Career realism

[InProgress]

Hello, I was wondering if all missions are combat missions and always something is happening. I assume that in real life lots of flights were patrols without any action or missions to attack ground targets where no enemy will come to fight back.

 

Is this in new campaign? I played few hours but every flight was combat one, always fighters were there to cover my targets. Except one where enemy did not came to attack our ground units but it was bug, I spend 20min flying in circles above target with my ai comrades, then went to closest allies ground units and saw them destroyed, I assume that's where enemy attacked instead of mission targets. 

 

I remember missions in TF campaigns where you were send on patrol and not always something was going on. I know lots of people wants action but would be nice to get button to turn on additional missions where you do patrols and stuff like that with no enemy, like a random factor. 

 

Any thoughts?

[Finkeren]

Occasionally I'll fly a mission and never see an enemy, but I have a feeling, that this has to do with something getting triggered improperly or some flight paths not intersecting as they were supposed to. It seems that there is always some kind of direct opposition to your mission as well as a few random flights about. 

 

I'd really like to have the option to only have direct opposition maybe every 3rd mission or so. You might still run into a random enemy flight, but nothing guaranteed.

[Warpig]

I know I had a mission the other night where I had to cover ground troops, and the mission ended without any action.

 

For me personally, I find it a waste to play a mission and have nothing to shoot at. If I wanted to just fly, I could do that in Quick Missions.

[US63_SpadLivesMatter]

Use the career speed option, and set it to medium, or rapid.

 

What this does is skip days between missions; and it makes it a bit like you are only flying the "exciting" missions where stuff happened, and skipping the boring stuff.

Edited March 22, 2018 by hrafnkolbrandr

[SharpeXB]

Right. I’m sure on the Realistic setting there’s a chance you won’t encounter enemies. I actually prefer that because it creates a sense of the unexpected. 

[Walrusboy]

Started a Career for BoM, 126th IAP flying P-40s. My very first mission was sent to cover ground targets( Which in itself is quite realistic, one of the major complaints of pilots for the VVS was they were tasked with covering the air over friendly ground units instead of hunting the enemy). We flew in a three man Vic, flying effortlessly across the cloud riddled horizon. We reached the airspace over the infantry unit, and commenced to making lazy circles in the sky. After doing this for at least ten minutes(thank god they didn't have us loitering for hours) we met the mission criteria, lit off back to base, and landed with no problems. Never saw an enemy airplane.

 

I went to the Flight Log, and after a quick perusal noted some activity along the front line with some units being strafed or shot down here or there, so things were happening....just not in our lonely corner of the battle field miles behind the front lines.

[Finkeren]

6 hours ago, hrafnkolbrandr said:

Use the career speed option, and set it to medium, or rapid.

 

What this does is skip days between missions; and it makes it a bit like you are only flying the "exciting" missions where stuff happened, and skipping the boring stuff.

 

But I wanna fly the boring stuff 

[Original_Uwe]

14 hours ago, Warpig said:

I know I had a mission the other night where I had to cover ground troops, and the mission ended without any action.

 

For me personally, I find it a waste to play a mission and have nothing to shoot at. If I wanted to just fly, I could do that in Quick Missions.

 

8 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Right. I’m sure on the Realistic setting there’s a chance you won’t encounter enemies. I actually prefer that because it creates a sense of the unexpected. 

 

Exactly thats the thing I love about this career. In reality on 9 patrols out of 10 you aren't making contact, and complacency is a very real problem.

To see it simulated, man, I love it.

 

Edit: For example, Im running a career for 126IAP flying P-40's over Kalinin (Moscow).

The real unit flew 666 combat sorties to cover the forces of Kalinin and 318 combat sorties for the defense of Moscow from 25 October 1941 to 25 April 1942, and shot down 29 aircraft.

Thats about 1 kill per 34 sorties. From what Ive read in that period a sortie averaged 1.5 hours, so about 50 flight hours per kill.

Thats a lot of time flown with no contact.

Edited March 23, 2018 by 1./JG54_Uwe

[US63_SpadLivesMatter]

28 minutes ago, Finkeren said:

 

But I wanna fly the boring stuff 

 

I completely understand.  My play time is severely limited though.  If I want to be bored for the largest chunk of my session, I'll play online.

 

When I want to blast Nazis in a semi-random mission environment, I enjoy the career.

[Finkeren]

17 minutes ago, hrafnkolbrandr said:

 

I completely understand.  My play time is severely limited though.  If I want to be bored for the largest chunk of my session, I'll play online.

 

When I want to blast Nazis in a semi-random mission environment, I enjoy the career.

 

Perfectly understandable, and that’s why I think a less action-filled career should be an option.

[US63_SpadLivesMatter]

6 minutes ago, Finkeren said:

 

Perfectly understandable, and that’s why I think a less action-filled career should be an option.

Agreed.

 

I am really happy that we got options for stuff like this.  Aside for some technical hiccups I am very happy with this update.

[InProgress]

This is why it would be nice to have this as option. I bet there is lots of people who would like to play this game as realistic as possible. I hope devs will see this topic and add this kind of thing I would really enjoy flying on mission with feeling that you never know what will happen and be little stressed that normal patrol can turn into hell. Now you just know that every mission = action.

 

Also not sure if you can now,  but would be nice if you could fly more than 1 mission per day. Pretty sure during stalingrad campaign Luftwaffe was pretty busy.

 

3 hours ago, Walrusboy said:

We reached the airspace over the infantry unit, and commenced to making lazy circles in the sky. After doing this for at least ten minutes(thank god they didn't have us loitering for hours) we met the mission criteria, lit off back to base, and landed with no problems.

