KC23's Spring Offensive Strategy Guide - Armed Recon
Armed Recon
Perhaps one of the most unappreciated missions of them all. No thousand
ton of supplies destroyed missions here. A good one perhaps is only about
100 tons give or take a crate or two. Couldn't your air assets be better
utilized against a supply depot or something? Consider this, a typical
well planed Armed Recon mission only takes two flights of F51s and generates
about 96 tons per mission. I set up two Armed Recon missions per session
and there are three sessions per day. That is close to 600 tons a day
with aircraft that really aren't much good for any other kind of mission
other than CAS.
Armed Recon missions also have the added benefit of being very low risk
especially compared to well defended Supply Depots and Marshaling Yards.
You may get a lot more tons destroyed each week hitting Marshalling Yards
and Supply Depots, but you'll lose aircraft at an alarming rate and you
can only keep that up so long.
By now you are probably saying to yourself. No way are you gonna get a
100 tons of supplies every Armed Recon mission you send out. It's true;
the numbers do start to shrink fairly quickly. This is largely because
there is a limit to the number of trucks the Reds have. Unlike a lot of
sims, MiG Alley actually has finite numbers of trucks and after you keep
constant pressure for several weeks sooner or later you will start to
see horses with carts. The Reds are in big trouble at this point and by
no coincidence you'll notice the UN start grabbing real estate like a
rich American yuppie in the early 80's.
Hopefully you are sold on the idea that Armed Recon is worth a little
time and attention. Lets start by looking at a few ground rules of Armed
recon missions.
1. Always use your F51s for these missions when available. They are very
effective, but more importantly F51 are not very effective in almost all
the other mission types.
2. Always use the Attack Pattern "Spaced target select". This gets the
job done quickly and efficiently by having each aircraft attack individual
targets on each pass.
3. Never have your F51s go anywhere near Supply Depots or Airfields. F51s
make beautiful targets for AAA.
4. Always send two flights per convoy. This seems to be the best bang
for your buck.
5. Make sure the local airfields are down or at least being attacked by
the appropriate quantities of medium bombers, F80 and F86s as per outlined
in the "Airfields" article.
6. Don't waste flights on Armed Recon AAA. Typically they are not very
effective. If you want to make sure your flight comes back because you
are worried about "Extreme" or "Dangerous" AAA levels, fly the mission
yourself and act as your own one man Flak suppression flight.
7. Never attack more than one sphere of influence in a single session.
In other words, always attack Armed Recons either in the West, Central
or East, but do not mix. The MiGs like to go where you have been recently.
If you go to multiple areas in a single session you'll have to guess where
the MiGs might show up on the next session. If you go just in the West
you know not to go there the next mission. This goes for all the other
kind of targets as well.
8. Save your mission profiles once you get them the way you like so you
can just pull them up without any hassle or micro-management.
9. Never let up until you start seeing horses pulling carts with supplies.
Then turn those horses into dog food.
Time to fly
Some people shy away from any F51 missions because you can't even get
down the runway without turning the tarmac into one of those local destruction
derby contests. Here is an easy way to take off without crashing. All
you have to do is keep back pressure (trimming the nose up helps too)
on the stick all the way down the runway and ease off of it just after
you get air born. When you get out of control in an F51 going down the
runway, your tail lifts off the ground before you have enough lift to
get in the air. Once your tail lifts off the ground and the wing wheels
are still on the ground you are at the mercy of that monster Merlin engine's
torque and off you go into your wingman next to you. So pull back on the
stick to keep your tail down until you have enough lift under your wings
to get you air born. Be sure to relax the stick as soon as your wheels
are off the ground or your nose will bob up and you'll stall and spin
out of control.
Navigating the old fashion way Guys who like the experience of flying
the whole way often have a very difficult time finding targets. MiG Alley
actually does an excellent job of putting correct looking sizes of people
huts and trucks. They're terrain is patchy enough to make it difficult
to spot your targets even when you know where and what you are looking
for. This can be complicated even further with bad weather. When it is
raining or snowing padlocking visibility goes from about 10nm to 3nm.
