PF - IJN Pearl Harbour Mission

[MA_Moby]

A beautiful start. The sun rising in front of the aircraft sat on the carrier, their own rising suns, blood red and proud on their wings.

I take off. The number two plane, for no apparant reason takes a nose dive into the sea - you can't hire the AI pilots these days. I content myself with flying close formation on the number one plane for a while, then get bored - sea, lots of sea, so much sea. I hit autopilot, whack the speed to X4, go and make a cup of tea, look back in, nothing doing, go and watch a bit of telly, look back in, still more sea, sit down in front of the PC and fly manually and speed X4 for a while, set autopilot ahgain, read a chapter of a book on the radical underground press in the early 1970s, look up at the screen AT LAST - an island has appeared. By this time roughly an hour has passed (or it seems that way).

I take control, set speed to normal and ready for the attack. We are the first wave of - erm - two dive bombers. Over target I get into the dive and concentrate my puny bombs on a cruiser. No effect - bombs not up to the job. I see the number one plane hit the bombers on the nearby field instead and I wish I'd doen the same. I stick around and strafe AAA positions (not yet firing). The second wave arrives, drop bombs which bounce off the ships, and the americans wake up. I decide to go home racing over the island then out to sea. Right, set autopilot and read another chapter of the book. I set the autopilot, the throttle drops, the speed drops and the plane goes into a series of dives and stalls, at one point threatening to spin. I regain control and altitude, try again - the same thing happens. So I fly manually - speed X4 - until I get a GAME OVER message. By this time I can't be fricking arsed to go and land on the carrier, and just quit out of the game.

This game could be so good, and shows flashes of this brilliance. The model of Pearl Harbour is great, the ships look fantastic, and that dawn take off was magical. Yet the crappy AI and autopilot, the fact the planes can't actually sink any ships with 60lb bombs (as far as I can work out), and the utter boredom of the the realistic distances flown, make it almost unplayable in IJN bomber career mode.

Don't even get me started on the USN bomber pilot career. Hours flown on a recon whcih doesn't spot any ships - just sea (lots of it).

[r1zeek]

It's the sad sad truth.

Could have been so great

[Geist]

haha so i wasnt doing something wrong with the usn missions the ships are out there.... somewhere.... u can see them on externals but i could never find them ingame

[Nick]

The autopilot will be trying to take you to the next waypoint. So unless you have minimap path enabled, you'll have no idea which wypoints the game has registered you as flying over. This means you could miss one waypoint by a couple of miles, or take a shortcut over the hills and then game won't register you as having passed a waypoint.

You do the mission, engage the autopilot so you can have a read on the way home to then find the autopilot flies you right back into the combat zone.

You can avoid this by using the next way point key, but then you have to minimap path enabled. Also, what the plane should be doing at the waypoint it is heading towards is enabled no matter how far you are from the actual waypoint.

Just for a laugh, I took my P40 WAY out to sea, chasing Zeros. I got miles out and fed up hunting for them, so I flicked on autopilot and went off to get a cuppa. I come back to find my plane skimming over the waves at about 200knots, gear and flaps down.... check the minimap and sure enough, in the previous dogfight I had flown over all the waypoints (I guess) and the autopliot was heading for the landing waypoint... in a landing config... while 200 miles out to sea.... brilliant!

[MA_Moby]

the autopliot was heading for the landing waypoint... in a landing config... while 200 miles out to sea.... brilliant!

Yes, I've jad a few of these moments!