How are the campaigns in DCS? Are they at all like falcon4?

They are not as active and are semidynamic like Janes sims.

Too bad, to me falcons campaign engine is still a masterpiece in the genre. I would gladly pay 50 euros if a similar campaign engine would be released for DCS as a seperate module. I tried FreeFalcon5 for a while but it never worked really well. If DCS would add a F-16, which i believe they are doing, and a F4 style campaign engine I might be set for life sim-wise.

The dynamic campaign in F4 is pretty awesome I got to admit, but it is not perfect. Tasking is a little out of whack but that is where the beauty lies -- you create your own ATO if you feel you need it. What you lack here is the potential for narrative and building/telling a storyline. Not all care about that, but some like it.

The semidynamic campaign can be pretty damn good, however, if done right -- you need (1) a LOT of missions, (2) you need a lot of triggers, outcomes and flags that can be tracked by the campaign engine (3) and you need a really robust level of random activity, events and opposition inside each mission. By that I mean you need to be able to fly the same mission several times and not really recognize it, having flown it maybe 8-10 missions before. Nobody ever really mastered this to the full potential in Janes FA-18. Well, one guy K2 came close, and I am trying to build on what he did, still testing what outcomes really get tracked and which do not. But this is wrong thread for that, I realize.

IIRC the DCS crew promises a campaign engine with a lot of triggers in it, and I am extremely interested to learn exactly what that means. If that is truly the case, I think a very strong semi-dynamic campaign can be built such that you might not miss a true dynamic campaign. Since the common thread between the two sims in Matt Wagner, I tend to believe that this mission builder and the campaign builder will be well integrated with a lot of tools.

Ripcord

Hi Ripcord,

ArmA 2 was a game I really enjoyed in COOP, I liked the idea you could play the SP campaign in COOP too. I think you could call its campaign semi dynamic. I must say even though I liked the campaign it doesnt offer enough replay value where I could see myself play through it again. I don't like PvP much because I tend to suck too badly to have any form of succes against human players so for me COOP campaigns are a big plus. I don't care much for storytelling campaigns though because more often then not their cheesy with the inevitable plot twist (one of our guys being a double agent or something stupid), I'd much rather fly my missions, move mud and not accidentally be the guy that drops the JDAM that kills the enemy dictator. I liked IL-2's dgen campaigns but not as much as I liked Falcon 4's. In the end I raked up 1000+ kills as a russian pilot in IL-2, that must have made me some kind of superhero!

Here are some updated shots:

T-Bone,

Bumpety-bump. How goes develoment on this theatre!

Now that I hear this Platunum version is out on shelves at Best Buy, I'll be keeping an eye our for it this week.

I posted a question for POP on antoher forum, but I was wondering if his naval/carrier ops mod would work in this theatre, and with LOMAC Platinum. This Sea of Japan map is just begging for some carrier-based Superhornets coming over the beach.

Ripcord

That looks good.

T-bone, yooo-hoooooo?

Ripcord

Did you say El Centro!!!! " El Centro. "

Great balls of fire I live here. Get to do some bombing runs in the superstitious mountains, or chocolotto mountian pass?