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 +some DLC What's this? Strike Fighters 2 by Third Wire Productions is an aging modular series of indie combat flight sims covering a sizeable chunk of Western (mostly American) aircraft between 1950s and 1970s. It's an upgrade over an earlier series of games: Strike Fighters - Project 1, Wings over Vietnam, Wings over Europe and Wings over Israel. Those in turn seem to inherit quite a lot from European Air War. The designer/coder of SF was involved in finishing that one, and he also did some coding for Jane's Longbow 2. He also, apparently, did some acting for X-Com: Interceptor  Yuck! Is it a "hardcore" sim? No, it's a simpler game you can play with a basic joystick (provided it's not a gamepad) keeping only a few keyboard commands in mind. The main thrills come from combat - not from starting your engines. However SF2 doesn't have any tutorials worth mentioning, and the manual is only somewhat helpful. A book or videos on air combat maneuvering is of more use to the player in the end. That, and a printed list of AI quirks, interface oddities, and strange design decisions. Simpler... like Ace combat/HAWX? No. No dozens of missiles per plane. No superweapons. No fancy scripted scenarios. No experimental aircraft. No unlockables. SF2 dumps you into a war, generates missions in a semi turn-based fashion and offers you chances to survive or die on a daily basis. The flight model stays reasonably realistic, the weapon reliability never ceases to disappoint, and under the hood the game models quite a few little details that are overlooked by arcade titles with planes. So, is there a plan for the LP? This is a quick trip through four decades of combat aircraft evolution, warts and all: underpowered, inadequately armed, and painful to handle. There's an approximate map for this trip: some stops will be longer, some shorter.  lick here for the full 2000x4300 image But first check out some extra info to make the map more clear. Generations Fighter generations (sometimes applied to attack planes as well) are just marketing bullshit, like game scores in the press. The generation boundaries are not clearly defined, but the general idea is something like this: I. Take a very surprised WW2 airframe and shove a barely functional jet engine into it. Give it enough fuel to stay in the air for an hour, tops. You might want to give the pilot an ejection seat, but safety is optional. If you think you're badass, sweep the wing backwards. II. Add an afterburner to burn the fuel quicker, and give the plane enough power to go faster than the speed of rock 'n' roll. Provide hydraulic boost to the controls, so that a human pilot actually has a chance of pulling out of a supersonic dive. Install a radar, which gets startled by seeing the Earth. The guided air-to-air missile is king, we shall never need the guns again. III. Holy crap, put at least one gun back in! The missiles can't hit poo poo! But good news - ground targets can't dodge, so our TV repairman made these guided bombs and missiles to use against them. Now we can finally wreck the goddamn evil comm building with one hit, as opposed to carpet bombing the gently caress out of the next door chicken house. Ah, and we've also figured out how to calculate the impact point for unguided bombs, so the pilots no longer need to bomb tents going by their gut feeling while dodging intense ground fire. IV. Machines don't make mistakes, right? Let's put a computer between the pilot and the control surfaces to filter stupidity. Let's also design airplanes in such a manner, that no human can actually fly them without computer aid. If only there were a way to get rid of humans... Missions A half-arsed estimate of what missions I'll be getting in this campaign. CAS means bombing the enemy tanks, before they destroy ours. A2G stands for bombing buildings, air defences and convoys. A2A is anything that involves ruining the day of enemy pilots. Difficulty It's not the estimated difficulty of the missions - you can fail many of them without immediate "game over"-ish consequences. It's the difficulty of basic survival. You're one lucky bastard, if you get two missions into any campaign I've rated Insane. What's left out? A ton of F-4, A-4 and A-7 variants, mostly. I'm also not touching the hundreds of mods for the series. Nor am I going to give much attention to the Mercenary campaigns, that take place over the Desert map, because the mercenary system of renting bombs and buying planes is really inconvenient. Audience Participation The plane voting points are marked on the map. I'll provide more detailed description of the options, when we arrive at them. Note, that the losing aircraft will still be shown off briefly in their own episodes. Also, suggestions for non-offensive names for pilots are welcome. First Name/Last Name/Callsign. We'll need quite a lot of them in the long run, mostly for the graveyard. Before you ask, there is no multiplayer mode. Just very unpredictable AI.
