So my group - getting back in IL2 after a few years hiatus - is starting to play around a lot with the various online mission types.

'Dogfights' are the easiest to just jump in and have some fun, but we want something somewhat more substantial.

The 'co-op' missions are basically a great start, but...it's just one mission. At a time. You win, lose, whatever...and things move on. There are a bunch of great campaign-like sets of co-op missions, but there is nothing to tie them together. Just one day after another in the Battle of Britain, or one unrelated mission after another in the South Pacific, etc.

How much difference is there between a mission set up as a one-of co-op, and the campaigns? IE., if I have, say, 8 missions that make up a particular 'campaign', that are all standalone co-op missions...can I just copy them into one of the 'campaign' folders? If so, what would need to be done to make them string together with some consistency? Pilots lost in one mission not available in the next, or something like that?

There is a campaign generator for multiplayer and if you can figure out how to use NGen to create a campaign using NGen it might work? The documentation on NGen is non existant and I could never figure out how things tied together for a multiplayer campaign that uses it.





The ones that have (BoE) in front of it are campaigns that the Battle over Europe addon added to the multiplayer campaign list.


Wheels

The dynamic generators available are great for many purposes but they tend to lack "feel", basically because the computer generates the mission tasks. Computer adversaries become predictable.

Some people like human vs human campaigning. If this appeals to you, consider SEOW. You can often piggy-back on public SEOW campaigns, so you can avoid the server setup process.

Cheers,
4Shades

I think that the easiest is to take one mission as a base point, and then develop two follow up missions that account for a win or loss for one side.

Manually creating the campaign, one mission at a time, as we go? I don't...really think any of us have the time for that. Heck, we almost hardly have time to fly in GENERAL (it has been years since we've last been able to try to make a go at this at all).



I guess that's what I was confused by. Is that the only other option? NGEN 'dynamic campaigns', or co-op or standalone single missions? I thought there was a 'campaigns' option that was a series of related predefined missions. Is this not so?

(And if NGEN is it...how well does it work with a 4.10.1m + UP3 install?)

That's confusing in itself.

The Campaigns button in IL-2 basically runs NGEN. Lowengrin's DCG is another add-on coop generation option that works with TD 4.10 I believe, but it will not work with UP3 because UP decided to do away with eventlog support in favour of focusing entirely on dogfight technology. Both NGEN and DCG autogenerate the missions, to varying extents and with varying options.

Cheers,
4S

Well, that's kind of what I was talking about.

They said "campaign co-op", but are plainly not NGEN-based. "Libia" is just 5 co-op missions...that don't appear to have any kind of branching logic or details from one impacting any others. And "Invasion of Sardinia" is just a single mission. I'm not sure how that's a 'campaign' at all?

I recall reading about the problems with DCG and UP3. This kind of brings up a follow-up point, though - if the issue with DCG and UP3 is that UP3 'breaks' eventlog support...wouldn't that problem persist with NGEN, too?

Can't read the link while at work here. But what makes my mission come up? Invasion of Sardinia is indeed not a campain and is as far as i know also not in the campain section, but just in the co-op multiplayer section?

Coenraad,

Your 'mission' is listed in the 'Campaigns (Coop, Online)' category, described as 'Multiplayer Campaigns'. It probably should be in the 'Missions' section, described as 'Single Player, Coop, Dogfight and training missions...'

Aviar

Right,i must have been sleeping while putting that mission online :o
Placed in the right place now, thanks for the heads up!