Campaign Feedback

[brodie4598]

I just (sort of) finished the campaign and thought I would provide some feedback. 

Pros:

• Was a great campaign for me to learn the Mi24 - really liked the skill level required for the missions. 
• Good storyline
• The voiceovers were good but I wish there were more of them

Cons:

• Triggers - I had to skip roughly half the missions due to whatever trigger(s) being required not happening and there not being any in-mission feedback to know if I had missed something or was doing things right. 
• Limited mission briefings - this probably contributed to the above. The briefings were pretty short and simple. Left a sort of feeling of going into the mission not actually knowing the plan but just assuming the voiceovers would tell me. 
• MIssion 12 - I  really was excited to wrap this campaign up with this mission but It made me just give up:
  • The first time I did it, the voiceovers stopped after passing the first waypoint and heading to the second. Not sure what I missed but the entire mission broke after that. Despite this, I continued on hoping something I would do would kick it loose.  I went into the town and killed the AAA units. Then I accidentally killed the friendly ground units not realizing they were friendly. (would have been great to have more detailed maps/info in the kneeboards/missions briefings)
  • The second time I tried it, while starting the helicopter up my wingman took off and crashed into the Mi8 during his hover check. 
  • The third time I tried it, while starting the helicopter up my wingman took off and crashed into the Mi8 during his hover check. I gave up at this point.  

[LuseKofte]

I had no problem with any triggers. I really liked early missions with transport of troops   
overall a very entertaining campaign. 

[JohnW71]

On 10/27/2023 at 10:49 PM, brodie4598 said:

• The second time I tried it, while starting the helicopter up my wingman took off and crashed into the Mi8 during his hover check. 
• The third time I tried it, while starting the helicopter up my wingman took off and crashed into the Mi8 during his hover check. I gave up at this point.  

This is still an issue; in my first two attempts my wingman crashed into the Mi8 during hover check, destroyed it, which then breaks the bombing stage later so is impossible to finish. On my third attempt he stayed on the ground, did no hover check, took off after me and from there everything was fine and finally completed the mission. I'm not aware of doing anything different on the third attempt though.

[Gunnar81]

Great campaign! The only issue I have is in the later stages of the campaign the Mi 8 routinely hover checks after takeoff and lands right on top of me before I am ready to take off. Seems to happen at random. Another time the Mi 8 hovered directly over top of me during takeoff.

[Talvid]

in Mission 12 I can't get the Mi8 to drop the bombs.  How to advance?

[Talvid]

On 10/27/2023 at 2:49 PM, brodie4598 said:

 

• MIssion 12 - I  really was excited to wrap this campaign up with this mission but It made me just give up:
  • The first time I did it, the voiceovers stopped after passing the first waypoint and heading to the second. Not sure what I missed but the entire mission broke after that. Despite this, I continued on hoping something I would do would kick it loose.  I went into the town and killed the AAA units. Then I accidentally killed the friendly ground units not realizing they were friendly. (would have been great to have more detailed maps/info in the kneeboards/missions briefings)
  • The second time I tried it, while starting the helicopter up my wingman took off and crashed into the Mi8 during his hover check. 
  • The third time I tried it, while starting the helicopter up my wingman took off and crashed into the Mi8 during his hover check. I gave up at this point.  

so the trigger zones are very narrow, you must be exactly on the flight plan and the trigger is tripped right before you reach WPT 1, then you must turn right to bearing 252 exactly and fly to it.  

the way you make sure your wingman doesn't land on 101st Mi8 is you start up and get all ready for takeoff, and then do the F10 menu asking for startup,  this is to delay your wingman from starting up, and if you are in the air circling above by the time he starts up he will follow you and will not land on the Mi8 and it won't be wrecked.  

Now for the tricky part:  Even if you destroy the 4 AAA technicals in the town, the Mi8 AI unit does not drop the bombs like it's supposed to, so you can 1) if you have the Mi8 module you can jump in it and go through the process of hovering above a weapons warehouse and dropping a bomb on it and getting out quick (before the explosion gets you) (there is a little delay)  and you have to bomb 3 warehouses, just like in the Mi8 Border Campaign) OR Option 2) fly back to a FARP (there is one in Tskinvali) and load bombs on your Mi-24 and do it that way.  I haven't yet figured out if after the AAA are down if you can destroy with large rockets the weapons stockpile ware houses( They are squared roof red brick buildings spread out in 3 places in town) (If you DM me I will get you the coordinates and possibly an overhead map of the warehouses that must be destroyed for mission completion.

After that the friendly ground AI units must move in according to programming, who knows yet if they are buggy or not?

Good luck, if you try again!

[ghostskills82]

Phew, what can I say... Essentially, this campaign is more geared towards Hind beginners. It has some minor but annoying flaws and could use some fine-tuning. More experienced Hind pilots might find it rather boring. Additionally, the incredibly ugly scenery on the oldest active DCS map, Caucasus, doesn't help. Regardless of this campaign, I believe I won't want to play another campaign on the current Caucasus map, but that's not the creator's fault. Mission 11, Escort, is personally my favorite, and for Mission 12, I would have expected to be able to drop the bombs myself (Wingman kills AAA, me dropping bombs, Mi8 dropping troops). Overall, most of the annoyances are more due to the AI rather than the mission design. AI colleagues parking in the forest, AI lead helicopters frantically changing altitude and speed, etc. On the positive side, I like the mission length, which averages between 30 and 60 minutes - so you can restart something quickly without throwing away hours of playtime. All in all, this campaign is okay, but it's far from being as authentic, challenging, or well-synchronized as the Outpost campaign. The use of the other radios would have also been useful. Here, everything is handled on a single radio... there's a reason the Hind has multiple radios.

Also, the pointless training range missions where only rockets and the onboard cannon are used are quite monotonous. A bombing practice session would have been nice here.

 

Edited July 19, 2024 by ghostskills82