feedback Raven One Campaign Review / Feedback

[gutersnipe]

Just finished the campaign. It was my 1st campaign I have played in DCS with the F/A-18C (not sure if that was a good thing as my expectations are much higher now for other ones  ) which was my 1st paid for plane. It had made the purchase worth while. Thanks for great campaign and I look forward to trying the new one you just released. 

There are a couple bugs I wanted to report that I didn't see appear here yet. 

On Mission 15 when I need to refuel just before heading back to land at the carrier, I saddle in behind the tanker and I am right next to my wingman where I can clearly see him and I issue the refuel command, but they don't do anything and just stay sat in their current position. Then the tanker won't release the basket for me to refuel either. I had to do a work around where I attempt to refuel using my wingman's basket  (which is scary as you fly right behind them), after that I can successfully ask the tanker to release the basket on the right wing.

Another small bug in the briefing of of mission 12 or 13. It says my Loadout contain an "AIM-65C" instead of saying "AGM-65C"

Edited August 6, 2022 by gutersnipe

[Pekins]

This is my first pay-ware campaign for DCS and Im overall satisfied, I didn't know about the Raven One novel prior to this and still havent read it. The only difficulty Ive encountered was the brevity, but with a bit of research all was well.

 

I'd also mention that M03 was a huge headache and time investment to get it right, I had to run it 4 times, the first time I died to the manpad during the second show of force, when smoke called sam launch I was already hit by the time he finished saying "sam", I was looking forward the whole time and never saw any launches. On the second attempt the manpad shot from the front when I was almost on top of it so again I didnt see the launch, I was pre flaring tho, the sam launch call from Smoke was again too late. On the third attempt this time the manpad shot when I was cold past it, I could see the launch and evade, the failed part happened during RTB when an AI got stuck on the boat. 4th attempt was successful. (the 3 show of force I did were following the instructions from south to north at 1 000ft)

 

The manpad ordeal almost made give up on the campaign but thankfully I didnt cause all the following missions were very enjoyable.

Edited August 29, 2022 by Pekins

[markturner1960]

My feedback is around the map rather than the campaign...I too am on mission 3 and the terrain textures and details are simply terrible around the town of Al Basrah ( and most places else you look ) ......what are supposed to be roads I guess are just giant pixellated squares linked together, the placed objects stand out really badly and its virtually impossible to visualize the area as the desert terrain its supposed to represent.

I am surprised at this considering the map was released way after NTTR, been flying there a lot for training and its way better.

This completely ruins the immersion for me...........

[baltic_dragon]

@markturner1960 I hear you, and I had a huge doubts whether to do this or not. But this is one of only few missions from the novel and I simply was not able to put it in Oman, Iran or UAE (as it took place in Iraq). So this is an exception taken just for the sake of keeping a great mission in the campaign and hoping that one day this part of the map will get upgraded. The rest of the campaigns is in normal, fully modeled areas. 

[Flanky83]

I finished the campaign yesterday. I found this campaign very good.

I learned a lot and enjoyed it. There are here and there some bugs, but a lot less than in Enemy Within 3.0. I found this campaign also a lot easier than the A-10 Enemy within 3.0.

Thanks!

 

 

[Pyrocumulous]

I purchased the Hornet and Super Carrier modules specifically to fly the two Raven One campaigns in order(Dominant Fury followed by Raven One), and these two made that well worth it, even if I was never going to fly the module again. These are not beginner campaigns, you really need to be proficient in flying the Hornet, utilizing the radar, navigation, and weapon systems, and able to maintain your spatial awareness. Both campaigns are truly works of art. Not sure how Baltic is able to keep these missions working over 95% as intended with the constantly changing DCS code, but it's impressive, and clearly takes time and devotion to maintain. It's one thing to create an amazing set of missions with complex triggers that works on a single version, it's another to keep it working as the underlying canvas is in constant flux. Probably foolish, but amazing, none the less!

The briefing terminology can be daunting, and understanding the codewords in real-time radio traffic is  challenging. Realistic, but the pause button is a blessing for such occasions! There are a few minor errors in the kneeboards / briefs, but nothing game breaking by any stretch. Only complaint would be that datalink is only partially working, for no apparent reason some friendly aircraft just don't show on the SA page (and show as ambiguous when you get a radar hit), and others do. Looking through the mission files, I certainly can't figure it out, but it's really odd. Just means that you need to be even better with the radar and extra careful that your target is actually a hostile.

I don't recall any air-to-air refueling that you absolutely couldn't skip, but these are actually relatively simple due to the reasonable airspeeds (300 knots is typical) flown. Of course, having wake turbulence turned on brings the stress back, particularly as your remaining fuel drops below 2000 pounds.