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Oct 3, 2013 22:49
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Season 1. Operation Kadesh - A Lovely Hebrew Mass (P-51D Mustang) First, the campaign intro screen  TL;DR: Britain (using Israel and France) wants to grab the Suez Channel for  , so they go all  against Egypt. In real life they succeeded, but in the end both  and  told them to GTFO, although in different ways.S01E01: 1956.10.29 Here are the shots of pre-mission screens (with Action's HUD  ). Normally, I will stick to map only, but this is the first time, so there you have it. Briefing: Where we find out, what our target is.  Map: Where we see, how far we need to go, and how well the war's going. Also, we can hover the mouse over all of those counters and find out their plane/tank type, their strength in numbers and the current mission. We can also drag our waypoints around a bit.  Loadout: Where we pick today's brand of death. The supply is limited, but usually generous. Fuel and gun ammo are always available.  Roster: This is fairly important. Here we see the pilot stats, which the developer never explained fully, but the higher they are, the better the guys perform. Most important, however, is the ability to click pilots to add them to the flight (or pull them off it). This way I can take more planes on a harder mission, or dump the AI when they would be a burden. The maximum number of pilots on a mission is limited by our plane reserves (squadron strength), shown only on the map screen. Oh, and constantly flying as a full squadron formation will burn through ordnance supplies, wear the people out, and the casualties will eventually skyrocket. The mission video  Zshytt... thanks, YouTube!In which I can't find a single reason to love the plane. Post-mission debriefing. Normally, I'll sum it up in text and post statistics, but this is another first time.  Results. Where I see, that I lost one Mustang. I note in the commentary, but did not notice it while recording.  Statistics. Everyone loves round numbers, right?  Log. Who shot when and hit what. So, that one guy we lost ate a 37mm cannon round...  Roster. ...and survived. Only to be captured. AFAIK, that cannot be cured and he's gone until the end of the war. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2013 22:51
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Madurai posted:That is... an ambitious plan of campaigns, if you're going to play them all to their conclusions.
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Oct 4, 2013 07:05
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S01E02: 1956.10.29 (Still) I never checked time in this game earlier, but the briefing screen of the previous mission said, that we took off at 15:00. Total mission time was given as 1 hour 15 minutes. Mission 2 starts at 15:42. I'm beginning to think that naming the first pilot Emir "Killer7" Parkreiner was sort of fitting after all. Today we go deep  I hate these missions. In the previous one I was only a short way away from the friendly territory. Here it's a long flight to the border (marked with the red line on the map). Bailing out on the enemy side makes you a POW and forces a game over. We'll use the superpower, known as "strength in numbers" The mission video  In which there is a Fagot on fire, and I miscount my guns.  Getting better. Yet we lost two planes, and provided the enemy with two more POWs. Still, two air kills by the squadron show, that even though the Mustang is obsolete, you don't want to wander into its sights. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2013 05:29
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S01E03: 1956.10.29 (Yet again) I was going to play a few missions off-screen before the next video, and show only the map changes and statistics, but things happened in mission 3, and there was stuff to talk about.  At 16:12 we are sent to bomb a very silly target in an enemy airbase. Meanwhile, the Israeli tanks flat out ignore the Egyptian units on the shore, even though each has only about 10 tanks against our bundles of 30. The mission video  In which there are fields of smouldering wreckage and a tale of bitter revenge A somewhat relevant wiki link: a Split S to save your rear end.  Post-video 6 planes lost: 2 pilots captured, 2 MIA (one doesn't simply go missing in a desert  ), 2 wounded, which means they'll slowly recover and rejoin the active roster. I said, the casualties will skyrocket, but not so fast, dammit. And I didn't expect 20 enemy planes to turn up just to meet us.
SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2013 05:39
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IIRC, at one patch level the game did give the player air kills for grounded planes. Then TK fixed it. At the end of this mission I had another 12 active pilots (new blood trickles in), so I switch to 8-plane groups. Surprisingly squadron strength remains at 15 even though we burn through planes like through toilet paper. Galaga Galaxian posted:Three missions in one day, thats quite the combat pace. Do most of them involve such frequent sorties?  Some campaigns in the game can have you fly missions once a week. I know, the intensity can be set in campaign settings files, and here it seems to be connected with the ground war - the troops can't advance unless the player flies a mission, so we fly just for the sake of it, or our tanks freeze in time. Most amazing part is that the game insists on sending us to bomb crap deep in enemy lands with no cover, while there are battles all over the place. However, the first mission of Oct 30 is way, way sillier.
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Oct 8, 2013 07:07
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Does such an intense frequency of sorties have any effect on pilot performance, at least for the AI?
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Oct 8, 2013 07:25
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Bacarruda posted:If you're still taking pilot names: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. For the next campaign after the current one, I'm looking for a name that sounds closer to Egypt. Any ideas?
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Oct 8, 2013 09:24
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S01E04: 1956.10.30 I skip two completely pointless missions, that took place on 1956.10.29, and show the maps. Both missions were done in 8-plane groups, and we scored no kills.  At 16:21 we went to bomb a Comm Building (aka radio shack). One plane lost.  At 15:58 we were sent to bomb a specific fuel tank on an airbase. Those are my favourite strike targets, because you can kill the tank with guns and use the bombs/rockets on the rest of the base. No parked planes, but I did burn a hangar. No friendly losses.Finally, the new day begins. We still have 15 planes, even though yesterday we started with 16 and lost 10. The Israeli supply system works in mysterious ways.  Bomber intercept. Unusual for our squadron, but should not be much of challenge, in theory. The mission video  - Weeeeeee! Look at my smoke trail, guys!In which silver planes blend in with the background, and a strong argument for switching to jets is delivered along with some bombs  4 kills in one  P.S. Found a capture from one of the unsuccessful attempts to record the test video. Can you spot the problem?  BTW, that water in the test clip? We'll never see it until the Northern Sabre campaign. It's a one-map deal. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2013 18:02
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I'm curious, did you know what the enemy's target or heading was? If so, why didn't you fly an intercept to cut them off instead flying at where HQ reported their current position? That, and I really would not want to approach their guns. The AI tends to attack the bombers straight from behind.
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Oct 9, 2013 06:19
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As I said, the cap is from a bad take of the test video 0, where I bring a P-51D with some other planes into 1979 Iceland to attack a Kiev aircraft carrier. And yes, the clock thing is confusing as hell if you're turning.
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Oct 9, 2013 08:09
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S01E05: 1956.10.30 (But a bit later) Only four Egyptian tank counters are left on the map, and the front line is creeping up to the airfields of two MiG squadrons. We're sent on armed recon to look for stuff. The mission video  In which everything starts kind of smart but ends in escalating stupidity  Well, I did kill something! One other plane lost, a fresh POW.  I already know the answer, but make a guess. How long will it take for our hero to recover? Bear in mind, that the war literally can not progress for as long as the player is not flying. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 9, 2013 19:21
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S01E06: 1956.10.31 The world waited with bated breath. It took us almost 24 hours to shag all the nurses, but now we're ready for the real action, and the war can continue.  At last, another CAS mission. Our strength dropped to 13. And there might be a small problem with the enemy numbers.  Either Egypt assembled a superweapon, or they managed to hide a hundred tanks in a desert, or somebody stole our intelligence. I take 12 planes anyway. The mission video  In which we look into the face of the enemy  A quick and dirty job with 2 POWs left behind and a first confirmed KIA. After this Egypt has only two tank units left. P.S. I remembered the reason for the first infinite day of this war. When a designer sets up campaign data, they can specify dates for a major offensive. On those days event frequency goes through the roof, the attacking side gets insane supply and beats the poo poo out of everyone. Good news is, if all goes well we'll be on the receiving end of this nightmare in the attempt at Meteor campaign, and in every single Red [insert word] campaign. Nothing ever happens in Nam. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2013 15:56
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ChaosSamusX posted:So, does something happen if your land units overrun the enemy airbases? Do the air units die/get captured/? If the enemy overruns your base, you fail the campaign.
