Tips and tricks

[wgkieboom]

Has anyone some tips and tricks? please leave them under here (like what you should upgrade and crew gear)

[Vitriks]

Near end game it nearly impossible to fight with armoured planes. Either you escape to high altitude or they tear you to pieces. At high risk mission forget about taking photos.

[spineyrequiem]

Decide in advance who you care about most because you never have enough medkits and it's possible someone'll have to decide between helping other crewmen up and bailing themselves. Keep parachutes near the stations where possible (I have four in the front and three in the back). Bail while the plane can still fly, as once it starts nosediving crew will have serious trouble moving to the exits. If you need to bail, try to emergency land immediately after the last crewman gets off, as their survival chances will be greatly improved if they're close to the bomber when they land.

[Ricked_Sick]

Originally posted by Brygun:

If you are needing to improve the plane or crew equipment (grind) its ok to avoid the main mission to bring in recon photos. You get ~$5,000 for a photo if you land the plane at the base. Sure its not awesome to miss the target but it does let you build up toward success.

It may be better to kill an ace than do the bombing target. One method is to use custom heading to go east-west-east-west along the southern english coast or the english channel. If you go to far into england the Ace will disengage (or maybe its on a timer?). Either way if you near England there is no flak adding to your damage and far less other planes. This means lower rate of damage to your plane and your gunners are shooting at the ace more often.

I think the aces will try to escape on the first encounter when on low life, no matter how far away you are from the british coast, it is still possible to shoot them down, but they will make a run for it.

They will stay a significant amount of time longer fighting against you on the second and following encounters, and I think they will just try to escape again if you aim for your home base.

Oh - and never forget to bomb the optional photo targets, if you can spare the bombs! Usually 1250 + XP per destroyed target, plus 500 XP for the photo. The destructions won't give you any more money or other rewards, however.

Morover, the money for the photo is just 5000 pound sterling in the later game, earlier mission is 500, 1000, 2500 pound sterling I think.

[oom5]

if you gets shots maybees yous dies

[TacoTaco]

In the early bombing missions, overfly your target at medium altitude for a minute (whilst fighting off the first fighter wave) then descend to low altitude to get a nav bearing, turn back and bomb the target; this way you are facing back towards England rather than flying deeper into europe.

[Vitriks]

In all high risk bombing missions kill all the enemies first and only then do the bombing. But when you have to deal with airfield destroy them asap. Mission is impossible to complete if you bomb before you take out all enemies.

[slapz]

Originally posted by Tavingon:

Who's the best guy to man the belly guns?

I put my radio operator on double duty for empty guns. They are either in the chin when there is a hot drop zone (and you really need the foreward guns), or in the belly when the crew is at high alt and under heavy fire. Low alt fighting, you might as well not have anyone in the belly. Better have the radio auto tagging.

[Marceline "Duckson"]

Originally posted by ℧ Nescient:

Originally posted by Tavingon:

Who's the best guy to man the belly guns?

I put my radio operator on double duty for empty guns. In the chin when there is a hot drop zone, and in the belly when the crew is at high alt. Low alt fighting, you might as well not have anyone in the belly.

I would recommend putting your engineer in the vert gun so hes closer to things that need repairing then just have your radio operator run back and forth between his station, mostly because auto tag is a fairly important thing.

[slapz]

Originally posted by The One True Duckson of Spook:

Originally posted by ℧ Nescient:

I put my radio operator on double duty for empty guns. In the chin when there is a hot drop zone, and in the belly when the crew is at high alt. Low alt fighting, you might as well not have anyone in the belly.

I would recommend putting your engineer in the vert gun so hes closer to things that need repairing then just have your radio operator run back and forth between his station, mostly because auto tag is a fairly important thing.

Heavy reliance on auto tag is for chumps that don't take advantage of high alt flying and good radar. If you can manually tag before bandits even see your pathetic rust bucket, there is really no need to have then engi running the guns. Bombardier swapping between the chin and bomb sight is nearly instantaneous, but for the long sticks heading into a run, I'll run the radio operator up. Besides, if something's on fire, I already need someone at the fire suppression controls, or near the front. You'd have to pull the bombardier, or someone for that anyway.

[Marceline "Duckson"]

Originally posted by ℧ Nescient:

Originally posted by The One True Duckson of Spook:

I would recommend putting your engineer in the vert gun so hes closer to things that need repairing then just have your radio operator run back and forth between his station, mostly because auto tag is a fairly important thing.

Heavy reliance on auto tag is for chumps that don't take advantage of high alt flying and good radar. If you can manually tag before bandits even see your pathetic rust bucket, there is really no need to have then engi running the guns. Bombardier swapping between the chin and bomb sight is nearly instantaneous, but for the long sticks heading into a run, I'll run the radio operator up. Besides, if something's on fire, I already need someone at the fire suppression controls, or near the front. You'd have to pull the bombardier, or someone for that anyway.

