Issue with Career Mode Free Hunt Mission

[=RS=goldeneye7700]

Hello,

 

I am currently playing a Career Mission "FreeHunt" in which we (myself and my wing leader) have flown to waypoint 3 and have been circling behind enemy lines for 20 real life minutes of flight. I find  this to be extremely boring from a gameplay standpoint and from a realism standpoint, it is frankly not realistic. I do not usually have a lot of time to play games in the run of a week, and to waste so much time on a mission that is ill-thought out as this one is wholly disappointing. I would like to suggest removing this mission during the next update until such a time it could be reprogrammed to at the very least make it more realistic. 

-goldeneye7700

[Feathered_IV]

Free Hunt is more like a QMB skirmish, just with longer flight times.  There is typically a group of fighters waiting to spawn at the "action-point" and no actual hunting to do in the otherwise uninhabited airspace. 

 

Modders who are familiar with the FMB might be able to modify the .group files for this and other missions to provide a more interesting experience.  These are stored in the .GTP packets and can be extracted for use in mods-on mode.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Feathered_IV

[Elem]

Free Hunt is just that! Nothing is forcing you to fly in circles for 20 mins. Just do your own thing.

[Feathered_IV]

Elem, I think what he means is aside from the single skirmish at the obligatory third waypoint, there is nothing programmed into the mission for you to hunt. 

[[DNKN]GoNuts4Donuts17]

I would rather not see Free Hunt removed as I've found there to be a varying amount of activity. Of the three I've done they've yielded decent results. 

 

My first one the flight leader and I bounced a formation of IL2's with I-16's as escorts within 10 minutes. The second we got bounced by MiG 3's from the clouds within a minute of crossing the front lines, and the third yielded some shot down MiG's and destroyed AAA.

 

Could perhaps the option for the density of the front-line activity have something to do with how often or quickly enemies appear and how many? (Those were not from this career mind you. That one I was sadly shot down after 5 months and 174 kills lol)

Edited August 19, 2019 by CHSims

[Sublime]

This is something the game could use so bad and perhaps try to take a page from the other sim - the other sim has random civvie traffic of cars etc driving around.  They could do way less and even in just the "bubble" at least have a. Random column or 2 of trucks, and trains.  Imagine if *just* random trains spawned going around for all missikns or just free hunts. 

That and random unaffiliated with tge mission flights.

In my free hunts I have to admit though there usually is more than just the enemy fighters. I rarely seem tonfind them but when I look at the AAR and map I usually see a friendly ground attack squadrons hitting stuff nearby, or enemy groynd attack. Usually to complemebt the extra flight is a mirror flight on the other side.  Its surprisingly hard to notice a couple planes off the track doing their thing sometimes

Things like this would go soo far thoufh. For example imagine if in career mode after an part in thw zstalingrad campaignt that a couple of 3 ships of ju52s would be flying from out of map or furthest west to pitomnik then turning arohnd taking off back. Just to be there.  If you play Russia you can stumble on them or go after them as Luft you may see them being attacked etc.

Just a thouggt.

[Soilworker]

6 hours ago, Elem said:

Free Hunt is just that! Nothing is forcing you to fly in circles for 20 mins. Just do your own thing.

 

That's not true unless you're the flight leader. I mean you can ditch hom and go home but it's super immersion breaking. 

[LukeFF]

9 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

Aside from the single skirmish at the obligatory third waypoint, there is nothing programmed into the mission for you to hunt. 

 

There is more than that. 

Edited August 19, 2019 by LukeFF

[Sybreed]

Hmm, I reckon you could just patrol the front line and you'll be sure to see some activity. In my few free hunt missions I did, we found planes near no waypoints at all.

[Feathered_IV]

After the initial action at the third waypoint, I have flown a rectangular grid pattern to systematically search for other activity over a wide area.   At regular intervals I would hit the external enemy view button to make sure I didn’t miss anything.  On these occasions after about an hour of patrolling behind the lines I did not find any activity beyond the remaining ground units the mission spawned with.  The ideal (for me) would be to encounter a lone Ju-52, a high flying ace spawning in over my head, a scrambling enemy fighter, or an unescorted recon aircraft etc. etc. Small encounters, with greater frequency.   I don’t necessarily need Great Battles.  Especially when the game engine struggles to represent even a relatively quiet day at the front.  A much higher likelihood of smaller vignette encounters across the map would go a long way to giving the illusion of an engaging, populated world.   

