88mm,
Campaign trouble eh? That's a real drag, I have to admit. But there's hope yet! Perhaps you can appreciate how hard the war was in reality.
Codered (the above post) hit it right on the head. You have to cripple the enemy from the inside. The two most influential things you can do in a campaign are to attack factories (especially those within a Production Center), and to sink ships. Sink
tons of shipping! Not coincidentally, these are also usually the most dangerous missions. Concentrate primarily on ground and shipping attack missions. Try to choose missions with three stars in whatever sector you select... AND, whenever you are offered the mission "Attack Production Area", take it! If you want to be successful, only about one in five missions should be air-to-air. And in
those cases, Fighter Sweeps are usually the most destructive to the enemy.
Also, make the most of your missions... you have 7 wingmen, let those punters do most of the dirty work, and spread out the destruction! As an example of what I mean, here's how I often go about a mission... let's say I'm a British Fighter Pilot:
- I'm flying from, say, Dover, in England, and decide to attack the Germans in The Netherlands (no invasions have begun yet).
- I will always choose a mission in a sector where nearby there is a concentration of factories, shipyards, etc. These are all displayed on your map when you zoom in, so look for them!
- In this case, I'm going to choose "Attack Railyards" in the sector that is Amsterdam.
- Now, in Amsterdam, there are three railyards, and one factory. In fact, the factory in Amsterdam is an aircraft factory! They make Ju-88 bombers at this particular one. If you hit this well, you can conceivably get up to 30 air kills! The CFS3 3.1 patch considers aircraft destroyed on the ground as an air kill... just like they did in the real WWII. Your prestige points gain will be in the thousands. Trust me.
- So I head off on my mission. I order one flight, and one flight only, to attack the assigned target (the Railyard), which after a few minutes, they do, and the mission goal is accomplished.
- At this point, I order my two remaining flights to each bomb the two remaining Railyards in the area, which, eventually, they do.
- Finally, I bomb the aircraft factory, get my huge number of kills, and, if there is anything left of the factory (vehicles, etc.), I have my wingman drop his bombs on it. Don't let anyone else attack your target first! It's more important to the war that you get lots of prestige points.
Does all of this make sense? If you go about methodically pounding the enemy to ashes at every opportunity, you will cripple their ability to continue the war successfully.
Here's an important tip! When you are looking around for targets of opportunity, use your tactical display ("radar") wisely! Set it to show Vechicles, and search for large concentrations
of vehicles (big red blotches)... these are always factories, railyards, V-1 launch sites (there are tons of these on the coast of France in Pas de Calais and the Caen Peninsula), shipyards, radar stations, and the like.
One final thing...
Sometimes, no matter what you do, the enemy just keeps pushing, and you need a little help.
When you save a campaign, CFS3 saves a .CMPSTAT file within your "My Documents" folder. See photo below, and note that in my case, "My Documents" is renamed "Mark". This file can be opened up using Notepad or any text editor. Now, I won't go into the gory details, but you can completely alter the way the campaign plays within this file. You can turn off the enemy's, or your own, ability to inavde. You can give yourself and your squadron any amount of prestige points you desire, turn your health, g-force, and vision ratings all the way up. You can designate which aircraft are available at what date. And you can give or take away any nations' Strategic Reserves level and National Production Level percentage.
Granted, this
is cheating, and it will take most of the challenge and fun out of the game, but sometimes you need a little help.
For instance, when I'm on the Allies' side, I always turn off the other allied member's ability to launch an invasion until
I'm ready to invade. I want to save up lots of Prestige before we invade France! I don't want the Yanks jumping the gun and invading Calais in April of 1943!
Hope this helps.