Air War! v1.0
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"Greetings Gentlemen! You have been selected to partake in a one of a kind air war. Select your choice of air craft and engage the enemy in a series aerial dogfights - your collective team score will determine the winner. You're encouraged to use the rugged terrain of this region to shake and flank your enemies whenever possible. Bombing downed enemies as well as the enemy runway is also encouraged. Only the best will survive! Good luck and Godspeed!"


Installation
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Extract Air_War.rfa to "\Battlefield 1942\Mods\bf1942\Archives\bf1942\levels" wherever that folder may reside (usually C:\Program Files\EA GAMES\)


Objectives and notes:
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Air_War is a Team Deathmatch Battlefield 1942 map centering on aerial combat. It was developed under BF1942 v1.45 using Battlecraft 42 v1.1.

This is my first Battlefield 1942 map and actually my first released map since the days of Doom 2. *argh, give me a cane...* so I apologize in advance for it's simplicity... oh, and I guess I should also be apologizing for subjecting the BF1942 community with another dogfighting map as well. 

Now that that is all over with let me give you some background on the map. I love Coral Sea. A lot of people knock it saying it caters to plane campers and the like. Personally, I like it because it gives everyone who wants to play it an opportunity to fly, bomb, and dogfight. I specifically love being able to out fly my opponent by being able to duck around sharp cliff faces causing them to be flanked, to completely lose me, or even to take themselves out of the action by slamming into the ground.  This is the purpose of my map!  I've constructed it to be a map where being a good pilot matters. There are steep cliffs, huge jagged mountains, deep trenches and gullies. This map is even fun to fly by yourself just to test your own abilities, in fact I suspect many adventurous pilots will suffer more deaths to the terrain than to their enemies. 

There are two bases, one in the Northeast corner of the map and one in the Southwest corner. They're pretty barebones, a hanger, a barracks, an uncapturable flag, an AA gun, and of course the planes. I was struggling with which planes to add, both because of balance and simple coolness factor, so I did the one thing that will make those of you who appreciate historical accuracy cringe the most and added EVERYTHING. Oh, not only did I add everything, I added LOTS of everything:

Axis
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10 BF109 (2 spawns of 5)
10 Zero (2 spawns of 5)
5 Aichival (1 spawn of 5)
5 Stuka (1 spawn of 5)

Allies
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5 Mustang (1 spawn of 5)
5 Spitfire (1 spawn of 5)
5 Corsair (1 spawn of 5)
5 Yak9 (1 spawn of 5)
10 SPD (2 spawns of 5)

For a potential total of 30 planes and 40 seats per side! How's the balance? I don't know, but for training or organized dogfights you can choose WHATEVER you want. For large fights? I seriously doubt a 64 player dogfight would be anything but chaos but you're welcome to try it if you're insane.

The bases are literally carved into the rock making them more difficult to bomb than, say an open field. The bases have purposely been positioned near the edge of the map boundaries to make bombing or "spawn camping" more challenging. I've only included one not so amazingly well positioned AA gun per base for defense - I would really like you to get in your plane and take off and defend your base from the sky. There are 4 AA guns "hidden" high in the mountains throughout the map. They are NOT easy to get to and will require you to be fairly skilled to parachute onto them. In regards to their positions, their effectiveness remains to be seen but if you NEED to bail out you can always try to aim for one of them. Speaking of which, this map is horribly unfriendly to bailers or infantry in general - the terrain is VERY rugged, there are no roads or paths. You should be able to kill yourself with grenades or misadventure in almost every case, however. There are 2 flat and open farms on the map that anyone bailing should try to hit if a hanger can't be reached. You can easily kill yourself by trying to cross the rugged terrain in the included jeeps, or if you value your life (SUCKER!) you can have a teammate land in the open field and pick you up in a two seater.

That's about all I can think of. I hope I see this map on some servers since I'd love to come kick all of your asses on it.  :)

Trencher (trencher@phloored.org)