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#4082818 - 02/23/15 09:33 PM Any decent campaigns yet?  
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The problem I have found with practically all the latest flight sim games is a lack of any decent campaign which has generally made me avoid buying any flight sims recently. DCS when I last looked were the same - canned missions and thats all.

Now its a few years later and I feel like playing a decent flight sim. Now of course there is Falcon 4 but I have played that to death I was hoping to try a new sim.

So whats the deal with the DCS sims now? Do they have decent campaigns at all or are they still just canned missions?


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#4082882 - 02/24/15 12:17 AM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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The campaigns for the Huey and the Mi-8 are IMO very well done. They are still canned missions but are very atmospheric and at should keep you busy for a couple of hours.

There is also a 3rd-party dynamic campaign for the Mig-21 that focuses on A2A and is very interesting.


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#4082973 - 02/24/15 07:11 AM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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I have FC3, the Mustang and the KA-50. Played almost all the campaings in that modules. The really good ones are (IMO):

- Deployment for the KA-50
- Operation Mendeleev for the KA-50
- Cold War Warrior for the SU-25
- Fortress Mozdok for the SU-27
- Heavy Sky for the SU-33

But still, those are just static missions that you have to play in the given order. Nothing dynamic.
There is also a (static) payware campaign for the SU-27 which seems to be pretty good.

#4083001 - 02/24/15 09:32 AM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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Check the AAR forum, Beach did some reports of the Su-27 campaign.

#4083044 - 02/24/15 11:26 AM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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#4083213 - 02/24/15 03:56 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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dcs is all canned missions

#4083269 - 02/24/15 05:47 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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There is a good AAR of the Mig-21 Dynamic Campaign at Mudspike


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#4083514 - 02/25/15 02:07 AM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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DCS World is the ARMA 3 of flight sims. It is not meant and intended for single player.


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#4084766 - 02/27/15 10:02 AM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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Thanks for your responses I thought that was the case. Guess it will be Wings Over Flanders Fields 2 then for my flight sim fix, that at least has a decent campaign. I suppose i could get back into Falcon 4 if need be, its looking better than ever these days. Its very sad flight sims dont feature decent dynamic campaigns anymore whatever has happened? My stable computer games were flight sims years ago, now there are practically none. Mind you Tornado had a branching campaign and that wasnt bad - it doesnt need to be completely dynamic. Just needs to be more than canned missions which I hate.


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#4084796 - 02/27/15 12:25 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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Originally Posted By: PFunk
DCS World is the ARMA 3 of flight sims. It is not meant and intended for single player.

lolz

Originally Posted By: nats
Thanks for your responses I thought that was the case. Guess it will be Wings Over Flanders Fields 2 then for my flight sim fix, that at least has a decent campaign. I suppose i could get back into Falcon 4 if need be, its looking better than ever these days. Its very sad flight sims dont feature decent dynamic campaigns anymore whatever has happened? My stable computer games were flight sims years ago, now there are practically none. Mind you Tornado had a branching campaign and that wasnt bad - it doesnt need to be completely dynamic. Just needs to be more than canned missions which I hate.


Tornado had a full-on dynamic campaign (under "Command" menu option). It is probably up there with the very best in that regard.

Regards
heartc

#4084836 - 02/27/15 01:42 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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yes, I hate canned missions too.
you play it once, that's it, you get bored with it.

that's why I have just installed again ef2000 and F22TAW.

#4084850 - 02/27/15 01:59 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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Cudos to you, good sir. I'm currently replaying Falcon 3.0. When you look at what those sims offered with the limited ressources back then, the current offerings are a laugh.

#4084887 - 02/27/15 03:46 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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I used to play falcon 3.0 when it first came out.
What year was that? 90s?

That was the first time I knew padlock view,
Wow, it blew my mind away.

And a very good dynamic campaign!

#4085007 - 02/27/15 06:47 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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I also remember I bought the 5.25" version the installer was broken so it wouldn't work. So after returning that copy for another and it STILL not working, I finally exchanged it for the 3.5" version which did.




