New thread for MP sort of stuff.

About the subtitles, and flight leads making declare calls.... I think this works great until the merge. Once battle is joined, and there are 20 jets within 20 miles,what then? If guys are mutually supporting and flying formation through a furball, that's fantastic. But it more often than not devolves in to a free for all. How does the wingman, who has become separated from his flight lead know what is hostile for certain without making his own declare call with no IFF? Is it datalink? See who the lead has locked and listen to his AWACS response? If I have someone locked up and the lead has another locked up, is the lead supposed to drop his lock, to acquire mine so that I know if I can fire?

Curious to know how this works in practice. If everything in front of you is enemy that's one thing. In mixed airspace, with no IFF, I have trouble seeing this working. But if you guys have regularly flown this way in a mixed environment I'd like to learn more.

When we were flying this spring, we used subtitles so that everyone was free to use declare liberally. With subtitles it doesn't matter if two guys do so at the same time.

It was more or less a joke about the subtitles.

It takes a lot of practice to get to the point where you are comfy w/ comms and a lot of different VFW/S's do it different than one another. I have flown with several wings/squadrons so I'm pretty flexible.

If your flight lead is keeping tabs w/ AWACS like he/she should, then you will usually have time for sorting etc.

It's going to be our first flight together, so some bumps along the way are expected. Not a big deal. We just iron things out as we go and the more we fly together the more comfy we get.

May I suggest...

Our chief weapon is surprise
Surprise and fear...fear and surprise
Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope
Our four, no, amongst our weapons -- amongst our weaponry, are such elements as fear, surprise....
I'll come in again.

Haha! You know this stuff better than me!

Big fan, big fan

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, and those that do...

I have flown with some guys who had a system that you might like.

Anyone can call Awacs , pretty much at any time, providing that you first must state (for example) '2 calling awacs declare' or 'Lead awacs picture' etc.. After so stating it he is free to hit the keyboard command to actually make the command. His stating before making It tells all other pilots that they have to wait until he gets his response before making a call.

Using this no one should get walked on. Or rarely anyway.

DBond-- 'With subtitles it doesn't matter if two guys do so at the same time.' How does this work. Do I hear the response and see the subtitles of other pilots call, or just mine. ?

You see all responses in the subtitles, but since each is addressed by callsign it's easy to pick your response.

The audio is immediately stepped on when a second guy makes a call while the first response is still coming over the radio, so the subtitles negate the need to wait until the first guy gets his reply. 10 seconds can be an eternity, and you feel bad if you're a second early and kill the first AWACS response before it's completed. I'm all for realistic procedures, but in this case I find unrestricted use with subtitles the best way to do it in multiplayer in this sim. Plus maybe two guys are waiting for the first to end, and they each declare at the same time. What then? After you, no I insist, after you. Dead. If BMS had IFF and datalinked AWACS things would be different, but we don't have that, yet anyway. The only sure way to know if a return is hostile is AWACS declare. I guess there's the Sniper pod too, and I see some guys doing that. I have yet to make that part of my bag o' tricks. But heads down is shot down sometimes, so anything I can do to keep eyes out is better, at least for me.

Using subtitles does seem better. That 10 sec delay is indeed a bad thing. I have never used it the way you describe but does make a lot of sense.

IFF should not help as it tells who not to shoot at, not who to shoot at.
You guys can use my solution: anything infront of me gets a missile

That's true Oden, but in a sim I'd expect it to be an absolute. In other words, in real life a plane may have a non-functioning or non-existent transponder, or the pilot may have forgotten to turn it on, or maybe squawking the wrong code. But in a sim I'd expect it to be more binary. So anything not squawking is enemy (or neutral I suppose, like in the Balkans). It could be coded of course to introduce a realistic grey area due to reasons like I mentioned. Regardless, it would surely help separate the good guys from the bad even if it weren't foolproof. Just by eliminating certain returns from the possible-enemy list the picture becomes much clearer. You would spend less time declaring friendlies anyway.

I'll also add that my MP experience is colored by the fact that I've flown with many different people. If a guy were to fly continually with the same wingman (or wingmen) a certain degree of familiarity evolves allowing more strict or streamlined procedures. Things become more telepathic in a sense. You start to think alike and know what to expect. You know what the other guy is about to do, and he you. Frankly, this is what I'd like to attain, but with real life, and time zones and all the other things that prevent it, it is difficult to achieve. Maybe Axe and I can get back to that after all these years

oh durn this is going to be hard,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

DBond bad news, I want theOden as my flight lead.

if ya know what i mean........

and trail formation

kicked out X 2

It's a fine choice really. His missile shots will flash by (hopefully) and point toward the bad guys. Just follow the smoke

And he's also just a good dude.

