approaching the halfway point: a review

[sith1144]

Good morning. Last night I finished mission 5 and I thought I'd share my thoughts so far.

Weasels over Syria is back, and its more challenging, exciting, and meaner than ever. In the first five missions I have only managed to get that perfect 100 once - but I havent scored below 90 either. I'm okay with that. The perfect score requires near flawless execution of the mission.

Those missions so far are well designed and build on the skills acquired in FIWOS nicely. There is a nice bit of setup and payoffs too - for example, you approach the airfield in an almost airliner feeling way. There's a standard instrument approach, flying along a radial to a predetermined initial point. This pays off a few missions later when you have to land in poor weather, or at night. So far there has been a nice mix of HARMs, JDAMs, WCMDs, dumb bombs, and laser guided bombs. I have even carried out a strafing run or two.

There has also been a nice variety of targets. I have attacked HARM-supressed SAM sites with a known position to various pop-up threats I had to find with the HTS and TGP myself, and there was one particular highlight in the form of an exciting pop-up attack on an early warning radar with mk-84s where I had to fly a fairly tight attack profile to minimize my time over the target, while keeping separation from my #2. If there wasn't a whole mission attached to that Id fly that attack over and over until I got it perfect!

Some of the extra tasks you can take on add a nice dash of extra challenge and really bring you to the fuel limit. Even so, I have only had to do air to air refueling once, althought I think I could have just about made it back to base. This does bring me to a "downside" of sorts. Some of these missions are rather long, so be prepared for that. I have personally stopped playing them in VR because of the length (and I dont trust windows mixed reality to not crash the game when I put down the headset to refill my glass of water)

In short, if you liked First In Weasels over Syria, you'll like Last Out Weasels over Syria too.

Im going to get into mission 5 now, which is the first mission where I at some point I was slightly dissapointed with something. If you dont want spoilers, stop reading now!

okay, so, this mission involves striking an sa-6 with laser guided bombs only. fun! im looking forward to it. I fly out there, and first task is to distract the AAA a bit. I feel like I flew as briefed but sword 3 still got hit. no biggie tho, its a war, sometimes that happens so im okay with not getting those points. Then we have to attack the SA-5 from the east, flying all along the runway full of guns. great, thanks mission control. But im down for a challenge. Ill send sword 2-2 around to the west to make a pass from the opposite direction to go in first and distract the target and... oh. thats not an option. I would have really liked that as an option and feel like it would have been included in FIWOS. I suppose sword 3 would have done it but got hit and had to RTB. Its a small thing, and i'll just blame Shade for not being willing to distract the SAM a little bit. You could say hes... weaseling his way out of trouble... 
I ended up running the sa-6 out of missiles. the last one exploded closer than Id like but I made it out unscathed. I did refuel on the way home though, as I was about 500 pounds behind the fuel planning and it felt pretty tight. Overall still a solid 8/10 mission.

[ChillNG]

42 minutes ago, sith1144 said:

Good morning. Last night I finished mission 5 and I thought I'd share my thoughts so far.

Weasels over Syria is back, and its more challenging, exciting, and meaner than ever. In the first five missions I have only managed to get that perfect 100 once - but I havent scored below 90 either. I'm okay with that. The perfect score requires near flawless execution of the mission.

Those missions so far are well designed and build on the skills acquired in FIWOS nicely. There is a nice bit of setup and payoffs too - for example, you approach the airfield in an almost airliner feeling way. There's a standard instrument approach, flying along a radial to a predetermined initial point. This pays off a few missions later when you have to land in poor weather, or at night. So far there has been a nice mix of HARMs, JDAMs, WCMDs, dumb bombs, and laser guided bombs. I have even carried out a strafing run or two.

There has also been a nice variety of targets. I have attacked HARM-supressed SAM sites with a known position to various pop-up threats I had to find with the HTS and TGP myself, and there was one particular highlight in the form of an exciting pop-up attack on an early warning radar with mk-84s where I had to fly a fairly tight attack profile to minimize my time over the target, while keeping separation from my #2. If there wasn't a whole mission attached to that Id fly that attack over and over until I got it perfect!

