AH-1Zs means we should also see some UH-1Ys and MV-22s...it's all USMC!


The Jedi Master

Actually yea, that would be real cool! We could have some Marine beach landing assaults, that would be quite immersive...watching the Knights dropping off the guys, seen the hovercraft and Amtracks bringing the guys to shore... smoke shells going off to obscure the view...

That would be really awesome inded (together with the UH-1Y and Osprey)! I couldn't agree more

I wouldlike to see some european machines as well.

yeah, like I said:

Is there even a *HOPE* of EECH-2 or a decent modern combat chopper sim for that matter? I'd love to see a newer one someday soon, but that may be wishful thinking.

I think that dynamic campaigns are a great idea. I mean, in war, there are usually predictable actions that aircraft and ground troops will perform for the most part. Then for actual battles there is some randomness to it. It can be calculated almost RPG style, so there is still a chance that the underdog still has a small chance of winning. Then with the player engaged, their actions will actually affect how well the outcome of the war proceeds.

I think the player should have some control over commanding troops, which would be awesome. If you could have some control over tanks, aircraft, and naval units in a sort of strategy type game, but with limited control.

Of course if there has to be a decision between dynamic campaign and a game at all, go for randomness and a great mission editor.

I disagree about the dynamic campaign. The campaign aspect is one of the things I love most about EECH. And the fact that I don't have to be concerned about whether I'm playing single player or multi-player and can change within the same campaign based on whether someone else is available is excellent and should be kept.

I dont engage fast movers very often. As a chopper pilot I feel the goal is to slip past the fast movers and let other fast movers or sams take care of them.

Speed

aka

I agree with your analysis of the dynamic campaign, it is a bit bland. Comlaints about the enemy aggresiveness and lack of movement have been their for a long time. Basically it is not a war but a battle between chopper fleets, the other entities are of course important but the dynamics is provided by the choppers only it seems.
problem with scripted missions in chopper games is that they are not very aggresive either: fly in a zone, trigger a respons (basically defensive) wipe out all resistance, fly out to the next zone etc. untill all targets are destroyed... the change being the type of environment and the placement of the resitance.
but I haven't played gunship2000, so maybe that is a change.
I wonder if a mix is possible with certain type of missions earning points and advancing the goal more.

The first things I look for when buying a sim are,

#1.Are the avionics and flight model realistic and not arcade.

#2.Does it have a decent campaign system?, preferrably dynamic.

If the 2 features above are missing from a sim 99% of the time I wont buy it.


THe best things about TAW,Falcon 4.0,EECH,Etc Etc were the dynamic campaigns even though they have their flaws I love the ability to be part of a "bigger picture" with rank/promotions.

So gotcha is there anything you can do to take a look at the campaign code and address teh question of ground units just being there to make up numbers and not have any effect on the outcome of who wins and who loses.

I think the thing that sucks about EECH is that the enemy can have all the ground units and you have only one tank platoon left but you have wiped out all the enemy attack helicopters and you have some of yours left. So you win, regardless of whether they still have air power in other forms.

You definitely have a valid point there, but I'd settle for A/P actually working on the Longbow under 151d WUT. Breaking that was unforgiveable.

Yhis would only be believeable in a multi-national alliance.

What bugs me is the lack of variety in enemy units.

I at 100% favor to a Dynamic campaign and a dynamic campaign must be featured in a futured EECH 2!
I only defend that the current campaign that exists in EECH should be vastly improved and I posted earlier in this same thread some of the reasons why and where this should be done in my oppinion.

To me the best campaign that I ever saw in a Helo sim was by far (My oppinion again) the Jane's LB2 campaign. Even one more improvement should be made to the LB2 campaign and which is also valid for the EECH/EEAH campaigns which is:
In both LB2 and EEAH/EECH campaigns, the "RED" side has always the same level and number of equipment as the "BLUE" side, for example:
-> The Blue side has 4 squadrons of AH-64 Apaches while the Red side has 4 squadrons of Mi-28 Havocs
-> The Blue side has 3 squadrons of RAH-66 Comaches while the Red side has 3 squadrons of Ka-52
-> The Blue side has 4 squadrons of UH-60 Blackhawks while the Red side has 4 squadrons of Mi-24 Hinds.
-> The Blue side has 3 Batalions of M-1 Abrams while the Red side has 3 Batalions of T-80s
And so on...
But like you can see this doesn't portraits the reality. There are many countries (and some of them modeled in EEAH/EECH) that the best combat Helos are older variants of the Hinds (there are others that doesn't even have those Helos) and diferent sides (Blue/Red) never have the same number of equipment (Helos, aircraft, tanks, Artillery, Ships, etc...) a thing is which the EEAH/EECH (and also LB2 to some degree) campaigns fails completely (in the campaign of those games both sides always starts with similar number of ALL equipment or weaponry types).
Other thing that fails in the EEAH/EECH campaigns are the Order of Battle (LB2 is better regarding this). In those games you have a "generic" Blue side order of battle and a Red side order of battle. This is completely wrong, the order of battle should be organized by country and not by side (you should have for example the Syria order of battle, USA order of battle, Russia order of battle, etc...) -> There are many countries that are modeled in EEAH/EECH that doesn't have for example Ka-52 or T-80s (examples of this are Syria or China, if I'm not mistaken).

