DCS: F/A-18C Flaming Sunrise Campaign by Sandman Simulations

[Sandman Simulations]

30 minutes ago, Wiggo said:

"Spoiler Alert". 

Thought I give littlebit of feedback of the Flaming Sunrise campaing!

Have now played the campaing two times, and gotta say this is maby the most actioned campaing that I have played among SP. Dynamic system in here hase come far from Operation Pontus, and also the design of the map / missions emselves. For fist timers I really recommend to just fly A/A and buzz around the Iranian bases to get em coming for you suicidal, and just drop em. Get air superiority first. You will get it pretty fast. After that one can do OCA and Strategy strikes without Iranian airforce buzzing and complicating things.  Same time at beginning i usually have "carefull sead" by AI (dont send em to die for nothing..), and Ship strikes seems to be effective at beginning also! I also kinda always had one cap and one cas over the Dubai itself, if I just could / mainly at least before the US Airforce gets there... (sry for spoiler) Ai seees to do some stupid things time to time, but thats not campaings fault. And sometimes the f10 settings at beginning bug weirdly (so rare that it has not really bothered me-> just reset mission and try again) so that i put like "devil 4 cas to area india" "devil 4 area set to echo" (sometimes it just puts the area in wrong, dunno why, but as said this is rare and i bet it is not also about the campaing, think its just DCS / dynamic engine doing new stuff, understandable). But yeah. I really liked the action in this. In beginning one really needs to think what to do, and gets even pretty fast multirole and a/a action. It was so fun that immediatly I wanted to restart the campaing after playing trough. Now it is fun to try how Multirole I can get / can I do it without first getting overpower in air, like I solved stuff at first time. Very nice. Keep these coming! (And yes it is good that one does not need to put weapons to devils 2->5. That would ofc be cool someday also, but in SP it would just be too much to be fun.) In here the "glunkyness" of other dynamic campaings was pretty much fixed better. This is just good amount of stuff for one mission, for one player. In other dynamic campaings it has been to boring to pick weapons for every group etc etc. In Flaming Sunrise it is just normal mission editing / put waypoints to what you are doing / targets -> choose what others do -> go. And big part of that is the ready to go strike devils 2->5 strike /cap flights. Nice job! (btw: I would love some more radio "chatter" (no, i dont want that "maby we grab a bear after this" top gun mambojambo as we see in many other campaings.. ), but maby just some recorded mission radio sounds background, just for kicks.. Like in many other campaings. ) The use of radios itself was here pretty nice, as there was not too much triggers etc. But the radiosounds were littlebit, well, boring. Thats only improvement that I would like to see (hear ) Still. This was really worth the money!

 

Hi,

I'm very pleased to hear how you are playing this campaign. It would actually be nice to hear if someone else has found different but working (or not so well working tactics). Re-playability is of course a goal when talking about dynamic campaign and nice to hear that you have found it as it was meant to be. Using different tactics the campaign is quite a different every time.

I have also found that sometimes F10 menu gives your squadron mates a wrong tasking. First I thought it was just triggers messed up but it works normally after resetting the mission so it must be something in DCS core engine. Fortunately it's quite rare. 

About radio chatter there is problem with overlapping radio sounds causing other one being cut or not sound at all. More chatter, more overlapping. In scripted campaigns it is possible to time different messages not to trigger same time but in this campaign timing is just from things happening around. Agree that more radio traffic is always nice.

Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback

[Diablo 1-1]

6 hours ago, Sandman Simulations said:

Hi,

Thank you for your message. If SA-10 has already spawned (someone of good guys has flown close enough and AD-level is right) it shouldn't dissappear by killing Rapiers. But it may not spawn at all if Rapiers have been killed before.

That behavior is not ment to be like that and I have found the problem. I have already sent patch to ED and it should be out in next Open Beta update.

 

 

 

Okay cool. Thanks for the reply.

[Wiggo]

BTW: Have on question about DSC menus and logbook reading of dynamic missions. What I have noticed, is that while starting DCS and i go first time to campaing menu, -> click F/A-18C and choosing/clicking first time (after loading dcs), in the campaing menu,DCS seems to load dynamic missions logbooks weirdly long (normally info of missiong progress comes to screen immediatly, this can take ~30-40seconds..) Is this normal? This really doesnt bother my gaming anyways, but thought it would be nice to ask/report..? Can others reply this?

