DCS: The Border Campaign

I think the default campaign is better. But it is something else to do. At $5 (the sale price), I was pretty happy with the purchase. At $10, I would still be OK with it, but probably wish I’d paid $5. LOL

Right. I think part of the problem is that the English localization is partial. I feel like I am missing some key information. And don’t get me wrong, its not bad. For $10, this was a great way to learn one of the most iconic flying machines in history. I’ll relate a couple of niggling frustrations: 1) We have a navigator who is more than happy to give an initial heading and distance–but who seems obliged to keep his trap shut as we fly over the Georgian border to our certain harm. The triggering should be sophisticated enough so that he at least provides a little warning (as in, “Dude, aren’t we uncomfortably close to the border!”). Instead, 30 minutes of flying abruptly ends with a frame freeze and failure message. Another representative frustration is where we are tasked with landing next to a house and quickly scrambled to destroy it. (You will appreciate this spoiler). If you are inside 500 meters when you hit it with rockets your helicopter blows up. No explanation other than boom. Only later after rerunning the mission did I discover that there was an ammo cache in the joint and it is the secondary explosion that takes us out as collateral. (Shoot from afar). A little subtle hint like “we suspect that the bad-guys might be storing explosives here” would have saved a pointless repeat. So yeah, a little testing and refinement would have made the experience more polished and less sterile and haphazard.

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Those are all great points, you should suggest those edits on the ED page. Stuff like this is good feedback. I agree that more info the better, I think when you are making a mission you forget that people playing it doesnt have all the knowledge the builder has.

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Good ideas, @smokinhole ; also, congrats on your cakeday!

@smokinhole 500 meters is already a tad close to fire anything from the Mi-8 anyway, I think you are to break the run earlier!

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True. But that doesn’t normally kill you (in the game at least).

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Aaah, fair point. Consider it shrapnel damage :wink:

LOL…I was just scrambling to get away from that house. I ended up flying up the valley, then coming back around to destroy it with rockets I think - or did I order the Mi-24s to destroy it (?) (I’ll have to check my screens). Whatever the case, I wasn’t close enough to get “killt”…

Have you tried any of this in VR @BeachAV8R?

I’m thinking I might try the A10C Red Flag in VR, but wondering if I’ll need something to see PDFs etc. I should probably set up the kneeboard materials, as the kneeboard works great in VR.

I haven’t - but not because I haven’t wanted to, but mostly because I can’t capture really good screens to go along with articles :smile:

The A-10C in Red Flag might be pretty daunting - that campaign is fairly hard…well, maybe not for someone more proficient. I’m thinking about giving Operation Piercing Fury a whirl (for the A-10C) - I picked that up during the last sale along with some of the BFT training ones.

Are there any other Nevada map campaigns other than the A-10C and F-15C ones?

The FC3 campaigns might be worth a shot too, I found the A-10A campaign to be quite fun!

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I’m really hoping to get an Su-33 with the PFM or AFM or whatever it is called and a new campaign for that at some point. One with A2A and A2G…

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Oooh thar’be sea dragons here :wink:

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…and…to be honest, I would really like a low intensity conflict type of thing for the C-101CC (?) whenever we get that. Something against guerillas or something like that. Oh…this video is from nearly a year ago…I want sooooo bad!

I will so be all over that plane when it’s fully released with a campaign!

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@BeachAV8R, what would you say are the top 5 skills you need to that campaign?

  1. General Helicopter handling;
  2. Doppler (and general) navigation w/ radios;
  3. Weapons;
  4. Sling Loading;

ie: What would these be the skills you would recommend practicing before playing.

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All of em Fridge. The Mi-8 is a fantastic nimble machine once you get to feel it’s edge! But it is massive, and overpowered. So, light but determined control is very important.

The Doppler system is explained on this very website but the glorious @EinsteinEP.

The weapons… Well, I would recommend getting a feel for activating them and how to achieve the firing parameters. Flying by the book when doing weapon employment is very important.

Sling loading is easy, but do remember that slowing down ought to be done slowly, and the weight change when the cable is tensioned is something you will feel.

TL:DR, JUST FLYYYYYYY

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I think you have it in order - also (perhaps under General Helicopter) would be the cold start if you are so inclined to not use the LeftWin+Home technique. Technically, you could probably even fly the whole campaign using the F10 map for reference and/or labels, so that would eliminate the need for the Doppler, but the Doppler is so much fun to use (and actually quite easy), that would be a shame to eliminate that.

With regards to weapons - you don’t use them much, and you can get away with just learning the rockets or the gun pods, but it is important to know all the switches you have to throw to get them to be active and armed.

Sling loading is awesome fun in my opinion.

Your biggest enemy in this campaign is impatience. Impatience killed me multiple times when I was trying to “hurry” up a landing or approach and ended up getting sloppy and entering VRS. This is extremely frustrating if you are thirty or forty minutes into a mission and you crash because you couldn’t take the extra couple of minutes to properly set up for your landing.

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BOOOO

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