LOWOS Persistent Issue.

[AlexViperAce]

Hello ! First i'd like to thank you for providing us Viper pilots with these awesome campaigns. I finished FIWOS and i was absolutely amazed by it. Of course that means i bought LOWOS as well and i am on Mission 4 currently. I am having a blast ! However i do have a complaint (more of a constructive feedback type of complaint). I love that you provide fuel plans and speed/altitudes to travel in order to make it back home on the starting fuel. It worked out great in FIWOS (i did use air refuel but more for safeety). However in LOWOS things aree different. I am currently stuck in MS4 and i cant seem to ccontinue thee campaign. The issue ? I crash just before i reach ARCO in my way home. AKROTIRI is a LOT farther away from the mission area than H4 was. This means that i basically limp my F-16 in the way to and back from the mission. Fuel on mission isn't great either. Unless you never use burner and you are stuck below 300 knots constantly you can never return home if you completee all objectivees. I know that once you hit BINGO you are supposed to go back but you havee barely donee anything in the mission by that point. Air Refueeling helpeed with that in FIWOS but in LOWOS there is an issue. ARCO is on orbit WAAAY far from your flight plan. He extends up to 60 MILES or moree from the entry to Silver and thats beecause he runs not parallel but perpeendicular to your flight plan. Meaning i constantly have to chase ARCO at MIL otherwise with the F16 limping in M0.58 i can't intercept him. But the reesult is always thee same. Crash cause i am out of fuel. I know that the Viper is a very fueel hungry plane on top of not being able to carry that much in the first place. I can't help but recommend to update ARCO to run parallel to thee flight plan our at least put it's orbit much closer to SILVER entry. Also it would help way more if we could refuel on our ingress route as well. That would help a lot more. Thank you so much for any feedback to this !

[ChillNG]

13 hours ago, AlexViperAce said:

Hello ! First i'd like to thank you for providing us Viper pilots with these awesome campaigns. I finished FIWOS and i was absolutely amazed by it. Of course that means i bought LOWOS as well and i am on Mission 4 currently. I am having a blast ! However i do have a complaint (more of a constructive feedback type of complaint). I love that you provide fuel plans and speed/altitudes to travel in order to make it back home on the starting fuel. It worked out great in FIWOS (i did use air refuel but more for safeety). However in LOWOS things aree different. I am currently stuck in MS4 and i cant seem to ccontinue thee campaign. The issue ? I crash just before i reach ARCO in my way home. AKROTIRI is a LOT farther away from the mission area than H4 was. This means that i basically limp my F-16 in the way to and back from the mission. Fuel on mission isn't great either. Unless you never use burner and you are stuck below 300 knots constantly you can never return home if you completee all objectivees. I know that once you hit BINGO you are supposed to go back but you havee barely donee anything in the mission by that point. Air Refueeling helpeed with that in FIWOS but in LOWOS there is an issue. ARCO is on orbit WAAAY far from your flight plan. He extends up to 60 MILES or moree from the entry to Silver and thats beecause he runs not parallel but perpeendicular to your flight plan. Meaning i constantly have to chase ARCO at MIL otherwise with the F16 limping in M0.58 i can't intercept him. But the reesult is always thee same. Crash cause i am out of fuel. I know that the Viper is a very fueel hungry plane on top of not being able to carry that much in the first place. I can't help but recommend to update ARCO to run parallel to thee flight plan our at least put it's orbit much closer to SILVER entry. Also it would help way more if we could refuel on our ingress route as well. That would help a lot more. Thank you so much for any feedback to this !

Hi glad to hear how much you're enjoying the campaigns!

Regarding fuel, to be honest it sounds like you must be being far too heavy on the throttle, fuel in LOWOS can certainly be tight at time as the Viper is the Viper after all, but I am not aware of this being a wider issue.  For context, in the 100 or so playthroughs I have made of the LOWOS missions I never refueled even once (I find it boring which is one of the reasons I avoid making it a necessity), it's not an issue my testers raised either and I can't recall another user report on the same issue.

It seems strange that you are struggling to complete so little of mission 4 before Bingo, this is not what an issue I have experienced or had reported to me by anyone else either.  If you can supply a track replay of the mission I'll be happy to look through it and see if I can ID either where you're going wrong or if there's something else odd at play.

For me, I almost never use AB, only during combat when I really need it, or occasionally on a climb if I've messed up and got too slow.  Follow the fuel plan, if you find yourself behind then try to conserve fuel to get back on plan if possible.  If you've pushed too far past bingo for RTB then I usually climb as high as I can, and fly as efficiently as possible for home.

Regarding refueling on the inbound leg, the reason it's not offered as an option is due to the massive increase in complexity by having it as an option.  It would cause havoc with mission design when TOTs apply, and would force the mission to start earlier to allow those to refuel that want to, but would mean that those that don't have to burn holes in the sky or sit on the ground waiting to use up the additional time, basically its an extra variable that really complicates things.  Having said that, if it's a mission where there are no major TOT requirements, ie. to meet up with a package ( mission 4 isn't  for example) then you might get away with stopping at the tanker on the way in.  Mission progress in TOT dependent missions is usually driven by time, and the mission will continue without you.  However non TOT dependent mission are most likely to be driven by your advancement across the map, with entering the Silver Corridor/going feet dry a common trigger point - in these mission you might get away with a pre-mission top up.

Hope that all helps, and happy to look at that track if you're able to supply one.

Thanks.