In the original Ace Patrol you’ll fly World War I fighter planes on a hex tiled battlefield. Dozens of maneuvers, nice little effects and some challenging missions make Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol quite a fun game. Although none of the Steam achievements is too hard, altogether you’ll want to make them in the most efficient way. That’s what this Steam achievement guide is meant to help with.
Ace Patrol Steam Achievement Guide
Win a Mission – Pilot
Win a Mission at Pilot difficulty level |
Win a Mission – Ace
Win a Mission at Ace difficulty level |
Win a Mission – Leader
Win a Mission at Leader difficulty level |
Win a Mission – Legend
Win a Mission at Legend difficulty level |
The 4 “mission difficulty” Steam achievements are the easiest to obtain. You start on Rookie difficulty, but once you’re a bit used to the game mechanics, ideally as early as possible, switch to higher levels of difficulty. You’ll get all those whilst playing the game anyways.
The following faction-independent Steam achievements can be obtained with any faction. The thing is that sometimes they are a distraction from the main goals of the campaign and make the other achievements harder. Playing Ace Patrol for the first time I got all of these playing my first (of two) British campaigns:
Four Aces
Create a Squadron with four aces This is the biggest risk for your “Legendary Pilot” achievement. An “Ace” is a pilot with 5 confirmed kills. But any kill a different pilot gets is one your “Legend” might lack at the end of the campaign. |
Destroy an enemy supply train
Destroy an enemy supply train Supply train missions can be picked throughout the offensives. I recommend doing so whilst you already have a good overall score, because these missions are tricky: The train moves across the battlefield so time is limited. You might have to destroy the train, instead of doing a maneuver to avoid damage. So scores in these missions might be lower. |
Zeppelin
Shoot down an enemy zeppelin Another achievement you will always get: At the end of every offensive you’ll encounter all of the enemy pilots and have to destroy their zeppelin. |
Hat Trick – Rookie
Shoot down 3 planes with 1 pilot in 1 mission: Rookie Doing this on Rookie difficulty is incredibly easy. Sometimes enemy pilots don’t even shoot back and they use only very limited, simple maneuvers. |
Hat Trick – Pilot
Shoot down 3 planes with 1 pilot in 1 mission: Pilot Slightly more difficult than Rookie. |
Hat Trick – Ace
Shoot down 3 planes with 1 pilot in 1 mission: Ace Now we’re talking: On Ace difficulty enemy pilots use good evasive maneuvers and shoot back fiercely. Competitive air battles await! |
Hat Trick – Leader
Shoot down 3 planes with 1 pilot in 1 mission: Leader Here’s where shooting down 3 planes with the same pilot becomes really difficult. The goal is to damage enemy planes with your other pilots and make the kill with your chosen one. Sometimes I did maneuvers with my wingmen, explicitly NOT killing the others. Having the option for a direct shot, doing a bank left/right instead. |
Hat Trick – Legend
Shoot down 3 planes with 1 pilot in 1 mission: Legend The toughest nut to crack: On Legend difficulty it’s really really hard to do 3 kills with the same pilot. One thing that helped a lot was to save in the main menu, start the mission and hope for a setting with clouds on the way. This way you can mostly stay in the clouds and go after your enemies whenever one is in a good position. More about cloud tactics later… |
The 1st British Campaign
In the first campaign playing the British I did all generic Steam achievements as described above. In the end I was also able to do the British Score achievements (15.000 points in 1 mission and 150.000 in the campaign). I did not focus on one Legendary Pilot here, but invested more in learning the game mechanics.
From here on, the first Ace maneuvers I always chose were “Wingover”, a quick turn on the same tile, always deadly for other planes on your tile, and the Immelmann, a turn setting you one tile behind, even better for pursuing enemies who just flew by you.
The 2nd British Campaign
The result of the 1st campaign allowed me to do a quick and easy 2nd campaign with the British to go for the Legendary Pilot achievement. Quick and easy because without the need to achieve high scores I only did Rookie missions (lowest level of difficulty). In the end my Legendary Pilot hat 71 confirmed kills.
The unique trait I’d choose for those pilots is “Deadeye”, which increases the firing range. A pilot with Deadeye can shoot from 2 tiles away, whereas normal pilots can only shoot from an adjacent tile.
