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4 hours ago, ChuckyChuck said:

I just finished this campaign and it was really fun! Thank you @Reflected!

Are you planning on making more campaigns for the P-47?

 

Thanks so much, I'm happy you enjoyed it. I'm not planning any other P-47 campaigns at the moment, but my new Spitfire campaign is just around the corner, and it's quite similar to Wolfpack in that it's a reconstruction of original documents.
 

 

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6 hours ago, Reflected said:

Thanks so much, I'm happy you enjoyed it. I'm not planning any other P-47 campaigns at the moment, but my new Spitfire campaign is just around the corner, and it's quite similar to Wolfpack in that it's a reconstruction of original documents.
 

 

Yes I am planning on getting that one, just need to learn the Spitfire first. But Fear the Bones is next on my list. Thank you again for your amazing campaigns!

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  • 1 month later...

EYE FATIGUE WARNING!

Amazing campaign indeed! 🙂
I wish I spoke more English so I could do proper justice to the quality and immersion that Reflected's campaigns offer, the Wolfpack Campaign included.
I guess I should have got used to it by now, but I haven't - each time it surprises my how much effort is put into these campaigns. Let's talk for a moment about the thing not commented here, at least not often - the "cinematic" missions, those where you are just an observer. Take your cup of tea, sit down and watch the "movie" as it introduces you to the story. What a treat, where's my popcorn! There are great voiceovers across the whole campaign and they deserve accolades on their own, but even such a small thing as the font used for inscriptions popping up on the screen in those cinematic missions was mindfully selected to pretend the text came out of a worn-out typewriter. Get it? WW2, no computers, no printers, all the bureaucracy punched on typewritters. The briefings are written/drawn in chalk on a blackboard, you didn't expect modern stuff, did you? In each mission you get the "B" channel on your radio tuned to... probably BBC playing some cool swing songs, I listened to it every time on the way back to England. I may be wrong, but I think the song-set wasn't the same in all the missions. If I'm correct, think how much attention it takes to cater even for that!
Boy, the list goes on and on, I don't want to write an epic, no one reads epics nowadays.

While in fact I had seen it before, played through quite a few campaigns from Reflected, Bunyap and some other folks, it has only recently started to fully "float" up to the surface of my mind, I started realizing actually how much thought and love (yes! that's the right word) is put into these campaigns. And I'm utterly charmed...

Now think about this: is it obligatory to create the aforementioned cinematic missions, chalk briefings, add music, add all these countless touches (there are more, but contrary to what you think I'm trying to be succint... to my limited capability), or if you don't, ED won't accept the campaign for sales? No, it's not obligatory, some campaigns don't have it.
Do you set the price for the campaign twice higher than other (less sophisticated) campaigns if you do all this? No, campaigns cost more or less the same. In fact... I like to be honest... I've seen a tad bit rough-edged campaigns sold for more than the Reflected's ones.
Why then does Reflected make them with such great attention to detail anyway? Well, for starters I suspect he simply does this for his own satisfaction and the feeling of accomplishment (which the campaigns undeniably are), of doing a great job, but at the same time he wants to give something as spectacular as he possibly can to other people, to get us involved, immersed, "soaked" in the world at war, give a taste of those gloomy times when even though you'd prefer to date that girl you met just before coming to Great Britain or fool around with your mates in your home town, you must instead stick your head out against the bullets in a furball mess. Today you live, tomorrow you may not. You never know.
If all history lessons at school felt this great, we'd all be historians by trade 🙂

I'm writing all this to confess that: a) I get it, b) I appreciate it a lot, and c) THANKS A 1000 for taking the time and energy to do all this for us!


Part 2. I know there are new people here who haven't played any WW2 campaign yet and may be wondering if it's worth it. Shortly speaking: you bet it is, but here are some pros of a quality WW2 campaign, such as the Wolfpack:

