For the Rookies: Wingmen Advice

[Olham 164]

Put the four wingman orders on buttons or keys, you can reach and use easy.

The wingmen in OFF are not just decoration - they really follow your orders, and can be a great help.

 

R: Return = the order to make them re-assemble, or to make them break off a fight

 

H: Help = pressed once, it seems to call for your personal wingman (wing 1) only. He will stay near you

most of the time anyway, if possible. When you press "Help", he will attack the enemy next to you.

I had the impression, that, when I pressed "Help" more often, the other wingmen helped me too.

 

S: Split = the order to make them take more distance to each other - useful, when your flight gets

attacked from behind

 

A: Attack = an order, you can use two ways. You can mark a target on your TAC - when you press "Attack"

now, you will make them attack that single target. That also, when you do a ground attack: switch TAC

to buildings or vehicles, mark one, and press Attack.

 

If you don't mark any targets and press attack, they will attack enemies, which are so close, that they

appear red in the TAC - probably the closest of them.

(But careful - I used it sometimes to check, if enemies where near I hadn't seen. But when I flew low, they

would suddenly attack ground targets.)

 

Especially the Help button often saved my bum.

The Attack button is also useful to make them attack the highest flying opponents (for their own sake) -

you just mark the top one.

 

A last note: take care of your wingmates, help them, if you can, and they'll help you. And you want to bring

them back home with you - someone must be witness for your claims.

[ArisFuser 2]

Very helpful, thanks Olham, ..."H" is definitely a must ;)

[Bullethead 12]

A: Attack = an order, you can use two ways. You can mark a target on your TAC - when you press "Attack" now, you will make them attack that single target. That also, when you do a ground attack: switch TAC to buildings or vehicles, mark one, and press Attack.

 

Things get a little complicated when attacking ground targets. The only way I've found to do it is to pause the game and use the Target-Player external view to be sure I've selected what I want them to attack. And this takes a LONG time when you're in the Building and Vehicle TAC modes, because there are so many of them you have to cycle through to get to what you want. Plus, due to the camera not being able to go below ground level, and the fact that the Target-Player's line of sight is fixed, sometimes you can't tell what you've selected because it's out of sight below the bottom of your view. On top of this, while you can select a target with the game paused, the wingman orders don't work unless the game is running. So you have to remember to give the attack order after you unpause the game .

 

To make matters worse, things in OFF aren't always on the TAC page you expect them to be. Most of the "vehicles" shown on TAC are actually immobile flak guns, but some guns also show up in the Building TAC mode. Same with entrenched troops. Marching troops, however, all seem to be "vehicles". AFAIK, there are zero "ships" in OFF at all, so that TAC mode is completely useless.

 

With that said, the most common ground targets you're ordered to attack are balloons, airfields, and rail yards. Here are some tips on these:

 

Balloons (aka "Spotters")

Normally, you don't tell your wingmen to attack balloons because you want the kill yourself. However, sometimes you'd rather they eat the flak while you deal with the defending fighters, if any. Problem is, the actual observation balloons up in the air (what you want the wingmen to shoot at) don't show up in TAC at all, nor can they be selected as such. Instead, you have to look for the thing on the ground under the balloon, which is usually a "vehicle". In the external view, it usually looks just like any other flak position in the area, EXCEPT you can see the rope to the balloon rising vertically out of it. And sometimes that rope is ALL you can see due to the angle you're at compared to the spotter.

 

Airfields

Airfields are unique in that in Airfield TAC mode, they show up as single objects. When viewed in Vehicle or Building modes, OTOH, they are huge clusters of hangars, flak guns, trucks, etc. AFAIK, there's no way to tell each wingman to attack a different building, which gives you something of a Hobson's choice here...

 

The "airfield" designation is tied to a specific group of buildings somewhere near the airfield (varies with airfield layout). These buildings are NOT the same thing as all the hangars and such around them, which you normally think of as the airfield. In fact, they usually seem to be located on the other side of the runway from the hangars. Think of this "airfield" object as the control tower, HQ, personnel quarters, the mess, etc. Anyway, this is what your wingmen will attack if you give them the order from the Airfield TAC mode. They will, however, each attack a separate component of this group of buildings, or so it seems. Also, there seems usually to be less flak around these buildings than around the hangars.

 

To get wingmen to attack hangars, you have to be in Building TAC mode and pick one. The problem here is that you can only pick the one and all your wingmen go for it, which can waste a lot of bombs in overkill. The best way to resolve this is to make your pass down the row of hangars and select one in the middle, so that hopefully wingman bombs that fall long or short will hit one of the others. You, of course, need to aim for one at the end of the row and not the one you've sent the wingmen after. However, it's sometimes hard to tell which hangar you've got selected, even in the Target-Player view.

 

Rail Yards

The "rail yard" designation is tied to a group of buildings, parked rail cars, stacks of crates, etc., and shows up in the Building TAC mode. It's easy to recognize--nothing else looks like a rail yard. The problem, however, is that it's surrounded by many other "buildings", so it takes time to get it selected. These other nearby "buildings" are flak guns, bridges, etc., and as mentioned above, depending on how far away you are when you start looking, you might have DOZENS of other buildings on TAC that you have to cycle through to get to the cluster of triangles which is the rail yard area.

 

On the plus side, however, once you select the right "building", your wingmen appear to bomb different specific objects within the "rail yard" cluster.