Edited August 23, 2023 by Wiggo

[Sandman Simulations]

54 minutes ago, Wiggo said:

BTW: Have on question about DSC menus and logbook reading of dynamic missions. What I have noticed, is that while starting DCS and i go first time to campaing menu, -> click F/A-18C and choosing/clicking first time (after loading dcs), in the campaing menu,DCS seems to load dynamic missions logbooks weirdly long (normally info of missiong progress comes to screen immediatly, this can take ~30-40seconds..) Is this normal? This really doesnt bother my gaming anyways, but thought it would be nice to ask/report..? Can others reply this?

 

Hi,

Thank you for your message. It is true that it takes a bit longer with this campaign. Reason is the way how dynamicity for ground war in this campaign is created. There are bit over 50 individual missions when in normal campaign there are usually from 10 to 20. 

[Wiggo]

On 8/23/2023 at 2:36 PM, Sandman Simulations said:

Hi,

Thank you for your message. It is true that it takes a bit longer with this campaign. Reason is the way how dynamicity for ground war in this campaign is created. There are bit over 50 individual missions when in normal campaign there are usually from 10 to 20. 

Ok. Thanks for the info. As I said that´s really not a problem for me - Just wanted to be sure, that the problem is not in my DCS install or logbook etc. BTW, now third time playing the campaing. Just cant keep my hands out from it. Great practice, now when I know (about) what is happening in the campaing, to train with weird loadouts. Good practice for use of fire, like bombing sequences etc. Also great way to test multirole skills, as I played the second time the campaing, more or less.

[Wiggo]

On 8/8/2023 at 11:47 AM, Sandman Simulations said:

Hi,

I'm very pleased to hear how you are playing this campaign. It would actually be nice to hear if someone else has found different but working (or not so well working tactics). Re-playability is of course a goal when talking about dynamic campaign and nice to hear that you have found it as it was meant to be. Using different tactics the campaign is quite a different every time.

I have also found that sometimes F10 menu gives your squadron mates a wrong tasking. First I thought it was just triggers messed up but it works normally after resetting the mission so it must be something in DCS core engine. Fortunately it's quite rare. 

About radio chatter there is problem with overlapping radio sounds causing other one being cut or not sound at all. More chatter, more overlapping. In scripted campaigns it is possible to time different messages not to trigger same time but in this campaign timing is just from things happening around. Agree that more radio traffic is always nice.

Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback

I have noticed, that it usually (pretty rare) replies when autostartup is used.. But sometimes (much more rare) replies also in manual coldstart. Oh yeah btw, seems if changng weapons on the deck sometimes AI freezes after that into the deck. (i dont need to change weapons on the deck, and very rare do that, it would be bad mission planning from me, just noticed when done sometimes) (doing nothing). But these are, well, DCS OB...   Basically compared to how big this campaing is, the problems in it are VERY few. More or less in every DLC campaing there is something, and even more in user files campaigns. There isnt ANY problems, or I havent had, while the flight itself is going on, ofc DCS normal problems, but I was pretty surprised after other dynamic DLC campaing, how working this was. And yes, it would be very nice to hear comments about campaing and tactics in it from other ones. I dream in future that we would see these kind of SP campaigns, where one could even choose which planetype he wants to fly. I know it is alot for now, but in that way it would get so near multiplayer as possible. That would be very cool. But yeah, I want to point one more time to you and ppl, that this worked. The bugs it had was so little that they did not slow or stop my gaming.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Wiggo

[Sandman Simulations]

2 hours ago, Wiggo said:

I have noticed, that it usually (pretty rare) replies when autostartup is used.. But sometimes (much more rare) replies also in manual coldstart. Oh yeah btw, seems if changng weapons on the deck sometimes AI freezes after that into the deck. (i dont need to change weapons on the deck, and very rare do that, it would be bad mission planning from me, just noticed when done sometimes) (doing nothing). But these are, well, DCS OB...   Basically compared to how big this campaing is, the problems in it are VERY few. More or less in every DLC campaing there is something, and even more in user files campaigns. There isnt ANY problems, or I havent had, while the flight itself is going on, ofc DCS normal problems, but I was pretty surprised after other dynamic DLC campaing, how working this was. And yes, it would be very nice to hear comments about campaing and tactics in it from other ones. I dream in future that we would see these kind of SP campaigns, where one could even choose which planetype he wants to fly. I know it is alot for now, but in that way it would get so near multiplayer as possible. That would be very cool. But yeah, I want to point one more time to you and ppl, that this worked. The bugs it had was so little that they did not slow or stop my gaming.

