Posted By: Waldemar_Kurtz
Artillery Spotting and Recon missions: what do you do? - 09/11/18 04:18 AM
does the game actually keep track of whether or not you're in the designated area for 'observation'? or does the game simply register if you've arrived over the target and flown the required number of minutes after arriving at your specified target?
towards that end. are these missions where you simply do the following:
1. log in flight time
2. try to stay alive and uninjured?
I admit, that after doing a half dozen or so of them I've started taking up flares and seeing if I can 'bomb' targets with them on artillery spotting missions. sure, it's a bit wonky-- but at least it gives me something to focus on. if the flare actually hits something... great. if not, it's not really a big deal since it evens out with bombs being able to destroy multiple targets with a single hit. eventually, after you've expended thousands of flares and scored hundreds of target kills with dozens of bomb hits... it all sorta evens out to a more historically accurate number....
since it required hundreds, if not thousands, of bombs to actually hit something during WWI.
as for recon flights... I used to take screen snaps peering through the bomb sight and pretend I was using a camera. it was also a bit silly, but added a certain level of immersion... since I could be surprised by enemy fighters rather easily if I tried that out.
at one point I was even looking up the altitudes that aviators would have flown at so that they could meet the requirements that the photographs depict terrain features at a specific scale. but that was back a few years ago when I played it more often. I don't remember the figures, but I've got them buried in my library somewhere.
do you try to 'stay on mission' or do you wander about freely looking for trouble?
I did that while flying a Morane Parasol. I flew on over to get a closer look at a German balloon and very much regretted it! suffered a direct hit from flak that emptied out my fuel tank almost immediately. I spent the next several minutes desperately trying to glide back into friendly territory and came up three kilometers short. miraculously I was only a POW for 16 days. since my observer and I were both at 95% health or more... we both escaped back together. is that fairly typical? or is it possible for you to stay a POW and your observer to return (or vice versa)?
so... what do you guys do when you get an artillery spotting or recon mission?
towards that end. are these missions where you simply do the following:
1. log in flight time
2. try to stay alive and uninjured?
I admit, that after doing a half dozen or so of them I've started taking up flares and seeing if I can 'bomb' targets with them on artillery spotting missions. sure, it's a bit wonky-- but at least it gives me something to focus on. if the flare actually hits something... great. if not, it's not really a big deal since it evens out with bombs being able to destroy multiple targets with a single hit. eventually, after you've expended thousands of flares and scored hundreds of target kills with dozens of bomb hits... it all sorta evens out to a more historically accurate number....
since it required hundreds, if not thousands, of bombs to actually hit something during WWI.
as for recon flights... I used to take screen snaps peering through the bomb sight and pretend I was using a camera. it was also a bit silly, but added a certain level of immersion... since I could be surprised by enemy fighters rather easily if I tried that out.
at one point I was even looking up the altitudes that aviators would have flown at so that they could meet the requirements that the photographs depict terrain features at a specific scale. but that was back a few years ago when I played it more often. I don't remember the figures, but I've got them buried in my library somewhere.
do you try to 'stay on mission' or do you wander about freely looking for trouble?
I did that while flying a Morane Parasol. I flew on over to get a closer look at a German balloon and very much regretted it! suffered a direct hit from flak that emptied out my fuel tank almost immediately. I spent the next several minutes desperately trying to glide back into friendly territory and came up three kilometers short. miraculously I was only a POW for 16 days. since my observer and I were both at 95% health or more... we both escaped back together. is that fairly typical? or is it possible for you to stay a POW and your observer to return (or vice versa)?
so... what do you guys do when you get an artillery spotting or recon mission?