Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26257239-20150724203251/@comment-25467429-20150729183108

Strategy for tackling a mission is important too. A lot of players just head straight into the alignment they start at and go at any target in view. At the risk of spoiling my future endeavors at Moscow, here's how my plan usually works, with my piloting the F-15 S/MTD Stripes, equipped with FAEBs;

Starting position is directly towards the center of the map from the south. First thing I do is arc the nose up to get extra range on my first FAEB and first launch on the group of targets around those two towers center-right. Then I quickly realign to the group of targets immediately to the left. There are usually about three groups of targets that can all be hit with FAEBs. So, four Faeb launches done. That's the first 30 secs or so of the mission. Then I check further to the left to see if the batch on the other side of the river is still there. If someone else has already gotten to it, go right. There are two groupings of targets over there. One set is about the ampitheater, the other is further south (to the right of where you're already facing). Usually the one to the south is already hit by the other team, but the one around the ampitheater is still there. Two FAEBs will get those out of the way. If you've done all this well, near perfect, you'll have about 30k points right there. From there it's mopping up the targets not clustered enough to get bombed, as well as the air targets left flying. If you're fast enough, you can end the first half with 40 to 50k points, give or take a few thousand based on your skills and your competitors. Downside of this strategy is if there is another wide-area bomber flying about (FAEBs or MPBMs, have rarely seen SFFS) you're in a race to get the groups faster than them.

Second half, the most common variant I've seen has a lot of air targets with a moderate amount of high value ground targets. The ground targets are mainly at the center of the map. This is the reason I use a multirole like the Stripes, rather than an attacker like the A-10. My second most common variant to the second half is weighted more to the ground target side, what I'd call the middle path option. There are still a lot of air targets, but there are more ground targets, still mainly concentrated at the center fo the map, though spread out a bit more. In both of these you can swamp the area with FAEBs, diverting to quick strikes on air targets while waiting for your bombs to reload. I can usually one-hit yellow targets from aggressive angles, either two hits or one and a few gun rounds on reds, again from aggressive angles. Try to keep in a limited circle so that you can get to the ground targets fast.

This mission can be done too in a pure fighter, as long as you're lucky enough to avoid the second half variant with almost all ground targets, and/or your fighter is is very good and/or you're very good at switching from air-to-air to air-to-ground. In either case you need to be quick enough to beat others to the target sets you're goign for. That's why you want to be in small rooms (2v2) and avoid competing with your teammates unless you have the confidence to certainly beat them to every target group your going for and still secure an S. If your teammate is boming, go fighter, if your teammate is going fighter, go bomber.