Deployment Campaign difficulty

[EbonySeraphim]

I've flown a lot of BlackShark in my day and I'm finding that the Deployment campaign is super punishing probably because the core game engine has updated in a way to make things incidentally more difficult for a number of reasons -- I'm referring to DCS World 2.5, and maybe even 1.5. Many of these missions I've played and beaten more than once so I know where to look for targets and where threats are. Three key examples:

• For every missions the first big issue is the AI is terribly bad. It was never that great to begin with, but I used to at least be able to have my wingmen fire Vihkrs at obvious targets; and do so safely if I've already taken out AAA and air defenses. Now, even if the only thing left are defenseless targets not shooting back, they fly off to nowhere or do nothing when I tell them to engage. Sometimes they just say negative. The only command they sometimes execute halfway is recon. This basically means only my payload counts for the mission. I have to engage every necessary air defense target, and every mission target. If I waste rounds or missles on something unnecessary, I might simply not clear the mission.
• Deployment campaign, mission 8 or 9 "Assault on Weapons Cache" -- Though I may not have the number right, this is the mission where you have 3  wingment (flight of 4); with a 50+ minute flight time, and you need to clear a very high elevation mountain pass before getting to the missiong area. This mission has a group of BMPs with AT missiles that will blow you out of the sky when you get within 3km; and they are very hidden in trees preventing you from killing them. I know they're there but they simply are not visible from Vihkr standoff range, and it would be terribly inefficient to attempt to fire cannnon rounds. I did eventually figure out that my mission targets were light armor and I could gun them all down out of BMP missle range and pass the mission.
• Deployment campaign, mission 9 or 10 -- this mission has you taking out some ground targets so that a ground convoy can move in. The mission is mostly fine -- a bit of a mundane scan+search and shoot, buth that's what Ka-50 is. However, the mission script messed up as I unloaded on some friendly tanks that had moved past living enemy infantry and neither side engaged each other. It wasn't until I landed on the FARP that the infantry at a certain angle shot at me and I kill them instead. Only after I got mission success did I see the fratrice issue, and I knew it was the tanks I killed prior but it made no sense as I saw them drive right by the FARP.
• Deployment campaign, mission 11 -- is a coordinated stike mission against armored targets. First, this mission unreliably has the allied AI flights engage air defenses. The mission has you standing by while allied flights take out the SA-8s. Well, first the allied flights seem to frequently fail in that mission so you should not entirely wait if you observed that they have all failed. And given SA-8's have 12km range, this can get tricky. But the real problem with this mission is that there aren't enough Vihkrs to take out the serious AA threats AND the mission targets. Even if every Vihkr goes to a mission main battle tank target, there are still more targets left which you'll have to get within gun or rocket range, and to do that you will be in range of AA that hasn't been addressed. This mission wasted the most time from me and I flat out skipped it. I've played this mission to 95% efficiency taking out everything that could even shoot at me and still not able to pass the mission due to running out of weapons. This mission has a more fatal AI flaw: the AI winment doesn't even seem to recognize mission targets are right there. The mission also takes place right at sundown and a flight all the way back home turns it over to night time and that is not a flight the Ka-50 is capable of. I ended up skipping this mission.
• Deployment campaign, mission 12 -- I just got here tonight and is the first mission I don't member playing more than several years ago. I spent a lot of time flying slow and scanning around once I was in the target area. This mission has a low cloud deck and the ground is 85% or more covered with trees. Nothing was in sight until I saw a FARP. Nothing in the FARP fired at me so I flew over it initially, to get to the secondary target and again saw nothing, but looking back I noticed my wingman getting shot at and engaged air defenese (it died of course). I flew back into the area and the rounds came from the trees. I fired back and somehow it seemed to work because I wasn't fired on more. Returned to the FARP destroying three trucks that couldn't shoot back at me, and then a facility before meeting my end from something. When I looked at Tacview, I was surprised to see that the initial rounds from the trees that fired at me was a massive force of tanks. There was nothing shy of two additional groups I either did, or nearly flew over but I didn't see them at all. I'm pretty sure every target and threat was under the trees. How is a BlackShark supposed to handle that? I haven't even tried this mission a 2nd time but I'm certain I'll skip it after only 1 more attempt most likely. I think this mission is broken in terms of trees being where they weren't before.

Anywas, the TLDR is that missions in Black Shark are very broken. I may need to quit this entire campaign in favor of one that has the right and intended difficulty for the state of the engine now.

[grimnir]

It is really a shame that these old campaigns don’t get any love as they are quite good. Also they are the first campaigns new players will try, and if they don’t work or are to hard then it will cause unnecessary frustration. For me I can’t get past the campaign «Rescuer», as described here: 

I have give up waiting for a update on this.

[MadDog-IC]

On 7/8/2022 at 6:07 PM, EbonySeraphim said:

I've flown a lot of BlackShark in my day and I'm finding that the Deployment campaign is super punishing probably because the core game engine has updated in a way to make things incidentally more difficult for a number of reasons -- I'm referring to DCS World 2.5, and maybe even 1.5.

Many of these missions I've played and beaten more than once so I know where to look for targets and where threats are.

Anyways, the TLDR is that missions in Black Shark are very broken. I may need to quit this entire campaign in favor of one that has the right and intended difficulty for the state of the engine now.

If you or others are so inclined, try my corrected versions of DCSW Campaigns, should work better than the originals, bar any newer issues since I did the work and testing.

Deployment and others for DCSW2.5

Regards Ian.