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#4085055 - 02/27/15 08:03 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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BTW, while we are at it: Let's see what sims back then had a dynamic campaign and did what "can't be done, it is teh hard" today. Because I hate it when I hear people saying "only Falcon 4 did it and it made them go bankrupt":

LucasArt's BoB, 1989 I think it was.
LucasArt's Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, 1991
Spectrum Holobyte's Falcon 3.0, 1991
Domark's Harrier / SVGA Harrier, 1991
Digital Integration's Tornado, 1991
Sierra's Red Baron I and II, 1991 / 1997
Rowan's Flying Corps Gold, 1997
Rowan's Mig Alley, 1999
Rowan's BoB, ca. 2000
Digital Image Design's EF2000, 1995
Digital Image Design's TAW, 1997
Microprose' B17 I, B17 II, 1992 / 1998
Microprose' Pacific Air War, 1994
Microprose' European Air War, 1998
Razorwork's Enemy Engaged: Apache Havoc, Comanche Hokum, 1998 / 2000
Jane's Longbow 2, 1997

That's just the flightsims, and I'm sure the list is not even complete. There were also naval sims and ground warfare sims that offered dynamic campaigns. And I didn't include Microprose' Stealth Fighter and Strike Eagle series, since these were not really dynamic campaigns, but rather random misson generators, albeit with stat tracking and coherent theatres which gave unlimited replay value and were great fun, too, with the environment reacting to your actions within a mission by default - by having interceptors taking off when u were detected by radar for example in Stealth Fighter / Nighthawk.

The downfall came around after 1998, with the so-called "semi-dynamic" campaigns in e.g. Jane's F15 / F18 and then just scripted missions in later flightsims like LOMAC. I remember being very reluctant to go out and buy LOMAC back in 2003 because it lacked any kind of campaign system at all. I still went and bought it though since I was hoping / sure that some third party modder would come up with a DC system for it, as it happened in Flanker 1 (by ROSS), IL2 and CFS2 (by Lowengrin). But no joy, pal. Until actually just recently now, 11 years later, when MBot came to the rescue with the MiG-21 "Guardians of the Caucasus" dynamic campaign. Much cudos and many thanks to you sir at this point. I also remember I think it was Grimes who developed an early dynamic campaign system for Flaming Cliffs 2 some years back, but unfortunately it was made incompatible by ED completely overhauling the mission editor system. I would have prefered the dynamic campaign system Grimes was working on, thank you very much.

Also, a personal pet peeve of mine, which I've still not gotten completely over: A-10 Cuba! It was an AWESOME, awesome A-10 sim in 1997 that however only had like TWELVE scripted missions. No. I'm still not over it.

I had no internet back then in the early 90s, but when you read the old google groups discussions, when a new sim came out, you see people asking: So, how is its CAMPAIGN SYSTEM? Nowadays, many people don't even know what a dynamic campaign is and are then told don't bother, it is too hard to do. I understand there is much time and effort going into the systems modelling and flight models in ultra-realistic sims like DCS, and that is great. But in 11 years you couldn't hack it? Really?

Regards
heartc


#4085086 - 02/27/15 09:04 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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And as an additional note, if I may: I think much of the blame actually goes to the player base itself. I don't think that a developer like ED that is putting out such high quality and super complex sims like A-10 or Black Shark is really "incapable" of figuring out how to do it. No one is asking for a dynamic campaign ala Falcon 4. Falcon 4's "mistake", if you will, was that they overdid it. Feature creep and all that.
In reality what happened was that flightsim devs died out around the late 90s, because the gaming market was going mass market and other games, like ego shooters and the like, started to become more profitable to do than flightsims. Less developement costs and bigger customer base. So while you had multiple flightsims coming out per year back in the 90s, you now only got a few with several years in between them. This let to the dweebs being thankfull for ANY flightsim at all to appear, turning 2 blind eyes to any shortcoming it might have. Like, no campaign. And if anybody dared to mention that (or other) shortcomings, he was shouted down by the "fanbois" as being an ungrateful brat. Also flightsim review sites turned hard against what they considered "flaming" or "beating a dead horse" - which would have been regarded as perfectly rational discussions in earlier times - and add to that newbies who didn't even know what all the fuzz was about anyway, and you end up with lesser products.

I am convinced that had there been a topic popping up every other month with players demanding a dynamic campaign without being shouted down by the fanbois, we would have like 5 dynamic campaigns in LOMAC / DCS by now. And maybe 2 modules less. What is a great modelled airplane worth if you can only fly it in repetitive scripted missions? For me, it is the A-10 Cuba effect. It hurts.

