WWII and Me. Lost in the Weeds

I just spent $2000 building a gaming rig. Finally I could play DCS at something close to ideal settings minus VR. Il2 Stalingrad now looks amazing and runs smooth always. So, in my High Computing Power sugar rush I bought Moscow and Kuban for just north of $100. I then put about 50 hours sandboxing and attempting unsuccessfully to have some semblance of a “Career”. I put another five or six hours in Multiplayer. In summation, I liked what I saw visually but didn’t really enjoy a MINUTE of the actual gameplay. Well, that isn’t entirely true. I did have one white-knuckled dogfight with a MiG-3. I was a kickstarter supporter of EDs early attempt at WWII. More sandboxing with the Mustang, 109 and 190. That was OK but entirely pointless without a War to play in. Now that war is coming (maybe). Or at least the landscape is coming. Will there be a war? Or will it be just me with my Tonka Spitfire and my Tonka Fortress playing alone in my sandbox? Or when other kids come over will we see Mirages and Mi8s mixing with P-47s? Just writing that makes me a little sad.

And may I digress here and say that DCS is as nearly in the sim weeds as I find myself in. There was some real greatness. The old GOW campaigns for instance. But mostly it’s been a fractured disappointment for me. So many disparate theaters and betas and planes with no thread to tie them together. Multiplayer is a mess of incompatible genres already. Now we are going to add 1944 Europe to the mix!? And honestly I have watched ED trend to an unrelenting fracturing of their products ever since the release of Black Shark. Even when they manage to combine two desktop icons they somehow manage to add a third. Not that I care that much about icons but they are a fair indicator of Ed’s design philosophy. After 10 years I have zero confindence that this trend will change.

IL2 has different problems. You have to be pretty smart with the Editor to sandbox IL2. Fortunately Rise of Flight put me on a solid footing. But I can’t find anything to do to make that sim approach even a fraction of the original IL2’s fun. The Multiplayer missions lack DCS’ messy mix of genres but share some of the same contrived gameplay (Take out a train, and airfield and a factory and your team wins the map). The original IL2 did the same but I guess I was more prepared to enjoy it then. This malaise isn’t new with me. I wrote a similar post at SimHQ a few years ago. I was surprised to find that many players didn’t really get my point. That’s why I say, “in the weeds”. I have grounlooped my sim career into a ditch and the rest of you seem to have no problem staying on the centerline. Where am I going wrong?

But that’s not even the real point of this thread. The real point is that I have no intention of buying anymore of this crap without out either a convincing war to play in or a multiplayer community as involved and motivated as the old IL2 (or to some extent, RoF). We have two rather expensive WWII sims that offer exquisitely modeled planes and beautiful landscapes and zero gameplay. I’m going back to Xbox. The most fun I have had all year was playing with Magnum and others in Battlefield 1. Props and jets mixing over a lonely landscape offers zero appeal.

No, I am not selling the Rig.

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I tell you what- let’s fight.
I’m crappy- you should win all the time, but it’s ok- I like to lose. :slight_smile:

Or let’s play wingmen. Or mixed.
Or what you want.

I’ve been there myself and what you need is someone to play with. But someone you know.
I’m Komemiute and I’m going to be your best Playma… erhm, dude.

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I was pretty much in the same boat last year. It all seemed to be kind of stale and boring. Then I got my Rift and it was like night and day. The same issues will still be there of course when it comes to campaigns and multi-player, but the experience is now so good that I just keep coming back for more. I was up until 2am this morning tooling around in the A10C.

If you want to rejuvenate your sim experience I can’t recommend it highly enough. They just dropped the price too :wink: .

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, had Strike Fighters 2 had MP co-op, it would have been an all time classic that would still be being played today. It is easy to use, easy to use mods, has pretty good graphics, and has a fair campaign that would only be better with a group of half a dozen other human players playing. “Going downtown” with other A-6s while F-4s circle overhead providing cover, F-105s doing SEAD…it would have been fantastic for those looking for a fun time without having to get a type rating. That SF2 didn’t have MP is one of the biggest tragedies of sim history…

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And to answer that question - for me personally, I’ve actually found that I haven’t had near enough time to either explore the content available for DCS World, or even scratch the surface of learning the modules I have (let alone the ones I don’t have). I rather enjoy working through the campaigns, which are of varying levels of quality. Currently I’m doing the A-10C Basic Qualifications campaign, and plan to do the Advanced one next. Even though it isn’t dynamic in nature, it is a progression, which is OK with me.

From what I understand, the Mirage 2000 has a really nice campaign as well, and I haven’t tried some of the other campaigns such as the A-10 Piercing Fury one (going to after I get my A-10C training done). The Mi-8 campaign was good. I’m not an A2A guy, so I don’t have a bunch of interest in the F-5 campaign or F-15 Red Flag ones.

It would be great to see some of the SP campaigns made MP capable. I haven’t flown some of the helo campaigs too.

All of that said - there has to be a good story to the campaigns to make SP (or MP) interesting. Some of the early DCS campaigns were basically “fly there, shoot that” and they didn’t have a ton of flavor. Now, with people like Ranger and @Baltic_Dragon creating some pretty cool, in-depth content, I think we are seeing more immersion. And with MBot making strides toward dynamics stuff - my dream of seeing a whole map, persistent state deployment or something is getting closer.

I’d love to see ED put a whole team on a dynamic campaign module - I think many of us would pay pretty heft sums of money for that. And I’m easy, I can do dynamics campaign lite like SF2 or EECH. Those were compelling enough for me. Falcon’s campaign was good…but I did always feel like a bit too small of a fish in that pond to tell you the truth. EECH - I felt like I was driving the campaign with my “excursions” during missions.