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Oct 10, 2013 16:46
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S01E07: 1956.10.31 (We do advance about 2 hrs per mission now) Another short trip.  Air Defence Suppression = arrive in the area and kill a quota of things that shoot at planes from the ground. Probably, the mission type with the highest odds of killing you. Those two MiG squadrons must be getting really uncomfortable by now. The mission video  In which we get high, and I try to use certain things in a silly way  I take all the credit and 2 lost planes (KIA, POW) with gratitude. We're off the magic supply, so those start to hurt. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 11, 2013 13:15
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Madurai posted:Looking ahead, I can't help but notice you've omitted the F-105 option in the 1962 "Red Thunder" campaign. Few things are as hilarious as driving the Thud in air-to-air. Normally, you run into a lot of air targets in 1965 Nam on a Thud. Plenty of chances for outrunning missiles and shooting lazy pilots.
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Oct 11, 2013 17:11
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Heck, some anti-bomber interceptors carried only rockets. That is, if you ignore AIM-4D. I swear, that piece of poo poo never guides, and it's the only reason I have the F-4D in the campaign list. I also remember unguided rocket fun in Aces over Europe, I think.
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Oct 11, 2013 18:21
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There's no message for running out of ammo, the gun just stops. Something you learn very well on certain Nam era upgrades of of A-4, where to fit the electronics they cut cannon ammo from 100 rounds per gun to 20. The Mustang is the last plane with the MGs, so their jams won't be a problem. Then there will be cannons that jam, until US switches to M61 Vulcan, which is completely jam-proof in this game. As for the rockets, these are HVAR. They have a very flat trajectory, until the booster burns out, and then they drop. Most other player-flyables in the game use smaller rockets with folding fins and massive dispersion, which start dropping sooner. And you carry them in bigger packages. I'm used to those, and the weapon that actually hits where I aim is just baffling.
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Oct 12, 2013 13:18
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S01E08: 1956.10.31 Got a short one again. Forgot to mention, but at the end of Episode 6 Emir got promoted to Lieutenant. It affects... absolutely nothing, so no wonder it slipped my mind.  Our ground forces keep pushing ahead. The mission video  In which everything goes well  It never dawned on me, but we burn through 80 rockets per mission. We're another 2 updates away from the end of this war. It's, probably, going to be the only campaign I bother to win. You'll see, why. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2013 19:27
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bobthethurd posted:That and I can't tell what 90% of the controls are because the config menu cuts off all of the multi-key settings. https://store.thirdwire.com/man/sf2/Strike_Fighters_2.htm Controls getting cut off.. that might be the deveopler again assuming that everyone has a widescreen monitor.
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Oct 12, 2013 19:51
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bobthethurd posted:That's the thing. I have a widescreen 16:9 It seems like bad formatting of the table and no way to expand or shrink the fields.
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Oct 12, 2013 21:34
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Vietnam tracer fire was actually the inspiration for the red and green lasers in Star Wars. *checks wiki* quote:In addition, he also based the Ewoks' defeat of the Galactic Empire on the actions of the Viet Cong guerrillas who menaced American soldiers during the Vietnam War.
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Oct 13, 2013 07:45
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Suspect Bucket posted:I am enjoying your frequent updates, but I wish the videos were longer. Oh well, always a tradeoff. I did chuckle at "Oh bugger the video's ending already!" That's why don't really want to stay on any later campaigns for too long - the planes, the enemies and the situations become familiar. Time compress in, bang, bang, kaboom, time compress out.
