[TrashMan]

In real life a wing consits of 5 fighters. Logical - one takes the point and two flak him at each side.
In FS2 a wing consits of 4 fighters...silly...

So I was wondering is it possible to have 5 fighter wings?
Is it difficult to implement?

[diamondgeezer]

You can have up to six fighters in wings which aren't Alpha, Beta or Gamma. **** knows why. Prolly something to do with space on the loadout screen.

[Lightspeed]

space on the loadout screen, HUD art, and cause theres nothing for Alpha 5

[IceFire]

Originally posted by TrashMan
In real life a wing consits of 5 fighters. Logical - one takes the point and two flak him at each side.
In FS2 a wing consits of 4 fighters...silly...

So I was wondering is it possible to have 5 fighter wings?
Is it difficult to implement?

Which nation and when?  Typically during WWII, German, USAAF, and RAF all used a four man formation for the average flight of fighters.  This separates the flight into two groups each with a leader and wingman.  Leaders are in number 1 and 3 positions and wingmen in 2 and 4 positions.

Typically this would be arranged in a loose formation called the finger four which was developed during the Spanish Civil War by the Luftwaffe and quickly adopted by the RAF during the Battle of Britain.  The less effective Vic formation was quickly phased out (the fourth guy was usually known as tail end charlie).

[StratComm]

Yeah a 5-fighter wing would form up in a delta, whereas a four-fighter wing usually takes either a diamond or unbalanced delta (can't remember what that's called offhand) formation.  However, on grounds of why Freespace restricts Alpha, Beta, and Gamma, it's only for interface in loadout; the graphics exist for a six-fighter wing in the squadron list (6-fighter epsilon shows this off, actually either a 5 or a 6 fighter wing is in the FS2 main campaign, in the mission where you have to scan the Sathanas' subsystems.

[Solatar]

Same reason why cruisers are like gunboats/destroyers, carriers have hugeass guns, and the speeds are so low.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by StratComm
Yeah a 5-fighter wing would form up in a delta, whereas a four-fighter wing usually takes either a diamond or unbalanced delta (can't remember what that's called offhand) formation.

The US Airforce, IIRC, calls those Echelon Left or Echelon Right, depending on how its balanced.

[IceFire]

You sure...I was under the impression that Echelon formations started with leader on one side and swept back to last man at the back with nobody on the other side.

The one with a leader followed by two guys on either side and a fourth man at the back is a 'Vic' formation.  The last guy was called Tail End Charlie.  Usually first to get knocked off in a fight.

[TrashMan]

Anyway, the question is - what need to be done for it to work?
New HUD graphics and loadout screen...
Anything else?

[StratComm]

Just new loadout code, and a change in FRED to allow it to work.  As I've already said, the hud graphics already support up to 6 fighters in a wing.  However, I doubt this will get high priority because there isn't space on the loadout screen to simply add another two spots for each wing, and there's the added complication that it changes the way default wings look in loadout.  On a related note, how hard would it be to have non-standard wings appear in the wings section of the HUD?  Or to make wings appear and dissapear from the ones selected to appear there?  That was always one of the most limiting things about FREDing missions in my opinion, as you get a lot of useless clutter if all of a wing dies or warps out.

EDIT: and I say just, changing the interface code may be way more trouble than it's worth here.

[Mav]

And for the Kilrathi, 8-ship wings would be an idea ...