to reach that site.

Those look great: well done.  :)

You may find this thread interesting over on What-If: http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,18821.0.html

I know that one. The guy called Spinners is a colleague of mine. We both are pretty active over at Combatace.

[dy031101]

Due to the quality of the stuff displayed...... is there any ROCAF (Taiwanese) what-if in the line-up you have?  :)

Not yet, but there is always the possibility to change that  :)

Check PM (the newer one).  Let's see if there is one more item to add into the potential of that possibility.  :)

[ValAstur]

Hey folks

Sorry for not having been around a while. Real life® keeps me busy.

Please specify what air superiority camo you exactly mean. All in all grey? Or the one sported by the AIDC Ching Kuo:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DOqSTiSBP3U/S6kRnS9fd7I/AAAAAAAAAic/QyxUrX3ptCc/s1600-h/0+capa.jpg

[dy031101]

Please specify what air superiority camo you exactly mean. All in all grey? Or the one sported by the AIDC Ching Kuo:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DOqSTiSBP3U/S6kRnS9fd7I/AAAAAAAAAic/QyxUrX3ptCc/s1600-h/0+capa.jpg

I meant to say the two-tone grey one as used by the F-104 and F-5 (see here).

The camo scheme of Ching-Kuo is likely used to emphasize a low- to medium-altitude air combat role within airspace over or closely around Taiwan itself (in real-life because Mirage 2000 would handle high-altitude interception).  I couldn't help to wonder if ROCAF F-14 or F-15 would have somehow tried to adopt a more-aggressive stance against PLAAF B-52......

======================================================

Actually, now that you brought up the one used by Ching-Kuo......

Maybe make this (backstory: licence production secured after fall of Soviet Union but before Sino-Russia reproachment) three-dimentional as well?

I have a few more ideas, but as they require aircraft that don't seem to be included in the stock game, I think I'll wait for the current queue of requests from me to clear and try not to cut off others who might want to make their own requests, too......