 

I think that's bug, but i am not sure. Happend to me as well, AI just attack diffrent units than their targets, you got mission success because AAA or friendly planes shot some of them down, in my case i was  stuck there for 20min and would probably be there until we all fall dawn because no fuel :|

Edited March 23, 2018 by InProgress

[US63_SpadLivesMatter]

I didn't realize that was a bug.  I thought the uneventful patrols were a feature.

[56RAF_Roblex]

I found I was getting a lot of missions with no action even though Ctl-F2 showed me there were enemies on the way while I was heading home.   I had left on 'Airstart' from when I was testing so I changed that to groundstart and now every missions has action which I presume is a timing thing ie starting from the ground delays your flight just enough to make you meet the enemy.  Sometimes I get too much action as the enemy has a nasty habit of turning up just as you are nearly home and beginning to relax :-)

[Livai]

11 hours ago, Warpig said:

For me personally, I find it a waste to play a mission and have nothing to shoot at. If I wanted to just fly, I could do that in Quick Missions.

 

Palim Palim ( Nonstop Nonsense ) -> People complain why x4 or x8 time speed doesn't work in the Career Mode to skip the boring stuff and other annoying stuff about the Career Mode. So some seriously valued the RoF Career Mode and now I read around how others start to devalue their work much the same as how to read "Shoot first and talk later!"

 

 

 

 

[dburne]

2 hours ago, InProgress said:

Also not sure if you can now,  but would be nice if you could fly more than 1 mission per day. Pretty sure during stalingrad campaign Luftwaffe was pretty busy.

 

 

 

Actually there are times you can. 

I had completed a mission in my Career yesterday, and saw there was another pending mission listed as well. I clicked to add pilot and added myself to that pending mission and flew it.

[Walrusboy]

2 hours ago, InProgress said:

I think that's bug, but i am not sure. Happened to me as well, AI just attack different units than their targets, you got mission success because AAA or friendly planes shot some of them down, in my case i was  stuck there for 20min and would probably be there until we all fall dawn because no fuel :|

 

In my instance I don't think it was a bug. I think it was just another unit doing it's own thing on the frontline.

 

So far I've played 4 missions in my campaign. Since it's a P-40 campaign in Battle for Moscow I'm stationed at Khimski just outside of Moscow. As for my Option settings I'm set up for In The Air Startup, Medium Difficulty, Realistic Campaign, Moderate Density, and it's been that way for all four missions. Started off with (I think) 10 or so pilots, 8 P-40's altogether. Here is how they played out.

 

1st Day; 2nd Mission: I was only in the 2nd mission of the first day, same one I mentioned in the earlier post. Vic of 3 P-40s, air patrol over a ferry crossing. Flew there, circled it, trotted off back home. No enemy to speak of.

 

2nd Day, 2nd Mission: Again, only in one of the two sorties that day, but it's the big one. All 8 P-40s in the afternoon setting off to strike an Artillery position with everyone loaded with a 500kg bomb. head off, everything so far so good until we hit the front line. 6-7 109Fs roll in on us. Commander orders us to jettison bombs within sight of the target and get stuck in. Swirling dogfight ensues, I brew one up with the .50s, then get tagged by the 109's flight leader leaving me with bullet holes in my right wing and an oil leak. Fritz Will PAY. I turn on him into a head on pass and lay on the trigger. Black smoke pours out of the 109F and I bathe in vindication. Look around to see all friends and enemies have are nowhere to be found. Shrug shoulders, look up the closest friendly airfield, and manage to land my oil-smeared crate intact. Strike mission is a bust, one fellow pilot crashed and captured and another wounded but with an intact plane.

 

3rd Day; 1st mission: Looks like I'm in both sorties for today! Strike against Artillery position. I can't recall if it's the same one we were supposed to hit the day before, but it might have been. We sally forth with all 7 planes with our 500kg bombload again. while heading towards the target we hear another unit call out a contact with enemy fighters and listen to the ensuing dogfight. Soon I see the actual fight off to our left with them fighting below the cloud layer and us above it. Looks like it was a unit of I-16s versus a mix of 109s and some Macchis. It's far enough out commander has us keep on truckin' to the target. we swoop in, everybody drops their payload and we commence to strafe the crap out of 'em. I linger a bit cleaning up the target and leave nothing alive then bug out. while trying to catch up with the squadron, I noticed that a P-40 from my flight took out a Macchi on the way back. Must have been a straggler from the previous dogfight. I catch up and we land back at base. Looking at the Flight Log it looks like that fight between the Polikarpovs and the Messy-Macchis left each other blooded with 6 downed planes, 3 on each side, not counting the one downed by my squadmate.

 

3rd Day; second mission: Same mission, but different Artillery position. I note with glee that the previous Artillery position we hit no longer seems to be shown on the map. We roll out as before, only difference I hear nothing else from other units on the way to the target. No planes seen, roll in and bomb again although there seemed to be more targets at this position, so we only blow up and strafe about half of them before we hightail it out of there. We RTB with no problems and no other fights heard of on the radio.

 

Maybe I've just been lucky so far, but I think that I'm getting a lot of fairly dynamic results from just 4 missions, especially since 3 of them were the exact same type of mission. They may not have been completely action packed but I've felt like I was getting some realistic outcomes all around. I imagine I will see some pretty glitchy outcomes later on and I'm sure the campaign will need some tweaks. But this is the best semi-dynamic campaign I have played EVER. I would have to go back to Dynamix's Red Baron 3D to find something similar to this, and I think BoS is actually pulling away from that hallowed experience.

 

Can't wait for the WWI pack to roll in! :D

[=LD=Hethwill]

And returning to base just to find your own AF under attack... yep  No ammo...little fuel... and ack ack flashing all over the place.