Average mission length

[Glide]

I've been thinking of changing the way I make missions from 1-1.5 hr chunks of time to one mission that can run all day.  By switching the "fix times" I can have units spawning all day, and I can complete a series of flights in each mission by rearming and refuelling,  pausing for sandwiches now and then.  Does anyone run day long missions?  Is there some roadblock to running a mission that long?

[StevanJ]

So i made a mission that ran upto 3 hours long, You take off at dusk and join up with your lead, find a boat- while 2nd element goes off and defends you.
Depending on how how you destroy that boat, opens up an alternative mission where you have an option to fly over to the tanker, refuel and get some situational awareness back before following your Lead over to a JTAC and finish mission beyone enemy lines, You even take on a squad if youre 'seen' by enemy radar.

No one liked it, they found it boring..
Their argument 'It seemed like a job'.

No matter what i did to make that mission exciting through the 3 hours, nothing made it fun..
Instead of the whole squad loving that mission, one person liked it.
And so i realised, everyone wants to have fun, but not everyone wants to actually be a pilot, they just want the escape..

If i fly online, with others, then yeah a long mission can sometimes be fun, but if your on your own, you get bored really quick..

Dont be put off, just make sure you cover the problems that i experienced.

[Glide]

Thanks!  Yes, I've been going after the perfect furball with just enough bad guys to put on a good show.  Campaigns have been a dozen interesting missions spread around the map.  I think making a long mission that is exciting may be more work than maintaining multiple smaller missions.  I was also worried that the really fun parts would be later in the mission making me impatient to get past some objectives.  You can't skip to the good parts.  

 

I've also been putting refuel legs into the missions.  This has added some length to the missions, but it's also taught me to be more frugal with fuel.  Even without external tanks I can build a mission that covers a lot of ground without refuelling but still takes an hour to complete. 

 

Thanks for the input.

[Los]

Our group flies and trains together about 5-8 hours a week. We find that flying for extended lengths doesn’t add anything to our enjoyment so we avoid long flight or sessions that go over two hours.  (Not including planning)  Most  of us are real pilots and vets so I understand the it gets to be like a job thing. We like persistent experiences we can pick up week after week .  
 

We do have flying cons where we get together and fly campaigns that might go four days straight. These are usually based around full blown campaigns 

we spent months preparing for.  But the flying is typically broken into maybe two two-hour sessions a day.  The rest of the time we just talk about flying.

[EasyEB]

I love long ass missions. I’ve made XCAS - Syria open ended so you can CAS all day, refuel then CAS some more. A long trek from and to Incirlik is the perfect start and end to a whole day of fun. 

Edited March 10, 2021 by EasyEB

[fargo007]

At BSD our squadron averages about a 1 hour briefing followed  by a 2 hour mission flight for a total of 3.  

 

Some are longer, but very few are shorter than that. 

 

We got complaints of numb asses on really long ones.  

[Glide]

That's my multiplayer experience too.  3 hrs doesn't seem so long with friends and that pretty much fills the evening.   I'm trying to balance the size of the mission (in GB of VRAM consumption) with the right amount of light show and adrenaline.  I'm stretching them out in length of time too.  As long as you have some task to perform (AAR, escort, rendezvous, etc.) covering the miles does not get boring.  The ride home is usually long and relaxing unless you have a Mig on your tail.  I'm up to about 75 minutes for the longer ones.  I'll set the bar for 2 hours and see how much fun I can pack in there.