by Mike "von Krarr" Kovacs

  The air defenses are currently very weak around P'Yongyang. There are some high altitude defenses remaining west of the city and several airbases around the city operating but the attack so far has been very effective. Ground troops are being directed towards the city but are beginning to slow down from exhaustion.

So far I've found it very important to click on the ground units and direct them the way you see fit. They advance very slowly if you allow the computer complete control. I would also recommend saving and restarting Falcon if you make a lot of changes to flight plans and ground troops. It has crashed on me a few times in the pie screens after making changes. Doing this requires a lot of patience because the ground troops will change their orders from time to time. Ground units must be continually managed.

At this stage in the campaign I am changing the priorities to CAS and Interdiction. In a few instances in the past couple of hours I've retasked BDA flights as CAS (* see below), particularly around Haeju. The armored battalion that captured the airbase there was in deep trouble from advancing DPRK armor, artillery, infantry and ships.

In two missions flown by myself the ships were sunk with LGBs and the ground troops were decimated with napalm. They are completely broken and in withdrawal. There was no air resistance whatsoever, even this close to P'Yongyang. Take note ground pounders: your salvation has arrived! I hit 42 moving ground targets on the second CAS mission. Wingman performance was abysmal. Nothing I tried could get my wingman to drop napalm.

F4 1.08 Cockpit Mod

Warning: Scoob_SBM has identified a BDA crash issue in 1.08. If you change the center pylon from a reconnaissance pod to a jammer, lock up a moving ground target, check that it's DPRK from AWACS, then order wingman "Attack my target" you will get a crash to desktop. Ditto for 1.08i. If you retask BDA flights don't move that pod!

Click to continue

Up to this point here are my main impressions:

• The "Wall of MiGs" appears to have fallen down
• Enemy aircraft do not take off from captured or destroyed airfields
• Captured airfields cannot be used as forward airbases
• Wingman AI is very poor in situations where there are no assigned targets
• Ground troops have a mind of their own
• Save often if you make modifications to the computer's plan

Day 2: 12:00:00 through Day 2: 20:00:00

According to the iBeta team the overall success of your troops depends on you flying missions successfully and frequently. Although I couldn't completely pass up the opportunity for some campaign flying, I decided to let the campaign run on its own for about 5 hours and see for myself the effect. China entered the war early day 2 so the skies are now swarming with PRC Su-27s. If the momentum starts swinging towards the north again then it will allow me to assess the repairs the DPRK are making to their assets.

Figure 10

The DPRK made some excellent strategic moves early day 2. Wonsan and that pesky Sansago-Ri airbase (50% now) were close to being overrun when they sent out attack aircraft and destroyed a number of strategically important bridges. I can still get there without bridges but now my troops have to make a large detour. You can see in figure 10 how there is a large pocket on the east coast near Wonsan. A large force of mine was quickly sweeping up the coast when the bridges were destroyed.

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