Only the hardest core individuals will truly try to eyeball the target
without padlocking. It could be argued that using the padlock is a cheat,
but looking through a 2D screen and at extremely low resolutions compared
to the naked eye is hardly fair either. Use your padlock (F3) key liberally
once you get in the target area and you'll find your targets. Often your
wingmen will spot them before you and point them out to you. Once you
find them and turn for your approach make a token check with the Dentist
for MiG activity nearby. If they are approaching you are still pretty
safe until they get within about 15nm. Sometimes even if they do make
it to you they'll stay at altitude if they have recently been given a
bloody nose. Don't push your luck though, if they show up it is time to
cut your loses and get out of there.
Like the bridge missions your wingmen will head off in a 90-degree direction
to your right before making their attack runs. I like to approach the
truck convoys passing to the south (I always approach from east to west)
of the convoy approaching perpendicular (convoy is usually moving north
to south). This serves two purposes. Most of the AAA comes from south
and north of the convoy along the road. If you approach from the one end
of the convoy you'll be in a fairly good position to draw AAA fire away
from your attacking wingmen. Once the AAA opens fire I turn the tables
and take him out with guns. While this is going on my flights of F51s
are taking out truck after truck.
Once the UN starts gaining ground and you capture a few airbases then
it is time to move your F51s up to a forward base. This allows you to
discard those fuel tanks for napalm. If I have napalm and have pretty
much taken care of the local flak/AAA batteries at the local supply depots
then I like to approach from north to south. I can get my F51s to lay
down napalm along the road and get a couple of trucks at once if I approach
it like I do a bridge.
I personally never shoot at the trucks myself. The wingmen are better
shots, but more importantly the wingmen will not attack the huts (at least
with the version of MiG Alley I am playing as of the writing of this article).
Huts you say? Yep, those sneaky Reds hide some of their supplies in huts
along the convoy roads. Occasionally they'll even hide supplies in a clump
of trees near the outskirts of a town or supply depot. For some reason
your AI wingmen will not target these supplies so I take care of them
myself and leave the truck busting to them. The huts are significantly
easier to hit with rockets than trucks.
Do all of the huts have supplies? No, some do not. There are a few tricks
to help you get a higher percentage of huts with supplies. You'll notice
that sometimes the trucks will head off the road and head straight toward
a particular hut. This hut has a high percentage of having supplies. When
several huts are clumped together it seems that the one in the middle
often is the one with the supplies.
Another trick to finding the supplies is to attack with only one rocket
and if you see a small puff of smoke coming out the middle then this one
will most likely have supplies. If there is no small puff of smoke you
can still destroy the hut, but you'll notice no column of smoke after
it is destroyed which tells you there were no supplies inside. I like
to hit it with a single rocket and finish it with guns. This gives me
a shot at six different huts if I'm accurate and haven't had to do any
AAA work prior to hut busting. Any gun rounds left over after the rockets
are gone I use on more hut busting. Napalm doesn't work well on huts for
some reason so you can save that for the trip home. Pay a little visit
to the nearby supply depot and lay the napalm on it to make best use of
it.
Rail missions
Rail missions are very much like truck convoy missions with a few important
differences.
1. Use 500lb bombs instead of napalm. Napalm has no effect.
2. Once a target is spotted quickly run to the target before the rest
of your flight and hit the engine with rockets to stop the train. The
wingmen have a terrible time hitting the train with 500lb bombs unless
the train is stopped.
3. Sometimes multiple trains are not within visual range so once you've
nailed one train there still might be others outside of padlock range.
4. The train missions are generally north of Seoul and have a higher possibility
of being intercepted by MiGs. It might pay to send F80s instead of the
slow F51s or an escort may be in order.
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