Which sims actually had/have dynamic campaigns?

Cant think of many

Falcon 4.0
EECH
Mig Alley
JSF
M1 Tank Platoon 2
Rowan's Battle of Britain
EF2000
TAW

any others that I'm missing?

Longbow 2 had dynamic elements if I remember correctly, but still had scripted missions

Good topic.

How about which sims that do NOT have a dynamic campaign but for which a third party DC is available?

Isn't CAP 2 supposed to have a DC? *

*edit* I think it was planned,so may not be implemented just yet.

Digital Integration's Tornado had one if I remember correctly.

Tornado (and Desert Storm), in the command mode. Not 'fully dynamic' in real time, but war goals set by player, and campaign progression and situation in response to player squadron and allies accomplishments. Campaign mode had freedom to plan missions to accomplish tasked orders, with tasking being dependent on outcome (arguably more realistic than command, but less dynamic).

What do you mean by "dynamic" in a campaign?

Rise of Flight has a campaign where the missions are generated before flight, so every campaign is going to be different.

So is that "dynamic?"

The older Microprose sims such as Gunship, Gunship 2000, F-19 Stealth Fighter, F-15 Strike Eagle 2 and 3, etc., at least felt like they had dynamic campaigns, though were quite simplistic by today's standards.

@ Dart - Rise of Flight has a decent dynamic campaign. I've never had a single career turn out the same, and the sequence and progression of missions were always different, even out of the same aerodrome.

Strike Fighters series have a dynamic campaign, you cannot set your objectives, but the missions are generated by the sim itself and you can have an impact on the war destrying transport planes, or helping armies attack/defend certain locations.

Dynamic campaign always meant your mission successes or failures affected the campaign as a whole. So, fail to destroy your assigned bridge targets and enemy armor attacks your ground troops. Destroy your assigned SAM sites and your bombers make it to their targets.

Falcon 3.0 had a dynamic campaign as well.

All of that can occur in the same mission you're flying. A well-scripted DCS mission can do this.

One aspect of the DC is that you actions two or three missions ago still affects the campaign now. Destroyed an airfield? It could take a few days for it to be back online. Destroyed the bridge near that airfield? It could take weeks to fix the base now. That corridor you cleansed of SAMs on Day 1 of the campaign will be a major avenue into enemy territory even on Day 4. This is what cannot be done in DCS, at least the last time I tried making missions for it. You bomb that bridge and it's fully repaired in the next mission unless the mission creator scripts in some method of destroying said bridge before you overfly it, giving you the impression of the persistence of the effects of your actions.

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe!


You could play as either the 8th USAAF and direct the strategic bombing campaign against Germany or you could play as the Luftwaffe and be responsible for allocating fighter defenses for the different industries and also fly missions. The progress of the war would be affected by your performance on each mission.

Battle over Britain (2?) had a dynamic campaign - destroy a fighter airfield and in the next days you have less fighter opposition in the air; destroy a part of the Chain Home radar, and enemy fighters are late to the party, ...

I should have specified that the future was affected by your successes and failures. Obviously if your mission was to provide SEAD for a flight of bombers 15 minutes behind you but you failed, the bombers got shot down or had to abort. But if you succeeded, you had a safe ingress route like you mentioned.

Dynamic campaigns are ones in which the battlefield is perstinant between missions and the campaign engine reacts to events occurring during missions or during events occurring in during the engine clock.

So the true DC is a digital battlefield where the engine is playing as both sides. Assists won or lost are accounted for and can the reactions of the game engine.

Falcon 4 would be the closest to a true DC. ROF would be the farthest away. ROF I would classify as a random generator. As far I can tell one mission has no effect on the next and there is no operational impact to the campaign situation—it’s simply one random mission after another.


For another with DC was 1942: Pacific Air War. There was also a real old that I can’t remember the exact name—something like AV8B Harrier 2.

Yes, absolutely this one. You could command the strategic disposition of the carrier groups and then fly a mission.

1942 PAW doesn't get it's due. It's hardly ever mentioned when people speak of golden age flight sims but it is to this day my all time favorite sim. I spent hours upon hours flying strikes against enemy carriers or shore targets and defending friendly carriers or Henderson Field or Munda etc. from enemy attack. Even flew my first MP co-op missions in PAW with my best friend.

And I have the GOG / DosBox version on my PC right now.

I flew this coop as well. If I remember correctly, you could even multicrew the dive bombers and torpedo bombers that had a rear gunner.

I think you may be right.


I remember there were these stock messages you could send to another player with a couple of keystrokes (stuff like "Break Left" etc)

and there were a couple of slots you could write your own custom messages you could send. One I had was "Watch this Willie"*


*as spoken by Duke Cunningham to his RIO Willie Driscoll. This was years before Cunningham disgraced himself.

PAW was one I really wanted to like but my hardware was sorely not up to the task at the time. I remember trying to play it with terrible performance and frequent crashes.

I remember it was reviewed by mainstream gaming mags in the day with great reviews.

I wonder if any of those still publish magazines? I cancelled my subscription to PC Gamer back in 2001 or so.

Amazingly PC Gamer looks to still have a physical mag. I loved them as kid but their cover art was too embarrassing to have show up to my house.

