My Feedback on this Campaign

[Taxman]

I've got to say, while I can appreciate a lot of work went into this campaign, I feel there are a lot of issues in it that really take my enjoyment out.  Please take the following in the spirit it's intended, as I really want to like this campaign and feel there's a number of issues that detract from it.  I do mean this all in a constructive manner.

 

To start, please hire an editor.  Even just a basic spellcheck of the dialogue would go a long way to making this feel more polished.  Additionally, while I'm no expert, the overall military jargon and terminology seems far below the level of other paid-for campaigns.  Having someone go over the communications and briefings who has a better grasp of the subject matter would be a great improvement.  Outside of the military jargon, it's very apparent that your native English speaking characters are being written by someone with a less-than-fluent grasp of the language.  I certainly can't fault you for not understanding the way native English speakers talk to each other, that's definitely not my complaint here.  Rather, it would be helpful for you to get a native English speaker to go over dialogue and ask "does this make sense? Does this sound natural?".

 

The loadouts for many missions seem nonsensical.  Why do I launch into so many missions loaded to the brim with Sidewinders?  The AIM-9 is a valuable weapon for sure, but it's meant as a backup weapon.  For air to air engagements, AMRAAMs are what should be on those pylons.  Again, while I'm no expert, I don't think I've ever seen a Hornet loaded out with six Sidewinders and zero AMRAAMs before.  Additionally, several of the air-to-ground missions ask you to visually mark or identify targets, but then load you out with long-ranged standoff weapons such as JSOWs and Harpoons, when Mavericks or LGBs would be much better at the job.  One of the best examples of this is the mission where you are instructed to escort the incoming Admiral's plane in.  While there are no enemy fighters to engage here, why would the US Navy send up an escort for an invaluable asset armed with nothing but short-ranged weapons?  If there had been enemy fighters sortied up to assassinate the new commander, there would have been nothing the escort could do to stop it.

 

The lack of AWACS or GCI can really be felt here.  In most missions I feel as if I'm running blind the entire time, with no clear picture of what's in the airspace.  This is compounded by a couple factors, including "Strike" giving directions to targets in very uncertain terms ("Bogies to the West", "Bandits flying from Abu Musa") rather than proper BRAA calls.  It's an ineffective way of communicating in what should be a precise military operation.  Another factor here is the close-range spawning of enemies.  I understand you're attempting to keep the performance overhead low for VR users, but I doubt a modern-day US carrier operation would be unable to detect Iranian fighters until they're within missile range of friendlies.  Even if you don't spawn the aircraft in-game, it would be helpful if there were some radio calls informing the player that there are incoming hostiles at a much more reasonable range.  Jets don't appear out of nowhere.  Adding to this overall sense of unpreparedness by the US Navy, it seems nonsensical to not have GPS coordinates for GPS weapon strikes on static targets, such as in the dam mission. Why do I have a waypoint that is in the vicinity of the target, yet crystal clear images of it? A targeting pod should not be needed, the coordinates should be loaded into the weapons before takeoff. 

 

There are a number of bugs that have made certain missions unplayable.  While I understand much of this is on ED's shoulders, out of 15 missions (I've flown 14 so far) I've had to skip 3 of them for various reasons.  I'm looking forward to playing again once the new patch hits that hopefully will fix some of these issues, such as my wingman crashing into the ocean (not on takeoff, just while attacking helicopters in the oil rig mission), my wingman not actually employing weapons on his targets (the JSOW mission) or the chopper not following its proper flight path (the Batillus mission).

 

While I really want to like this campaign, there are just so many issues which keep pulling me back out of my immersion, reminding me this is a game, and as it is now, it doesn't stand up to the quality of some other paid campaigns.  It's a labour of love, for sure, and I appreciate the hard work that went into it, but at its current state it feels like a fan-made free campaign in terms of quality, not something that is a paid for DLC.  Could it get there? Absolutely, and I really hope it does!  I'm not going around asking for refunds (not that I could get one anyways) because I do think a lot of time and effort went into this, but it's just shy of being worth a price tag at the moment I feel.

 

Again, I do mean this constructively, and am not here to slag on Badger or the hard work he did.  I hope he takes my feedback in the spirit it was given, and is able to fix up the issues and make his next campaign even more spectacular.  I'm looking forward to it!  Thank you.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Taxman

[gonvise]

This is one of the best campaigns I have flown for the F18. Perhaps it had some bugs, but none of them have stopped me from finishing a mission... What missions you couldn't finish?

 

EDIT: I did not remember mission 8, but is a DCS failure. Is reported and advised. 

Edited August 11, 2021 by gonvise

[lax22]

34 minutes ago, gonvise said:

This is one of the best campaigns I have flown for the F18. Perhaps it had some bugs, but none of them have stopped me from finishing a mission... What missions you couldn't finish?

Agreed, also thought this campaign was fantastic. 
Best DCS campaign for the F18 I have played so far.

[dburne]

Currently Mission 8 is broken until ED gets the fix out which should be in next Open Beta update according to Badger.

Of course one can choose the skip option. I am holding out for the fix myself.

I am thoroughly enjoying this one!

