Mission 10 - Next level formation flying etc

[andhog]

Just managed to complete mission 10 after some failed attempts and that was by far the most challenging sortie I've ever made in DCS. The reason for that was about 50% the mission itself and 50% how the mission was created.

By that I mean I understand that these kind of missions must be very challenging IRL and I actually liked it, but there where some things I wish the developer had done differently.

First, when starting the mission it felt like starting a 100 meter at the Olympics (not that I've done that but anyway) and it took me 3 times to get it right. Configuring those JDAMs and everything else HAS to be done prior to take off because once leaving the catapult all focus will have to be om the flight lead. It would have been nice to have proper time to set things up after "spawning", like with the previous missions where you press spacebar to set things in motion when ready.

Then, when I finally managed to get that part right, keeping up with the flight lead was as tricky as it gets. All of a sudden he banks right, then left and light the cans. It's most likely a DCS thing because I've encountered this behavior during the other missions as well, but the fact that this was a night sortie makes it 100 times harder. Perhaps it is what it is, but if there's something you can do to ease those "transitions" it would be nice.

ANd finally, during the recovery I didn't get the message to "kiss off" my wingmen until I was about 5nm from mother on final approach. Since this was a CASE III recovery it would have been more natural to let them loose before calling inbound to give them a chance to enter the stack properly.

[baltic_dragon]

Hey @andhog, thanks for this post.

As for first part - difficulty - in real life you'd probably have more time on deck, but in DCS there is no way to keep all those flights there and then make them take off in order. I still think there is quite a lot of time, given that player takes off last, and you don't have to follow your FL until you get to the hold point. But the bottom line is: yes, it is meant to be difficult, task saturated as it is in real life. That is the whole idea behind Raven One

AI behaviour in flight is entirely on the DCS, I spent hours trying to tweak it, but it is completely out of mine (and other campaign devs) hands. I hear that coming patch is supposed to bring some improvements there, we'll see. 

The last part - I'll look into it,  you are right it should be done much earlier.