My experience with single player so far

[Xavven]

Before I start, let me say this is not a "DCS A-10C sucks" post. I've put in more than 150 hours into the hog in the past 6 weeks (took a week off of work too :D) and this game is addicting and fun as hell. Flying custom missions with the online community has been SO AWESOME and I've barely played any other games since I got this. I want to provide some constructive feedback on the campaign and missions that came packaged with the game as of October 2013 in the hopes that mission designers can give us better content next time.

 

I am also prepared to accept constructive criticism about my flying skill. I realize I still have a lot to learn, and maybe I could beat some of these missions if I had some tips from you all.

 

However, I'm... not so impressed with the campaign and single player missions that came with the game.

 

Georgian Oil Campaign

My experience with the Georgia Oil campaign has been that the missions are flat. There seem to be two basic tasks, really: blow up this artillery behind enemy lines, or escort your 4 tanks through two cities infested with 40 enemy tanks. The latter is more of a "let your tanks stay put for 2 hours while you and JTAC kill all the bad guys on the map, then once they're all dead, tell them to roll out and wait 30 minutes for the map to end" kind of game. I'm stuck permanently on mission 9 in the Geogia Oil Campaign because the game crashes to desktop every single time (gave up after 3 crashes -- approximately 5 hours of flying down the drain.) :mad:

 

I know many will disagree with me, but I would have preferred a linear campaign instead of dynamic, because it gives the level designer better opportunities to write a story with characters and meaningful, tense situations. Operation Save Badger is an example of a community made linear campaign where I'm actually engaged in the story, character, and action. But if you're going to do a dynamic campaign, let all my kills persist (but I know this can't be done with the current campaign + mission editors).

 

Okay, now for my feedback on the single player missions:

 

CSAR.miz

Friendly SEAD flight doesn't clear out all air defenses. Rescue chopper gets killed by air defenses. Mission failure. Hum... well since the A-10 was not designed for the SEAD/DEAD role, what is the point of this mission when the AI SEAD isn't doing its job? I skipped this after 3 tries. I could easily win with labels on, but I feel it's cheating. I could easily win by un-caging my wingman with 6 mavericks, but his super-human, target-seeking Mk5000 eyeballs seem to be just as cheap/cheating to me as turning labels on.

 

Defend Camp Yankee.miz and Overwatch.miz

Incredibly AWESOME missions... until the MANPADS spawn. I swear, 200ft to 10,000ft AGL is like the death zone for the A-10C. As soon as I detect a missile launch, I break in the opposite direction and dispense whatever CMS semi-auto cooked for me. For some reason, this usually ends up as program M. I get torn up pretty badly by these things and the infantry launching them are virtually impossible to find. I could play DCS: GBU-12 from Angels 15 but it's certainly less visceral than flying below 10,000ft. Any ideas?

 

In the weeds.miz

Too hard for me. I can fly at 100ft AGL all day long pretty well, but doing that while pulling 3g turns and engaging targets... yikes. I still get multiple SAM launches on me and they're hard to avoid. Is this just my lack of skill? Any done this successfully and have some tips? I can't help but think an A-10 would never operate in this environment without it being sanitized first. Dunno if this was meant as a realistic mission or just as a practice/challenge map. In fact, I might try this mission again, but do it with AGM-65Hs and kill the long range SAM with force correlate from 15nm away at Angels 20. Then I can finish the map from Angels 20 and GBU-12s. Not exactly "in the weeds" though.

 

Midnight train to Georgia.miz

Is it just me or is this mission broken? I fly to WP4, JTAC says "no tasking available," So I fly north at 100ft AGL and get a bunch of SAM launches against me anyway, get hit eventually, and crash.

 

Kashuri Gap.miz

Good fun on this mission! However, the map designer set no mission "goals" so there's no way to tell when the mission is over. I suppose you should just leave when JTAC runs out of targets, but there are some JTAC bugs that make this hard to gauge. JTAC gets all wonky in this game when targets are neutralized before you finish reading back the 9-line, or calling IP Inbound, etc. Sometimes you have to check out and back in, but this doesn't always fix the issue (I'm left with "Ready for 9-line" and no response... ever... even with Easy Comms.)

