Plotting an Air Mission

This is by no means the only way to plot air missions, but I have found it to work consistently. Once the mission time has been selected a waypoint list now appears. For aircraft the first waypoint is TKOFF (takeoff). Now click on the map where you want the next way point for the flight. Keep plotting until all you waypoints including one at the destination airfield have been plotted. If the mission is a ground attack mission ensure that one of your waypoints is over the target. Targets can be either factories, bridges airfields, ground units or objects. On your map ground units are represented by symbols. Simply move your mouse cursor over one to have the details on that unit displayed in a pop up. Some units may not be identified yet or you may have incomplete intelligence regarding that unit. It will appear as a question mark. Units spotted by human players are not plotted on the map. You can plot a waypoint where you think these units may have been seen. Ensure that you have at least 3 waypoints prior to a ground target (not including the ground target or takeoff waypoint) and at least 3 waypoints after the ground target waypoint prior to landing (minimum of 9 waypoints). This is a restriction of the IL-2 engine only. For air only missions only 3 waypoints are required before landing not including the takeoff waypoint or the landing waypoint (5 waypoints minimum). Also make sure you have enough waypoints and distance to climb to your desired altitude. The higher you want to climb the more waypoints you will need. I use a rule of thumb of 1 waypoint for every 500 meters If you make a mistake when plotting a waypoint right-click on the map on the right hand side. A pop up list of choices will appear. Either select Reject Latest Waypoint to delete the last waypoint plotted or select Reject all Waypoints to erase all waypoints placed so far for this mission (see Figure 13 - Air Mission drop down).

Once you are happy with the placement of your waypoints now set the altitude for the individual waypoints. The waypoints are displayed on the left hand side of the screen. Depending on the number of waypoints plotted there may be a scrollbar. If you have to use the scrollbar until you can see the first waypoint. There are five pieces of information displayed for each waypoint Dist (Distance), ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), Speed, Alt (Altitude), and Task. For waypoint 2 click on the Alt number for that waypoint. A box will be displayed in which to enter your desired altitude. Enter the altitude and press enter. You may get a message indicating the change in altitude is too extreme for the flight. The interface will then recalculate the altitude for you. Remember to ensure that enough waypoints are available for altitude changes. Move through your waypoints entering the altitudes for the planes. Ensure that near your airfield that the altitudes are descending. This ensures that any AI planes will be able to land easily.

You can also set the airspeed at each waypoint. This can be useful when combined with careful waypoint and altitude plotting. By adjusting the speeds of planes it is possible to route them to arrive at a target from differing directions and altitudes almost simultaneously. This is better attempted using AI planes to fly these missions. It is quite difficult for human pilots to navigate these awkward and time sensitive flight plans.

Now let us deal with the tasks. If this is either a ground attack or recon mission you now set the waypoint tasks. Each waypoint can only have one of the following tasks assigned to it (task abbreviations (R,G,L,W,F):

• (R)econ – the unit will take a picture of the area inside the recon circle. The higher the altitude the larger the circle photographed. However the higher the altitude the poorer quality of the image. You can have 1 recon waypoint per photo allowed to the plane type flying the mission. B25’s for example have 10 photos available, therefore it could have 10 recon waypoints.