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Hey BD,

 

I've been messing around with the F/A-18 radios in one of my own missions, and discovered that the Maritime channels on the ARC-210 actually work properly on the correct Maritime frequencies, including the Maritime Emergency frequency (Channel 16, or 156.8 MHz). If you set the F-18 radio to S16, and place a beacon or audio transmission on 156.8, you'll hear it properly if within range.

 

This got me thinking about M02 in your campaign. This is a pretty fine-grained suggestion, but it is odd that the woman in the boat would be broadcasting on UHF aviation guard (I don't think most maritime radios can even broadcast UHF), especially since the dialogue makes a point she doesn't know the radios. It makes more sense for her to be using Maritime Distress.

 

How to get the player to use S16? Maybe a directive from Akrotiri or the carrier that they've heard garbled transmission on S16 and are hoping you can pick it up? Not sure.

 

It's probably too late in the game to be rewriting dialogue, but it would add just one more layer of realism to an already impressive campaign.

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From a user standpoint, this SAR flight is the perfect mission to ease pilots into a complex campaign. M01 is too demanding for a cold open. I love DCS and have all of BD's work. These are the flagship campaigns. However, that ILS night trap will turn people away from an amazing experience. Please consider swapping out M01 with the yacht rescue as the opener. BTW, it was weird to hear a distress call from the deck and not the bridge. Otherwise, awesome narrative esp. with the recovery position steps!

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On 7/12/2022 at 12:00 AM, AngelAtTheTomb said:

but it is odd that the woman in the boat would be broadcasting on UHF aviation guard (I don't think most maritime radios can even broadcast UHF), especially since the dialogue makes a point she doesn't know the radios.

Maybe her husband is a former military pilot and preset his UHF radio in case she needed to call for help? 😉

I think 121.500 would make a lot more sense, but the beauty about 243.000 is that players get an incentive to enable guard monitoring, which I think every player should always do during startup anyway.

An option to choose between UHF and VHF Guard monitoring would be awesome, but it seems that's just not a feature of our Hornet (I assume).

On 7/12/2022 at 12:00 AM, AngelAtTheTomb said:

It's probably too late in the game to be rewriting dialogue, but it would add just one more layer of realism to an already impressive campaign.

Sounds like a good suggestion, but I think it would indeed take quite a bit of work to write some new lines of dialog and then make sure all the transmissions are sent on the proper freq (though best case scenario, the latter might actually be just one tiny change).

16 hours ago, Wyndemere said:

M01 is too demanding for a cold open.

There's been some discussion internally whether or not M1 is too hard.

My point of view, not that it had any impact on the decision (I'm just a tester for the campaign), is that it's a hard mission, period. What's the use of getting players nicely settled in the campaign when this mission is mission 2 or 3 or 10, and then players fail it?

In a way, it's a punch in the face. Then again, a) real pilots will sometimes have to deal with very bad weather and b) flying-wise it's one of the harder missions of the campaign, so when players punch their way through and make a successful landing, they'll be kind of battle hardened long before the first shot is fired. 😉

But I think the real reason BD made this mission 1 is because he just loves to make players suffer. 😂

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How many people will experience their first F-18 campaign this way? Should the flagship product, with the premier campaign, attract new players just to kick them in the nuts? Even MMA schools know that's bad for business. Being challenged is great, but M01 could hurt sales because it makes unfair assumptions about the player base. For example, the barrier to entry for DCS is so high that airline pilots I know won't touch it. My intro to DCS was the Mirage Red Flag campaign which buried the night ILS in the middle. That gave pilots time to adjust to the platform, and it was a great feeling. So, how does it feel to hit the drink before M01 ends?

For the story arc, it might flow better to push M01 as the warmup for the M05 air intercept. Real world skills are done by scaffolding, but the opening narrative hopscotches to sea searches then back to intercepts. That's my editor's take after the first touch. This is a complex campaign and I want to see them succeed.

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3 hours ago, Wyndemere said:

How many people will experience their first F-18 campaign this way? Should the flagship product, with the premier campaign, attract new players just to kick them in the nuts? Even MMA schools know that's bad for business. Being challenged is great, but M01 could hurt sales because it makes unfair assumptions about the player base. For example, the barrier to entry for DCS is so high that airline pilots I know won't touch it. My intro to DCS was the Mirage Red Flag campaign which buried the night ILS in the middle. That gave pilots time to adjust to the platform, and it was a great feeling. So, how does it feel to hit the drink before M01 ends?

