"In June of 1942, a large Japanese task force approached Midway with intentions of taking the island. Its strategic location was recognized as a valued prize by the Japanese forces, and an all-out attack was mounted, causing heavy damage to nearly all of the above-ground facilities on Midway. However, the United States stood its ground; the Japanese were met by aircraft carriers and other Midway-based aircraft. The ensuing battle ended in a crushing defeat for the Japanese and marked the turning point of the war in the Pacific."
PREPPING-Section describes exactly what it takes to get an airfield into "Prepped" status
CAPTURING AIR FIELDS.
Why do we do it?
There are six air fields in Air Warrior that can be captured. Airfields are captured to gain a strategic advantage over the enemy.
The capturable air fields in Air Warrior are the N (neutral) fields. Typically there are two fields residing in each countries origin, one that is typically an airbase, from which you can fly any available plane, and the other which is stricly a tank/jeep base.
Why do you need to know this?
If you dont capture or prevent from being captured the "N" fields in your country you WILL regret it.
[Boa's Note: Bz capturing N88 gain a huge advantage in fighting the war in A-land as they have a base of operations very close to juicy A targets. The reverse is also true and should Cz or Az capture N86, you can be sure B-land will be in trouble as B84 and B83 are both nearby.]
Before troops can be dropped on a neutral field, the field must be placed into "Prepped" status. This is achieved by killing the ack and the tower. These two items MUST be down before troops can be dropped to capture the field.
Taking out the tower and ack.
My choice for this task is either the P-38 "Lightning" or the A-26 with a full payload of 8 bombs. Typically with the 38, I have been able to take out the ack with guns and drop my two eggs on the tower, a little riscky in a 38, typically the A-26 can withstand more direct hits from the ack, also with the A-26's bomb load you can dump four on the ack and four on the tower. However, if I am in a P-38 and I encounter an enemy in route to target, I can shoot down the counter and continue to the target. You might not find yourself as lucky in an A-26.
[Boa's Note: You need not prep the tank/jeep fields, N89, N90, and N91]
[Boa's Note: Note that a good pilot can prep 2 fields with a p38 or a26 by strafing the ack and dropping half load on the tower. The a26 is espeically good at his because it can take a lot more ack hits then the p38 as mentioned above]
The "Duck"
Load up that duck! It's not unusual to hear the C-47 Gooney Bird reffered to as a "Duck" in the Air Warrior Arena, because with no guns, that is exacly what you are in a C-47 "A sitting duck" :-)
[Boa's Note: some pilots refer to paratroopers as "drunks", you may hear things like "IcMan: I got drunks otw to n86"]
Selecting the C-47
First things first, after youve
got that airfield prepped, grab the C-47 from the closest airfield. Hopefully
you will have a couple of your buddy's in their favorite fiter to go along
for the ride because there is nothing that I love more, than shooting down
an un-escorted C-47. After selecting the C-47 Gooney Bird, you will see
a pop up window with all of the goodies that a C-47 can carry. Be
SURE you select "Paratroopers",
it is the default, however there is nothing worse than getting ready to
drop and not having any paratroopers on board, so double check.
Troop Drop
Get them on the ground. Eight paratroopers must be dropped, and land in a close proximety to the air field you are trying to capure, at an altitude of no LESS than 500 feet. I typically drop them from just before the begining of the runway. The command to request a paratrooper to jump is '*go [enter]. If you are succesfull you should see "a paratrooper jumps" in the text box. As you can imagine entering this eight times is almost impossible while flying. That is where a "Troop macro" becomes handy ( and you thought a kill macro was all macro's were good for )
[Boa's Note: there is also a time limit that you have between the first and eight paratrooper. I'm not sure what the time limit is, but definitely dropping one trooper per pass will not capture the field for you. As Iceman says above, the best thing to do is to use a macro and get all the troopers out in one pass.]
Creating the Macro
The best way to create a macro is
off line. Select the C-47, dont bother taking off, you're fine just sitting
on the runway.
Press Ctrl+Alt+F9 to start the recorder. Next, select the keys
that will activate the macro. I used capital "D" or [shift]
d for my macro. (Remember you can no longer use the key you choose
as a text key while playing Air Warrior. I.E. I can no longer send text
with a capital D), then just start entering the command's. The jump command
needs to be entered a total of eight times, once for each trooper. It should
look something like this:
Ctrl+Alt+F9
[shift] d (if you want [shift]+d to activate your macro)
'*go + [Enter]
'*go + [Enter]
'*go + [Enter]
'*go + [Enter]
'*go + [Enter]
'*go + [Enter]
'*go + [Enter]
'*go + [Enter]
Ctrl+Alt+F9 To end recording.
I recommend testing your macro off line, just to be sure you recorded it properly. If you find that your macro is not opperating properly, simply re-record it using the same activation key you used the first time. The old macro will be over written by the new one.