Edited August 9, 2021 by dburne

[omnijinx]

Man I don't know why nobody listened to you here but these same points are driving me insane. Why am I constantly being asked to go 2v4 against fighters that spawn 15 miles away hot, and then I only have Fox-2s? Their AI seems to know exactly where I am even when we're in clouds, but then I don't even have an AWACS to help me keep an eye on them. The first half of Mission 8 is awesome but I don't really feel like going through another 40 minutes of it just to attempt this bull<profanity> dogfight again.

Edited yesterday at 03:32 PM by omnijinx

[DD_Fenrir]

2 hours ago, omnijinx said:

Man I don't know why nobody listened to you here but these same points are driving me insane. Why am I constantly being asked to go 2v4 against fighters that spawn 15 miles away hot, and then I only have Fox-2s? Their AI seems to know exactly where I am even when we're in clouds, but then I don't even have an AWACS to help me keep an eye on them. The first half of Mission 8 is awesome but I don't really feel like going through another 40 minutes of it just to attempt this bull<profanity> dogfight again.

Nice attitude. I'm sure you'll get plenty of people falling over themselves to help you with your issue using that tone and language.

[Badger633]

@omnijinx

You do not just have Aim9X if you check you also have one 120C. Although there are 4 F5’s your wing will deal with two of them. You will note from the radio calls you are to engage the two on the right so make sure you do that and leave the two on the left to your wing. If you use your radar correctly you can locate and take out one with the 120C. You can then engage the remaining F5 with your Aim9X missiles which when used with your head mounted display will allow you to fire at almost 90 degrees. This together with the better F18 performance will give you a massive advantage over the F4. It should also be noted that the F5s are armed with Aim9ps so rear aspect only compared to your 9Xs which are all aspect.

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Badger633

[OmasRachE]

It has been some month since I played this campaign and some points I can approve like there are much more complex campaigns outside with more focus on real life procedures. But this is not what RotPL wanted to be. I realy enjoyed this campaign and the following two (RotPL2 and OGL). I like them espacially because they are somewhat less complex. When I have not much time on the evening but whant to get a nice ride in the hornet I love to pick on of Badgers campaigns. I read the briefing, get a time estimation and then sit in the cockpit and do what my players says he is doing. No hours of reading through PDFs no complex procedures to be followed. Allways an interresting and sometimes challanging task, some nice plot twists and sometimes a roge bogey catches up on your way home and lets you get rid of the extra weight of your Air to Air ordonance. I realy love the staging and lighting. Very much atmosphere and the campaign helped me learn the hornet very much. I think its a beginner friendly, quite immersive and beautifull campaign, that is not and does not want to be a study level hardcore campaign. Allthough I realy like such hardcore campaigns, I love to fly this more casual ones from time to time. 

[omnijinx]

Hey first of all thanks for responding and for making the campaign, I'm really enjoying basically all of it except the dogfights

> It should also be noted that the F5s are armed with Aim9ps so rear aspect only compared to your 9Xs which are all aspect.

Maybe this got changed by an update or something, but they have AIM-9Ls now (this is in Mission 6 I think, the first 2v4 you have to do?) which are all-aspect. Yes I'm obviously still in a better plane than them in the 18, but going into a merge with multiple bandits with Fox-2s is always going to be a risky thing. I eventually managed the fight since I knew exactly where they'd spawn on my second attempt, but without the benefit of hindsight you have very little SA with them spawning so close. It's pretty tricky to manage all that on your first try to get your one Fox-3 off, then you have to try to survive the merge. The time I actually beat it, I had to survive an AIM-7E and an AIM-9L shot straight at me just to get to the merge. Track attached in case you don't believe me about the 9Ls (ignore the fact that I generally suck). PL Mission 6 I think.acmi

Love the campaign, just wish I didn't keep having to deal with these very risky dogfights at the end of otherwise good missions. Mission 6 isn't even that bad since you get to the fight pretty quickly, but some of the later ones make you do these dogfights after a lot of ground action. Difficulty of the ground vs air sections is really out of whack. It also ruins the vibe of doing thought-out, professional strikes when you're repeatedly waltzing into these bad situations without support or modern missiles. There isn't any air-to-ground at all in Mission 6, why don't I have a reasonable anti-air loadout?

 

Edited 6 hours ago by omnijinx

[Badger633]

Hey @omnijinx

The missiles in mission 8 are definitely Aim-9Ps. You are correct with the missiles in Mission 6 from the F4s , which I noticed you beat, thanks for the Tacview. So Mission 8 should be a much easier task.  

You can actually change the load outs if you want but they were selected to make the air fight a reasonable challenge.  They also promote more close up dog fights which can be more interesting. Generally my Campaigns are thought of as much easier than many of the campaigns. As a designer it is a difficult balance to strike as some will find it hard and others easier dependant on how experienced the pilot is. 

The missions are normally about 1 hour long which is much shorter than a lot of the other campaigns, which can be twice that. 

Edited 5 hours ago by Badger633

[omnijinx]

Thanks, yeah I don't have a ton of perspective here since I'm new and this is only my second campaign. I didn't realize you could re-arm in campaigns (the other one I played, Inherent Resolve, constantly tells you DO NOT CHANGE LOADOUT but I guess that isn't a general thing). I can partially fix this on my end then by packing AIM-120s.