Mission 7 - covering choppers over Krasnodar

[VsetciPokapu]

Hi, I´m stucked in this mission. You (+ 1 wingman) are asked to provide a cover for your choppers over Krasnodar AF. There are 2xF-4s + 2xF-5s as a primary threat. I tried it a lot of times with different approaches (low/mid/high alt, fast/slow, F-4s as primary targets/F-5s as primary targets)...but everytime I was shot down.
Does anybody have some advices for right strategy in this mission?

Thanks a lot!

[SorelRo]

Sorry for the late reply, make sure you stay alive on this one. In the end that's your goal. Don't get suckered into dog fight, ask your wingman to cover you, it's best chance you have for the AI to give you some better protection. On your first pass, you should deal quickly with at least 2 planes. This will give you enough advantage to re-position and take the rest of them down. 

[CrispyRoboChicken]

I retried this mission 14 times before I skipped it. This is effectively a 1 vs 6 scenario since the AI wingman is not really contributing anything.

The only way I see how you can win this is by luring the enemies into the SA6 that is south of the big lake. For me the SA-6 shot down 3 F-5 and 1 F-4. The other F-4 was RTB and I then died trying to kill the last F-5. 

For me it was also a very difficult environment since the dark lake makes it very hard to spot planes when you are higher than your target. 

So all in all a very frustrating mission, where I do not see a way to win it without using the SA-6 as cheat. Maybe if your name is Maverick

Good luck to everyone trying this one!

[SorelRo]

Do you tell the AI to cover you? This is the only way he is engaging more or less. Also, using the SA-6 is not a sin. AI is tough lately with all the changes that are added after each update. Sorry if it was a pain. I'll change the conditions to just surviving the mission. A year and a half ago when this mission was put together AI was behaving differently. Who knows how it will behave after the next update. 

[CrispyRoboChicken]

I tried both: "Engage Bandits" and "Cover Me" - for me personally engage bandits seemed to work better, since with cover me the AI would sometimes just fly in formation way to long.

Thank you for you response though  

[суховей]

Hi! 
The mission is imbalanced. Was only able to complete it by turning invulnerability on after more than 15 attempts. 
Two Mig 21 to intercept 6 enemy planes is too little.

 In the first merge I cannot shoot down at least one F-5, because they are well away from the poorly maneuvered radar missiles of the MiG. Further begins a dogfight where it is very difficult to twist the F-5s and I get shot down by other F-5s.

Avoid the enemy to survive? Why take off at all?! 

I suggest increasing the number of planes in a formation to four Mig 21s, then the forces will be more or less equal. 

Four Mig plus  SAM site would equal 6 enemy planes. 

 And by the way, if I remember correctly, in mission 4 of the F-5E campaign (which mirrors the Mig 21 campaign) there was four  F-5E to intercept Mi-8, without F-4!

I hope for your understanding, thank you!

Edited February 9, 2023 by суховей

[SorelRo]

With the new AI they are getting out of whack, I'm working on both set of missions to try to balance it better. It's just that in total there are 75 missions to go through, it's a lot. 

[MickV]

The bandits are also equipped with 1990's era all-aspect AIM-9P5's, which makes a 1v7(?!) merge pretty suicidal. The AWACS ignores Bogey Dope calls about half the time, so maintaining SA is almost impossible, and all it takes is one of the 7(?!) enemy aircraft to get nose-on within 5km and you're toast.

The AI wingman is hit/miss on whether he gets shot down immediately on the first merge or actually does anything useful. So far the best bet seems to be to loiter over the SAM site and hope it takes out 3 or 4 to make it more of an even contest. I think I'm on attempt 12 or 13 so far. Pretty frustrating. 

 

Edit: Just loitering around the south end of the lake does the trick - the SAMs will shoot down all the bandits other than the choppers, which are then fairly easy to clean up. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by MickV

[IxIFelIxI]

Had to try this mission like 20 times before figuring it out. Wingman is a lot more active if you use Execute>Primary and Rejoin. He downed 3, I was able to Fox 1 another on the merge, lure 1 more into SAMs, and Fox 2 last one. 

 

Hope it helps others.

[solidGad]

On 5/8/2023 at 10:13 AM, IxIFelIxI said:

Had to try this mission like 20 times before figuring it out. Wingman is a lot more active if you use Execute>Primary and Rejoin. He downed 3, I was able to Fox 1 another on the merge, lure 1 more into SAMs, and Fox 2 last one. 

 

Hope it helps others.

thanks!