Rowan's Battle of Britain
Combat Flight Simulator 3
Jane's Apache Longbow 2
Falcon 4.0

...are just a few examples of sims that have fully dynamic campaigns and have extremely accurate Order of Battle by country.
And Rowan's Battle of Britain is also extremely detailed and realistic in terms of doctrines used by each side (Falcon 4.0 is also excelent in terms of doctrines too)!

Well, you should try any of the games that previously posted. From what I see, you didn't try any of them.
To give you quick examples let me state the following:
-> In Battle of Britain you have ALL the major air wings and squadrons that fought during the real Battle of Britain modeled in that game. They are based in where they where historically based and execute their tactics acordingly with what they did in reality (the tactics even vary depending on the date or phase and results of the campaign). I advise you to get the new BoBII that will came out soon to the market, it appears to be excelent (it will maintain the excelent campaign)!
-> Regarding Jane's Longbow 2, you have ALL the ground formations organized in at least at a battalion level that I can garantee to you and if I'm not mistaked those ground formation are by it's turn are organized into regimental levels! The ground units in LB2 dig-in into defensive positions, await and receive reenforcements acordingly and they ONLY mount offensives when they are effectivelly reenforced (otherwise they simply don't mount any offensives util they have the enough strenght to do that). Obviously you has a Helo pilot have the ability to disrupt reenforcements to enemy ground units (which avoids those certain regiments to mount offensives against you) but be aware that the enemy can do exactly the same!
I can garantee to you that the LB2 campaign is very good (the best for that matter) in terms of ground war realism (considering all known Dynamic and "Static" campaign likewise)!

-> Finally regarding to Falcon 4.0, the ORIGINAL Korea campaign (note that there are other new more "ficticious" campaigns like Korea 2005 which doesn't reflect the DPRK reality) has a very detailed and accurate Order of Battle of the DPRK.
They (the DPRK) don't have T-80 tanks (they mostly have T-55, T-62 and a few T-72 if I'm not mistaken), they don't have BMP-3 IFVs (they have BMP-1 and 2, between other older vehicles) and their artillery is based on D-30 Towed Artillery and Katiuska Rockets which is far from modern. The same happens with the aircraft, the DPRK in Falcon 4.0 Original campaign only have one Mig-29 squadron as a modern aircraft which is realitic. The remaining of the DPRK air force in Falcon 4.0 campaign is composed mainly from older and obsolete Mig-17/19/21/23 fighters and their correspondent Chinese copies.
What happens in the Falcon 4.0 original campaign is that later on the campaign, Russia and China will enter that conflict allied with the DPRK, that's why someone told you that T-80 tanks, BMP-3 IFVs and modern self-propelled do appear in the campaign (those aren't the inicial DPRK units that you see in the begining of the campaign).

I hope that this info helps you to undestand that there are in fact excelent and realistic Dynamic campaigns in terms of Order of Battle and Doctrines...

Well regarding the BoB campaign, it is obvious that this campaign doesn't have any ground units as it should (it was an Air War exclusively, with some attacks on ships).

Regarding the Ground War on campaigns, well if I'm not mistaken this discussion started because of what a Dynamic Campaign style and a Static Campaign style can do in terms of modeling a ground war correctly, right?
I do not pretend to convince you that any of the existing dynamic campaigns model a ground war with a 100% accuracy, but NEITHER can a Static Campaign.
But what I'm trying to say is that it is possible to program the ground units to have similar strutures and order of battles like their real conterparts in dynamic campaigns. This can be done with both Dynamic and Static campaigns, but the advantage is that the Dynamic campaign can like the name say, be dynamic, that means that the units that exists in such a campaign style can react to events that happens in the battlefield. With a Static campaign you just have the opposite, units do EXACTLY what they were programmmed to do (or the mission tells them to do) independently of what happens in the battlefield. Let me give you an example of this:
-> Imagine for example a batallion which is on an offensive and while this it suffers an Airstrike from which suffers heavy looses. In a GOOD Dynamic campaign that battalion can for example dig-in in defension positions or retreat. With static campaigns the most probable thing to happen is that same batallion will continue it's offensive (depite suffering heavy looses).

With this I don't pretend to to say that dynamic campaigns are ALL GOOD, which they aren't. There are excelent dynamic campaigns like the one we find in LB2 which models the ground quite accuratly. Ok, that like in EECH/EEAH both sides have similar doctrines, but I'm sure that with some programing it's possible to model diferent doctrines for each country or side. Again I advise you that if you have the possibility of trying Jane's LB2 campaign, you should do it.
And there are also "bad" dynamic campaigns like for example the EEAH/EECH campaigns (in my oppinion, obviously) but even if I consider the EEAH/EECH campaigns to be bad, I sure that it has the potencial of being improved a lot, specially if modifications like for example the ones that I previously sugested are implemented.


Regarding Falcon 4.0, I don't play it for some time ago so I don't remember the exact Order of Battle of North Korea -> I know that I said that T-72 and BMP-2 appeared on the North Korea side but if you also noticed I'm not sure about those two vehicles appearing along with DPRK units.

The only thing that I can do is to check back tomorrow on Falcon 4.0 campaign and check all that data (OOB and military organization -> Batallions, Regiments, Division, etc...), if you want, that is?

Modern Rendering Engine
Clickable 3D cockpit

Higher Definition Flight Model
Optional Realistic Avionics

Full Ground War, Tanks and Infantry are more than just targets in your shooting gallery.

I like to be able to assign targets to my wingman like LB2.

Would love to see full auto-rotation modeled.

Would like to be able to fly a TRAP mission.

Pitching LHA deck for when landing the helos.

Semper Fi
Tatsu