Gold Standard Campaign

[gnomechild]

Wow! Just over halfway through this campaign and needed to come give some feedback. Reflected has a gift for Helicopter ops. This campaign really displays the best of what helicopters can do in DCS. Every mission has been excellent. They are fun, difficult, engaging, interesting, immersive, and just cool. This is also the best voice acting I've heard in a DCS campaign. It's not a Hollywood blockbuster, but every VA I've heard is doing a great job, and none of it pulls you out of the immersion. The Guam setting is fantastic and I love the alternate history. Plus it's the first time really using the new Marianas map and it's a really good map. (I haven't had many issues with frames, but I have a 970 and play on low to medium settings in 2d. ) 

If you're on the fence about this campaign, and you love the Huey, do yourself a favor and buy it.

Reflected, if you read this please make another campaign for the Hip and Hind in a similar vein! Alternate history in Syria maybe!

[Reflected]

@gnomechild thanks so much for the kind words and for taking the time to leave this message. I appreciate it. I hope you'll enjoy the 2nd half flying gunships just as much as the first half. Looking forward to your feedback once you finish it.

[blaster182]

I have to support gnomechild's review. Thank you very much, Reflected, for this excellent campaign! I've finished the final three missions this morning, every mission has been both great fun and excitement.

Paradise Lost has become my favourite Huey campaign and is among my favourites overall. Great mission design, perfect setting, scripting and voice acting make this campaign a must for every Huey pilot. The immersion level is very high, on par with Baltic Dragon's amazing work for me.

The difficulty level may be not too high for experienced pilots but it should be challenging enough. Beginners should also be able to master the missions without frustration. And you could always skip one and revisit it later. Regardless of the pilot experience, the skillful mission design should thrill everyone.

Like gnomchild said, it's also a perfect way to explore the Marianas scenery. I hope that we'll see more helo campaigns from your side in the future, you certainly got the right stuff :-)

[War_Pig]

Reflected, just wanted to let you know that I think Paradise Lost is every bit as awesome as Fear The Bones is.  It's taken me from a novice Huey pilot (couldn't start-up without the checklist, couldn't hover; Autorotation?  What's that?!) to a- well, I won't say seasoned, but competent Huey driver who grasps the cockpit flows, can hover hands-off, and can fly the thing with smoothness and fineness.

This campaign gave me a reason to 'go to school' on the Huey and really learn the bird, and it's such a simple aircraft systems-wise that the results are impressive.  I've had a blast learning, and flying the campaign.  I know you didn't build the campaign to be a school for novice whirlybird pilots, but the difficulty ramp-up is well done, and very conducive to that. 

Thank you for another great campaign!  I haven't encountered any bugs at all, except for one minor issue:

Without spoilers, the LRRP team's long-count was actually only 3 seconds of FM transmission (needles alive, the audio lasted the full 10), which meant homing too a few (several! lol) tries to pin down their location.  Not sure why that was, but FYI.  Probably a DCS bug.

[Reflected]

Thank you all, you’re very kind. 
 

@War_Pig I also noticed that the needle is not alive for the full 10 seconds even though the sound file is 10 sec long. Probably a DCS bug. 

[War_Pig]

It might be possible to make it so that if you ask for a long count, they transmit either continuously, or just repeat every few seconds until you get close.

IRL, at least in books like Chickenhawk (I see a lot of influences from there in this campaign, which is awesome!), the ground unit would likely give you a couple clues like:

"You're getting closer", or "You're going the wrong way".  I don't know if this would be possible to rework, but I had to repeat the ten-count several times, closely checking out each hilltop I came to until blind luck made my copilot give me the "There they are!" message.  It worked, but it was a little frustrating because IRL things might work a little better.

[Reflected]

I found a workaround. I made a version of the long count with some silence at the end, and set the transmission to 'looped'. Then I added  a trigger to stop the transmission after 11 seconds. This way the needles are alive for the whole duration of the long count. That should make things a lot easier.

This should be available with the next OB update.

Edited January 17, 2022 by Reflected

[War_Pig]

Awesome, thank you!  I was excited to get to do FM homing to an LZ; glad to hear that you were able to fix it.

[BuzzLine]

OK, I finally made it through the whole campaign. I had a blast. Let me join the chorus in congratulating you for an amazing experience.

I had my doubts about Marianas as a stand-in for Vietnam but I do agree that you made it work quite well. With just a bit of suspension of disbelief, it works very well. Also, it makes the flying quite easy without advance navigation aids, as you can always use the shoreline as a reference. And the "letters from home" was an amazing touch. I love it when there is a backstory (still got goosebumps from Jagdflieger), it helps with the immersion and gives a lot of sense to our flying. The music was also a nice touch, in M12 in particular  ! 

In terms of the flying, I find that you really managed to capture well the weight, temperature, and other conditions that made UH-1 operations difficult in Vietnam. Hot weather, full load of fuel (maybe some additional hidden cargo in the back too ?), that made the flying just as difficult as you'd expect from reading books by those who flew in that period.

TLDR : Great job ! Loved it. 

[PapaFlo]

Just finished the campaign. Great atmosphere and some cool ideas. Well done, Sir!

[Qiou87]

I finished the campaign finally, and can only join the chorus here: it sets a high bar for all other story driven campaigns in the game. Well done @Reflected, and thank you. I know it takes hundreds of hours to make a campaign so polished, and we pay a relatively small price compared to the amount of work. You made me fall in love with the Huey all over again.

I was reading "This is Minuteman 2-3... Go!" in parallel and felt you really captured what I was reading, in the game. Well done!

[Reflected]

Thanks so much for the kind words! Y'all be happy to learn that a sequel is coming - although not in a way you would think. More info later

[wowbagger]

Just finished and wanted to add my thanks for a very entertaining, and extremely atmospheric experience. For me, feeling like "I'm there" is the most important thing for any simulator (way... way higher up the list than pressing 5k buttons in the right order again and again, or failing a mission because I didn't get proper ATC clearance), so a combination of Huey + Reflected is exactly what I'm looking for.

Now I'm wondering if a WWII (optimized) version of this map might not be an even better place for some Huey fun. But looking forward to whatever may be simmering on the Reflected hearth of creation.

Spoiler

 

Cheers Greg!

[Reflected]

Hey, so glad you enjoyed it. That feeling of being there is my main focus with campaigns. 
 

unfortunately moving the campaign to the ww2 map would mean rebuilding it from scratch which I don’t intend to do. Also, it wouldn’t be any more realistic for 1968 than the modern map. Maybe even less realistic - lack of proper airbases. 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Reflected

[wowbagger]

Oh, ya sorry, I didn't mean that Paradise Lost should be redone - I know maps cannot be switched with a total redo.

I was just thinking that sometimes the island seemed a little bit too built up and modern for the jungles of Vietnam and Laos vibe, and maybe some future Huey action could work on the older map. You're right though, I hadn't thought of the airbases. Maybe a FOB of some sort? 

I know every map is going to be a stretch of imagination to one extent or another (won't even mention the Northern Territory). However that has always been a strength of Reflected Simulations - taking an 'inappropriate' map and telling a damn good story about a different time or place.

Keep 'em coming please.