Mission 5 Additional task issues - SPOILER -

[SPAS79]

SO I just finished mission 5, about 110 minutes overall. 
Here's my observations/feedback which I hope can be useful for the future: 

 

1) Long in and out flights. I get bored and use time compression but lose some of the dialogues if I get distracted. So there's a choice: either A) fall asleep at the controls to be woken by the odd radio comm about how the breakfast eggs had a funky taste this morning or B) use time compression and be on high alert to SHIFT+z to listen to the dialogues. I know the map is what it is, but please consider shortening the length of the in/out flights, maybe make the missions end once the main tasks have been accomplished and just require landing when it's functional to storytelling etc. We're playing an advanced campaign, we know how to land the plane, no need to do it every time? I know it's realistic, but sparing 2 hours, 1 of which is cold start, clearances and in/out bound flights seems like a waste of time to me. 
 

Spoiler

2) I could not find the building the marine JTAC was describing. "two chimneys"?? could not see. "Destroyed BDRM in front and trucks at the rear"? Yeah there was a burning BDRM in front and BETWEEN  two buildings with trucks at the rear. None of them buildings appeared to have "two chimneys" on top. And anyhoo, how do these chimneys look like? 

I think the major issue with this is that IRL there would be a lot of back and forth between the pilot and the JTAC to properly PID the building before releasing, bu obviously we can't have that sort of interaction there. I understand that maybe there was a design choice not to give he JTAC a laser to illuminate the target (even if it should be standard for a JTAC) but that would help in such a situation were I cannot just call the JTAC back and say "hey I'm seeing this building, this tall with x1 armed man outside, please confirm". And yes I was given a Grid but that wasn't really pointing at the building, was it? At least it didnt seem to in my case. 

 

As usual, no track file. I should really take this habit to save them but I hate wasting space, and I think the issue lies more with design decisions (i.e. JTAC without a laser?) rather than me fat-fingering grids in the A10 (which is a possibility). 

 

Well again, funny, engaging mission with a lot of different stuff to do. Well done! Thanks! 

Edited August 18, 2021 by SPAS79

[ChillNG]

21 hours ago, SPAS79 said:

SO I just finished mission 5, about 110 minutes overall. 
Here's my observations/feedback which I hope can be useful for the future: 

 

1) Long in and out flights. I get bored and use time compression but lose some of the dialogues if I get distracted. So there's a choice: either A) fall asleep at the controls to be woken by the odd radio comm about how the breakfast eggs had a funky taste this morning or B) use time compression and be on high alert to SHIFT+z to listen to the dialogues. I know the map is what it is, but please consider shortening the length of the in/out flights, maybe make the missions end once the main tasks have been accomplished and just require landing when it's functional to storytelling etc. We're playing an advanced campaign, we know how to land the plane, no need to do it every time? I know it's realistic, but sparing 2 hours, 1 of which is cold start, clearances and in/out bound flights seems like a waste of time to me. 
 

  Reveal hidden contents

2) I could not find the building the marine JTAC was describing. "two chimneys"?? could not see. "Destroyed BDRM in front and trucks at the rear"? Yeah there was a burning BDRM in front and BETWEEN  two buildings with trucks at the rear. None of them buildings appeared to have "two chimneys" on top. And anyhoo, how do these chimneys look like? 

I think the major issue with this is that IRL there would be a lot of back and forth between the pilot and the JTAC to properly PID the building before releasing, bu obviously we can't have that sort of interaction there. I understand that maybe there was a design choice not to give he JTAC a laser to illuminate the target (even if it should be standard for a JTAC) but that would help in such a situation were I cannot just call the JTAC back and say "hey I'm seeing this building, this tall with x1 armed man outside, please confirm". And yes I was given a Grid but that wasn't really pointing at the building, was it? At least it didnt seem to in my case. 

 

As usual, no track file. I should really take this habit to save them but I hate wasting space, and I think the issue lies more with design decisions (i.e. JTAC without a laser?) rather than me fat-fingering grids in the A10 (which is a possibility). 

 

Well again, funny, engaging mission with a lot of different stuff to do. Well done! Thanks! 

 

 

Thanks for the comments!  Missions 5 and 6 both have pretty long travel times, something I wrestled with given the size of the map vs the speed of the Hog.  Whilst there is still plenty of travel time throughout the campaign I've tried to make this easier on everyone from M7 onwards by having your Hog detachment forward deploy to different airbases, certainly in testing it was well received so hopefully this will make the journeys a little shorter as time goes on.  Regarding landings...I guess its down to taste and what you as a player enjoy, personally I would always want to do the full mission and my goal with the campaign was to make something I wanted to play so landings will always be a part of it for me.  That said there are a couple of missions where you are asked to fly a very long way to land, in these the mission will end in the air as the travel time is excessive.  Missions 5 and 6 are definitely the worst two for mission length and travel, stick those two out and it will get better .

