Feedback - struggle with MANPADS and friendly AI

[PawlaczGMD]

Thanks for the campaign, I was having fun. I do however have some feedback/questions about frustrating parts I've encountered.

My main gripe is the uselessness of wingman AI. In particular, they just cannot do air-to-ground, at all. I don't think they killed a single enemy ground unit in any CAS missions. They either immediately get killed or suppressed by air defenses, or in many cases just refuse to accept my commands to attack any ground target, replying "unable". This felt frustrating and unrealistic, as I had to do all of the work myself. Not sure if this is more of a core DCS AI issue, or a campaign scripting issue.

On the topic of CAS, the air defenses of many missions seem to make the task almost impossible with the capabilities of the F-5. MANPADs have just insane spotting, tracking, and fire rate. They do not get suppressed by nearby explosions, etc. The only way I was able to do the attacks with multiple manpads is by cheating with spotting dots, and guessing which ones are manpads. Then you can win if you take them all out in a single rocket strike from high altitude. But playing "realistically", not knowing the target location exactly, and only reacting to their launches to spot the tiny people, this feels literally impossible. They will launch with a head-on attack very fast, even if you terrain-mask, and quickly follow up with a rear aspect shot. Only by blowing all flares and masking perfectly do you have any chance of surviving. And then you're out of flares for the future. I can handle all the AAA, but I feel like there are too many manpads given their strength. How do people counter them? Are your wingmen doing anything?

 

The default loadout for these missions, which includes 5 snakeyes, often feels useless, as I almost always got killed with any low pass if manpads are present. The bombs just make you super slow. They cannot be fused to nose only to make them slick. I swap them for normal bombs for a high-alt attack, or just jettison them, as the F-5 with this loadout is barely flyable.

 

The difficulty of some CAP missions is also very high due to poor wingman performance. In encounters with 4+ Mig-21s, the wingmen just die without doing much. I frequently lost after killing 2 Migs myself, only to learn all my wingmen are also already down without any kills. This is my skill issue for sure, but it feels like the wingmen are just useless, which is frustrating. I can accept that I suck, but the wingmen should be doing at least an adequate job to make the mission feel realistic...

 

Some missions have very inflexible win conditions. E.G. the intercept of 6 Mig-23s at night - I killed 5 and one escaped. The mission score is 50 with a  draw, same as doing nothing. Seems a bit unreasonable.

 

I understand that a lot of the above are core DCS limitations, but I also think that the campaigns should be designed with this in mind.

[SorelRo]

The campaign has been designed with this in mind. 4 years ago, It's just harder and harder to keep up with all the AI changes and constraints, that's why I will do a total overhaul, the work has already started on it, but it's pretty much going to be a new campaign, with all the triggers redone and voices and so on. It will take me a few months to have it ready, and i will want to launch it fully not just to trickle a mission or two every update. 

[PawlaczGMD]

4 hours ago, SorelRo said:

The campaign has been designed with this in mind. 4 years ago, It's just harder and harder to keep up with all the AI changes and constraints, that's why I will do a total overhaul, the work has already started on it, but it's pretty much going to be a new campaign, with all the triggers redone and voices and so on. It will take me a few months to have it ready, and i will want to launch it fully not just to trickle a mission or two every update. 

That's good to know! It's sad how the game has very little regard for Single Player content. Seems like all the campaign makers are just a guy with the mission editor (no offense), and after a year AI and triggers are broken. Most campaigns I've played have serious issues, be it bugs or just general quality.