Thank you for the experience!

[baltic_dragon]

Thank you for taking time to post the review. Glad you liked it!

[Taz1004]

This was my first paid campaign.  I first played Operation Piercing Fury which as we know is open source.  Even tho OPF was free and I enjoyed it, many parts of it is broken since it hasn't been updated for a long time.  So I had to do a lot of modifications in Mission Editor.  I didn't like that part as it took out all the surprise element of missions.  So I decided to try a paid campaign hoping that everything works without me having to fix anything.

I enjoyed about half of the missions in this campaign.  The other half, frustration.  I wouldn't necessarily fault Baltic on it as most if it probably is on ED's AI.  I liked the story, voice acting, procedures and documents.  With that being said, I don't think I would ever buy another campaign.  Not just from Baltic but from anyone.  Bugs are still present (regardless who's fault it is) and not being able to fix it myself actually added to the frustration.  And the missions are spoiled anyway from playing multiple times due to the bugs so my original goal for purchasing a campaign was not met.

Only suggestion I have is to keep the missions simple and less dependent on wingmen.

Thanks to everyone who worked on this campaign.

[baltic_dragon]

Yes, that is my general lesson too after both Raven One parts. That campaigns need to be less complicated and much less relying on AI, which I am implementing moving forward with the F-16 campaign and the Kola one. Thanks for the feedback @Taz1004

[This]

Hey Guys,

finally finished the campaign last week. I thought I'd share my experiences with the campaign here, including pros and cons.

All in all, it took me just over a year to play through.
To clarify:  I think this is due to 3 points:

1. my job. I get 2-4h of play time every 2 weeks if I'm lucky.
2. the demands of the campaign: there are relatively few features of the Hornet that aren't needed and even those simplify the missions a lot (offset waypoints and TOT - never thought those features could become so useful). In the end, I easily needed twice the duration of the respective mission to prepare and learn the (weapon) systems, but also the possibly useful functions as preparation.
3. updates and bugs: In some places I had to fly missions 4-5 times until I either found a way around the bugs or until BD ironed them out with the next update.

 

That brings me to the pros and the cons:

Pros:

1. immersion
   Raven One is an absolutely atmospheric and immersive campaign with exciting missions. Especially in combination with the books, you really immerse yourself in the story. A few things happen a bit differently in the campaign than in the books. But to notice that you really have to read the individual chapters in parallel. (If in the future briefings in the Ready Room and a working Marshall stack should be implemented in DCS and the campaign => :D:D:D:D)
2. realism
   (I am not a pilot and was not in the military, so the following statements should be taken with a grain of salt.) From a personal point of view, Raven One really tries hard to convey a realistic feeling. At least insofar as DCS and probably military confidentiality allow it. This adds a lot to the atmosphere. However, especially in longer missions, it sometimes leads to flying 30 min relatively boring phases under Emcom and also under non-emcom radio discipline is applied.
3. variety
   The missions are besides the mentioned points actually very varied. Both the range of different mission types and objectives, as well as within the missions themselves, which (at least as perceived) rarely run strictly according to plan, but usually still have one or two surprises in store ( Offset Waypoints, anyone?).

And with that we come to the cons:

1. updates / bugs
   In total I had 3 (out of approx. 12 missions (because of save points some missions are split)) that I could play through as they were planned. Since I mostly searched the error with myself (also happened often enough ), I usually needed 2-3 attempts to notice that the mission is bugged. So if a mission doesn't work right away, even though you follow the instructions, I recommend taking a look at the forum right away (it took me until mission 9 to figure that out). I can also recommend the playthroughs by RedKite on Youtube for troubleshooting, even if they take the suspense out of the mission.
   
   BD in my experience always fixes the bugs with the next update (and then has to fix the bugs that came with that update with the same update).
   I guess that's the downside of the complex missions. Anyway, except for one bug, I had no showstopper, since most bugs can be worked around with a bit of trial and error (Olive drops no bombs => Equip 2 more, drop yourself; JTAC instructs an abort even though he requested an approach from 270 => Just try other directions, approach from 040 works; tanker crashes => Equip one more tank, set cruise altitude to 40k + and ignore proper procedure on landing, done).
   
