I'm really excited about the chance to fly a Helo again since Jane's LB1/2. But it would be a shame if no work was done to make the Campaigns more Dynamic, even Semi Dynamic would be nice.

Guess I'm just spoiled by the Campaign in the Longbow series.

Is there any talk of adding mission trigger events, Fence areas, or percentages of objects showing up?

If Matt is behind this project, I would love to, at least, see some movement toward the Janes F/A 18, Semi Dynamic, Campaign structure. A great project, which I believe he was also involved with.

At least this way, you could branch a campaign off in many different directions depending on a whole multitude of outcomes, from any given mission, ending in a court martial, win/loss, or even stalemate.

Yeah, what he said,

I wouldnt hold your breath, IMHO they will have quite enough on their plate doing the Ka-50 flight modelling, cockpit, NVG's, maybe tweaking terrain so it looks OK from helo flying heights, etc. They are only a little company - only so much they can do.

A dynamic campaign is not a little thing to program. Figure a year-long add on all by itself. Not gonna happen this time around if at all.

If they'd program the features of LMR (LOMAC Mission Randomizer) into the mission editor it would make the majority of us happy. With LMR you can set objects to spawn or not, and you can also set them to spawn w/a certainty sometime w/in the mission. I've made a ton of online missions w/LMR and only the designated targets are the same. I made one ship strike mission that when randomized ended up in a furious furball just to get to the target. Another time we got to the target w/out being spotted on radar, no A/A contact whatsoever. And there were plenty of units looking for us. There were 7 of us on that mission, a couple of '15's, some 27's and 2 '33's w/locked loadouts. It was a blast to fly. I still remember some of those sorties and that was 6 months ago.

Not from ED, but we'll just have to see if Swingkid comes up with something.

Just to clarify, LB2 had a dynamic campaign, not LB1. LB1 and FPK had a branching linear campaign, where the success or failure of missions would lead to the next one.

LB2 had a dynamic campaign with scripting, unlike F4. In LB2, you would occasionally have a scripted mission inserted into the campaign (the location/specific units might differ slightly) to help spice things up as the standard missions could sometimes seem repetitive and little to surprise would occur.


The Jedi Master

Yes a completely Dynamic Campaign isn't neccessary at this point.

Just give us some trigger events and % chances for objects to spawn and I'll be happpy.

For now.

Adding a flyable helo just seems a bit pointless while the rest of the sim is so lacking. There's great visuals,FM(for the Su25 anyway) and weapons modelling but nothing else. Lock On feels like a dry technical sim, it needs a gameplay element.

I agree. ED has definitly programed a benchmark SIM that technically is the best out there, but sadly the gameplay is about as engaging as watching snails f**k

Also agree.

Once you play any mission, Campaign or other wise, there is no reason to play it again as it's totally predictible.

That's why we need random events and percentages built into the MB.

I'm not saying go all out for the Falcon 4.0 Mother of all Dynamic Campaigns (although with the current flyables in LOMAC it would be awesome).

Even a SEMI-Dynamic, branching, Campaign would be a huge plus!

Some sort of linked random mission generator (i.e. EAW's campaign) or even a simple branching campaign with random events, etc in the missions themselves would help thing along. We don't necessarily want or need a F4 style campaign in every sim, but something to convey the since that you are in an air war would be nice. Now, LOMAC more or less feels like going to a real military sim; a great training tool, but not alot of fun once the newness has worn off.

I find myself in agreement. Seems to be a cultural phenomenon with both the IL-2 and Flanker series being Sahara dry. It could be made much more interesting even without the true dynamic campaign. Pre and Post-mission speech and script as well as in-mission speaking lines from wing-mates would go a long way toward making it interesting. There are a lot of examples of what I'm referring to including Freespace 2, Ace Combat for PS2 (though its lines are a bit TOO childish), Aquanox, and the old Wing Commander series (I liked the element of taunting on both sides! It was fun!). Too bad we don't have some of this in LOMAC. Fun is good to have in a sim/game.

Talk of Ed's upcoming F16 sim being more detailed than F4 makes me worry, Lock On has quite enough button pressing thanks guys. I'd rather see more aircraft modelled than a single type where you have to remember to press 5 buttons to drop a bomb. I also think that level of complexity is a big turn off for casual gamers.

ED should concentrate on creating a believeable world in their sims rather than an avionics demostrator.

Hire about 4 guys to work exclusively on campaigns, and lay off a little on the avionics. Button pushing can be cool, but I get enough of it in real life, thank you.

Actually, the avionics do need improvement.

Janes F/A-18 had an incredibly deep yet simple Semi-Dynamic Campaign Engine.

You could branch a campaign in an unlimited number of directions, based on an almost unlimited number of events.

Hopefully Matt can work on this as I believe he was the driving force behind, Janes F/A-18.

It still does. In fact, there are now a few campaigns built to mimic fully dynamic campaigns.

He definitely knows a lot about the JF-18 campaign system. He created the first JF-18 add-on campaign, Valhalla.