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Oct 13, 2013 08:40
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S01E09: 1956.11.01 (A six-pack) I skip five missions of mostly nothing. A - 1956.10.31  8-plane Armed Recon near Suez again. I decided to be a smartarse and rearrange the waypoints to take a trip over both enemy tank groups. Only, when I arrived at the target area, there were no tanks at all, and we got jumped by MiGs and Meteors, while my squadron buggered off to the north like the last time. Not much to show, except for that warm welcome. Bonus clip (no commentary)  The right wheel was shot off, so I bailed out - another day at the hospital. Two other pilots ended up as POW and MIA. B - 1956.11.01  The remains of the Egyptian troops attempt a morning counter-attack. 4 of us fly defensive CAS, i.e. the enemy tanks are the ones moving now. Nothing of interest happens, except I get so low, I graze the belly of the plane against the sand and survive. No visible damage, but the plane acted like it lost a third of the right wing. This engine doesn't do belly landings - without the gear all planes take damage from the ground and then explode. C - 1956.11.01  Exactly the same deal as the previous mission, only in a different area, and with less sand in my face. Oh, and as you see the two MiG squadrons finally redeployed deeper. Now everyone hangs out near Cairo. D - 1956.11.01  Friendly tanks go on another offensive. 4 of us help out, even though there is a small problem with supplies.  We're so out of rockets, I can't fully equip everyone. I end up giving myself and 1-3 the usual 10 rockets, while 1-2 and 1-4 get 2 500-lb bombs each. You can only hang bundles of 6 or 4 rockets on the P-51D hardpoints, and there is no way to equip less than 4. Emir got promoted to Catpain. E - 1956.11.01  Aka the "gently caress it" mission. There are no enemy tanks left, nothing is going on, and the game tries to send us on pointless strikes or patrols. I boot the sim and immediately quit. Mission failed, but no harm done, and the world time moves forward. Our tanks capture Suez. Which brings us to today's episode.  Fine, game, I'll do a Combat Air Patrol, I don't need rockets for that. The briefing tells you to go and shoot down whatever, but in fact one of the enemy flights is marked as the primary target. Nobody will tell you, which one, and the mission can be completed even if you kill some planes from other squadrons. The mission video  In which the MiGs seem to suffer from major brain and manufacturing defects  So, 2 air kills makes it 6 total, and Emir is now an ace. The only ace on the entire map - that's something I can easily check, because all friendly and enemy squadron aces are reported when you hover your mouse over the map icons. There are no benefits for the player. However, an AI pilot, who survives to become an ace, turns into a god of war. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2013 17:38
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Ace MiG-17 is something you never want to see, because it can follow you through every maneuver, unless you hit the afterburners and run away. Ace AI also gets a boost to gun and missile accuracy. Ace F-15A wingman can score kills faster or as fast as the player. The best/worst part about "acing" is, that it applies to any pilot with 5 or more kills, regardless of their original skill and experience.Soup Inspector posted:I don't want to step on your toes, though, so would that be cool with you, SelenicMartian?
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Oct 14, 2013 20:31
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S01E10: 1956.11.02 (The End) Before I show the "grand" finale of this campaign, here's a bonus (commented) video. Non canon clip, didn't happen!  I wish, every minute and a half went like that... well, not exactly like that... in fact, I'd rather see the exact opposite. Things you can do to improve survival rates, short of dropping the sim difficulty. - Refly option on the debrief screen. Let's you replay the exact same mission, again, with the benefit of hindsight. I'm not using this because it takes away the sense of wonder and whattheChristaMiGisdivin... - "Reroll" a mission. If you return to the main menu before the game saves the progress (it saves only if you hit Continue in the debrief screen), and then reload the save, the game will generate a different mission. It will have a different type or area of operation or weather, the ground forces may attack different targets. The same happens if you restart a campaign. Although, sometimes the game is quite insistent on sending you into specific areas. I'm using this a lot, otherwise many missions would be us bombing a latrine in the middle of enemy fighter training grounds. That is a job for F-105D. - Skip mission by quitting. See Episode 9. - One other option, which I don't use, but explain in the main mission video. And now...  CAS in Suez? But there weren't any enemy tanks left! Well, just for this one time, the campaign spawned a massive T-34 unit in Cairo. And it's already rolling into Suez, where 11 Shermans are holding ground. We are still short on rockets, but a donkey cart delivered another 10 overnight, so we have 13 total. This is almost epic. The mission video  In which we try to say goodbyes, while the game goes a bit odd  We succeeded, even though the enemy tanks wiped out every single defender. Here's the final squadron roster.  If the game actually modelled the difficulties of leaving a plane with no wing or tail, the KIA count would be way higher. And now, what we've all been waiting for, for 17 missions.  ... Some historically relevant text over a shot of an F-4 above a city having an orgasm. Due to budget, the games often use the one-size-fits-all approach: one victory and one defeat artwork for all campaigns on a specific map; one loading screen per game. I just love loading into a P-51D mission staring at an F-14. Also, what the hell, according to the text there's a major air offensive incoming, and the player is not invited?! While I'm at it, let's look at the credits. The screen is available at any moment, but now's a good time to bring it up.  Of course, in the decade of the series' existence there were more people involved in the production. There were even beta testers at some point. But lately that's really the entire crew. They say, that free-to-play tablet SF games are bringing most of the money now.  Next up - Egyptian Meteor F.8. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2013 06:10
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Kangra posted:Does the game model anything in particular with prop planes and high mach numbers? I think you hit over 800 kph in that one dive a while back -- does it affect how the plane handles as you go faster?
