Quote:
Originally Posted by Avimimus
It would be really nice to see more period and airplane specific tactics. It would also be nice to see the possibility of greater coordination by formations (eg. trying to outclimb other formations, regrouping, group turns etc.)
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That's something i liked a lot back in the day when flying European Air War. The AI didn't really do it on their own, but that sim had a very good radio command system and you could do wonders with your own flight. For example, you could be leading a dozen P47s on an escort mission and split them up as you saw fit: four of them would be cruising slightly ahead of the bombers in a small sweep/early warning role and to break up head on attacks by enemy fighters, four more would be assigned to close escort at the back of the formation and your section would be flying above them all, able to see everything, direct the show and intervene wherever help was needed.
This was very satisfying because it gave you opportunities to win against greater enemy numbers by using good positioning. Suddenly, it wasn't all about shooting everything down, but it became about exercising crowd control against the enemy and preventing him from doing his job. Splitting the sections up that way, i could deny free reign to enemy fighters in all of their attack profiles by positioning wingmen in their way and whenever i saw tracers, i just dove down and attacked whatever enemy fighter managed to slip by them.
It's also a good illustration of how responsibilities change when moving up through the ranks, a flight leader needs to be able to see what happens and direct the action appropriately even more than being able to shoot down the enemy himself. It was like having a small strategy game within each mission, great fun.
I don't know if this could be done in SoW, because EAW's command system made heavy use of padlock.
For example, if you gave a "regroup" command it meant "stay close to me and carry on with the mission, engaging when necessary" (different to the disengage command, which prevented them from engaging). However, if you targetted one of the bombers you escorted and ordered a regroup for the third flight, it meant " the four of you, go on with the mission, aka escort, but do so in the vicinity of the friendly bomber i have targetted". This way, you could position a flight to cover the back of the bomber formation in close escort.
Since fewer and fewer people use padlock nowadays, maybe it would need a "cursor" function to have commands like that, eg by pressing shift a command cursor appears in the middle of my view. Then, while panning my view i can direct my wingmen to do what i want around a specific part of the sky or in relation to the position of other aircraft, friednly or enemy (ie, order them to "attack the left side of the enemy bomber formation", by holding shift and looking at it before pressing the "attack" command key). It would be cool, it wouldn't need padlock to be enabled and it would also be faster than sequencially going through all the targets by padlock, just look at where you want things to happen, hold the cursor modifier key and give the command. Especially with TrackIR and the cursor key assigned to a HOTAS button, it would be a breeze, fluid and fast.
06-28-2010, 12:29 AM
how a simple question has the abiility to set off WW3 on these and the zoo forums. 
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