Staged missions use a combination of artifical intellegence (AI) planes and player planes to fly missions usually with specific tasks. See my staged mission list below.
You can download the available staged missions from any online arena. Click on staged missions in the tower and then check “show missions for all terrains”. Click on one and an option to download will come up. However, you cannot edit the missions you download like that. There are some missions posted in this forum you can download, just look through the previous posts and you will also find documentation on using the mission editor.
Offline you have to choose the terrain the mission was written for at the start up screen. Good luck and let me know if you have any more questions.
Below is a copy of my March 2016 post in this forum if you want to look it up.
These are general instructions for staged missions for custom arenas. They work best if you use a custom arena which is very simple to set up, but you can download them and use them offline.
1. Go to the on line arenas and click on create arena.
2. Name your arena anything you want and set a pass word if you want to limit players.
3. Choose the correct terrain such as ndisles. Leave everything else at default. If you set the arena configuration file to the terrain name like france43w, I think it will load the settings you have for that terrain offline such as a hardness factor of 6. Not sure about this.
4. Click create.
5. Click on staged missions when you are in the tower, then select mission. Select show missions for all terrains to see the missions available for other terrains.
6. Top menu click on a mission. For mine, IANAVHFTR means in air spawn (IA), naval target (NAV), heavy fighter (HFTR). Checking load mission arena settings will set the ack way down to allow you to concentrate on bombing accuracy.
7. Click download so you can play it off line.
8. Click load mission
9. Click populate mission, click on your name and double click the plane you want to fly usually no. 1. If you have other players in the arena with you, assign them to planes the same way. The remaining planes will be flown by AI.
10. Close the populate window and click on start mission. Sometimes it takes you to the tower view, just click on staged missions, then start mission.
11. Click start now. After the briefing screen, you should auto takeoff if your throttle is up or spawn in air depending on the mission. If you don't, take off and maintain runway heading.
12. You will warp to a point at altitude or spawn in at altitude depending on the mission. This may take a while depending on how many planes are taking off.
13. Choose your target and drop your ords on the target or engage target aircraft.
14. For the heavy fighter missions, the friendly AI planes will attack enemy AI depending on the mission. They are heavy and won't do well so you can try to shoot down the Enemy AI.
15. Crash when you are through and then click Kill Mission.
16. Go back to step 5 and repeat until you are confident of your ability to bomb targets.
17. For off line play, choose ndisles or other terrains depending on the mission you want for the terrain at the first Aces High screen.
18. Follow steps 5-6 and 10-16, there is no populate or load required. You will select the plane you fly from drop down menus depending on if you selected allied or axis.
