feedback Completed the campaign! Congratulations and some feedback

[TLTeo]

This post is going to contain spoilers for those that haven't been through all the missions. I will try to keep them at a minimum, but there's only so much I can avoid.

Everyone probably knows by now but it's worth repeating: this campaign stands head and shoulders above everything else in DCS. Even the best work of other excellent campaign makers like Reflected or Bunyap (or BD's previous campaigns) doesn't come close to how incredibly good Raven One is - and I didn't even read the book! That said, there are a few minor comments, in no particular order, that could improve things a little:

1) It would be great to have every single brevity code be added to the documentation. Currently some are missing, whether they be minor  (e.g. "Armstrong", which I imagine means Master Arm ON, "No alibi", which I guess is some sort of acknowledgment that weapons are live) or not (e.g. "Gorilla" in mission 12, which makes the initial radio calls very confusing). I more or less figured out most of them (I think), but it gets weird to have to figure some brevity codes out, while others can just be looked up in the kneeboard.

2) In many missions the briefing shows the location of known SAMs, but then those SAMs are not displayed on the SA page. This doesn't make sense to me and in some missions (esp 10 and 14) felt pretty annoying - if air defenses are known during the briefing, there is no reason why their locations wouldn't be loaded on the jet.

3) The triggers on mission 15 seem a bit iffy. Again trying to avoid spoilers, but I managed to get through the first fight with the F-4s very quickly and with my wingman alive, after which I ordered him to bug out on the F10 radio. As a result, the Su-33 did not engaged, everything was fine, and I missed all the following bits of the narrative. I'm not sure how one would fix this without the risk of forcing the player into a fight with no fuel though.

4) I realize it's more of a DCS issue, but AAR with the AI gets awful sometimes. I have had to re-fly missions or divert because the AI decided that an S-3 Viking really is a ballistic missile meant to fly straight up to Angels 100, or Hornets completely forget how to AAR and just get stuck behind the tanker..you name it. Given that the AI issues are so inconsistent and messy, I think the best fix would be to allow the player to spawn an additional tanker (and re-spawning any wingman at full fuel) using the F10 menu, and stating specifically in the mission briefing/notes that this is strictly in case something goes wrong with the tankers already present in the mission. It's a bit of a hack, but to me at least it's less immersion breaking than being forced to eject because the AI is dumb, or losing my entire flight because they run out of gas.

5) If possible, all missions should include a legend on the kneeboard that shows which aircraft callsigns on the SA page correspond to each actual flight. Having that in Mission 10 makes a huge difference in keeping SA, so it would be great if it was extended to other missions too.

All in all, this is very, very minor though. Between the Mirage and Farmer campaigns I was always going to buy any new Baltic Dragon campaign that comes out for any module I own, and Raven One just reinforced that. Cheers!

Edited October 24, 2021 by TLTeo

[baltic_dragon]

Thanks a lot @TLTeo!

Good point about the doc, I will update it with the things you mentioned. 

For the known SAMs, they should be there, but I found there are some problems with SA page. Still, I'll investigate.

M15 - yeah, there are several different outcomes / options and I tried to take stock of all of them. Weird with Su-33 not engaging though, I haven't seen that happen. 

As for AAR - well.. you hit the nail on the head there. It is even more annoying for me, especially that quite often trigger to stop the AAR for AI does not work. I am in constant back and forth with ED on this and they are doing a good job trying to solve this. 

For M10 such legend is in the kneeboard, I checked recently. 

Thanks again!

 

[TLTeo]

Cheers!

1 hour ago, baltic_dragon said:

For M10 such legend is in the kneeboard, I checked recently. 

For M10 yes, what I meant is that I wish it was there for all the other missions too, especially ones with multiple flights

[t-stoff]

SPOILERS

Sorry to jump in, but I didn't want to create another thread. 

I had to restart mission 14 for several reasons (some skills issues  ;D) and when I managed to get it all done, it suddenly stopped. 

Now I'm into mission 15 but I don't like how it is played out.

I ended mission 14 with a X number of fuel and missiles/tanks, and started with everything messed up, waypoints, configurations, EW setup, out of missiles, and god knows what on that F-18. 

It's not the plane I started the mission, it's not configured the way I like it and all of a sudden I have this million radio calls and stuff to deal with.

I'll skip and probably try on of the these days just to get it done. But it was kind of a bummer I must say. 

But the rest of the missions were great, thanks! 
And I'm buying the book soon;D

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by t-stoff

[baltic_dragon]

Hey @t-stoff, there is no way to port your configuration between the missions and also imagine how p... unhappy people would be if they had to go through whole of M14 if they didn't succeed in M15, so I think a little bit of mess is a small trade-off for that. I know this is not perfect, but this is the best solution I can think of...

[t-stoff]

7 hours ago, baltic_dragon said:

Hey @t-stoff, there is no way to port your configuration between the missions and also imagine how p... unhappy people would be if they had to go through whole of M14 if they didn't succeed in M15, so I think a little bit of mess is a small trade-off for that. I know this is not perfect, but this is the best solution I can think of...

yeah I know I know!
but no worries. I was just giving some feedback. I loved the entire campaign a slight bummer doesn't mean anything.
I hope that didn't sound ungrateful!
if it did, my apologies; D

My Raven One book arrived today!

cheers 

 

[baltic_dragon]

thanks mate @t-stoff! It didn't, was just giving you the reasons why it is built the way it is. Enjoy the book! And I am sure after you finish it, you'll want to get the other two. Oh, and please post some feedback (here or in PM) on how the book relates to the campaign!