Specific campaign recommendations

[grimdar]

So I won't name any names but I recently purchased this popular campaign which really annoyed me for two reasons:

- Lack of action: Start up, take off, and flying nearly 100nm to your target is 99% of the time spent in the missions I played in it. In addition, your wingman basically yaps his SOB story constantly over the radio which is not what I'm looking for in a campaign. I know some folks specifically want some of this for realism.. but this is just not my cup of tea.

- Bugs: It appears the campaign was initially designed for the first A-10C.. for this reason some maddening bugs occurred that prevented continuing the missions, such as entering waypoints.. but most of all radio bugs which for some reason do not trigger events. These were quadruple checked to make sure it wasn't user error. After some research, some other users have reported issue like this but is largely ignored or deflected as user error by the campaign creator.

Anyway, are there any campaigns out there that are more action oriented and up-to-date with the A-10C II? Thanks for any recommendations!

Edited November 30, 2023 by grimdar

[Yurgon]

Chances are I'm going to recommend exactly one of the campaigns that annoyed you... 

There's "Operation Piercing Fury" which was a good campaign IMO, but the author abandoned it and it's now defunct. However, some really awesome community members keep it alive and it's now available in the user files for the A-10C II (with permission of the original campaign creator, as far as I'm aware).

Then there's The Enemy Within 3.0 by Baltic Dragon, which (when it was 1.0) was the very first official 3rd party campaign in DCS. Besides major updates (2.0, 3.0) Baltic Dragon also fixes issues as they are reported and goes through entire campaigns to update them when things change in DCS. TEW 3.0 was recently updated because of radio changes in DCS, and all mission were test-flown. The latest version is available in 2.9.1 Stable and OpenBeta.

On the other hand, TEW isn't that much action oriented. There will be action, but for the most part the campaign is story-driven, so it may or may not be what you're looking for.

And if you like to get to know the A-10C II deeper than ever before, I've heard great things about the Maple Flag training campaigns and I can totally recommend Iron Flag Part I; all rounds fired will be on the training range, and missions can be quite long (around 1.5 hours). But there's tons of great info on the A-10C and outside of the multiplayer environment you'll be hard pressed to find a more realistic environment to fly in.

Other than that, most A-10 campaigns I haven't flown and can't comment on. I'm sure I'm doing many of them injustice here by not mentioning them, but hopefully other forum members will chime in with some great suggestions and recommendations.

And finally, besides the abandoned campaigns (only Piercing Fury as far as I'm aware right now), the campaign authors are usually actively monitoring the forums for bug reports and will work very hard to fix issues when they are reported. With the large number of missions and campaigns, even with a solid team of testers, they (in some cases we, as I'm a campaign tester) just can't test all the campaigns all the time to check if the latest DCS update changed or broke something that's essential to the campaign. Bug reports are always appreciated so that missions can be fixed for all players!

[ASAP]

5 hours ago, grimdar said:

your wingman basically yaps his SOB story constantly over the radio which is not what I'm looking for in a campaign. I know some folks specifically want some of this for realism..

 

Ha! This is the absolute furthest thing from realism. Comm discipline and brevity is a real thing. The only realistic response to the constant monologuing on the radio would be an emphatic "2, SHUT THE F*** UP!"

 

The only things a wingman should say to say are: "2", "2's Tally", "2's IN", "1, break flare".  

[Yurgon]

15 minutes ago, ASAP said:

The only things a wingman should say to say are: "2", "2's Tally", "2's IN", "1, break flare".  

In the context of DCS, that certainly creates a sterile mission.

The Raven One campaigns pay a lot more attention to comm discipline that most other campaigns. And while they're extremely well written and have great arcs within and across missions, I do find them to feel sterile at times because the player doesn't communicate unless it's necessary.

Somewhere between full real and Hollywoodish there's got to be a balance where missions are realistic, yet entertaining. After all, most of our missions take less than 4 hours and don't include aerial refueling, though IRL missions might take even longer and totally require AAR in many cases.

Personally I take more issue with badly written dialog or pseudo-realistic details that are just wrong, like "Squawk 5469" when the transponder can only set octal values, or players having to engage a column of SA-9s protected by Tunguska (that was in a free Apache coop-campaign from the user files; after that mission, we stopped playing that campaign...).

A well written dialog, even though probably unrealistic, can elevate a mission, convey important information and deliver immersion and entertainment. In the large scheme of things, I'm all for that.

[ASAP]

17 hours ago, Yurgon said:

A well written dialog, even though probably unrealistic, can elevate a mission, convey important information and deliver immersion and entertainment. In the large scheme of things, I'm all for that.

I would agree with that, and I'm sure in reality there is chatter during long droning missions. There's probably a balance that could be struck. I can't remember which campaign it was I was playing but there was a whole conversation about the wingman's upcoming wedding and how hard it is to be a military spouse. As I'm fenced in to go take out a column of tanks pouring through a mountain pass. like, could we at least talk tactics or something? LOL

[grimdar]

17 hours ago, Yurgon said:

Chances are I'm going to recommend exactly one of the campaigns that annoyed you... 

Thanks for the great suggestions and info. Actually you didn't mention it I actually did purchase and try Enemy Within 3.0 yesterday and completed the first two missions. You're right in that (so far) it lacks some action.. but at least I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of bugs vs the "other" campaign I tried. I did have some neck pain (lol) after completing mission 2 in VR, which required you to circle a moving convoy many.. many times.

I don't know, maybe it's just me.. but I feel many of the campaign missions could be significantly more action packed. Mission 2 of TEW3 for example, there is a LOT of needless loitering and circling.. literally it is 98% of the mission. There are so many endless possibilities in DCS, yet I am basically idle and circling a slow moving convoy for like half an hour (not sure exactly how long it took, but it felt very long). There was a brief 5 minute piece of action but that's it. I got bored to the point where I started conducting my own air show over the airfield for the few NPC spectators.

On the other hand.. I've tried many user generated missions.. and many of them are quite good and action packed, even containing custom voices and background sounds. I would pay double for a campaign that was action packed like some of the free missions I've tried.

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by grimdar

[jaylw314]

You'd probably like the Rising Squall campaign for the Hornet, but there really isn't any paid campaign like that for the A-10C.  Conceptually, the problem is that the A-10C does not do "excitement" all that well, since getting shot at is generally poor for your health .  Your virtual pilot might survive, but you'll have to restart.

That being said, many of the early TEW3 missions are pretty slow, but they do pick up the pace later on.

13 hours ago, ASAP said:

I would agree with that, and I'm sure in reality there is chatter during long droning missions. There's probably a balance that could be struck. I can't remember which campaign it was I was playing but there was a whole conversation about the wingman's upcoming wedding and how hard it is to be a military spouse. As I'm fenced in to go take out a column of tanks pouring through a mountain pass. like, could we at least talk tactics or something? LOL

With the AI wingman??  That would amount to "lead will engage, 2 will run out of fuel and eject" 

Edited December 2, 2023 by jaylw314

[ASAP]

11 hours ago, jaylw314 said:

 

With the AI wingman??  That would amount to "lead will engage, 2 will run out of fuel and eject" 

 

 

Lol, exactly! Air brief the wingman on what Bingo actually means. I wonder what the fighter-to-fighter brief would sound like...

"Fighter to fighter: Shooter/POW, Guns, 1's in North, off right to west, 2 snap homeplate and eject. 1's ready"