Campaign losses

[wschneid]

I posted this question before, but didn't get any response. Can anyone give some clues or stratagies to win a campaign. I sucessfully complete most of the missions, but still lose ground and eventually lose the war. Anyone have any suggestions?

Wildbill

[SgtMal]

I haven't won a campaign yet, but the battle line has been steadily moving toward the enemy. The best excuse I have for not finishing is that I'm finishing a grad degree right now, and I've had to buckle down lately to finish it.

Anyway, here are some quickly-written tips that have worked for me. I'm not saying their guaranteed-secrets at winning the game, but they may help. Heck, I'd actually appreciate it if anyone else had ideas for revising, adding to, or removing my ideas. One caveat, I wrote this without having the game in front of me, so I'm using my lousy memory to refer to various parts or buttons in the game.

1. Until you get comfortable with the game, set the ability of the bad guys low. Something I often repeat to myself is "This is entertainment." I started telling myself that after I spent a couple of months repeating mission 1 of CFS2, with the setting all set on hard. Even Pappy Boyington eased into it. As you get better, increase a setting or 2--which is satisfying in & of itself. When I'm first getting used to a new sim, I give myself unlimited gas & ammo as well. I am looking forward to working my way up to turning these off. In the future, having easy settings will be boring to me, but for now, this is entertainment.

2. If you haven't already done so, read the legend on the battle line. For me, attacking green squares with red perimeters are the best.

3. Related to the previous tip, use the pop-down menu below the battle map (used to select missions) and select missions with 3 stars preceding them. As far as I know, more stars means a more important mission. One of my favorite missions is attacking ammo depots, when they have 3 stars.

4. Launch a ground offensive when you have the prestige points. I usually wait until I have 3-5 "ground attack" days worth of points.

5. Related to the previous item, when you do launch a ground offensive, select a 3-star mission on the sector in which the offensive is occurring to support the offensive. Few things move a battle line more than a "several day" ground offensive with close air support.

6. Wingmen in this game can do a lot more than they did in CFS2, where I used them primarily to keep enemy tail-gunners busy. In CFS3, tell your wingmen to attack a target and tell them to help you if you are being chased.

7. Learn your tactical display. With it, you can zoom in, out, and highlight targets. Highlighting targets has the targeting cone point you in the right direction and tells wingmen where you want them to attack. For me, the best source of learning the tactical display is the "Customize Keys" button (or something like that) in the Options section of the game. This section lists all the commands available, in categories. Of course, the online help & manuals can be helpful as well.

8. Zoom in on the map and locate the small icons in enemy territory that represent factories, refineries, and rail stations. History and the manuals that came with the game are full of descriptions of fighter/bomber missions. To me, an aircraft can fly over the battle line, so it should. If you locate these goodies near the battle line (even 1 grid) you can usually find them by warping to your target, and then, fly in the direction (using your compass) of the over-the-line target.

I describe more of the above in the forum "Long Trip to Berlin, but need help with trig."

Hope this helps,