For the story arc, it might flow better to push M01 as the warmup for the M05 air intercept. Real world skills are done by scaffolding, but the opening narrative hopscotches to sea searches then back to intercepts. That's my editor's take after the first touch. This is a complex campaign and I want to see them succeed.

Personally, I think current M01 as a opener is stunning. 

I read the briefing carefully but still didn't expect that I would deviate to land in Cyprus. Luckily I completed the mission in my first try with 100 score, although I almost crashed the plane during the cross-wind landing. 

M01 indeed isn't for rookies, but this campaign isn't for training purpose neither. I just think such an opener is fantastic. A climax from the start. 

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7 hours ago, Wyndemere said:

How many people will experience their first F-18 campaign this way? Should the flagship product, with the premier campaign, attract new players just to kick them in the nuts?

I certainly understand the sentiment from a marketing standpoint, but it seems BD knows his audience - you can't complete any of his F-18 campaigns without really, really knowing the jet. Dominant Fury takes that even further, and so M01 seems like a fitting opener to me. It just sets the tone and atmosphere so perfectly.

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@AngelAtTheTombthis crossed my mind during work on the mission, but as Yurgon rightly points out, the whole thing is to have the Guard monitoring in the background enabled. There is no way to tell the player to monitor the marine guard frequency without showing from the start that something WILL happen. Now if you don't enable Guard Monitoring, you will just have a short flight to the boat. If you do, you get a completely different experience. 

@Wyndemere I hear you and we had a long discussion exactly about what you are saying (also with ED). At the end of the day, people complaining that M1 is too difficult were very few, because this is NOT a campaign for the beginners. It is not intended to be your first Hornet campaign and I would assume most of the people flying it have already finished the original Raven One. 

So in the hindsight I am happy with how things are done, just as AngelAtTheTomb says. 

And yeah, I love making players suffer, as Yurgon says 🙂

There is another side to this: M1 is for all those people who complained about the original R1 that it was boring as they got to shoot at something only in M3 and there was too much training etc. So we wanted to show things can get hairy without a single shot being fired...

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  • 2 weeks later...

BD, I did struggle flying M01 after not touching the Hornet in months. I've got 5,000 airline hours, with tons of night ILS, and that zero/zero approach still bit me. So good job! And thanks for a solid rationale. It's neat to hear the creative process. Also, how you weaved fundamentals into the story was smart. For example, the combat merge with a 1nm turn in. I've never seen that type of practice in DCS. The Kursant campaign was the closest, but we civilians never got exposed to tactical air work--which is fun to experience. That is a great selling point for DCS, because Places like Air Combat USA aren't very accessible.

For the record, I stand by the gripe about narrative hopscotch. I assume it's Miller's doing because finding pilots who have time to work on narrative structure is rare. So, I freely volunteer if you need an editor in the future, and I look forward to your next story.


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On 7/13/2022 at 3:16 AM, Yurgon said:

An option to choose between UHF and VHF Guard monitoring would be awesome, but it seems that's just not a feature of our Hornet (I assume).

The GRCV ARC210 function on our DCS F18 works as the real one.

As the after start routine on the F18 we enable the GRCV function on both radio. PRI (COMM1) and AUX (COMM2). But we need to understand the system.

The F18 ARC210 GRCV function works and it is capable of automatic listening of VHF Guard freq (121.5) or UHF Guard freq (243.00) depending on the respective COMM (PRI/AUX) main freq selected, example:

If on PRI (COMM1) we are using VHF freq like 127.5 and GRCV is selected on our COMM1, we can monitor and listen all the communications broadcasted on the VHF guard freq of 121.5 but not on the UHF guard freq of 243.00, as soon we switch on a UHF main freq like 305.00 we can monitor and listen all the comms broadcasted on the UHF guard one. the GRCV switch is automatic.

So it is self explaining and nice to know, that if we are on PRI and AUX both on a main UHF freq our GRCV will be able to monitor just the UHF guard freq of 243.00, the same if we are operating both comms in VHF. the GRCV will be able to only monitor the VHF guard freq of 121.5.

cheers 

 

 

 
 

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