Cross border skirmish - struggling to find artillery

[Kaldadarnes]

Hi, I am playing cross border skirmish but my meteors cannot locate the firing artillery (although they seem to be flying right over them...)? Generally I struggle to get recconaisnance to find anything - not sure if I have the mission set up wrong.

Any help gratefully received...(save attached)

Cheers

K

[ultradave]

When I played it they needed to fly very close to the artillery location, and if I remember I kept them down to 8-10,000 ft. You'll find some AA first so you'll have to avoid them. Basically I set up a north south north south stepping pattern, gradually moving east. Cover all the way to the no fly zones or close to them. Hope that helps.

[Andrea G]

I made them fly really low, 2000 meters, spotted them and be fired upon by the AAA.

To mantain contact with the artilley sites I moved the Jeeps and Recon APC near them; I expected to be fired upon also but the AAA didn't engage the ground forces; finally shell them with your artillery.

Suggestion: would it be possible to add some Syrian ground forces also, to protect the artilley from Israeli ground units?

[Kaldadarnes]

Ah - I wondered about that - i left to the default mission pattern but recce from 25k feet is probably challenging for small targets such arillery.

Good idea to move the jeeps into visible range also.

Thanks

[mikmykWS]

Yeah go low. Altitude matters.

Mike

[ljdramone]

If you go to "Game -> Browse Scenario Platforms" and select the Syrian 152mm artillery battery, the Database Viewer shows a visual detection range of 0.5 nm (about 3000 feet, or roughly 1000 meters).

The recon cameras on the Israeli Gloster Meteors probably increase this range some, but slant range matters too -- if you fly directly overhead at 20,000 feet you'll still be more than 3 nm away from the target.

A recon pass along the scarp of the Golan Heights at about 3,000 feet AGL worked for me.

[Phoenix100]

There's cloud cover too, if I recall? You need to get below that. Or maybe I'm remembering wrong.

[ljdramone]

There's no cloud cover in this scenario. Weather is clear, 25 C, wind/sea 0.

Good point though, visual or optical recon with a cloud layer between you and the target is not going to be very productive.

[ljdramone]

Suggestion: would it be possible to add some Syrian ground forces also, to protect the artilley from Israeli ground units?

Or maybe set the Syrian AA guns to engage opportunity targets, so they'll shoot at Israeli vehicles that get too close? I found I could drive the Israeli tanks and halftracks right up to the Syrian batteries and gun them down with .50 cal (12.7mm).

[kch]

I use the Meteors at around 8000 ft.. that way they don't get engaged by AA, but will detect any artillery that is firing.

Then I use the few Soltam batteries to engage any AA batteries I may detect and then launch a multi-aircraft strike against the artillery and the near AA.