Bouncing Fighters still Possible

[Nicholas Bell 117]

I read an earlier post that in the one of the last patches, TK had made it impossible to bounce FIGHTER type aircraft by giving them 360 degree vision.  I had a different experience this weekend while flying one of Wrench’s excellent F-86 updates in NF5 1953 campaign using my recently purchased SF2E.   I was flying the route (rather than alt-n skipping) and using “GCI” to direct me to the nearest threat rather than following waypoints.  I’m playing with sighting and HUD settings on hard, and not using padlock until I can actually see what I want to padlock.  Makes for a much more surprising environment.

After a bit of zig-zagging my flight stumbled low behind a flight of MiG-15bis and I called my flight to engage air.  I nailed the tail end Charlie from very close range, but of course the rest of my flight aimed high and missed.  When my target started down the rest of the MiG’s broke right and left and a melee ensued.  I ended up losing two with only my kill to show for it.  So the commies won despite being bounced (enemy setting was normal).

Now I don’t know what state the MiGs where in, although they were in good shape and had not apparently previously engaged.  But I definitely snuck up on them without being spotted.  They were not the primary target.  Maybe they were in RTB mode – but they definitely fought like they were “interested” as opposed to wanting to get back to the bar.  In any case it I was happy to see it was still possible to perform a classic bounce even if I don't know why I was able to...

Not that this has any bearing on the AI sighting and my bounce, but I’m using the AIRCRAFTAIDATA.INI and the various AIDATA  contained in the individual aircraft data ini’s from the KAW campaign package in my Germany-centric  setup.   Great stuff, and I really appreciate all the work people have done over the years to improve this sim.  I think that 50’s era jet gun slinging is where SF shines brightest.

[+streakeagle 866]

Build a simple mission with you approaching low from behind an enemy aircraft, sweep vs cap or something like that. If you can get the enemy to keep flying straight despite being completely in his blind spot, enjoy.

 

Sometimes the AI does things they shouldn't, like abandoning their primary to hit AA, etc. Flying straight when they shouldn't is always a possibility, but that had been an absolute standard in the past. No matter what you did, some aircraft would keep flying straight. So, TK revised the code to almost guarantee a defensive reaction. This included disabling the blind arcs listed in the data.ini file. So, unless TK slipped in a big change in the last patch, the AI isn't flying straight because he can't see you. Some other aspect was keeping him flying straight.