Operation Burning Sands: MERCS

I’ve always wanted to try out the “Mercenary” role in Strike Fighters 2 - so I’m going to give it a whirl. You start with the F-100D and $10,000 in the bank. The campaign premise is a Middle East proxy war (that never happens!) with Paran backed by the Soviet Union with the United Nations defending the Kingdom of Dhimar. While the UN mobilizes, the Kingdom mobilizes a mercenary air force: the 1st Special Ops Wing.

I’ll be starting with a fresh pilot. While I might like to play this campaign in Dead Is Dead mode, I’m pretty out of practice with SF2, so I might need to pick a less brutal option.

Our first mission will be to provide a combat air patrol over Mosak…

For this first mission, I choose one of my more experienced wingmen, 1st LT Lin already has three air to air kills - so he will be watching my six…

The mercenary campaigns use money and inventory (I don’t really know how it works yet) to outfit your air force…

For this mission, I arm our flight with 4 AIM-9B Sidewinders each. I was hoping for droptanks to be available too, but I didn’t see them in the arming menu. I don’t know if they will come available later (?)…

Off we go - our F-100D paint scheme is the cool Desert Aggressors by ValAstur…

I try to be judicious with the user of the afterburner, but the F-100D is a real sled at low speeds and does require a lot of power to get “on the step” so to speak…

Keeping an eye on the fuel gauge…

Terrain is a combination of Centurion and Piecemeal’s Desert 4 add-ons…

Toothy looking Super Sabre…

We hit the coast and head southeast…

AWACS calls out a threat coming up north from Paran so we put our noses down and accelerate toward them…

The enemy is flying the Hawker Hunter (I think?)…thankfully not sporting any missiles that I can see…

The F-100 is pretty fast, but if you pull too hard you’ll end up snowplowing very quickly as I found after my first merge. I was never able to recover enough energy to get around on the Hunter and we stayed in a circling stand-off for a couple minutes while I sucked gas like no tomorrow. I tried to get my wingman to drop down and engage but he got mixed up with two other fighters near the coast.

Lots of close passes. I did find I could pretty much accelerate away from him at will but without my Track IR hooked up, I was having a hard time keeping a bead on him (I wasn’t using any HUD cheats)…

When I tried to conserve some fuel…he ended up getting some angles on me and did line up for a snap shot that missed…

Watching the fuel drain quickly…

After a couple of minutes, I was dangerously low on fuel and as I accelerated away the Hunter also broke off and headed south. I don’t know what the AI logic is when they start running low on fuel…but we called it a draw and both lived to fight another day. Unfortunately, I was so critically low on fuel that I had to land at a nearby base. A ground refuel option in SF2 would be a nice feature…

Honestly - a draw is a win for me when it comes to dogfighting…so I’ll take it…

10 Likes

Yeah, wingman in SF2, from what I remember, are painfully not interested in self - preservation, so it’s probably a good thing you called it before he could auger in.

Thats corect :slight_smile:

:+1: I’m not real good at that period aircraft ID…

Our second mission will have us heading back to the seaside border area for a strike against anti-aircraft units near Riqdur…

Loaded up with rocket pods, Sidewinders, and a few 250 lb. bombs…

Other assets in the area - perhaps the UN?

I also noticed that Hawker Hunters fly for both the Dhimar and Paran sides of the conflict - making positive target ID by finding the red or green star flash on the wings and tail essential…!

On our way to the target area, a flight of Hunters bounce us. I have a couple opportunities for shots, but my early model Sidewinders don’t track well through hard turns and I go 0 for 4…

I finally get close enough for a guns kill on one. My first A2A kill of the campaign!

Enemies in the mix with more lurking to the north of our course…

The second Hunter gets position on me. I’m reluctant to drop my stores because I want to press toward the target area. He fires his gun and when I spot an opportunity to escape during one maneuver I make my way toward the coast…

I’m not ashamed to admit I’m using labels in some instances. Mostly for finding ground targets that otherwise would be very difficult to find. I’m using a modded HUD.ini file that makes the label just a few pixels and is very unobtrusive…

A few puffs of AAA as I roll in…

My pair of bombs sails long. No CCIP in the F-100D - just angles, altitudes, and airspeeds…so misses are frequent…

Coming back around, keeping a nervous eye on the skies for more bandits…

This time a rocket run is more successful…

Finding another primary target, I roll in once again with my single remaining bomb and do manage a hit on this one…

Spending a lot of time in burner trying to keep my sled from hitting the ground…

A few gun runs against other AAA units…

Mission success. I glance at my fuel gauge and I actually misread it. There are two and I saw the one to the right and thought…OK, that tank is nearly empty, but I have that other tank next to it showing lots of fuel. Uh…wrong…they are both reading the SAME amount of fuel - one is FWD tank and the other is TOTAL tanks (for keeping track of external fuel if you have it I guess). As a result of my misreading the gauge in the heat of maneuvering, I don’t realize how much fuel I actually have and I keep plinking away at targets with the gun…

AAA is getting a bit more lively…

Hey…what is that light? Why is my throttle not responding? Oh no…good grief…!

Out of fuel (dumb, dumb, dumb) but with 400 knots of energy I’m pretty close to a friendly airfield on the other side of the border…

I’m down to about 180 knots as I stretch the glide to a modified dogleg to final - and the F-100 isn’t super forgiving at low speeds. I bump in the flaps which lets me make the remaining few hundred meters to the runway. The touchdown is firm…but I’m alive…!

