Is the last mission broken?

[RyanR]

 

I've been stuck on the last mission.

If you fly the mission from cold, the F-18 escort flies off to the east at push time. It never comes back. Since they're TDNL donors, you can watch them on the HSD after they fly east over your head. *Every* friendly flight gets shot down one by one. Your F-16 flight runs into both Groups of Flankers. If you survive to live to steerpoint #9, you're out of countermeasures and missiles. It's pretty bleak.

In contrast, when you F10 and "skip to push time", you get a completely different mission. The F-18's spearhead the push, shoot down baddies. Friendly flights all pretty much live. It's almost too easy to scoot over the target and dump the GBU's, then laze the target as you break for beers.

Something's gotta be off?

-Ryan

[RyanR]

I pulled up the mission in the editor, sure enough, the F-18's last waypoint is #8. So they bug out.

The "start at push? has the F-16's scattered. Might as well be herding cats. It takes 10-15 minutes to wrangle them into formation.

Sheesh. This should be embarrassing to ED that another F-16 thing is broke.

-Ryan

[Istari6]

I had the same experience.  The J-11As stormed through and shot my flight down shortly after we pushed from the Marshal point.  Watching the datalink, I "think" there were escorts in the area (I saw green bubbles in the area), so perhaps the F/A-18s are now going to the right waypoint, but are just ineffective at engaging the Flankers.  Fortunately, the "range officer" allowed me to continue on with my mission and rather than start over with a complete cold start, I pressed ahead and had a great rest of the mission, including a tense engagement with Flankers after hitting the target.  

The mission was counted as successful (100 score) and I completed the campaign.  So I'm not sure it's "broken", so much as the current escorts are ineffective.  

Edited July 21, 2024 by Istari6