To Fly As A Wingman In Single Missions

[Wrench 10,454]

TO FLY AS A WINGMAN IN SINGLE MISSIONS (SF2 & FE/FE2)

by pagsab

- Start the sim, and open Options - Gameplay to ensure that you will start on the airfield.

- Exit to the main menu and click on Single Mission and then on Create Mission.

- Choose your plane type, year, mission type, map, time of day, weather and enemy activity as usual.

- If you have the SF2 mission editor installed, click on the pen button to open it, and make any desired changes to the month and to individual flights (for instance, you could delete all other flights and shift the position and altitude of your own waypoints to create a formation training flight entirely over friendly territory).

- If you are playing FE2, or SF2 without the mission editor, click Accept and then Fly, let the mission load, and then press Escape to abort on the runway.

- In either case, you should now have a button to save the mission.  Press this, amend the filename if desired, and accept the save.

- Press Exit twice to return to the main menu, and a third time to leave the sim.

- Navigate to your Missions folder, which should be in Desktop – [your name] – Saved Games – Third Wire – [the name of the version you are playing].

- Open the Missions folder, find the file you just saved, and open it with Notepad.

- Scroll down to the [Aircraft Mission 001] block, select the entire block from the title to the numbers assigned to individual planes, and copy it (Ctrl-C).

- Scroll down to just past the last Aircraft Mission block, widen slightly the gap before the next section, and paste the copied block into the gap (Ctrl-V).

- Amend the number of the copied Aircraft Mission to one more than that of the Aircraft Mission preceding it (so you would put 002 if there are no other missions besides your own).

- Reduce the Size of the copied Aircraft Mission by one, and cut the Size of the original Aircraft Mission 001 to 1.

- If you wish, amend the Name of the copied Aircraft Mission and the Number assigned to its first plane so that they differ from your own.

- Close the mission file, and agree to save your changes.

- Restart the sim, and click on Single Mission – Load Mission.

- Check that the selected filename matches, and click on Accept and then Fly.

- In FE2, your leader should start superimposed with you – momentarily disorienting, but not a problem unless your Collision setting is Hard.  In SF2, your leader starts flying above the airfield.  In either case, once airborne you can press Ctrl-Y to target the nearest friendly plane, and then use F4 to toggle the padlock view on and off to help you locate and track your leader (who may be a subordinate leader in larger formations).

- Leaders generally fly at a stately pace, so at full throttle it should not take too long even in SF2 for you to catch up.  A greater risk if you do not throttle back in good time (or use speed brakes if you have them) is that you will overshoot your leader and face a difficult recovery.

- You are now ready for prolonged practice of formation flying skills, which are hard to master especially if flying fast, close, off to the side or with multiple aircraft.  The key technique is anticipation, moving your throttle and joystick before a problem becomes evident so that you are not always ‘porpoising’ back and forth due to successive belated over-corrections.

- Once you achieve tolerable stability, you may risk a quick glance at your map with Alt-M, using W if need be to delete any waypoints you just missed.

- You will lose formation if you use the Autopilot, time compression or time jumps, so flying as a wingman is best suited to shorter missions in which you can simulate the entire flight from takeoff to landing in real time, perhaps with a brief flurry of combat in the middle.