In response to the original question: it depends.

If you have multiple bad guys and good guys in the same area, WTH are you doing there adding to the mess? I think the best option is to turn and run and hope the friendly AI picks off anyone who chases you.

If it's a 4v4, WTH are you doing merging in a 4v4? You should've picked at least one or two off in BVR before going in WVR. If you have 3 other guys in your flight, you should've been able to organize a chainsaw and solved the problem or whittled it down to a more bite-size level.

Assuming a 2v2 in the merge, well, one is attacker, one is support. I can't remember the terms for this or brevity used but it had something to do with "hounddog" and "high man/low man"... there are also tactics you can employ to separate the enemy flight and pick one off before the other one can reposition to be a threat.

Note that none of this relies on IFF. Like I said, that's a whole can of worms and relying on IFF for target ID is really not a smart move. IFF does not tell you who to shoot at, it can only tell you who **NOT** to shoot at and even then, it may be a bad guy that managed to hack the IFF codes and is a wolf in sheep's clothing. I've also read that IFF is turned off when crossing the FLOT --- no sense in advertising that you're part of the enemy team --- and is turned on when coming back in and even then, CAP flights do VID "just in case."

That strikes me as idealistic. Or great for TEs and campaigns on day 2. 4v4 or 2v2 is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about flying campaigns when there are 20+ jets within slammer range and you're in the middle. If you argue well you screwed up to find yourself in the middle then you haven't flown many campaigns. (Not insinuating you said this, just trying to discredit this possible counter-argument)

On day one of Strong DPRK Iron Fortress, or between Zagreb and Bihac in Balance of Power for example. These surgical procedures go straight out the window in my opinion when jets are at all points of the compass, Red and Blue, inbound and out. Not to mention Blue and Red flying the same aircraft type. When all flight members have missiles inbound, cohesion is quickly lost.

Real world procedures are sound. But when is the last time a real war was fought with supersonic, missile-armed jets and the numbers depicted in a typical F4 campaign? Never.

I've argued before, that if the USAF had to fight a real-world version of classic Iron Fortress for example, we'd see very different tactics and procedures than we see in real world in the current climate. In F4 campaigns, you can reach the point where the combat intensity renders 'normal' methods inadequate, if you want to live to tell the tale. This isn't a constant state of affairs, after a while you've broken the Wall O' MiGs, or knocked out key airfields. Usually Blue will gain air superiority before too long. But at 10 AM near the front in classic IF it's every man for himself.

Edit: My mistake was using the term merge in the original post. I should have said when in the combat zone or something.

20+ jets and how many of yours? What range? How far from FLOT or enemy SAMs? How far from your own forces? What is your mission? These will dictate tactics available to you.

You don't suddenly appear in the middle of a 20+ jet vs. your lonesome, you'd have had a heads up at least earlier on. Depending on your loadout, you may have to assume a defensive stance vs. an offensive one. Assuming an A-A loadout, can you bait them and drag them towards your own air defenses? Are they baiting YOU and enticing you to enter into their SAM coverage? Assuming an A-A loadout, 20+ enemy jets, and it's only you and your wingman with 6 Slammers total. Prioritization is key. Not all of them are going towards you. Not all of them are A-A fighters. Do you take out the fighters? Or do you take out the bombers heading for your bases/assets?

At the end of the day, you will want to do the most damage to the enemy and minimizing damage to your own side. That may mean taking out the bombers and ignoring the fighters and then running for your life after you're skosh/winchester. Or it may mean ignoring the bombers and lobbing the spears at the fighters. Or maybe even just bugging out and trying to enter the fight from another direction. Just because a target is there does not mean you have to kill it, nor does it mean you have to do everything you can to kill it.

20 jets both Blue and Red, that's the point. Mixed airspace.

This!

This is the hardest thing to learn as a sim pilot. You have to consider your mission priorities and treat the situation as real if you want to survive and not kill friendlies. If I am ingress to target, I am usually doing my damnedest to try to avoid enemy air contacts.

Unfortunately there really is no correct answer because there are too many variables with the 20 ship scenario. I would avoid getting in the mix with that many ships in one place, maybe hanging out at a safe distance outside the furball and see if any fighters break out and head toward friendly territory. I would then make a decision about whether or not to go after them based on their threat towards blue forces.

If I am in Cat 3 I usually avoid A2A engagements unless they can't be avoided.

OK, all this is fine advice, but the question was not about tactics, or how to fly combat. I was asking how a wingman sorts dense mixed airspace if the lead is the only one making picture and declare calls. And specifically in Falcon 4 campaigns.

Clearly I'm not the best F4 pilot, but I have been doing it for nearly 20 years with 2000+ combat sorties under my belt