 

Regarding the JTAC section, I'll check the BRDM, possible it's behaviour has slightly altered in an update and its slightly out of position.  I'd love to have the JTAC lase but not possible using the editor functions unless you use the stock JTAC system (which would not work alongside the custom triggers/comms I use instead), it can be done with scripting but my skills writing scripts is far too low to reliably implement in a paid DLC, I'd be dependent (and profiting) on the work and help of others, which I'm not willing to do.

 

Finally JTAC comms, absolutely agree with the back and forth, this is something I'm working on with my new campaigns, the JTAC asking questions for example and you respond through the F10 menu.  

[SPAS79]

35 minutes ago, ChillNG said:

Finally JTAC comms, absolutely agree with the back and forth, this is something I'm working on with my new campaigns, the JTAC asking questions for example and you respond through the F10 menu.  

Thanks, all your answer is really appreciated, but especially this, seems awesome!

Inviato dal mio Redmi Note 8 Pro utilizzando Tapatalk
 

Edited August 19, 2021 by SPAS79

[schurem]

In this mission I really missed being able to F2 all the allied flights while plodding up the coast towards the target area.

[_Lobo_]

On 8/19/2021 at 7:00 AM, SPAS79 said:

maybe make the missions end once the main tasks have been accomplished and just require landing when it's functional to storytelling etc. We're playing an advanced campaign

I play campaign missions via the mission editor for this reason. I can end the mission when I want, change loadout, change mission setting (e.g. show damage), ignore bugs, and skip landing if I wish. I can then just load the next mission.

[Razor18]

When attacking the building, the IP is just 3.5 NM from the TGT. The problem is, if you tell "On final heading" for the Marines before you reach the IP, they will abort your run, telling you being poor positioned and try again. The problem is, if you take the requested attack heading (flying at 15k), and tell them "on final" only when you are 3.5 NM out, your countdown to drop is already within 10 seconds, I think I had 6 seconds left when they finally responded "Clear to engage". So I would move IP at least 2 miles back. I know it is bad because there are the embedded voiceovers and mission triggers, but this is really pretty tight.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Razor18

[ChillNG]

1 hour ago, Razor18 said:

When attacking the building, the IP is just 3.5 NM from the TGT. The problem is, if you tell "On final heading" for the Marines before you reach the IP, they will abort your run, telling you being poor positioned and try again. The problem is, if you take the requested attack heading (flying at 15k), and tell them "on final" only when you are 3.5 NM out, your countdown to drop is already within 10 seconds, I think I had 6 seconds left when they finally responded "Clear to engage". So I would move IP at least 2 miles back. I know it is bad because there are the embedded voiceovers and mission triggers, but this is really pretty tight.

 

Thanks for the feedback...if I recall I chose this IP as it was very easily identifiable from the air which was my primary concern.  When I last flew this mission I believe I lined up on the attack heading a few miles long of the IP and then set up for my attack in advance, meaning I was ready to drop the second I got the cleared hot.

[Razor18]

Sure, that's what I did for the second time around...

[paulw10]

Yeah, got really fustrated with mission 5 for the building attack. Nothing but poor position calls from the JTAC. I even set-up a WP on the building MGRS coord and dialed the approach heading to the HSI CRS; perfect approaches every time. On the transit from sector 3 I was attacked by SAM when at 15k MSL, so I repositioned to 20K. No chance of clearing after 3.5 from IP. Dropped back down to 15k but still couldn't get JTAC to call clear. Very dark by now and still doing repeated runs. Finally aborted on bingo fuel and headed for home. Just under three hours in total. My runs were starting from the north-west edge of the island going back along the target heading; initial distance was about 8 miles. I was waiting as long as reasonable to call for clearance. 3.5 miles is seriously tight, especially at night. Also at the time it wasn't obvious to me that the JTAC distance from target is a maximum distance for requesting clearance. Guess I haven't done anything set-up this tight before.

[Mistermann]

On 10/6/2021 at 10:51 AM, schurem said:

In this mission I really missed being able to F2 all the allied flights while plodding up the coast towards the target area.

Not likely a help to this poster, but anyone who reads in the future can benefit.  See this post if you want to enable the ability to enable external views in this campaign (or any campaign, for that matter).  

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Mistermann

[FroznAK]

Anyone have a screenshot of the proper building?  I see the bdrm and trucks on the street between the buildings? I hit what I thought was correct building, but obviously wasn’t.  Was so disappointing, because it was otherwise a perfect run lol.

Great campaign so far.  So immersive.  One comment, can we replace the CBU’s with just about anything else lol…they are pretty worthless.

Edited March 19, 2023 by FroznAK

[FroznAK]

Never mind, I located the correct building.  I didn’t realize there are 2 burned out BDRMs and I couldn’t see the correct one when I was orbiting to the east of the city.  2nd run through i orbited northwest of the city and it was pretty obvious which it was.  Even could see the 2 “chimneys”. Just 2 little circles on the rectangular structure on top of the building.