[Boa's Note: sometimes the macro won't fire, hitting the [esc] key to force the macro to run usually solves this]
A successful drop
If your troop drop was successful and with a little luck on your side, you should see "Airfield XXX has been captured!!", where XXX will be the victorious country and the field they captured. I.E. if the Bz captured N-86 you would see "Airfield B86 has been captured!!"
The long trip to the Drop Zone
As you will soon find out, flying any ungunned ship to a target is a huge task. You would be surprised how much attention a C-47 will get in route to a target. The enemy knows there is something coming, either troops or supplies. You can be sure they don't want it to get there. It may be that most people just like going for the easy kill.
[Boa's Note: any planes flying below 200 feet are invisible to enemy (and friendly radar). They will still appear as enemy counters, but the enemy will have to locate you visually. For this reason, most Gooney drivers like to ingress at 150ft altitude and fly up to 500ft just before the drop. Remember, paratroopers refuse to jump below 500ft]
Try this.
Definitely one way to go, is with plenty of escorts to keep the fiters busy. However the best way to go about capturing a field is to use two C-47's at the same time. To faulter one troop drop the enemy needs only to shoot down one of your eight troopers, if you drop sixteen they need to kill eight. Let me tell you that is no easy task.
The Cams below are far from perfect and you may find many faults but remember accomplishing the mission should come before how pretty you look doing it. So if you wish to see a demonstration of the mission being accomplished by 82Dog with commentary then read on.
Below you will find a zip file containing two Cams. One is a demonstration of a single P51 prepping a nuetral airfield. This can be done with any two bomb fighters.
The second cam is a demonstration of a C47 coming in at below 200ft and pulling up above 500ft before hitting the DZ (Drop Zone). This drop was done without using macros so imagine how effective you could be with them!
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD cmc204.zip- Zip file contains Prepping.cam and Capture.cam
When I heard Iceman was doing a course on capturing airfields I felt I could not let this course go without putting in my two cents. Being a reallife Paratrooper and sporting the name Paradog how could I sleep with myself at night if I didn't contribute something to this course.
So I begged Iceman to let me add some content to this course and am extremely happy that he allowed me the chance to mess up his course. HeHe Thanks Iceman I owe you one.
I personally have found that all I need to prep a nuetral airfield is a single two bomb fighter. Nuetral Towers are not as strong as normal towers and with a little practice I think you will find that one well placed bomb will take out a nuetral tower leaving you the other bomb to deal with the ack. Of course if you wanna live I would hit the ack first.
Hitting the DZ can be kind of rough sometimes and when you fly around avoiding enemys for 30 minutes it can be a real bummer when the only reason you didn't capture the airfield is because a couple of troops landed too far away. Try using the map as an overhead view. Using the map you can see exactly what you are flying over and will know when your out of the dropzone.
Avoiding enemys can be a real hassle even with an escort. Try doing what I do. Use your autopilot and rudder to stay below 200ft. Below 200ft you will not appear on dar. The only way the enemy will find you is if they actually see you. Flying low and avoiding radar combined with you avoiding crowded sectors can be a very effective tactic. Just before you approach the DZ you can hit your WEP and within seconds be above 500ft and ready to drop troops. A good example of this type of flying can be found in the instructional cams section of this page.
Here are a couple of facts that relate to the game, kind of. First the reason you cannot drop troops below 500ft is because their chutes will not open in time if you drop them any lower than that. Actually in combat we can go from 400ft but unless someone is shooting at me I guarantee I will be a jump refusal if you try to put me out the door at that alt.
Another interesting fact that does NOT apply to the game is the fact that a plane cannot be going too fast when paratroopers jump. If a plane is going over something like 150kia a jumpers chute stands a good chance of being ripped to shreds. Not to mention the opening shock.
Remeber these jumpers are using static lines to deploy their chutes. A static line is attached to a cable in the plane and when you jump the static line pulls tight deploying your chute.
This is one of the reasons you sometimes get Tow jumpers. When a static line gets caught and doesn't breakaway from the chute a paratrooper will feel the opening shock of his life and will find himself being towed by a really hard plane, ow! This is when they decide to pull you back in or cut you free. If you are unconscious they will make every attempt to retrieve you back into the plane. If you are conscious they may make an attempt to retrieve you but if they can't you will be cut free at which time you will deploy your reserve.
Be glad they didn't include all these features in the game cause if they did you might find capturing airfields a much more daunting task than it already is.
This concludes CMC 204. The reason I wanted to write this class was, remembering back when I first started playing, information was scarce and being a "Dweeb" there was not very many people who wanted to help. Personally I enjoy playing with skilled players, it makes killing them so much fun, hehehe This should be all the information you need to successfully capture fileds . And remember, this is just a game "Enjoy the ride".
~Iceman 11/5/96
Last Updated: 11/7/97
©1997 Lee Reese aka "Iceman"