Played mission 1 four times due to various odd issues. My first attempt had the most serious issue imo: Saint didn't fight me, and on checking Tacview I note that not only did Aggressor Saint not spawn, it actually looked like the "replacement" Saint - that does the stuff after the 1v1 training - spawns while I am still on the carrier, resulting in 2 Saints active on the map at the same time:
I found a comment that probably slipped under the radar in this thread suggesting that hitting backspace (normally to hide the stick) while on the carrier causes this issue, and that appears to be right, I was able to reproduce instantly spawning "2nd Saint" by hitting backspace on the carrier on a retry. I then worked around by binding another key to hide stick, but thought this is worth reporting.
Third try Aggressor Saint somehow manages to plunge into the water appearing to result in the mission getting stuck with confused me alone in the sky, but that's probably just me being really unlucky
Fourth try things go mostly well, but I was still somehow lucky enough to trigger some more odd behavior I tried really hard throughout the 1v1 to stay above 5k while Saint conveniently dives whenever I get in the control zone (which I liked - a Saint experience for sure). We fought until I near Joker, and I tried to call knock it off and end up fumbling a bit with the F10 - resulting in me just dipping below 5k while my hands were on the keyboard. At which point both the triggers for knock it off AND violating hard deck play at the same time. Not a giant deal because the mission still moved along, but there was one more surprise: after the thing with the fake SAM launch and then RTB, en route to the carrier when we dip below 5k, the hard deck violation trigger played again and I got yelled at for altitude and then instructed to take a cut south for the next round
Had a great time nonetheless and really looking forward to the next missions!
