I stopped playing it :(

[TimSell75]

Unfortunately I am a bit disappointed with the campaign. I played the 5 first mssions and came to the point where I will stop playing until an hopefull update.

Don´t get me wrong, I was really looking forward to the campaign, especially for the harrier. But there are just some issues which made it too frustrating to continue.

Positive: The Basic setting, the story is very good. Very realsitic scenario and also the mssions I played so far are tasked well.

There are three major negative things though in my opinion:

1. Oftentimes you wait for calls that never come.

- Mission 2: I got message to assist SAR for a downed pilot, but nothing else happend, Don´t know if it was just information or if I was tasked to do something?

- Mission 3: the go signal was never given, I just went when I thought was the right timing because waiting led to the fact that the Tomcats where already landing when the enemy fighters arrive.

- Mission 5: I got order to circle at the IP until futher notice, I did that for 30min until I ran out of fuel, nothing happened

2. Oftentimes the losses on Blue side are staggering.

- In Mission 2 the one SA10 site shot down 4-6 Tomcats at least in every try I made.

- In Mission 5 all F-18 that should provide SEAD where shot down by one SA15 and manpads because they are flying way too low. After flying there in real time for over an hour, just to find out that you are now alone against a whole array of air defenses with nothing more than a CAS loadout was really bad.

3. A lack of immersion and detail: Especially when flying VR, the small details make the difference.

- For example: in some missions you have some personnel and aircraft on the deck, in some it is completely empty. Same goes for the other carrier. It is nothing that is really complicated to do, but flying of a completely empty deck with no crew, no equipment etc. is unrealsitic and also kills the immersion.

- The first mission had a TOTE Board text message, havent seen that afterwards. Especially for the harrier this is important.

- The timings are off, starting from cold and dark at 7:30 and being tasked to be at WP1 in 30nm distance 2 minutes later is just not doable.

 

I really think that the basis for a great campaign is there, because setting and mission ideas are great but at the moment I think it need an overhaul to be enjoyable.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by TimSell75

[SorelRo]

3 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

 

- Mission 2: I got message to assist SAR for a downed pilot, but nothing else happend, Don´t know if it was just information or if I was tasked to do something?

Sometimes you are getting calls that pilots are down and if you know how to monitor guard freq you can listen to their beepers, but, as in reality, you are not going to be able to do anything about it. It's just for immersion. 

3 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

 

- Mission 3: the go signal was never given, I just went when I thought was the right timing because waiting led to the fact that the Tomcats where already landing when the enemy fighters arrive.

 

Most likely you are not patient enough that signal comes when all the sites are hit enough to allow you to survive. It also might be DCS bug, I'll check that mission. 

3 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

 

- Mission 5: I got order to circle at the IP until futher notice, I did that for 30min until I ran out of fuel, nothing happened

 

I'll have to see if this is another bug, the signal is given when the F-18's are taking down the SA-15's 

3 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

 

2. Oftentimes the losses on Blue side are staggering.

- In Mission 2 the one SA10 site shot down 4-6 Tomcats at least in every try I made.

- In Mission 5 all F-18 that should provide SEAD where shot down by one SA15 and manpads because they are flying way too low. After flying there in real time for over an hour, just to find out that you are now alone against a whole array of air defenses with nothing more than a CAS loadout was really bad.

 

This is DCS's AI. Something I can't control, these missions have been tested and have worked properly at the release. When bugs like this are reported I'm trying to tweak them to allow the AI to do better, but sometimes, that's how AI works. There's not a whole lot I can do about it. It's way way over my head this one. 

 

3 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

 

3. A lack of immersion and detail: Especially when flying VR, the small details make the difference.

 

I call BS on this one. Out of 3 missions on Tarawa, there are 2 with an empty deck where you have crew and the last one with a deck that's quite full where, for the sake of framerates in VR i decided to take the crew out. The other carrier is a SC should have crew on it no matter what. again, another thing that I cannot control 

3 hours ago, TimSell75 said:

 

- The first mission had a TOTE Board text message, havent seen that afterwards. Especially for the harrier this is important.

 

 

Will be added as soon as the AV-8B will leave Beta and Razbam won't tinker with the engine. Engine performances changed and your TOTE has to change too. I didn't consider it a show stopper this one. 

 

Cheers, 

[TimSell75]

Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it. 

Regarding the missing calls. It might have to do with the AI not being able to fullfill the needed tasks then. I flew some of the missions 4-5 times, but never received the calls. But I also noticed that HARMS barely hit anything and missed most of the targets by a few meters, so the AI got shot down when trying to use their Mavericks afterwards. Also SA-15 seem to have super sniper skills now, being able to shoot down Mavericks in flight in almost all cases.

In case of the unpopulated flight Deck. Yes the other carrier is a SC but other than the default Deck Crew there is nothing attched, no equipment no nothing. It might be preference of mine but for me it takes away some of the immersion. Having a crowded Deck as in reality just gives me this „almost real“ Impression.

[SorelRo]

I'll check and see how the AI is doing on those missions. Without the reports from you guys I can't catch whatever happens  after all the updates in DCS. Better to tell me if a mission is messed up after you fly it then get frustrated and fly 3 4 of them. I can't humanely check all of them. I tried once and pretty much ended up up having a heart attack. 

[TimSell75]

I made some testing today. 2x F18 with 4x HARM each against 2x SA15.

The capabilities of the SA15 is just beyond believe. In most cases they were able to defend themselves by shooting the HARMS out of the sky and even kill the F18 afterwards. Skill of the SA15 was average, F18 were set to Ace.

In other cases the F18 did not destroy the SA15 totally but their radar was out of action, because the HARMS only scored indirect hits. They then let them alone when set to SEAD even though the SA15 is still alive.

If the triggers in the missions are just set to total destruction, this might be an issue.

[SorelRo]

That may be the problem. I'm reviewing this as well and try to come up with some safeguards to get rid of those SA-15, In the development of this campaign that's not how they used to react.