British Ace Pilot (5 Victories)
Earn 5 Victories with a British Pilot |
Legendary British Pilot (50 Victories)
Earn 50 Victories with a British Pilot |
Win an Offensive – British
Win an Offensive as the British |
Win the Campaign – British
Win the Campaign as the British |
5,000 point mission – British
Earn 5,000 points with a British squadron |
50,000 Squadron points – British
Earn 50,000 points with a British squadron |
10,000 point mission – British
Earn 10,000 points with a British squadron |
100,000 Squadron points – British
Earn 100,000 points with a British squadron |
15,000 point mission – British
Earn 15,000 points with a British squadron |
150,000 Squadron points – British
Earn 150,000 points with a British squadron |
The American Campaign
Playing the American campaign as 2nd faction in Ace Patrol I already had optimized my process: I was able to do all those achievements in one go.
American Ace Pilot (5 Victories)
Earn 5 Victories with a American Pilot |
Legendary American Pilot (50 Victories)
Earn 50 Victories with a American Pilot |
Win an Offensive – Americans
Win an Offensive as the Americans |
Win the Campaign – Americans
Win the Campaign as the Americans |
5,000 point mission – American
Earn 5,000 points with a American squadron |
50,000 Squadron points – American
Earn 50,000 points with a American squadron |
10,000 point mission – American
Earn 10,000 points with a American squadron |
100,000 Squadron points – American
Earn 100,000 points with a American squadron |
15,000 point mission – American
Earn 15,000 points with a American squadron |
150,000 Squadron points – American
Earn 150,000 points with a American squadron |
The German Campaign – Total Optimization
Playing the Germans (as in almost all Great War games “the bad guys”) I managed to do one incredibly good “Forlorn Hope” mission. Doing that on Legendary difficulty, taking only light damage, that mission scored more than 30.000 points. As this is already 20% of the overall goal of making 150.000 over the course of the campaign, again I could afford to do most other missions on Rookie difficulty.
German Ace Pilot (5 Victories)
Earn 5 Victories with a German Pilot |
Legendary German Pilot (50 Victories)
Earn 50 Victories with a German Pilot |
Win an Offensive – Germans
Win an Offensive as the Germans |
Win the Campaign – Germans
Win the Campaign as the Germans |
5,000 point mission – German
Earn 5,000 points with a German squadron |
50,000 Squadron points – German
Earn 50,000 points with a German squadron |
10,000 point mission – German
Earn 10,000 points with a German squadron |
100,000 Squadron points – German
Earn 100,000 points with a German squadron |
15,000 point mission – German
Earn 15,000 points with a German squadron |
150,000 Squadron points – German
Earn 150,000 points with a German squadron |
The French Campaign – Optimal mission selection
By now I had found out how to optimize not only the scores and the time you spend on the game, but also how to optimize mission selection: The point is to right after one mission SAVE the game. The go to mission selection. If there is no Balloon Buster or Sitting Duck, go to Main Menu, load your previously saved game and try again. Given the random factor, soon you will have either one of those missions. They are the easiest ones, but still provide you with enough enemy planes to make the Legendary Pilot.
French Ace Pilot (5 Victories)
Earn 5 Victories with a French Pilot |
Legendary French Pilot (50 Victories)
Earn 50 Victories with a French Pilot |
Win an Offensive – French
Win an Offensive as the French |
Win the Campaign – French
Win the Campaign as the French |
5,000 point mission – French
Earn 5,000 points with a French squadron |
50,000 Squadron points – French
Earn 50,000 points with a French squadron |
10,000 point mission – French
Earn 10,000 points with a French squadron |
100,000 Squadron points – French
Earn 100,000 points with a French squadron |
15,000 point mission – French
Earn 15,000 points with a French squadron |
150,000 Squadron points – French
Earn 150,000 points with a French squadron |
Ace Patrol Steam Achievements – Conclusion
Ace Patrol is a fun game. Only later I learned this was a mobile adoption. You don’t feel it playing on a PC. Controls are great, game mechanics are great, so it’s good fun even though only for a limited time. All campaigns, all nations are the same and missions are repetitive. This is good for achievement hunters like me, but obviously really boring after a while for anybody interested in ANY story. Beware: This game has none. Just air battling fun. In the end I played Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol for about 23 hours until I got all Steam Achievements.