1. You will learn to drive your warbird comprehensively! Initally, you'll want to try instant missions to quickly get the feel of your new warbird, how she can (and cannot) dogfight, what her strong/weak points seem to be, you may learn to take off and land more or less properly and that's basically it.
In a campaign you'll be doing all the things that real pilots did (to the extent possible in DCS), not only dogfights, not even predominantly dogfights. You'll be taking off in a queue of other warbirds, sometimes 36 or so of them. How often did you see an airfield in DCS crammed to the limit? You'll be circling above the airfield until the whole group is airborne and formed. Yes, you, too, have a specific place in this big formation, can you find and hold it for 10-15 minutes? You'll be climbing with the whole group, keeping the formation and then you'll be cruising in formation a long way to the AO. Well, not very long as WW2 maps in DCS aren't very big, but still - quite a long trip.
You think it's boring? No, it's not, go and see for yourself - formation flying keeps you constantly busy and time flies fast. Oh, and overall you DO become a better pilot by doing just this. Stick and rudder heaven.
By the way, how often do you land a damaged aircraft. It's not uncommon in a campaign. I had to belly land once because I messed up my landing gear (the wheel got stuck against the wheel bay flap). Do you know how to feather the prop in the Jug, so that you can turn off the engine, cut the fuel off and decrease the risk of fire? How does it feel to land with other types of damage? I've had oil leaking, so I had to do everything it takes not to strain the engine in the hope that she takes me home in return. How often do you refer to the manual to check the best economy settings (manifold, RPM, altitude, speed), because suddenly you realized you had very little fuel left? All these may or will happen in a campaign, maybe the Wolfpack, maybe some other. And you really though you could fly the Jug, didn't you, eh? 😉

2. You will really need to learn fuel management, something you never do when playing instant missions or any kind of short missions. You may even want to make some new control bindings for it (I have). Two drop tanks? How do you deal with them? Here's a supposedly historically accurate practice: initially fly 5 minutes on the left tank, then take 10-minute-long turns from each tank. Why do it this way? Because you'll have weight imbalance from 5 minutes of left fuel burnt (righ wing heavy), through perfect balance, to 5 minutes of fuel right burnt (left wing heavy). If you don't allow for the initial 5 minutes, you'll have imbalance from 10 minutes of fuel one wing heavy to a perfect balance. The latter is worse. I like to think about it this way: it's better to walk like a duck (swinging left and right symmetrically) than to dramatically walk like that guy who had his whole leg put in a plaster cast, but forgot his crutches.
Yes, it's all small details, but hey - you wanted a WW2 pilot's job? Here it is, it's not only about shooting down bandits. There's another good reason to do it this way: AI planes climb with very high power settings. If you create a large weight imbalance, you'll have to compensate with rudder/aileron trims, perhaps to a point where you won't be able to keep up with your group. Haven't checked that myself, but it seems likely if you really don't care about fuel.

3. Since the Wolfpack is for the Jug in particular, you'll learn how to babysit the Double Wasp: warm it up first, then keep an eye on the oil temp. - adjust oil cooler shutters, carb temp. - adjust intercooler shutters, cylinder heads temp. - adjust cowl flaps. You really need to take care of it depending on the current regime of flight (climb/cruise/etc.) and altitude. Get used to carefully listen to the hiss of air from the turbo - the manifold pressure may have just risen above the red line even though you haven't touched the throttle and boost lever. Don't get caught. And so on, and so forth...

4. A common psychological catch in long missions. When 40 minutes have passed since the mission start, and you finally face bandits, not only do you want to shoot down one or two, you also want to survive, not get shot down - just because you've devoted quite a lot of your time and effort to get to this point. Do you want to refly the mission only because you went reckless and got shot down? That's something you NEVER consider in single player in an instant mission (or any short mission), where you instinctively go reckless because it doesn't matter - if you loose, you tap ESC, click "Quit" and "Fly again". That's it. That's not the case in a campaign. Typically it takes quite some time to meet bandits (not always), so you do care not to get shot down in a stupid way. This makes A LOT of difference as far as immersion is concerned.


Yeah, yeah, I know this post is too long already and you may think "Man, why blow the trumpet so loud, you liked the campaign, so just say it and go", but you know what? I've noticed these forums are a bit "asymmetrical". You see a lot of complaints about specific modules (aircraft), because there are old bugs, or new bugs, or missing this/that feature and your favourite plane isn't perfect yet. This is a skewed picture, but the campaigns get a skewed picture the other way round - they are seldom ranted on, if ever. No one wants to discourage creators, for various reasons, one of them being that everyone hopes the authors get better during the process of making new missions and new campaigns. Frankly though, some of them are technically flawed - "touchy" triggers etc. Some have subpar documentation, as if it was pulled out of one's throat by force. Or documentation where there are true and erroneous pieces of information in a 50:50 ratio. Or campaigns which require telepathy to figure out what the autor expects from the player.  Oh, man...