[Brano]

The question is: do you want to fly in realistic environment as a fighter pilot, or you just want every mission to be fully-blown aerial battle?

Top scoring soviet ace, I.N.Kozhedub , flew 330 combat missions, engaged in 120 aerial combats and shot down 62 enemy airplanes. Statistics for dumb tells me about average of 1 aerial victory per 5,3 combat missions.

Make your own conclusions.

[unreasonable]

I like it that sometimes nothing happens. Quite often you get home after a patrol to be attacked while landing: which is irritating in that the AI cannot defend itself while in the landing pattern, but it does mean that suspense is maintained. Missions without any kind of enemy contact are fairly rare in my experience.

 

For people who want to have a battle of some kind every mission, go for scripted campaigns, or PWCG with the settings cranked up to maximum. While there are still improvements in the career I would like to see, such as more sensible courses for bomber formations, the overall level of activity seems to me to be a good comprise.

[PatrickAWlson]

32 minutes ago, Brano said:

The question is: do you want to fly in realistic environment as a fighter pilot, or you just want every mission to be fully-blown aerial battle?

Top scoring soviet ace, I.N.Kozhedub , flew 330 combat missions, engaged in 120 aerial combats and shot down 62 enemy airplanes. Statistics for dumb tells me about average of 1 aerial victory per 5,3 combat missions.

Make your own conclusions.

 

For fighter missions I strive for mostly contact but not always, which is why I limit things to one mission per day.  More contact for Germans and a bit less for Russians.  I let the "in between" represent sorties with no contact.  I want to have fun in my limited time, not achieve perfect realism.  I want the fun to be close enough to not be jarred by the silliness of the situation, but I am not looking for a perfect depiction of air combat on the eastern front.

 

With the AI still not extremely talented and suicidally courageous it is very, very easy to rack up kills.  IMHO the first part (not extremely talented) is just fine to represent the average WWII pilot.  The "suicidally courageous" part is not.  Planes should be bugging out way more often.  If that could be made to happen it would be a major boost to immersion.

 

An example from the German side: Hartmann flew 1500 sorties.  He made contact with the enemy over 700 times.  He is credited with 352 victories.  Slightly less than 1 victory every 4 sorties and every 2 combats.  As noted earlier a PWCG mission (and probably a career mode mission as well) is more likely to represent a combat encounter than a sortie.  In my campaign I think that I have more kills than sorties.  If the AI tried to save itself with greater conviction I would have significantly less.

 

P.S.  This is not an AI whine.  The 1C AI will at least make some attempt to save itself, which many flight sims do not.  I just think it could be a lot more.  If my plane was leaking glycol I would make an evasive maneuver and bug.  

 

[sevenless]

I´ve flown many of these missions as flight leader and had never a mission without encountering enemy planes. I guess the problem here might be that the OP flew as a wingman and was dependant on the flightleader AI.

 

36 minutes ago, PatrickAWlson said:

In my campaign I think that I have more kills than sorties.

 

I can second that. I guess I have an average of 2 kills per sortie. However I like it that way. I think modelling the boredom of real world fighter experience would not do this game any good and would reduce the fun factor. It is a game after all and when in doubt a design decision should always be made in favour of the game aspect vs. the realism aspect.

Edited August 20, 2019 by sevenless

[Feathered_IV]

2 hours ago, Brano said:

The question is: do you want to fly in realistic environment as a fighter pilot, or you just want every mission to be fully-blown aerial battle?

Top scoring soviet ace, I.N.Kozhedub , flew 330 combat missions, engaged in 120 aerial combats and shot down 62 enemy airplanes. Statistics for dumb tells me about average of 1 aerial victory per 5,3 combat missions.

Make your own conclusions.

 

You must be in a permanent sense of elation as you fly over that empty map

[Lusekofte]

I hot enough frustrating hours in mp, and came to the conclution that flying a underdog is fun if you survive a dangerous mission. 

If you survive them all they would not be dangerous. 

I know I had some rage outburst here because of the frustration of not surviving. 

Point is, I think we all relate to realism and history as it is written. We know only about action. That said I like a balance. 

[Brano]

2 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

 

You must be in a permanent sense of elation as you fly over that empty map

I have to google that word... elation. Not in my limited english vocabulary ?

[US63_SpadLivesMatter]

I set career speed to rapid, so that all the non-contact missions happen in the "background".

My problem atm is that the waypoints for the intercept missions stopped working properly at some point.