The campaign: First impression not positive

[Bahger]

I've played this sim since early Beta and I love it but I've steered clear of the campaign (i) because I wanted to learn the a/c as thoroughly as possible first and (ii) because, in my experience, SP campaigns for otherwise great flight sims are often the weakest aspect of the experience.

 

I have to say, the A-10 campaign (the recent, CA-integrated version) appears to confirm the latter point. The first sortie, the familiarisation flight, puts the player directly in the envelope of a hostile, unbriefed AD missile threat at the north-easternmost waypoint, making missile evasion a sudden necessity when a launch occurs (even when the player is flying almost NOE.) This is silly and unrealistic but, okay, I thought, maybe it's a deliberate "baptism of fire". However, it appears that when you miss a waypoint trigger while avoiding the missile and RTB, the mission success trigger does not fire so the whole dopey thing needs to be replayed.

 

My other issue is this: In what realistic scenario would an A-10 pilot, a humble Lt., have command of all other air assets such as SEAD, CAP and other CAS missions?

 

I'm not really complaining, as this sim has so much to offer, including a very powerful Mission editor, so a hinky campaign matters little. However, as an experienced mission designer myself, I wonder about this. The above three issues (unbriefed threats, an inappropriate command structure and faulty completion triggers) are entry-level no-nos for mission designers, in my opinion. It seems to me that the campaign is not "hand-built" but generated by a combination of automatic processes and some human input. This is a pity. Briefings should be better and more detailed and friendly battlefield assets should be organised in such a way as to avoid putting the A-10C pilot into the middle of a SAM maelstrom that he would never face in real life with all the technology and planning assets available in modern NATO warfighting. And the two-minute ingress from Batumi to the IP is ludicrous. I'm just wondering; why can't the level of mission design in the campaign be more ambitious, more tactical, more realistic and less shooter-like? Does it really have to appear as though it's built for ADD flight simmers?

 

Does anyone know of a good, "hand-made" campaign for the Hog that I can attempt instead of the official one?

[Nealius]

I have yet to try one of the campaigns, but I've already been spoiled on Falcon 4's dynamic campaign so I'm not expecting much. Maybe there's a user-created campaign out there that's much better?

 

The way triggers are implemented don't make much sense. It would be much better--and more realistic--to have all units present from the start. In real life units don't just magically appear when you pass a certain waypoint or destroy a certain target. That's probably why the AD threat wasn't briefed: it wasn't there until you passed a certain waypoint.