Anyway, I understand and accept this assymetry, but as a side effect I think it raises the need to praise the quality campaigns, as loud as you can, so others can spot the difference. By the way, I haven't said a single word about triggers in the Wolfpack. Why? Because everything just works and the only quirk or two I experienced were due to the "smart" AI doing their "smart" things (such as crashing on the runway etc.). I just happen to have learnt already that mission creators can do very little about it, it's a DCS core thing.
That's why I think it's really important to elaborate on excellent campaigns (such as this one) and elaborate on the "value added", i.e. all those additions that (some) authors put in to increase the immersion, even though it's not strictly required to get the campaign to the shop. At least it's fair to mention them, acknowledge the author's extra efforts.

The Wolfpack Campaign is one of those top-notch campaigns which you plunge into and don't want them to end, ever, and those that unfortunately do eventually end and leave you as sad as a kid who ate the lollipop and there's nothing left. I've dragged my chunky Jug into the hangar and it felt really bad and empty. This simply means I've had a freaking great time.

Also make sure you understand that Reflected's campaigns come in two main "flavours": one is "fantasy" campaigns, where missions are basically made up (though anchored in the author's knowledge about WW2 reality), and historical campaigns which try to recreate missions actually flown back then during WW2 (based on written reports etc.). The Wolfpack is the second flavour. Which do I like more? I like more both 🙂 They're just a bit different, the fantasy ones have a slight proclivity to be more funny, or surprising at times, but the historical ones feel equally great when you realize that these exact events really happened, you take part in the history. It feels very special.


Edited by scoobie
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@scoobiethanks so much for taking the time and effort to write up this review and share it with us.

Every time I see there's a new post in this section I'm like 'oh no, did something break?' and it's so nice to see that someone took the time to write about the positives rather than just flagging an issue.

I see that we have a very similar taste in flight simming, what you wrote is 100% true - I'm adding all these details for my own satisfaction. And the time and effort it takes to get to the fight makes you want to survive, and that makes things so much more immersive, I agree. I remember when I played Bunyap's Epsom for the first time, and when I landed after shooting up a single opel blitz during a 1h mission was a more rewarding feeling than anything else in a quick mission or MP. So I tried to carry this 'vibe' over to my own campaigns too.

You'll really love 'Beware! Beware!', my upcoming Spit campaign - 16 historical sorties based on documents, plus 6 other cut-scenes and missions for added immersion 🙂 I hope you'll enjoy it just as much as Wolfpack. Fuel management will be much more tricky though!

 

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  • 1 month later...

Thank you very much, Reflected, for this Campaign!

Last mission made me a little bit nervous, because we didn't get external fuel tanks and I spent a half of fuel teel reach the target. After drom attack I heard bot's report a-la "fuel is too low". But it was only begining... 

Thank Lord, I had a plane damadge real reason to leave France. My engine was slightly demaged, I heard terrible sounds from it, left aeleron was losted... Really like "сomin' in on a wing and a prayer" (c) when I crossed France beach on extremly low alt and looping like a hare to avoid flak's fire.

Firstly, I had a option to use your advise and bail out immediatly after contact with ASR. But plane stiil flew normally above the Channel, I felt so sorry for him that and I decided try to land at base airfield.

Lucky for me I've already got an experience to release a landing gears after the plane's damage. And soonly after touching the ground I saw "Campaign has been completed" message!

Thanks again and I hope there will be more companies for the P-47.

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21 minutes ago, PeevishMonkey said:

Thank you very much, Reflected, for this Campaign!

Last mission made me a little bit nervous, because we didn't get external fuel tanks and I spent a half of fuel teel reach the target. After drom attack I heard bot's report a-la "fuel is too low". But it was only begining... 

Thank Lord, I had a plane damadge real reason to leave France. My engine was slightly demaged, I heard terrible sounds from it, left aeleron was losted... Really like "сomin' in on a wing and a prayer" (c) when I crossed France beach on extremly low alt and looping like a hare to avoid flak's fire.

Firstly, I had a option to use your advise and bail out immediatly after contact with ASR. But plane stiil flew normally above the Channel, I felt so sorry for him that and I decided try to land at base airfield.

Lucky for me I've already got an experience to release a landing gears after the plane's damage. And soonly after touching the ground I saw "Campaign has been completed" message!

Thanks again and I hope there will be more companies for the P-47.

 

What a way to end the campaign, sounds like the pucker factor was high 🙂 Thanks for sharing, I'm really glad you had fun playing it.

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47 минут назад, Reflected сказал:

sounds like the pucker factor was high

:))) Especially when I didn't saw a green lamp of landing gear 🙂

When I realised that I'll need to replay the last mission the 3rd time in case of fail at current landing (the 1st time DCS crashed during airfild attack)... I pulled myself together and remembered what do I need to Finalize The Campaign NOW :)))

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