Group Engagements in SP

I've struggled with this for a while now and seemed to have no problem with it in bear trap campaign. My philosophy is to avoid bvr in the su 27 and just focus on close in combact capitalizing on agility and ir missiles. But whenever I tend to engage a four ship of f15s and f16s my wigmen become useless. They never seem to split the enemy fighters when I send them to pincer and I end up with a 3 vs 1 on most occassions which spells death for me. Do I have my tsctics wrong in abandoning bvr or is it just a limitation of having AI wingmen?

ok, don't know if ill help you or not but ill give it a go, my wingman in 2vs4 usually does split the group, not always 50/50 but taking even one will help, but you cant rely on it.

so, always use bvr but in the middle range not at its longest, as it has a pretty thin chance of making contact anyway, but what it will do it force the targets to do some sort of manoeuvre, either to evade or just change heading, if you only have for example 2 long range missiles, use them, you have nothing to loose and it will at least stop the direct approach from the enemy.

you need to do the same to their missiles, I find rapid direction/alt change late on will help most, I like a lower alt than a big group first, so as I dive I have a lot of air speed to rise above them fast, this also works to evade oncoming missiles,

set yourself up ready for a turn to their 6, you know its coming as they are heading for you, tag one quickly and despatch with the hms.

only 2 left if wingman has done his job to distract 1.

keep seed up in turns, 600 at least, use air brake to outmanoeuvre and change attack angle quickly, just don't forget to put it down.

the important thing is speed/CM on turn, get position, once its one or two on you its all over for them :)

I've struggled with this for a while now and seemed to have no problem with it in bear trap campaign. My philosophy is to avoid bvr in the su 27 and just focus on close in combact capitalizing on agility and ir missiles. But whenever I tend to engage a four ship of f15s and f16s my wigmen become useless. They never seem to split the enemy fighters when I send them to pincer and I end up with a 3 vs 1 on most occassions which spells death for me. Do I have my tsctics wrong in abandoning bvr or is it just a limitation of having AI wingmen?

Just recorded this track. If the attached TRK plays back correctly, it might give you some ideas. It's best if you can pincer and come in on their flank. This was a 4v4 against F-15s. One wingman came home with me. The other two didn't make it. None of the F-15s survived. It was over fairly quickly.

4 Su-27 v 4 F-15.zip

Flying the Su-27, against F-15's & F-16's is 50/50 for me cause of that Aim-120, have you ever heard of the term think outside the box. (I.E if flying your waypoint during a campaign mission and typically if you hit waypoint 4 and Awacs calls out targets, instead of maintaining your waypoint and starting an engagement from there, I typically will do a hard cut left or right tell wingman at this time to engage bandits if your a 2 ship or 4, four is better. At this time If the enemies are lets say a bearing from you of 90Degrees I will typically get very low and do a long turn from zero degrees or 180 Degrees based off this 90 degree bandit bearing, and try and come in from behind or the sides, also if this does not work then using the mountains to your advantage and try and get them to waste a few missiles, stay low and loiter around in the valley wait a bit and try and pop up, I have had a few occasions the Ai has fired 3-4 missile that have slammed in the mountain and continued to wait and full afterburner up and been right behind 3 of the 4 bandits and they have no idea. This technique has worked on occasion but is not guaranteed this is what I mean 50/50 with dealing with the 15/16s. Hope this helps and this is the beauty of DCS nothing is guaranteed or the same ever engagement can be different.