Some of the extra tasks you can take on add a nice dash of extra challenge and really bring you to the fuel limit. Even so, I have only had to do air to air refueling once, althought I think I could have just about made it back to base. This does bring me to a "downside" of sorts. Some of these missions are rather long, so be prepared for that. I have personally stopped playing them in VR because of the length (and I dont trust windows mixed reality to not crash the game when I put down the headset to refill my glass of water)

In short, if you liked First In Weasels over Syria, you'll like Last Out Weasels over Syria too.

Im going to get into mission 5 now, which is the first mission where I at some point I was slightly dissapointed with something. If you dont want spoilers, stop reading now!

okay, so, this mission involves striking an sa-6 with laser guided bombs only. fun! im looking forward to it. I fly out there, and first task is to distract the AAA a bit. I feel like I flew as briefed but sword 3 still got hit. no biggie tho, its a war, sometimes that happens so im okay with not getting those points. Then we have to attack the SA-5 from the east, flying all along the runway full of guns. great, thanks mission control. But im down for a challenge. Ill send sword 2-2 around to the west to make a pass from the opposite direction to go in first and distract the target and... oh. thats not an option. I would have really liked that as an option and feel like it would have been included in FIWOS. I suppose sword 3 would have done it but got hit and had to RTB. Its a small thing, and i'll just blame Shade for not being willing to distract the SAM a little bit. You could say hes... weaseling his way out of trouble... 
I ended up running the sa-6 out of missiles. the last one exploded closer than Id like but I made it out unscathed. I did refuel on the way home though, as I was about 500 pounds behind the fuel planning and it felt pretty tight. Overall still a solid 8/10 mission.

Thanks very much!  Glad to hear you're enjoying!

For mission 5, during the attack on the SA-6, one of the other Sword flights (Sword 3 I think) will run in and distract the AAA while you make you attack run, there is an option/space-bar press to order them to start their run, which makes things somewhat safer .

Hope you enjoy the rest just as much, in my opinion the best missions are still to come!

[sith1144]

@ChillNGright but sword 3 had to RTB because they took some damage on their own run on the SA-8s, presumably because I maybe climbed too much when covering, or otherwise just because war is hell and sometimes you do everything right and still take a hit. So I was doing the attack without their support. if they succesfully distracted the AAA I couldve gotten that SA-6 a lot faster on a low altitude run I suppose, no need to dodge all 9 missiles before going in

[ChillNG]

Just now, sith1144 said:

@ChillNGright but sword 3 had to RTB because they took some damage on their own run on the SA-8s, presumably because I maybe climbed too much when covering, or otherwise just because war is hell and sometimes you do everything right and still take a hit. So I was doing the attack without their support. if they succesfully distracted the AAA I couldve gotten that SA-6 a lot faster on a low altitude run I suppose, no need to dodge all 9 missiles before going in

Ah ok I got you, yes IIRC you must have done something slightly off during the first phase, so a 'consequence' of that is less cover on your turn to attack.  It's a nice simple attack if they are around, and a very cool watch when all the AAA turns on them and opens up a path for you.

[sith1144]

I think its safe to say the "sometimes SAMs can track without LOS" issue has not been completely fixed XD but thats not on you of course

[Valinor17]

This mission played out exactly the same way for me. Overflew the base, just below cloud layer and Sword 3 got hit and departed. I too had to weasel every missile the SA-6 had before going in for the kill. Basically ran circles dropping to the deck, forcing each missile slam into the ground. Burned a ton of fuel. Then, dropped couple of bombs around the base on the AAA, followed by a gun run, but got below 2k lbs of fuel and had to abort the mission to flee to Texico before the mission properly played out. Oh well at least Shade had to do some work after I bailed. 

I may of been too high on the first fly over though, I was just below the cloud layer but just barely. The AAA never engaged me so I was probably too high. Will try to buzz the base lower down to attract the AAA next time.

Edit: That did the trick. You have to overfly the base low enough to engage the AAA and get them shooting at you. Mission played out beautifully after that.

Edited December 26, 2024 by Valinor17