The Air-to-Air Stinger and Defensive Counter Air

[tservello92]

So...I grew tired of Mi-24s chewing me up while my helicopters went about their own business. Thanks to the ease of modding this game (even w/o documentation) I created an AIM-92 Air-to-Air Stinger (ATAS) and mounted it to my AH-64s. It worked like a charm and soon my Apaches were blowing Hinds out of the air. Yes, I do plan on equipping the Hind with Iglas moving forward.

Next, I created an AIM-9L Sidewinder and mounted it to F-16s and A-10s, hoping to get a bit of "forced" Defensive Counter Air against enemy helos as my aircraft arrived on map for a CAS mission. Unfortunately - that one did not work. I placed enemy helicopters in close proximity to enemy ground troops hoping they would engage the helos as they came in for their IB/CBU/PGM run, but they would not fire the AIM-9L at the helicopters. Any ideas? A separate DCA mission (in addition to CAS) would be great to deal with pesky attack helicopters or in larger scenarios vs a Warsaw Pact air assault.

A couple screen grabs.

[CapnDarwin]

Helicopters with an anti-air missile will use it in the game, and based on the air superiority of the scenario, it is possible to have helicopters shot down be abstracted CAS. Air-to-air weapons on an aircraft will not shoot at the helos as they are not the target focus of the air strike, and the air-strike code does not function like the game's regular spotting and combat loop. It is a separate semi-abstracted event in Southern Storm. We plan to change this in the future so those aircraft travel over the map and can act like regular units in terms of spotting and combat.