 

Surrounded!.miz

This is a very fun mission with JTAC pointing out moving columns. The problem with this mission is that you run out of ordinance too quickly and have to fly home to rearm, even if you're smart about using your 30mm autocannon on some of the earlier, softer-skinned targets. Hell, I've even gotten good at taking out Shilkas on 1 vs. 1 gun strafing runs (fire at slant range 2nm, jink and break at 1.5nm). After rearming and getting back on station, I locked my TGP on the final convoy and saw it getting shot up by something. There's some friendly unit in the city (maybe even the JTAC itself) that I'm guessing is invulnerable but can fire at the targets, because shortly thereafter, JTAC said "Target destroyed" and "No further tasking available". Well I didn't kill it, and my wingman didn't kill it... So if there's an invincible super-killer defending the city, why the heck did they call me out there to begin with?

 

Hideout.miz

Ah, now THIS mission was awesome. It's an extremely tense situation with an SA-10 locked on to you almost the entire mission (SEAD apparently didn't want to destroy this radar). I'm assuming this was a Russian air defense basically saying, "you cross the Russian border, you die! There's a decent briefing and back story, and you have to fly in a tight area to avoid crossing into the wrong airspace and sparking a war. My one constructive criticism is that it's anti-climatic after you call the choppers in. Nothing happens, and you just fly home. A surprise attack on the choppers that you have to strafe would've been cool. That said, if the other missions had followed this mission's general example, I'd be much happier.

 

I'll provide feedback on the other missions as I try them.

[bart]

Nice post.........

 

I agree on your point about the campaign's and op Save Badger is brilliant. I got really sucked into that one.

 

It's a real shame every time there' s an update it put's peoples work back so they are constantly having to update their work to allow it to fit with the latest sim release.

[Yurgon]

That's a pretty good and exhaustive summary of the missions. I had pretty much the same problems and made the same observations when I flew them. :thumbup:

 

Smerch Hunt and River Raider are fun missions, I think you'll like them. :)

[AtaliaA1]

Interesting read, you have some experience in flight. Your avoidance of missiles needs work from the sounds of it. They are avoidable but it takes lots of practice.

 

You say you turn away. You do this to get your eyes on it? right? and jink like mad turning into it as it closes? with the intention of forcing it to work through its motor and get to the point where it has no energy for the hard turns you put it through?

[Xavven]

Interesting read, you have some experience in flight. Your avoidance of missiles needs work from the sounds of it. They are avoidable but it takes lots of practice.

 

You say you turn away. You do this to get your eyes on it? right? and jink like mad turning into it as it closes? with the intention of forcing it to work through its motor and get to the point where it has no energy for the hard turns you put it through?

 

Turns out, I do need some work on my SAM evasion. For starters, I took some advice from Ralfidude and switched my countermeasures to manual program C, and that's helped a lot. Igla MANPADS seem have good flare rejection on the wimpy program M, but if you drop about 40 flares on two runs of program C, they sometimes bite! :)

 

Getting eyes on the missile launch helps a ton when I can manage it, but if I can't spot it within 2 seconds, I just try to get the RWR missile symbol on my 3/9 line and pull some G's (with really close-in MANPADs it's sometimes too late for that and you have to hope your flares save you). Is it best to make a vertical jink or level turn? What works best for you?

 

Secondly, I've been reading A-10s Over Kosovo and I'm about 30% of the way through. It's been eye opening and has changed some of my negative impressions of the missions I critiqued above. Some of these A-10 pilots had the nerves to intentionally draw AAA fire in order to locate and destroy them. Now that takes guts... and here I am, too scared to do that in a video game.

 

On the other hand, the enemy SAM technology was also a bit older at the time the missions took place, in 1999. One SAM missed even when the A-10 pilots didn't notice the launch until pretty late and had little reaction time, and another actually hit but was a dud and didn't explode. From the book, it appears A-10s did destroy a fair share of IR SAM threats themselves even when they had F-16 and Tornado SEAD flights available nearby (which did make the Serbians afraid to turn on their SAM radars though!) I'm starting to take back my comment about A-10's not being a SEAD capable aircraft. I still don't get the impression it's their dedicated role, but they are certainly capable of it in the right hands!

 

One last insight from the book -- the A-10's had a 10,000ft hard deck and they still made gun passes. I am going to have to practice this, since I've been doing all of mine from a 20 degree shallow dive from 4000ft AGL and rolling out at, uh... 500ft or so :D Yeah... That's probably my problem right there...