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Oct 17, 2013 07:07
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Gothsheep posted:I was kind of wondering at that point if stress can ever damage the plane. Can you go so fast a wing gets torn off or something? I noticed at one point in a video you had a red-out for about half a second.
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Oct 17, 2013 07:36
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LordPants posted:If I wanted to drop thirty bucks and just smoke Migs or whatever, which is the best game to get? The base game? Vietnam?
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Oct 17, 2013 10:42
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I apologize for the delay, the Meteor's first mission footage was recorded days ago, the commentary is written, but my throat is still undergoing maintenance, and I can't really comment on a 13 minute clip without any semblance of voice. What I can tell about that mission is, that we finally kick rear end, and our generated squadron is a combination of people, who saw a plane for the first time yesterday, and people who are a few kills away from getting an ace badge. It's magnificent.
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Oct 20, 2013 10:35
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Season 2. Operation Kadesh - Go down, Moses (Meteor F.8) No need for the campaign intro screen - it's exactly the same as before. S02E01: 1956.10.29 (It's THAT day again) The world of Strike Fighters 2 is split into two major sides, FRIEND and ENEMY. The unmodded game is designed for the player flying the FRIEND side. This is the only campaign I'll be flying as the ENEMY, for two reasons: a) This is one of the few campaigns, in which flyable planes are normally present on the ENEMY side. b) This is one of the early campaigns, so surface-to-air missiles are not yet a part of standard air defences. The FRIEND side doesn't have a single model of SAM, except for those used by the ships in 1979. The entire West Germany or Israel? Not a single Western SAM unit, ever.  Now, to fly Egyptian you'll need to either unpack and edit some of the game's data files, or do it in the Campaign Customizer DLC. It's the kind of DLC, that lets you fly mercenaries on F-16s in 1965 Vietnam in a couple of clicks.  Like a P-51D, a Meteor F.8 won't offer you many loadout options. These rockets are new, though. They're fat, ugly, and drop like a stone.  Our generated roster is vastly different from the one in the Israeli campaign. We have 3 pilots with 3 kills already (something I hadn't noticed, until I finished the mission), but the squadron stats are utter crap. This happens, because in the game data there is a file, which defines training quality for every nation in the game. Most FRIEND countries are ranked really good. ENEMY nations are ranked at Star Wars storm troopers level, except for maybe the USSR pilots.  The starting squadron strength of six is not funny. I'll stick to flights of four, then. The mission video  In which we celebrate the gains, lament the losses, rip and tear  Ah, much better! 4 personal kills in one mission. Two wingmen kills. One of those guys has 4 total now. I think, I'll be taking the leading three pilots for the next hunt. We lost 2 planes, but we're defending and flying over home turf, so POW outcome is less likely. One pilot just shrugged it off, one pilot is wounded: we'll have to make do without Wafai for a while. P.S. How am I actually supposed to pronounce Mystère? Speaking of, on my system the game skips "è" and any other symbol, that is not a part of a basic Latin alphabet. The German map loses umlauts in location names. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 23, 2013 21:49
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Soup Inspector posted:but when you select airbrakes open or closed you can hear the motors working away. Soup Inspector posted:Aside from this campaign, are there any other ones where we'll run into opponents using the same aircraft? If you generate a single mission in 1948 Israel, during the first war, you'll see slightly different Israeli and Egyptian Spitfires fighting each other. There's actually one Egyptian Spitfire squadron on the map in the current campaign, but they seem to stay at home. Which was good for the previous season, because, well... People on a fan forum once did a test: 15 Ace P-51Ds + the player vs. 16 Ace Spitfires. The average score was Spitfires winning 16:01. They have cannons. The only thing that saves you from them normally is low Arab pilot quality. Soup Inspector posted:Do they ever try to actively gang up on their opponents? Usually, the AIs try to operate in pairs. One guy is attacking, one is flying cover.
