Always Lead - will I miss much?

[Dirk98]

Guys, are there many who enjoy flying as wingmen (vs.leads) in OFF3? I tried a few 'wingman' flights in OFF3 already but honestly I think there's no good simulation about wingmen yet. I'm aware of the aids with autopilot and time acceleration, but I don't think I'll want to fly wingmen in OFF3 as it is now. Did anyone find it different and enjoyable in OFF3?

I heard it was really hard to program sensible and consistent lead's AI where the wingman is a human, so some games used temporary 'take over' lead/wingman toggle (by keystroke or comms), that worked quite acceptable for critical stages of flight.

Really interesting to hear about your experience and thoughts on this.

Thanks,
Dirk.

[Rick Rawlings]

When you say "miss anything", I don't think you miss any encounters that you would realistically get otherwise. The skies are certainly target-rich enough that you will probably use up all you ammo and be ready to go home before you run out of "bad guys in the sky". I enjoy flying as a wingman because it helps me feel like I am really "working my way up" from the bottom. As of 1.2, the flight leader fulfills all the requisite requirements of an AI flight leader, he keeps you heading in the right direction and initiates combat when the enemy approaches. The warp feature also seems to work fine. My rule of thumb is to never attack enemy a/c unless my flight leader does, even if they show up on TAC. This helps me limit my field of view to what would be reasonable.


Once combat is over, I form back up if possible or if my flight is out of sight I just head for home. Flying by rank now seems to work fine!

Hope that helps somewhat!

RR

[Dirk98]

When you say "miss anything", I don't think you miss any encounters that you would realistically get otherwise. The skies are certainly target-rich enough that you will probably use up all you ammo and be ready to go home before you run out of "bad guys in the sky". I enjoy flying as a wingman because it helps me feel like I am really "working my way up" from the bottom. As of 1.2, the flight leader fulfills all the requisite requirements of an AI flight leader, he keeps you heading in the right direction and initiates combat when the enemy approaches. The warp feature also seems to work fine. My rule of thumb is to never attack enemy a/c unless my flight leader does, even if they show up on TAC. This helps me limit my field of view to what would be reasonable.


Once combat is over, I form back up if possible or if my flight is out of sight I just head for home. Flying by rank now seems to work fine!

Hope that helps somewhat!

RR

Thanks, Rick. I wish it worked like that and basically I'd also like to follow orders as you told once in a while. But in my case, for example, the flight took off and went into an infinite ascending hold (to 10 or 12K per my med setting) above the airfield. I tried to spur it up with time accel but the flight lost or missed the rendezvous with the bombers and so on.

[Rick Rawlings]

Thanks, Rick. I wish it worked like that and basically I'd also like to follow orders as you told once in a while. But in my case, for example, the flight took off and went into an infinite ascending hold (to 10 or 12K per my med setting) above the airfield. I tried to spur it up with time accel but the flight lost or missed the rendezvous with the bombers and so on.

Well, yeah, stuff like that occasionally happens. My flight ended up warping to the middle of the North Sea once before I could click ctrl-X! But in general, the waypoint/warp system under the Fly-By-Rank toggle seems to work pretty well. If what you described above happens again, just land and write it off as an easy flight. They won't all be :whistle:

RR