   Site Note: As far as I see it, developers like BD rely on generating new content, since the cash flow is generated with the one-time purchase of the campaign and not via a subscription model. How this is supposed to work in the long run, when so much effort goes into reworking already existing campaigns (aka hardly cashflow generating software) is beyond me. I fear that this will become a problem in general, even for developers of less complex campaigns. At some point, they won't have the time or money to develop new content. Why ED doesn't allow some kind of freezing of campaigns at a certain release stage here, I don't understand. Anyway, an absolutely great campaign is almost sabotaged with this kind of update policy
    
2. realism spoils other campaigns
   Something I hadn't thought of is that you get used to the "realism". I had started a new campaign (different developer) mid-week and turned it right off when the pilots started talking about beach vacations over the radio in the first mission. Direct immersion kill. I'll probably get over it, but it's going to dull the fun considerably.
    
3. expensive updates necessary
   So I guess there's only one thing left to do: Upgrade my computer to be able to play the prequel campaign in Syria, which currently absolutely wrecks my system.

Conclusion / tl;dr:

If you like to be challenged, can spend the time to prepare in advance of the missions and also have no problem with having to tackle some missions multiple times or you can wait for an update once in a while, you will be rewarded with a great, immersive campaign. Despite the bugs, I would buy it again. And I'm looking forward to flying the prequel (as soon as my graphics cards has received a major update).

EDIT: Sorry, that kind of went out of hand. Didn't want it to get that long  

Edited May 4, 2023 by This
had to excuse for the wall-of-text-underestimation

[baltic_dragon]

@This thank you so much for your feedback. You hit the nail on the head there, especially with the bug - update - new bug vicious circle which does take a lot of my time.  Thanks to great community I recently started a closed group of people who are trying to test the reported bugs and suggest fixes, which should buy me a lot of time I would otherwise have to spend re-flying everything, but still constant new problems with AI are generating quite some trouble. On the other hand - DCS is a very complex beast with code that dates back to Lock On days at some places and this has to be almost impossible to keep bug free. Guess we all have to live with it - and also focus on less complex missions, which I intend to do in the future (don't get me wrong - it does not mean less realistic, just less reliant on AI and probably a tad shorter). Once again, appreciate your feedback a lot!

[Colonel Akir Nakesh]

On 4/24/2023 at 1:32 PM, Taz1004 said:

I enjoyed about half of the missions in this campaign.  The other half, frustration.  I wouldn't necessarily fault Baltic on it as most if it probably is on ED's AI.  I liked the story, voice acting, procedures and documents.  With that being said, I don't think I would ever buy another campaign.  Not just from Baltic but from anyone.  Bugs are still present (regardless who's fault it is) and not being able to fix it myself actually added to the frustration.  And the missions are spoiled anyway from playing multiple times due to the bugs so my original goal for purchasing a campaign was not met.

Only suggestion I have is to keep the missions simple and less dependent on wingmen.

 

Taz, give some of his earlier campaigns, like Georgian War if you like air to air, and Enemy Within 3, a try. Neither campaign involves a strike package with lots of AI allies that will break triggers. I replayed Georgian War (my DCS gateway drug) recently and didn't notice any broken triggers despite being older.

[baltic_dragon]

Well, that is the lesson for the future - to keep the realism and fun, but reduce the scale of things to avoid unnecessary bugs. Working pretty well so far with the Gamblers for the F-16C. Having said that, as soon as we get the AI A-6, I am going to do a major overhaul of both Raven One campaigns and introduce some new ideas, squash bugs etc, so then it should be in a better state  like I just did with the Enemy Within 3.0 

[IceyJones]

im still in the campaign and have not fished it yet.

i enjoy the voiceacting, the mission variety and the partly challenging conditions. the night missions are hell, specialy when you are not much familiar with the hornet yet.

but when you have to cold start for the 5th time, because relief flight cant take off because they collided with the tanker on deck, and thus dont reach their trigger points, is just making me want to deinstall.....

Edited December 25, 2023 by IceyJones

[baltic_dragon]

@IceyJones you and me both. If something is not working in the campaign because I messed it up - I'll be the first to admit it and fix this. But if campaign stops working because of behind-the-scenes changes in how the Supercarrier taxi system works, that really makes me mad - because it usually means a few hours of trial & error testing for me with different aircraft configuration on deck until they finally stop crashing one into another. And it makes me want to uninstall whole DCS as well..
Please disregard these issues and continue to support us (the 3rd party devs). I don't think these issues will ever disappear because DCS is a constantly evolving projects, and that means bugs will be appearing quite often.

[IceyJones]

i can believe that. just another deck fkery happened again.

lined up for entering cat 2 as ordered, and my flight lead just drives into me XD

ED really needs to refine the pathfinding of planes on the carrier. this is just.......bad.....

[baltic_dragon]

I hope things will work better when the taxi directors are included - I've tested the missions with them enabled and all worked fine. Fingers crossed...