Career Levels

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

Right now there are three levels in the career mode: Difficult, Moderate and Easy. I am trying to move from one to the next one but the step is too big. The Step below is getting way too easy and no challenge at all anymore, but the next step is frustrating. May I suggest having 5 levels: Expert, Difficult, Average, Moderate and Easy?

What does the community think?

 

Edited June 16, 2018 by PA_Spartan-

[LukeFF]

IMO there should be 4 different options - Easy, Moderate, Difficult, and Historical. The last one would set pilot AI levels to reflect the real-world situation. Right now, when choosing a particular difficulty level, ALL pilots, be they friendly or enemy, use the same skill level (e.g., on Hard difficulty, all enemy pilots are Ace, etc).

[Legioneod]

2 hours ago, LukeFF said:

IMO there should be 4 different options - Easy, Moderate, Difficult, and Historical. The last one would set pilot AI levels to reflect the real-world situation. Right now, when choosing a particular difficulty level, ALL pilots, be they friendly or enemy, use the same skill level (e.g., on Hard difficulty, all enemy pilots are Ace, etc).

So on lower difficulties you don't run into any aces? I thought the higher difficulties made it more likely to run into an ace. The higher difficulties should generate more aces but it should still be a mixed bag imo, everyone shouldn't be an ace that just makes it kinda boring.

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

5 hours ago, LukeFF said:

IMO there should be 4 different options - Easy, Moderate, Difficult, and Historical. The last one would set pilot AI levels to reflect the real-world situation. Right now, when choosing a particular difficulty level, ALL pilots, be they friendly or enemy, use the same skill level (e.g., on Hard difficulty, all enemy pilots are Ace, etc).

 

The Historical option is a great idea, especially in a career mode. The level of the Soviet pilots increasing throughout the war and the German declining but retaining the shrinking Experten group.

[yeikov]

It'd be great too if the pilot level scaled with rank within every squad. They could have an average level based on the selected difficulty and apply +/-1 to highest (e.g. captains and mayors) / lowest (e.g. junior lt.) ranks. Apart from the variety in difficulty, it would also make neighbour planes fly and fight a bit differently, giving a better impression during engagements.

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

1 hour ago, yeikov said:

It'd be great too if the pilot level scaled with rank within every squad. They could have an average level based on the selected difficulty and apply +/-1 to highest (e.g. captains and mayors) / lowest (e.g. junior lt.) ranks. Apart from the variety in difficulty, it would also make neighbour planes fly and fight a bit differently, giving a better impression during engagements.

 

This is another excellent idea. I really like it! 

[Yogiflight]

8 hours ago, LukeFF said:

The last one would set pilot AI levels to reflect the real-world situation. Right now, when choosing a particular difficulty level, ALL pilots, be they friendly or enemy, use the same skill level (e.g., on Hard difficulty, all enemy pilots are Ace, etc).

 

1 hour ago, yeikov said:

t'd be great too if the pilot level scaled with rank within every squad. They could have an average level based on the selected difficulty and apply +/-1 to highest (e.g. captains and mayors) / lowest (e.g. junior lt.) ranks. Apart from the variety in difficulty, it would also make neighbour planes fly and fight a bit differently, giving a better impression during engagements.

One of the things that are much better in PWCG, where the player's flight has skill levels depending on the rank, while the skill level for the pilots of AI flights is generated randomly. Currently @PatrickAWlson is working on the new version 4.0, where the AI squadrons are tracked in the same way as the player's squadron.

[JonRedcorn]

3 hours ago, Yogiflight said:

 

One of the things that are much better in PWCG, where the player's flight has skill levels depending on the rank, while the skill level for the pilots of AI flights is generated randomly. Currently @PatrickAWlson is working on the new version 4.0, where the AI squadrons are tracked in the same way as the player's squadron.

I'd really love to fly this mod but with VR it's just super inconvenient to have to take my headset on and off everytime I finish a mission. I wear glasses so that just makes it even more difficult. The in game career mode works all in game without ever having to remove the headset. Wish I wasn't blind or had a good set of contacts that didn't bother my eyes. From what I can tell the PWCG generator has a much better variety than the stock career mode.

Edited June 17, 2018 by grimm862

[Yogiflight]

5 minutes ago, grimm862 said:

From what I can tell the PWCG generator has a much better variety than the stock career mode.

Edited 3 minutes ago by grimm862

Yes, absolutely you can change several things in PWCG, like cruising speed of the aircrafts, weapon loadout, flight altitude, waypoints, and so on. So you can customize your complete career and the single missions in different ways.

9 minutes ago, grimm862 said:

I'd really love to fly this mod but with VR it's just super inconvenient to have to take my headset on and off everytime I finish a mission. I wear glasses so that just makes it even more difficult. The in game career mode works all in game without ever having to remove the headset. Wish I wasn't blind or had a good set of contacts that didn't bother my eyes.

Yes that is of course an issue. IIRC Jason had planned to include PWCG into the game with the release of BOK, but unfortunately you still have to Alt+Tab between them. BTW I woudn't recommend using lenses for playing, it dries up your eyes. I wear lenses, but I would never use them for playing.

