Fleet Defender (Microprose)(1994)

[CarlosTex]

#4085

Hi all!

Fleet Defender is one of the finest flight simulations for MS-DOS. It simulates the venerable F-14 Tomcat, an aircraft which is commonly as misunderstood as it is famous.

This game is my absolute DOS passion. I learned to fly the Tomcat really effectively, with a fantastic flight model and extremely detailed and powerful AWG-9 radar.

Unlike most of its predecessors this game is not player centric, which means the Battlefield is very much alive and things progress whether you take off or not.

Campaign cenários were fantastic: cole war gone hot what its, and also campaigns inspires in real life historical military campaigns like for instance Operation El Dorado Canyon.

Graphically it was very good. Instead of just filled polygons the game used texturing for all aircraft. The player Tomcat looks exceptionally good.

There is so so much to talk about this game, my fingers would hurt from typing.

[evilcommiedictator]

#4086

I remember Dad playing this, I never played it in the end, but I assume it’s like most MPS flying games, pretty simple to learn, with randomly generated missions and a good difficulty curve?

MPS did so many flying games, looking them up now I didn’t realise they did 3 Stealth Fighter games, 3 F-15 games, Gunship + Gunship 2000, plus the very fun 1942 and B-17 games, very easy to play all of them, especially compared to 2000-era flying games!

[taxalot]

#4087

I do remember this one for looking quite graphically impressive at the time, but also for the absolutely superb manual it came with.

[CarlosTex]

#4088

Actually Fleet Defender steered away from the older MPS Sims, it’s not player centric, and while missions are not randomly generated there are loads of variables that introduce a lot of randomness and variation to the same mission. So its pretty common that a familiar missions play differently every time.

Let me give an example: on the El Dorado Canyon campaign there’s a specific mission with a pair of Lybian MiG-23’s that might or not do a high speed low altitude cruise missile run against out carrier. You can be flying back home and arrive in shock only to discover your carrier has been hit.

Sometimes you can watch planes from other nations clash. It is quite common to watch Greek and Turkish planes skirmishes, and in the North Cape scenarios neutral Swedish Viggens can intercept you, other friendlies and even the soviets. If you don’t leave Swedish air space they’ll shoot.

The game is pretty accessible in easy mode, but you can customize the difficulty really well. Setting everything to Authentic mode is very hardcore and realistic as the simulation allows but also extremely rewarding.

When playing on Authentic mode the learning curve is really steep. Keep this in mind: until the release of the DCS F-14 module, Fleet Defender was the most complex F-14 simulation ever.

[TigerQuoll]

#4089

I think Dos game club could stand to do a few more flight sims. It seems to have been forgotten now, but flight sims were absolutely huge on PCs back in the day. Their heyday might have been waning by the time of fleet defender, but it does look impressive.