Relying on auto tag is something you don't want to do but when things start going wrong and you don't have time to tag the enemy its nice to have. But to each his own.

[slapz]

Originally posted by The One True Duckson of Spook:

Originally posted by ℧ Nescient:

Heavy reliance on auto tag is for chumps that don't take advantage of high alt flying and good radar. If you can manually tag before bandits even see your pathetic rust bucket, there is really no need to have then engi running the guns. Bombardier swapping between the chin and bomb sight is nearly instantaneous, but for the long sticks heading into a run, I'll run the radio operator up. Besides, if something's on fire, I already need someone at the fire suppression controls, or near the front. You'd have to pull the bombardier, or someone for that anyway.

Relying on auto tag is something you don't want to do but when things start going wrong and you don't have time to tag the enemy its nice to have. But to each his own.

Yeah, everything is still situational. Poor visability might warrant the strategy you suggested, but if high and cold flying is easily navigable due to good conditions, my strategy works best. Out flying is much easier than out fighting... that's the best strategy. Can't count the number of fights I would have lost assuming I flew my crew right into the thick of it. What can't fight you, can't beat you.

[Brygun]

For the belly gun to review my earlier post. Presenting as the 3 situation of inbound, the bomb run and on the way out.

-> on the way in I use only the 2 original gunners to man the aft and 2 mid turrets. Mid turret gunner up or down depending inversely on your flying altitude. To much for everyone else to do. Engineer is saving fuel using lean, Bombadier is manning front gun and we are running into their territory so enemy planes often pass the front. Navigator is getting us there. Radio man is radar so I can spot or doing repairs. Engineer is 50% time running lean or the odd repair.

-+ On the bomb run. Bombadier in the bomb sight. Its is reason for living afterall. Engineer if available mans the chin gun. Otherwise Engineer may be on lean, repairs or rarely healing. Radioman at his post for autotag as I am too busy looking at the target at bomb sight during this critical operation.
Sometimes at higher levels I call in spitfires during my bomb run. There is almost always planes around for them to fight. A bit odd they are so far inland though. Any enemy planes they distract let alone kill is that much less damage done to me mid flight making the later flight also that much safer.

<- On the way out move the bombadier to join the 2 gunners. My bombadier is pretty armored so moves slow. With 2+1 for the 3 turrets often one is needing healing or getting ammo. Navigator is on the chin gun so he can reasonably in his heavy armor get back to navigate should I need. Engineer may be on lean for fuel, healing or repairing. Radioman is often doing repairs or autotags or healing. I am generally doing manual plane marking on the way out but there may be a lot of medkit and repair tasks to assign that briefly I dont keep up so autotag will restore our gunnery.

Pilot is always in his chair. One you get the improved medical skills heal him in his chair! I do give the pilot navigator as his secondary. The premise is anyone else can keep the plane level while he lets me get to the airbase. Then the pilot gets back in the seat for the actual landing/emergency landing.

[TheRamenWrangler]

When your crew bails out would they all scramble for a parachute?

[Brygun]

Originally posted by DatWeeabOO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.COM:

When your crew bails out would they all scramble for a parachute?

I think so but I rarely have more than one on board. So they all seem to race for what ever ones you have.

What could go wrong? Like when your plane no longer has a tail and they are soaring out the backend before they get to the chutes

[Ricked_Sick]

Originally posted by ℧ Nescient:

Originally posted by The One True Duckson of Spook:

I would recommend putting your engineer in the vert gun so hes closer to things that need repairing then just have your radio operator run back and forth between his station, mostly because auto tag is a fairly important thing.

Heavy reliance on auto tag is for chumps that don't take advantage of high alt flying and good radar. If you can manually tag before bandits even see your pathetic rust bucket, there is really no need to have then engi running the guns. Bombardier swapping between the chin and bomb sight is nearly instantaneous, but for the long sticks heading into a run, I'll run the radio operator up. Besides, if something's on fire, I already need someone at the fire suppression controls, or near the front. You'd have to pull the bombardier, or someone for that anyway.

To each his own as said above fits it quite nicely - I know of people getting the navigator as gunners, I myself belong to the ones that take the engineer as fourth gunner, as mentioned above.

However, I think taking your radio op is quite excotic. But hell, as long as you keep flying, why not. Don't shame Auto Tag though, you might be safe with high altitude at lower campaign levels, but as far as I can see, the jet powered enemy fighters are giving a sh*t about which altitude you are. And I prefer to spot these buggers asap.

Are you really telling me, you have an empty radio station from a certain point in the mission, until you can spare a gunner again? That seems like quite a flaw, unless of course, you have done the missions so many times, that you are completely aware of when to spot and when not.