[LukeFF]

21 hours ago, Legioneod said:

So on lower difficulties you don't run into any aces? I thought the higher difficulties made it more likely to run into an ace.

 

Right now it's like this:

• Easy: all friendlies Ace, all enemies Rookie
• Moderate: all friendlies Veteran, all enemies Regular
• Hard: all friendlies Normal, all enemies Veteran

[Legioneod]

2 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

Right now it's like this:

• Easy: all friendlies Ace, all enemies Rookie
• Moderate: all friendlies Veteran, all enemies Regular
• Hard: all friendlies Normal, all enemies Veteran

That kinda sucks. I was hoping that it would be more of a mixed bag with more veterans the higher difficulty you go but you'd still see all the other ranks as well.

[=gRiJ=Roman-]

4 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

Right now it's like this:

• Easy: all friendlies Ace, all enemies Rookie
• Moderate: all friendlies Veteran, all enemies Regular
• Hard: all friendlies Normal, all enemies Veteran

 

 

 

I don´t like it. It is too simple. It was fine to start the Career Mode Project but it has to evolve.

In short, there were three good ideas in here so far:

1. Historical.

2. The level according to rank.

3. Five levels: Expert, Difficult, Average, Moderate and Easy.

4. Some kind of random factor to have mixed levels.

 

IMHO I love all these three ideas! Combining all these ideas somehow would be perfect!

Edited June 18, 2018 by PA_Spartan-

[Cpt_Cool]

Does the difficulty affect the pilot skill within your unit?

 

I know in ROF there were different skill levels within your unit. I remember we got a hotshot transfer in who started impressively racking up kills relative to his rank. It was cool going on a mission knowing he was a cut above.

 

So far, nobody sticks out so obviously in my experience with the BOX career.

 

BTW, I don't like the idea of pilot level being directly proportional to rank very much. I imagine in real life there were rookies with natural talent, and on the flip side, higher ranked pilots who were maybe not the best pilots (as it would relate to AI skill setting). I think it makes for a more enjoyable career to identify the better pilots in your squadron by flying with them rather than being given the answer by their rank. Of course i would hope it is possible to skew the distribution to favor the more experienced pilots.

[RedKestrel]

11 hours ago, LukeFF said:

 

Right now it's like this:

• Easy: all friendlies Ace, all enemies Rookie
• Moderate: all friendlies Veteran, all enemies Regular
• Hard: all friendlies Normal, all enemies Veteran

Huh. There's been a few times I could have sworn the enemy were higher level than normal...I ran into a pair of Bf-109F2s on a column attack mission that obliterated my entire squad and myself - 6 MiG-3's in all - without breaking a sweat. Probably more a result of initial advantage than anything else, I suppose, the MiG isn't the best fighter on the deck. 

So there's no career difficulty setting that results in enemy aces? 

[Godspeed]

I want Historical Option nothing else.

[BB5000]

Rank = skill  would not be Historical, there were some NCO’s in the Luftwaffe with a lot of kills and Knights Cross for example..

[IckyATLAS]

We must try not to make it too complicated. Just an additional level "Historical" would be perfect. In that level squadrons would have pilots of mixed level generated at random. It should not be complicated to add that.

 

[Feathered_IV]

Often I take the same three guys with me on every mission.  It would be a welcome layer of complexity if having a pilot continually on the flight roster made them rate as fatigued and their skill level dropped accordingly.

[Schmehl]

On ‎6‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 2:38 AM, IckyATLAS said:

We must try not to make it too complicated. Just an additional level "Historical" would be perfect. In that level squadrons would have pilots of mixed level generated at random. It should not be complicated to add that.

 

I totally agree.  I like to play as realistically as possible, and the Historical idea that would solve the 1 thing that seems off. 

[unreasonable]

Is there any way to extract a mission from the career and look at it in the editor?

[LukeFF]

5 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

Is there any way to extract a mission from the career and look at it in the editor?

 

/data/missions, right after the mission is generated.

[unreasonable]

Well I think you may be out of date then LukeFF,  perhaps there has been some development.   Just loaded a mission from my current career - set on Easy - with me and two other German planes in the flight: one has his AI set on Low, the other on High, so there is certainly some variation in there although I do not know if this only applies to the player's flight. I had noticed one particular I-16 doing some pretty cool stuff earlier, so I was surprised to see that you said they were all the same depending on difficulty level. 

 

Anyway I choose to believe that there will be the occasional good enemy AI out there: I need to get my excuses in early.   

[LukeFF]

48 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

Well I think you may be out of date then LukeFF,  perhaps there has been some development.   Just loaded a mission from my current career - set on Easy - with me and two other German planes in the flight: one has his AI set on Low, the other on High, so there is certainly some variation in there although I do not know if this only applies to the player's flight. I had noticed one particular I-16 doing some pretty cool stuff earlier, so I was surprised to see that you said they were all the same depending on difficulty level. 

 

Not out of date at all: I always was referring to AI planes outside of the player's unit.