Campaign Priorities / Air War
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Hello BMS Team, how come when I first start a campaign, I adjust the sliders for independent targets such as Airfields, CCCI Facilities, don’t get appear in the frag order ? I want to fight a war by first killing Airbases Radar Stations, and things like that. Would I have to zero out the Aircraft target tab and then adjust the others ??
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Wow…nobody ?? no one ?? hmmmmm.
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The way it has been explained somewhere on the forums is that when you change a slider in the Priorities/Mission Type tab the campaign engine takes some hours to transition from what was set initially to the new slider settings. Don’t forget to check the PAKS also, you will often need to adjust those settings to get the intended results.
The best way to achieve your aim would be to take a couple of squadrons off ‘set by HQ’ and task your own strike packages for those squadrons. The AI HQ usually do a pretty good job after you tweak the settings but there are always a couple of suicide missions or idiotic mission to take out bridges that will only hamstring friendly ground forces later in the campaign. For your sanity just accept that these oddities happen and you can quickly and easily abort these flights when you see them (clicking aircraft on the 2d map and seeing their target pop up instantly is helpful) or if you can be bothered, after each flight have a quick look through the ATO and look for unhelpful AI packages and delete them, instead tasking those aircraft yourself onto more appropriate targets.
I really enjoy planning strike packages and monitoring the overall air campaign, so these days I usually have multiple squadrons who are not tasked by the AI and I use them for my purposes. Depending on the campaign settings and how difficult I want the missions to be I will take control of strike fighter and electronic warfare squadrons first. That way I can create large packages with DCA, SEAD and Strike assets all from the same squadron while leaving the AI to set the pure air to air squadrons to escort any other AI planned strikes and set HAVCAP, BARCAPs which they usually do a pretty good job of.
Ultimately you’ll find a balance of mission planning vs actual flying but when you start to get clever with how you use available assets you’ll notice your mission success rate skyrocket!
Hope that helps.