Number6

When I go low, the AI's manually-aimed 23mm guns are shredding me. I often get hit and explode before I even see any tracers. Can a manually/optically aimed gun really be that dead-on against low flying jets at near-supersonic speeds? I almost never get hit by SAMs or radar ZSUs, it's these dorks manning towed, unguided AA rigs that are the biggest threat. Should it really be this way?

With the stock WOE etc. campaign setup, when you load a campaign for a given date, you are assigned a computer-generated mission (that may or may not make sense given the battlefield situation, or your own tastes). It would be nice to have more control over this; for example, a one-button option to force the campaign engine to generate a different mission. Going even further, it'd be great if you could generate a custom sortie to attack a target of your choice, or even manually create a sortie for an AI flight. It'd also be nice if you could tell the campaign engine to generate a specific type of mission for your flight (strike, close air support, air intercept, etc.). I haven't found any mods that can do this, at least not within the context of a campaign in progress. Some of these features may be beyond the campaign engine or game interface without major changes. And integrating all this with a GUI would probably be tons of work. But if anyone knows of something like this, please let me know.

If you (or another friendly flight) destroy a runway at an enemy airbase in a mission, does it stop generating flights for some period of time? Or is it automatically "repaired" before your next campaign mission? I guess the same question goes for key radar and SAM sites. I can see how some of that can be re-supplied and repaired, after some period of time. But I hope it buys you a window of time when that site is down, so you can clear out a relatively safe area you can use as a lane for deeper strikes later. This in particular relates to Wings over Europe, but I'm also interested if it's the same for the other SF1 sims. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity...

With a little more Googling, I notice that runways seem to have a "RepairRate=X" line in one of the CAT files. I haven't experimented with it, but maybe tweaking that value would make repairs happen faster or slower.

This complaint is far too old for anyone to care about, but I just wasted a lot of time on a mission (ended up dying) because I couldn't get LGBs to drop from an F-15A in Wings over Europe. After the mission, I figured out it was 99% probable that the reason my LGBs would not release, was because the F-15A doesn't carry a laser designator. It would have been helpful, in the loadout screen, to have a WARNING come up when you load LGBs onto an aircraft with no laser designator. Or perhaps LGBs should not be allowed to be loaded if the A/C doesn't have a designator. Apparently it works when you have a strike mission, because the game magically gives you credit for some other aircraft or ground unit doing the lasing, but if you just try to use LGBs in some other type of mission, they won't work. Grumble.

Still learning basic modding and wanted to add some short-range SAM action to WoE. I added Rebel Ryder's BRDM/SA-9 vehicle, and it is working in-game. However, I can only target it with radar. Even when it is plainly visible in front of me, I can't select it as a visual target (E key). The E key cycles among all the other ground vehicles/objects in the area, but does not "pick up" the newly added BRDM. Any reason why a new enemy ground vehicle would NOT be picked up as a valid visual target? Anything obvious I forgot to do? It is flagged as SOVIET in the vehicle data ini file. Thanks for any feedback.

Noob question: If I add a third-party developed aircraft with an appropriate service period, will the AI automatically start using it in campaigns, if the country and date is correct for that aircraft? Or do I have to do something more detailed to get the AI to use third-party aircraft in campaigns? Thanks...

Thanks!

This is with a nearly stock install of WoE. During takeoff roll, in many aircraft (such as the F-15A), the nose starts to rotate (by itself) at what seems like a lower-than-realistic airspeed. I practically have to hold the stick partially forward to prevent lifting off before I have the airspeed I feel is needed. I don't suppose there is an easy way to reduce this tendency to pitch up during the takeoff roll? (Same issue presents itself on landing--you have to scrub a ton of speed before the nosewheel will come down.) Flight Model is set to Hard.

In WoE, and presumably the rest of the SF1 series, there are difficulty/realism options such as Weapon Difficulty, which influences how realistic your weapon performance and parameters are. Do these difficulty settings also affect the enemy AI aircraft and weapons? I.e. if I select "hard" weapon effectiveness, my missiles are subject to certain constraints... does this setting also affect the performance of the AI weapons? Or are the AI weapons always operating on some fixed level regardless of the difficulty I select? Thanks.

New to this series; are there any mods that add "bitching betty" style audio features to the avionics of the later aircraft? To annunciate stall warnings, low fuel, pull up, terrain, etc? Thanks.

I tend to be a few years behind the curve when it comes to gaming, so I'm new to the Strike Fighters series. Enjoying Wings over Europe so far (no mods, with the 2008 patch). However, I have noticed that when flying the A-10, even on heavily loaded, long range strike missions, my fuel quantity indicator(s) don't seem to start declining until I've flown a couple of hundred miles. I don't have any external fuel. Basically I can fly 200 miles to primary target and back to base again with something like 80% of my fuel remaining. That doesn't seem right. Wikipedia says the combat radius for A-10 is only about 250 nautical miles/300 statute miles. In the F-15A, I often run out of fuel, so that seems to be working as expected. Fuel difficulty level is set to "hard". Also wish there was more flexibility/realism in manually selecting targets for LGBs and Mavs though, but that's another issue.