#4085091 - 02/27/15 09:20 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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Quote:
which would have been regarded as perfectly rational discussions in earlier times


I mostly agree with what you wrote above, but in earlier times, the plane models themselves were much simpler than what's coming out now, at least on the HC end of the market. Besides, RoF has a dynamic campaign, doesn't it? Although I don't know how it is nowadays since I haven't played RoF in ages...

Moreover, I'm not sure if it's really fair to call folks in love with the super-complex "fanbois". Some peeps, including me, just simply LOVE the level of detail and attention.

#4085106 - 02/27/15 09:46 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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No offense sir, but I was reluctant to get further into it because I'm very tired with replies like that. I really mean no offense, but that is the exact kind of reasoning I mean when I say the customer base is to blame. Let me see:

a) I think I honored the difference in modelling fidelity in terms of systems and flight model when I said "we might have 2 modules less" and "hello, it's been 11 years now".

b) I didn't call people who are in love with super-complex "fanbois". I don't see where you got that from. Maybe re-read my statement regarding that. Falcon 3.0 for example was super complex for its time. So was Tornado. The point is that back then it was NORMAL to have a complex flightsim *and* a campaign system. And again, as above, I realize there is much difference between the modelling fidelity now to the fidelity back then, BUT at the same time it's not like the hardware and programming solutions stopped at a 386 processor. So, even taking these factors into account, it should be NO problem at all to hack a campaign system within the timeframe of 11 years.

Regards
heartc

P.S. Yeah, RoF has come up with one after a few years and that's great. It is still imho lacking though from the one you got in Red Baron II, but at least they did it. But isn't it sad that this is such a rare occurence these days? And btw. it just goes to prove my point further: In the RoF community, you can bet that you have many Red Baron old hands who were nagging the devs about it from the get-go.
And to give homage where it is due: Wings Over Flanders Fields also got a dynamic campaign that is actually even surpassing the one in Red Baron II. And surprise, surprise: Again you got the old Red Baron hands in there, I think actually the dev team is composed of Red Baron vets themselves for a big part.

#4085137 - 02/27/15 10:28 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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Quote:
super complex for its time.


This being the key phrase here. Back in the day it was normal to both have a DC and a super-complex aircraft FOR ITS TIME, true, but nowadays? The high-end segment machines are modelled to a depth no-one did back then, so it's apples and oranges really. To comprehensively model a machine to modern standards takes up lots and lots of manhours not only because everything's "bigger and better" nowadays, but because the sheer work in creating and debugging say base FM algorithms is vastly more complex (and time-consuming) as well. No more tables-based FMs anymore!

Granted, ED could've left out a couple of modules and develop a DC instead. But would that've created any revenue for them? I just can't see people forking out $$$ for a DC module, because stuff like that is considered infrastructure - and thus gratis - nowadays.

But yeah, I can see where you're coming from with this still, and I wouldn't mind seeing some dynamic content myself - quite the contrary actually. The difference between us, however, is that I'm pretty content flying complex machines per se for the time being, whereas you seemingly are not.

And with this, I think I'll just bow out of here as gracefully as possible, because judging from your somewhat bitter reply above, nothing really constructive will most likely follow. S!

PS. I'll grant you that at some point, more (dynamic) content is undoubtedly needed if ED wants to survive in the long run. But as I said, I'm willing to wait the meantime flying these complex machines, because I happen to like them. YMMV...

#4085142 - 02/27/15 10:41 PM Re: Any decent campaigns yet? [Re: nats]  
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One of the biggest challenges when creating the Falcon 4.0 dynamic campaign…was getting it to run on a minimum spec computer that was listed on the box. It's just a shame that in the 90's we had a glimpse of greatness…and I remember saying to myself "Imagine what they will be able to do in 10 years!".

All the horsepower that developer's now have at there disposal and most treat campaigns as a tacked on afterthought. The things that made those sims so great were the excellent campaign systems. I was plenty happy with the somewhat simpler FM we had back then compared to today because it gave me a reason to want to fly everyday.

Myself and many others still fly the old sims because of the "purpose" you felt when flying them.


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