Combat tactics.

Was wondering the best way to employ the MI-8 in comabt against a scattering of armed ground targets (nothing too lethal of course) that I can easily demolish at the helm of my trusty Huey- and certainly with the blackshark.

Gets me thinking that my tactics must obviously be wrong, as the old low peekaboo tactics that I employ with the UH-1 are not nearly as effective on account of the comparative lack of agility.

However black shark -hover and engage from a safe distance- tactics dont seem to be much better as without the modern computer systems you have to get reasonably close to your target, while keeping up the speed to avoid being sitting ducked. I am talking guns and rockets at the moment as U havent tried bombing yet bit of an MI-8 noob but am learning to love it a little bit more every day.

The best way I have found so far is to go in focused on one target, take him out, and then get the hell out of there ASAP. Then repeat on another target! Exciting but rarely successful. A mission I completed first time with the UH-1 still hasnt been completed after many attempts.

So just wondering how you guys go about it, should I just accept that the MI-8 is not really designed for the role I am trying to assign it? When you guys fight do you try to engage from a distant hover or do you go in close?

Just would like to discuss the module really and would be interested to know how others approach combat in such a difficult helicopter to control when in combat.

I find the safest way is to fire a burst or two from a relatively long distance (say, 2km) at high speed (200km/h) in a shallow dive or level flight. Then break away and repeat. Your speed and range should protect you from return fire. The manual has sight depression settings for such attack profiles. It takes practice to accurately judge range (it helps to plan a bit before the attack, pick some terrain features as distance marks). You won't achieve pinpoint accuracy this way of course, but with OFP rockets even near misses should do the trick. And you get a lot of rockets on the Hip.

The Mi-8 should only be used against soft skinned targets with a small caliber weapons. Anything bigger will make live tough on the Mi-8.

The Mi-8 excels in suppressive fire but that's not well modelled in DCS, use a script to make units behave as if they were suppressed is a good idea.

All the other things have been summed up, train yourself with the sight and judging distance and make repeated runs until you're able to land rounds on or near targets. Use infinite ammo and fuel in your training, makes life easy :).

Under 2.1 you should be able to hide behind terrain - including trees, so pop up, fire, duck down, move pop up...

How the East German NVA was supposedly doing it: http://www.nva-flieger.de/index.php/taktik/arfk/angriffsverfahren-gefechtsordnung.html

Site is in german, but perhaps google translate helps ...

The Mi-8 should only be used against soft skinned targets with a small caliber weapons. Anything bigger will make live tough on the Mi-8.

 

The Mi-8 excels in suppressive fire but that's not well modelled in DCS, use a script to make units behave as if they were suppressed is a good idea.

 

All the other things have been summed up, train yourself with the sight and judging distance and make repeated runs until you're able to land rounds on or near targets. Use infinite ammo and fuel in your training, makes life easy :).

Not nessesary I'm afraid I'm usually dead long before my ammo and fuel has depleted!