Practice missions

[sthompson]

I'm up to mission 7, and love the immersion, but I'm not sure I've hit anything yet with my own guns or bombs except the bomber in Mission 6. Clearly I need practice. But it's pretty frustrating to fly all the way to Evreux and then get knocked out of the sky before I've even fired my first shot. I'm wondering if there are some practice missions that give a sense of the action over Normandy without making you start in England? I really don't have time to run the mission twice in one evening because of the long flight over the Channel .

 

Also, I've noticed a few bizarre things with the AI and weather. I've already reported the weather in the DCS bugs\objects forum, but I don't know where the AI issues should be reported. Here are some things I experienced.

 

1) On Mission 7 some of the AI lag way behind the group and are not really part of the action when the furball starts. 

2) On Misssion 7 when I have the enemy in sight, and even after the furball has begun, when I give the "engage bandits" command to my flight I get "negative" for answers. Slackers!

3) I've noticed that "dead" AI are sometimes found flying around in very wide circles, inverted, with the prop freewheeling at maybe 15 rpm, trailing fuel and oil, at about 110 knots, and not losing or gaining altitude. I've sometimes accelerated time to watch this and they do it until the sun goes down. I noticed this after getting shot down myself in missions 5 and 7.

4) On mission 6 when you turn to 180 degrees the raindrops pass you from behind, and when you turn to 270 they pass you from right to left. That shouldn't be happening. Once in the air the rain should always appear to be coming from your reciprocal heading since you are moving with the wind.

5) On mission 6, even though the wind is strong from direction 350 the ATC tells you to land on runway 05, i.e. with a nasty cross-wind, instead of runway 35, which is perfectly aligned!

Edited February 1, 2021 by sthompson
Added another issue

[Rudel_chw]

45 minutes ago, sthompson said:

 I really don't have time to run the mission twice in one evening because of the long flight over the Channel .

 

 

You can trim the aircraft for level flight and then use LCtrl + Z to speed up time. Press LCtrl + Y to see the status bar with the time acceleration factor on its right. Press LShift + Z to return time to normal. I use this a lot on longer flights.

[Reflected]

That's a great advice from Rudel. Time acceleration is your best friend during long missions. I couldn't play them without it. Use only 3x-4x, so the aircraft is still easy to control, but time goes much faster. You cross the channel in 2 minutes.

 

I'm aware of all those issues, but unfortunately I can't do anything about them. They're core-DCS issues, not related to this specific campaign. A good advice is to make sure you don't fly too fast ,so that your formation can keep up - especially at high altitude. Don't use more than 46" MP and 2600 RPM. 34" and 2400 RPM is even better for cruising. Also, in a dogfight your No.1 priority should be not to get shot down. Always check your 6 and evade. If you get a kill, good, but mainly: don't get shot down.

You can report the AI issues here: https://forums.eagle.ru/forum/423-ai/ 

It's best to include a track for them to see.

 

To practice I recommend the quick start missions that come with the P-51 module, they're great.