investigating Mission 14 Has anyone completed this recently ?

[TicTocRock]

Hi

Just wondering if anyone has completed this recently, I am really struggling with the SA2 on this mission.

After destroying the designated target and starting egress that dam SA2 engages me, I have managed to dodge the first two launches it delivers but the third one it fires get's me every time, can't work out what I am doing that is so wrong, four attempts now and the same result, frustrating.

Does anyone have any tips ?

[Jasonmoofang]

Yeah this seems pretty difficult. I was able to fluke it once (missile screamed just overhead) but in an attempt to figure out a reliable strategy I made a custom mission trying to roughly reproduce the params of the mission. Tl;dr, the only reliable strategy I found was to immediately break away from the missile and then pull straight down to the deck full burner - like a 50 degree nose dive straight down.

The problem seems to be that, I'm not sure exactly why, the SA2 only fires when Flip is ~10 miles away from the site (in my attempts anyway) - which is like halfway inside the maximum range. I found it extremely difficult to defeat the missile kinetically when it reaches my posit at ~Mach 2 while I'm barely transonic. An immediate fast and steep dive though reliably causes the missile to hit the ground as it tries to pull lead. This is even more effective in the mission itself since as it turns out there is a bump in the terrain between the egress direction and the missile coming in.

[Solid_84]

Yeah, it's really hard to survive in this situation, especially with the laser guided bombs you're carrying. Most of the time I get the SA2s lock on warning when I'm still guiding the bomb in. So when the missile launches I'm still rather slow.

I concur with Jasonmoofang that diving to the deck at speed is your best bet to defeat this threat. Then use the terrain as much as possible to get the hell out of Dodge.

Edited October 11, 2022 by Solid_84

[baltic_dragon]

Possibly something changed in the way SA-2 works. It is a telephone pole not designed to destroy the nimble fighter planes and when building the campaign I don't thing I was ever hit by it (and my skills are not great). Still, I am getting this feedback a lot, so I will perhaps try to limit the number of missiles fired (or lower the AI skill if at all possible, IIRC it is at minimum).