 

Thank you again for your feedback.

That AI deck behavior sounds really annoying but fortunately I suppose it's quite rare that you need to change your loadout on the deck. Maybe it's easier to restart the mission. As you said unfortunately it sound like DCS AI problem and I don't think there is anything I could do about it.

I have to admit that I wasn't very hopeful about this campaign when started to build it because there is so much depending on AI behavior. But it was actually surprise that it was possible to overcome most AI problems and make it work. 

I agree that it would be amazing to have even more dynamic campaign with possibility to fly different aircraft types and so on. However, it would require  a completely different approach because with design used in this campaign it would be owerwhelming workload to design not to mention updating it. But maybe some other way it would be possible...

[FPS_Sage]

Just finished the campaign, and have to say I really enjoyed it.  It was a very clever way to get around some of the normal DCS campaign limitations, and was fun to consider the different possible approaches before each mission. 

There was one issue I ran into on several missions, where the AI flights would somehow crash during air to air refueling.  I think this may just be the AI being the AI, and I was mostly able to mitigate this by staggering the push times (push Devil 2 & 3 first, then wait until they were almost at the tanker before pushing 4 & 5).  That said, I only ever noticed them tanking with Texaco 3 & 4 - never saw anyone go to Texaco 1 & 2, so maybe those could be moved slightly east and make more sense as an alternate route (with enough air superiority rating of course).

I did have one question though: how is the end of mission scoring calculated?  It seems like I perpetually scored lower and lower with each passing mission, even though I felt I was doing a good job.  On a related note, how can I successfully pass "The End" mission?  I think other campaigns have just automatically given you 100% score on their final "victory lap" missions, so I think it should be possible somehow?

[Sandman Simulations]

6 hours ago, FPS_Sage said:

Just finished the campaign, and have to say I really enjoyed it.  It was a very clever way to get around some of the normal DCS campaign limitations, and was fun to consider the different possible approaches before each mission. 

There was one issue I ran into on several missions, where the AI flights would somehow crash during air to air refueling.  I think this may just be the AI being the AI, and I was mostly able to mitigate this by staggering the push times (push Devil 2 & 3 first, then wait until they were almost at the tanker before pushing 4 & 5).  That said, I only ever noticed them tanking with Texaco 3 & 4 - never saw anyone go to Texaco 1 & 2, so maybe those could be moved slightly east and make more sense as an alternate route (with enough air superiority rating of course).

I did have one question though: how is the end of mission scoring calculated?  It seems like I perpetually scored lower and lower with each passing mission, even though I felt I was doing a good job.  On a related note, how can I successfully pass "The End" mission?  I think other campaigns have just automatically given you 100% score on their final "victory lap" missions, so I think it should be possible somehow?

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback and nice to hear you enjoyed the campaign. 

ED mostly fixed the issue about Hornets stalling all the way down when approaching tanker with too high angle. Unfortunately it still persists but not as bad as previously. In scripted campaign I can make something about it by timing AI arriving to the tanker. But in dynamic mission it's not possible and sometimes they still crash if they get nose to nose with the tanker.

Only flights tasked for CAP or SEAD area Foxtrot or for strike mission to Shiraz use Texaco 1 & 2. Texaco 3 & 4 should be used by flights tasked for CAP or SEAD area Golf or strike mission to Kerman or Jiroft. Tested it and they seem to do like they should. You are right that there could be one tanker between those two pairs.

In this campaign structure mission scoring is a way to tell DCS which mission should come next. So your scoring doesn't tell about your success but just gives you the right mission to play. How well you and AI did is told in the mission debriefing. You can't get Succes from "The End" mission and proceed to the generic campaign success page. I didn't set there any scoring for this mission cause DCS campaign engine doesn't understand that campaign has ended until you are in the final stage. In this dynamic campaign structure there are more missions to come if you fail to pass "The Last Effort" mission. When you get FAIL it will jus repeat "The End" mission making sure that player understands that campaign has really ended. If you would get some score campaign engine would give you either "The Last Effort" or "Push to East" mission depending on your scores. DCS campaign structure is not designed for this kind of campaign.