Their finest hour had a DC

Mig 29 fulcrum too

F16 combat pilot too

All three on atari st

I didn't see Red Baron II/3D mentioned. Also B-17 II had a dynamic-ish campaign.

Also...the Silent Hunter III & 4 had pretty good dynamic campaigns. The op didn't specify flight sims only.

IL2/FB/1946 has a dynamic campaign with Boelckes Westfront Campaign.
Probably others with the sim also.

Digital Integration F-16 Combat Pilot, the first flight sim with a dynamic campaign. The pitch black night missions, the AAA flak, the radio chatter, the user interface, the mission planning tool, the weapon selection screen, the variable weather (including a weather room for pre-flight), the runway damage, the managing/assigning of missions to squadron members, the takeoff and landings, the simulated damage (heck, I even did a belly landing (landing gear damage), and when the plane came to a stop it rolled slightly 'til a wing touched the ground!)... the list goes on... and this was back in 1987/88.Personally, I think this game has never been equaled in terms of a DC... not even Falcon 4.0.

The Rowan sims Reach for the Skies (Battle of Britain), Operation Overlord (air campaign over Normandy leading up to Overlord) and Navy Strike (near future US naval aviation in 3 different areas of the world) all had dynamic campaigns. Other flight sims with dynamic campaigns included KA-50 Werewolf (counter piracy operations in the Indonesian achipelago), AV8-B Harrier Assault (fictitious USMC operation in East Timor), and ATAC (F-22s and AH-64s in a near future anti-narco operation in Colombia). Did Combat Flight Simulator 3 have one? I seem to recall that it did.

Non-flight sims with dynamic campaigns included Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic 1939-1943 (the Battle of the Atlantic), Task Force 1942 (surface naval action off Guadalcanal, 1942), Steel Armor: Blaze of War (Tank sim with extensive player input into operational planning), as well as a fair number of submarine sims from Sub Battle Simulator (WW2 subs in both the Atlantic and Pacific, in glorious CGA graphics) onwards.

RB3D did not have dynamic campaign, as one couldn't win WWI for the Germans while piloting his Fokker.

Read that again and tell me why "dynamic campaigns" are even remotely realistic.

As you pointed out in an earlier post one pilot isn't likely to change the outcome of a war. A dynamic campaign in a historical war simulation might cause a particular battle to go opposite from how it went in real life, but still not change the overall outcome of the war.

But on the other hand wouldn't you like to have a sim where it is possible for the Japanese to launch a third strike on Pearl Harbor and take out the submarine base and oil storage, and then win at Coral Sea (strategically, not just tactically), at Midway and at Guadalcanal? That would be interesting.

Now in a purely fictional flight sim like Falcon 4.0 a dynamic campaign is essential,IMO, to creating a realistic environment. I want that bridge I take out to stay taken out for a realistic length of time, I want the runway to stay closed and I want the MiG's that were shot down on day 2 not to show up again on day 3.

Sounds like the prayer of every German officer in WWII after 1941. Didn't work out for them that way, though.

It is equally true that no modern war has been won without air power as well.

And there's also the fact that Falcon 4.0 also modeled ground combat in it's dynamic campaign. It all has to work together.

Yup. I absolutely loved seeing the ground forces duke it out as I flew overhead in my F-16 Block 40. Or was it 50?

Yet...

Don't go for the new! stay in the 40 - much better HUD if nothing else
It's really immersive when getting close to the frontline and you see flashes on the ground and things happen, love it.
And as DBond and I reflected once flying coop, just the "welcome back" gives you a fuzzy feeling when calling tower 30 miles out after a intense mission.
Love it.
These things can't be replaced by pretty graphics, not even close.
Do hear me Wags?

This is why I loved Aces of the Pacific, and the 1946 expansion.

I guess it's about terminology.

Red Baron 3D had what I would call a "Dynamic Career" system. Medals, promotions, plane upgrades, injury, capture, squad transfers...etc. The battlefield was alive with different missions assigned and AI flights carrying out their "dynamically" assigned missions. If I could have a WWII...or better yet...a Korean War sim that had this kind of career system, I would be happy.

Janes Apache Longbow 2 deserves mention here.

I think the people that used to do the covers for PC Gamer now work designing NVidia GPU boxes

I don't think anyone is claiming that the player should be able to singlehandedly turn the tide of the war, Rambo style. A single pilot can actually have a pretty outsized impact on things, though. Imagine if that SBD pilot who scored the fatal blow on a Japanese flat top at Midway had missed instead. Or if the flight leader of the dive bomber squadron made a navigation error and the entire flight missed the Japanese fleet. Something like that could very well change a lot about the course of a war.

I think people are yearning for the immersion a dynamic campaign provides. Something that masks the artificialities of a game and instead allows you to forget you're playing one, and maybe even experience a little of what it might be like to really be in that situation. I know that's what I wish I could find in a flight sim. There have been few to measure up to that standard in recent times.

Hey wake up ! Wings over Flanders fields has a real dynamic, not only campaign but war/world !

Not a big fan of WWI air combat sims but I might have to check that out! Thanks.

I'm also not a fan of WW1 so I'm waiting for Wings Over The Reich which should be a perfect WW2 sim with DC.

I have WOFF and this will be a day one purchase for me. Doesn't matter how much it costs...a developer that puts this much focus and attention to single player immersion and AI I want to stick around!