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Oct 25, 2013 20:41
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I was gonna say "Why not just look over to see if they're open" I can use the mouse to look around. If I had a third hand I'd be using that all the time. I could bind the view to the POV hat on the stick, but that would make it even more awkward, like using arrow keys to look in an FPS. The games support TrackIR, but my unit is at least 5 years old, and the room layout is far from perfect. When I plugged it in before starting the LP, it made my pilot headbutt and headbang at the same time. Had to ditch the idea of actually scanning the skies. Nesher's origin story - yeah, that's something  
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Oct 25, 2013 21:25
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Oh, I wanted to mention that in the previous campaign. I don't think, the Mustang in SF2 drains its rear tank first. So, unless you lose some fuel at the loadout screen, you won't see it become nimble.
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Oct 26, 2013 06:49
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Glazius posted:What was that sound at about 9:40 that sounded like someone trying to blow their nose? Air rushing through something?
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Oct 27, 2013 05:33
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S02E02: 1956.10.29 (Twists of F8) Strike Fighters: Project 1 was released eleven years ago, on the 27th of October 2002. The initial release was a bad start, as what hit the shelves was still a beta. Still, the series took off somehow.  We're resupplied back to 6 planes. The ground counters blocking the enemy in the east have less than 10 tanks each, so they can get overrun rather quickly. Our mission is to intercept a Meteor flight coming in to bomb a neighbouring airfield. Perhaps, they were the ones who hit us, too. I assemble the 3+ kill team. Also, in SF2 the closer the target is, the more of a clusterfuck the waypoints are. The mission video  In which our flight almost gets a double-digit kill count  2 planes lost, one decent pilot wounded. One AI pilot becomes an ace with 7 kills total  Lesson of the day: a few half-arsed bursts in the first seconds of the fight can backfire massively ten minutes later. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 27, 2013 05:51
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The latest reference to a major SF2 sale I could find dates back to May 2012, and it ran for one day only. As for pick "one or two", I'll quote myselfSelenicMartian posted:The base SF2 is rather empty. Vietnam is limited - you'll never see any ground war there. Europe and Israel are the best choices, because even without the expansions each has a ton of different flyable and enemy planes. Europe probably has the greatest variety: from Hunter to Harrier to F-15. North Atlantic is an arse. The water is pretty, the F-14A is pretty, but the sea battles don't really work, and the ground war involves tanks driving up cliffs. TrackIR is even more awesome if you try it in something like ArmA2. You can keep your gun aimed in one direction, while looking around for other threats.
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Oct 27, 2013 09:17
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S02E03: 1956.10.29 (Alarm!) Previously we intercepted a strike flight coming for our neighbours. This time we get a scramble mission, because the bombers are heading for us. Also, as you see, the front line is moving. Regardless of your successes in dogfights, the ground combat is what determines the course of a war. When we did CAS missions, we could directly affect the outcome of battles. Now we can only kill things, that may or may not attack our tanks or our CAS flights. "Fighter pilots make movies; attack pilots make history." The mission video  In which we have extreme difficulties hitting slow targets flying in a straight line  I don't like this squadron's performance one bit. Well, I liked that one bit in the previous mission, but it seems to be a fluke.  Ace, huh.   P.S. I'll be switching to rapid progression mode now: 1 episode per 6-7 missions. The idea is to have two more episodes with the Meteor, and then get to the first vote. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Aug 22, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2013 14:30
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 11:15 |
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Strabo posted:It's weird that all aircraft in this game seem to go down after taking only very few hits. But then again, I'm used to Il-2 Sturmovik, where all the planes are notoriously hard to kill. The really weird thing happened, when TW released WWI-themed First Eagles, that used the SF engine. In the early builds one 7.62mm bullet could break a wing off. That, and flak gunners had pinpoint accuracy, so unless you went under 200m they'd blast you with the first shot. The times were zany over the trenches, until the patches started rolling in.
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Oct 28, 2013 16:51
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