Campaign Breaking Bugs/Behavior

[Gambit21]

I figure with the new campaign system coming online it's time to point out what to me can turn into a significant problem, both for us and for the devs.

We have have mission success MCU's, and failure to complete a mission means the campaign cannot progress. 

 

Simply, the problem I'm trying to nip in the bud here is a campaign brought to it's knees by the simple failure or breaking of AI or MCU logic.

This thread can be for current logic that is quirky and unreliable, or logic that breaks due to an update.

The correct function of these items is necessary for the mission to play out, allowing mission success and the campaign to continue.

 

This isn't a " it would be nice" request thread.

This is for items that can compromise the integrity of a mission, and thus the integrity of a campaign itself.

 

Hopefully items on this list will be very few and far between - I think making it a sticky might not be a bad idea.

 

I had a mission where 4 Ju52's taxied from hard-stands and took off.

This mission had been tested numerous times and was working properly - then after the last update they no longer would taxi from the

hard-stands, or indeed if they were located too close to any Block/structure. I caught the problem and moved the flight to the middle of the

field where they once again would taxi and take off. Aside from the fact that not being able to taxi from a hard-stand affects immersion negatively, had

this campaign been released before this AI routine was broken, it would have rendered the mission inoperable. Not only does the player miss

out on this mission, but he cannot continue to the next mission.

 

Thus - I think it is EXTREMELY important, not just on behalf of the mission builders, but also for the development team that extra care is taken where breaking

mission logic is concerned. It was annoying before, but can have real consequences now.

We rely in careful timing, triggers, events for the mission to unfold and complete. If something breaks due to an update, this

will lead to unhappy customers, not to mention making more work for everyone in the long run.

 

 

First item - AI taxi,form up/take off behavior.

As of right now 3 or 4 aircraft in a flight (or more) causes an extremely long delay in taking off, and if the player is number 3 or 4 in the flight, the delay

is such that the player might come to the conclusion that the flight leader is never going to take off at all - and give up.

 

Result - Mission Dead (Failed) campaign brought to it's knees.

 

In some cases, the leader indeed never takes off. This behavior needs to be quicker, and far more forgiving.

Something so basic and fundamental as take-off behavior NEEDS TO WORK CORRECTLY AND RELIABLY

So on behalf of everyone here, I respectfully request that it be looked into as soon as the schedule allows.

 

 

 

Mission Dead (Failed) campaign brought to it's knees.

[TG-55Panthercules]

Is there really a reason that missions/campaigns have to be structured so that the player cannot progress to the next mission unless the previous mission somehow "succeeds"?  That always struck me as bad design and a recipe for disaster (or at least unpleasant player experience).  As a player, the last thing I want to have to do is keep repeating a mission over and over again until I finally discover the magic secret way to complete it so I can move on to the next mission - reminds me too much of some of those old Doom levels where they made you search all over the place for the last secret key to open the last door, that was always hidden behind some movable wall or something similarly stupid.

 

Of course, it would be good to identify and eliminate problems like mentioned in the above post that might cause missions to fail, but at least if the campaigns were structured so that failing a mission didn't prevent the player from progressing to the next mission, the impact of encountering any such failure conditions would be lessened.

[Gambit21]

Well the success condition can be whatever we want it to be - simply taxiing a few feet for instance.

That defeats the purpose however.

[coconut]

Gambit21, you want to write shorter, clearer bug descriptions and attach a sample mission. Without that your reports are unlikely to be prioritized.

[Juri_JS]

When you notice a problem that first appeared after the latest update, like your taxi problems, directly report it to the developers. I've noticed autopilot take off problems after the latest update when fakefields are used and have send a bug report to Han. The developers can only fix such problems when they receive detailed bug reports with attached test missions.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Juri_JS

[Gambit21]

Juri, Coconut...I will do this.

I guess last night I was thinking that with all the noise around here on the forums in general, it would be beneficial to have this particular class

of bug in it's own place. I also was thinking contacting them directly and "jumping protocol" as it were would annoy them.

 

However I will concede to your wisdom on the matter and report this sort of thing directly to the devs.

 

Thank you.

[Habu]

I agree with you Gambit, but dev can't give you any assurance that a patch don't breake something that works until now, even if all is done to avoid that kind of problem. Sometimes, we don't detect the problem.

 

For information, i don't thing there is other tester which test the editor and the AI. I test AI taxing for every new plane which is add.

 

Here is what i do : i test it from various airfield : Ground in summer, hard in summer, ground in winter, hard in winter. And i add an airfiled wich have forest around him to test plane with bombs and cargo. I tested with various payload, but sometines, it's diffcult to test with all payload.

 

I used a group of 3 or 4 planes. They do a cold start, taxi to the ruway, take off, land, and taxy until they are deleted. As you can imagine,it took a very long time.

 

But even if i try to find all the situation, i can reproduce all the situation. Maybe i have to change the airfield i use. So if you enclounter a problem with a specific airfield, give the name of the airfield, and i'll try to reproduce it and reporte the problem.

 

Here are the airfield i use for my test :

- Pitomnik : ground airfield , Stalingrad square 1024

- Gumrak : hard airfield with a special difficulty because there are shelters when planes leave the parking, Stalingrad square 1025 NP7

- Stogov : forest around the airfield, stalingrad square 735 NP8

 

 

i can't test every plane at every patch, as i can't test every airfield. I tried to test with situation which could be a problem.

 

About the time taken by AI before take off (i have already report that problem), i agree, sometimes, they took very long time. I'm going to report it again. 

 

If you have a mission with that problem, give me a link to test it as soon as possible. I don't need all the mission, juste the AI which taxing.

Edited January 13, 2017 by Habu

[Gambit21]

I completely understand Habu - thank you for the hard work. 

[Habu]

What i explain wasn't to give me some flower, it was just an explanation for you understand how it work. But as i said, we can't test all the situation. So if you find a special situation, describe it and post a mission. It's like that we can fixed the problem with the ground attack of the 190.