Mission success - with a good profit to boot. In two missions I’ve gone from $10,000 to $32,436. Three A2G kills for me and my buddy from the bayou, Capt. Boudreaux has notched up three as well…!

So far so good - making progress and we haven’t lost a squadron member…

8 Likes

How old is that game? the graphics don’t look that bad

2007? 2008? Maybe? SF2 is strangely ageless.

Beachav8r put some key mods there…

2 Likes

Can we get a full mod list? Because I’m not sure if my installation is best optimized.

Sure…will take me a bit when I get home but I’ll post the mods I’m using…

1 Like

So my install is the standard of all the base products (SF2, SF2 Israel, SF2 Vietnam, SF2 Europe, SF2 North Atlantic) and these mods:

For this specific campaign I’m using modified Desert Terrain tiles:

Desert Terrain V.4

To that terrain I also added the following modification:

Desert 4 Mountain Regions V.1

For this specific campaign, I’m also using custom F-100D skins:

Dhimari Desert Aggressors

For effects for all versions of SF2 I have installed, I’m using Stary’s awesome Unified Effects package which improves (or Hollywood-izes) explosions, flames, smoke, all kinds of stuff…

Unified Effects 1.0

I’m also using some HUD.ini edits that just change the game info overlay to make the target box smaller and less obtrusive. Those I did manually. There is a ridiculous amount of stuff you can tweak with SF2…so much so that you can find yourself in an endless hole of tweaking instead of flying…LOL…

2 Likes

Mission #03 of our campaign has us on a relatively deep strike for the F-100D (particularly in that I don’t have any external fuel tanks in my inventory)…

Our two-ship flight will carry Mk-84, 2000 lb. bombs, some Sidewinders, and a couple 750 lb. bombs as backup…

On the way and keeping a close eye on the fuel…

Spotting some A-4s lending support to Dhimar…

With the long flight to the target area, I won’t have time to mess about, so I set my bombs to release all on one pass (I have 3 Mk-84s)…

We are delayed slightly due to a ridiculous amount of enemy pressure over the target area…

Once some offensive CAP flights move in to lure off the defensive CAP, we sneak in for a quick strike. I roll in steeply and drop…

Boom - boom - out go the…errr…a miss…really??

Some AAA drifts up and I escape at low altitude out over the coast…

Fortunately, I doubted by bombing accuracy and had already given my wingman the “ATTACK MY TARGET” command and he is dropping on the target just a few seconds after me… Boom boom - HE turned out the lights!

We pick a hole in the dogfights going on west of the strike area, zoom through and pull onto final as the fuel low level warning lights are flicking on…

Mission accomplished thanks to 2nd Lt. Couch…!

5 Likes

2Lt “Seat” Couch

1 Like

Actually…he’s “Stub” Couch… :smile:

I vote “Seat”; makes more sense!

Beats some other handle he could get. Could just call him “IKEA” and be done with it.

I’m feeling this campaign now - this time tasked for a short distance SEAD, which gives me spare gas to play with…

Loaded up with three canisters of napalm, 2.75" rocket pods, and 4 Sidewinders. I don’t see cluster bombs as an option in the inventory…or I would have taken them…

Other flights doing their thing…

I give my wingman the “high cover” command hoping he will keep an eye out for bandits…

Rolling in on the first AAA site…

…and…that’s a miss…(this no-CCIP isn’t real easy)…

As I’m pulling off the target, I spot a tiny dot rising off the enemy airfield just on the other side of the FEBA. Fangs out…!

I sling three Sidewinders at him and NONE of them hit even though I did get a lock light. These missiles are trash! As I fire my third one, I also pull my gun trigger as we flash by him at 500 knots…

A point blank kill…my first air-to-air kill of the campaign!

Coming back around, I’m getting nervous about more fighters showing up so I go right to the rockets, which seem more effective and easier to use…

Pulling off, I get hit a few times by some AA rounds, but I’m still flying…!

I find another primary target and order my wingman to engage…

I drop on another primary target - a radar and again my bombs are just outside the damage zone…

We have several columns of smoke rising and enough of the primary targets are destroyed to give us a mission success…

I don’t know how I got two kills with rockets but no hit %…

5 Likes

AIM-9B
Good

Pick one. :smiley:

It’s been forever since I traipsed through the guts of SF. I want to say that you or the MIG can’t be turning harder than 2 or 4Gs (can’t remember which). There might also be an built-in failure percentage that X amount of shots will just go dumb off the rail.

3 Likes

Might be better to fire off the AIM-9Bs in pairs. Such was the strategy of the VVS and PVO in the Soviet era, as their missiles had a high rate of failure, too.

This makes me sad that there’s no successor to Strike Fighters with a cooperative campaign in this style. It’d be cool to play with a few friends like this.

1 Like

It sure would. I know SF2 has it’s quirks and problems…but getting together with a bunch of people and flying F-105s, F-4s, and A-6s against North Vietnam would be really cool. And it is pretty simple…and fair looking for an old sim… It would be fun.

3 Likes

If I remember correctly, didn’t SF2 rely on the old DirectPlay mechanism for multiplayer and it doesn’t work anymore?