Campaign progress: Am I missing something?

[McVittees]

I had an issue last night with the Deployment campaign on the Narzan Valley mission. I hit fly, I did'nt un-pause the game. I realized I needed to turn on my CH profile, so I exited the sim. When I got back into the mission to fly the campaign had incremented to the Rescue mission. I ended up re-starting the campaign from the beginning because I did'nt want to skip any missions. I was also ready to turn off the icons and turned invulnerability off, so no big deal really. Moral of the story...Don't leave the mission unless you are truly ready to move to the next one...just in case.

 

Hang on, does this mean that the campaign uses your average score to advance you to the next stage, not the score in the mission you've just flown?

 

The writer of the Oil War Campaigns thought your death should take 51 points off your score which results almost automatically in your stepping back a stage (a score of 50 stays in a stage, >50 advances to the next stage, <50 steps you back).

 

If it is your average score that matters, then scoring <50 in a mission won't set you back a stage unless it pulls your campaign average below 50.

 

If my reasoning about average scores is wrong, what does the average mission score value in the campaign progress screen effect?

Edited January 28, 2009 by McVittees
I wanted to some editabling. I was hungry. Yum Yum.

[Wags]

Regarding GOW, there will be some changes to it in the patch based on user feedback (yes, we do listen):

 

1- All missions will start from a cold start.

 

2- The negative scores assigned to Player Death have been removed.

 

3- The success point structure has been altered. Previously, there were most often four missions per stage. One defensive mission that would be selected after a failed mission (less than 50 pts in previous mission), two success missions if the score of the previous mission generally ranged between 51 and 80, and a “kick-butt” success mission that you would get if the mission score was generally greater than 81 pts. However, it appears many folks will often re-fly missions to get maximum scores and as such keep only the getting the “kick-butt” mission of each phase. As such, you would only ever see about ¼ of possible missions in a campaign. The patch changes this such that all three success missions are now between 51 and 100. Anytime you succeed in a mission (greater than 50 points), you have a much more random chance of what mission you will be assigned in the next phase now.

 

Also, note that Chapter 2 by far will be the most draining on system resources. To have the front line make geographical sense, it often had to be very long and composed of many units such you do not have the “empty world” feeling. It’s not only the number of units that can affect performance but also the total area occupied by those units because the area around each unit also needs to be loaded.

Edited January 29, 2009 by Wags

[Frederf]

1- All missions will start from a cold start.

 

Aww, I like cold starts but a mark of a good sim is scalability. Surely cold/hot start could be a difficulty/realism preference?

[Sinner6]

If you do not wish to do the full cold start, there is a keystroke that automatically starts you up. Now we have an option where before we did not, IMO.

[silent one]

Even with the auto start its still irritating having to wait minutes for the chopper to start when what I want to do is fly.Flight sim , not button pressing sim ;)

[Frederf]

Yeah I was thinking about the auto-start command. Personally I would enjoy cold starts.

 

Please make it so if the mission scheduled takeoff time is 0945, DON'T SPAWN US AT 0945.

[uhoh7]

Also, note that Chapter 2 by far will be the most draining on system resources. To have the front line make geographical sense, it often had to be very long and composed of many units such you do not have the “empty world” feeling. It’s not only the number of units that can affect performance but also the total area occupied by those units because the area around each unit also needs to be loaded.

 

I just finished a hasty attack over a large city about five missions into chapter two. Even my system, which I just built, was not smooth in this mission, even after 45 min in the target area. This was ATO-B-P5.2.miz

 

I understand your concern about "empty world" and I've grow to very much enjoy the campaign and all the work you have put into it. But it's hard to say which is a bigger hit to realism, a little emptier world, or gameplay which is not smooth.

 

My suggestion would be to note the slowest missions, and without having to redo all your work, just pair them down a bit and offer an alternate "Chapter two lite". I think this would allow many more users to enjoy the campaign in the second chapter.

 

To test I took ATO-B-P5.2 and spent 15 min clearing out air defenses and units far from the flight path and target areas. My FPS on take off went from 20 to 50. I then flew to battle zone, which is over a big city that I thought might have been the problem partly for FPS--but now my frames were very smooth. I could not honestly tell the difference in action around me. Very Very busy but smooth. What was a not fun mission because of jerky gameplay sudden became very very fun. I have to say thank you for not locking these missions so they can be tweaked. I probably wreaked some triggers, but if any wants to try this version and compare to orignal please PM me with email, I'd doubt you would see much difference----and I'm sure someone who more familiar with the ME and chapter two missions could do a great job without huge time investment.

Edited January 31, 2009 by uhoh7