Any-who…back to your regularly scheduled programming…

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That plus air to air refueling and a slightly better radar simulation (nothing overboard, I just need notching to spoof SARH missiles).

The only reason I’ve stuck so firmly to DCS is the experiences I’ve had with friends. I surrounded myself with a group of people whose company I thoroughly enjoy. We make missions we want to fly, and we fly them. Simple as that. I could go on about my deep ambitions to be the best damned fighter jock to ever fast jet, make airedales shed singles tears with the beauty of my BFM, and bullseye a ground hog in a tornado at midnight with my bomb fu, all the while flying the most authentic flight anyone’s ever seen.

but that’s all flavor.

It comes down to DCS, for me at least, is about fun with friends. It’s been that way ever since I played @WreckingCrew’s Beslan mission on @Eno’s server back in the day.

I’m not exactly sure what you mean by, or rather what constitutes “war” for you as opposed to sandbox, but it seems like you’ve got a firm idea. My advice is be the change you seek. If you’ve got a scenario in your head, make it. Heck, if you need a server to run it on, shoot me a PM.

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+1

I spent many hours/days/months/years modding and flying the TW series. Such a sad ending, purely due to it being left incomplete.

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The best advice… Pick your M/P server carefully.

I’m very partial to the Tiger vs Fishbed server, as well as Open Conflict and 104th. The more “professional” flyers gravitate to those types where labels and easy helpers are not available. You still have the FC3 mix, so you have to be on your toes. The downside is that each server’s native TS channels are not used so not much in the way of communication. This is where finding a dedicated buddy/wingman is necessary.

Until the planesets begin to fill in the voids and match theaters, making due and using some imagination is important. And dont get discouraged by dying or some 12 year old lobbing 8 AIM-120s/R-27ERs at you. It happens…

Perhaps you shuold give the F-5E another go and try the Desert Tiger 76 campaign. I think it surpasses the SF2 campaign on every level. All losses of buildings, vehicles and aircraft are tracked and I think it does a pretty good job at putting packages together and planing routes. There is also plenty ground attacks, about 50/50 on the air-air/air-ground tasking. It starts of somewhat slow with some short range missions, primary to serve as sort of intro. But the campaign will eventually evolve into deeper, bigger and more complex strikes. I frequently had coordinated 14 aircraft strike packages tasked against SA-3 and SA-6 sites (these missions were some of the best DCS I ever played).

If you decide between Desert Tiger 76 and Desert Fishbed 76, take the F-5E one first. It is the master campaign of the two and offers more variety (Desert Fishbed 76 is an aircraft switch offspring project).

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That’s good advice. I also feel like I have the best time in DCS when I’ve invested something in a mission as opposed to just having dropped a lot of bombs. Some of my more memorable missions are ones where I have done the full startup, flown a good distance to the target, fired one or two shots, and survived to come home. I’m a bit of a planning and briefing nerd, so I always enjoy it when something comes together. I’m definitely not an Air Quake type player (those can be fun sometimes though) and prefer a good, lengthy briefing with well defined goals. At least, that is the way I prefer to play DCS World. Heck…sometimes I just get a thrill out of getting a bird started after not having flown it for awhile.

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Guilty as charged…! I have not tried that campaign. I’ll definitely bump it up to the top of my list of things to do.

What are the possibilities for your campaign engine with regards to helo ops such as the Gazelle or Black Shark? Can the techniques you use be used to build something similar for rotor craft? I have no idea how you do it…I think it’s magic!

Airquake is definitely what you make of it, and a big part of that is making your own structure out of chaos. I generally prefer more structured missions, but @Klarsnow and I have cleaned up multiple times just by running a tight two ship and using these strange things called tac-tics.

If you can find a wingy and fly a contract, the 104th and ACG can be oodles of fun. Same for Blueflag.

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I love the helos, especially the Huey and the Gazelle, but my DC Engine is not suited for them, as they operate by completely different principle than fixed wing aircraft. Basically they should be controlled like armor units instead, integrating into an extensive ground war simulation. My DCs do not include a ground war at all, instead concentrate purely on air campaigns (such as for example the Battle of Brittan, Linebacker or 90% of Desert Storm).

Check your 6, i’m in the ditch right behind you :stuck_out_tongue: You might not have noticed rolling past as at this point i’ve been there so long I’m like a car a redneck finds on his lawn when mowing.

I’ve just gotten tired of waiting for the things that got me excited about projects in the first place. In DCS the P-40 is still no where to be found, the F4U, well looks like that may finally be coming, but still some ways out I would imagine. The P-47 got bumped behind the Spit… I’m not complaining, just stating the fact that the things I were looking forward to in 2016 got bumped and I spent a good portion of 2015 waiting as well :smiley:

In CloD TF 5.0 got pushed off, then turned into DLC whenever it does arrive, but again, probably not actually soon as opposed to soon™

BoX can be nice with a large group, but flying Russian or German planes over flat land and snow meh, there is of course a P-40 there, but it is the absolute worst flying plane in the game :smiley: I’m holding out some hope on some of the Kuban stuff holding my interest and afterwards, if there is another expansion it will be the PTO but that won’t be until at least some point in 2018.

I have plenty of patience and will wait, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just keep plugging away at things that haven’t been doing it for me up till this point. I’ve supported a heck of a lot of stuff I wasn’t 100% interested in on the promise of future things I would be interested in. Those things still aren’t in sight though. Although, if we could get some VR going in RoF that’ll get me flying again in no time :smiley:

*not a rant, just rather a sigh of resignation to more and more waiting :smiley: *

SF2 with MP and VR would be the coolest sim experience ever.
Think about it… That relatively “light” graphics engine should do well in VR, I believe.

I wish TK would continue to evolve the SF series…

I’m in! Just name the Teamspeak.

What @near_blind said. I’ve found that the most rewarding combat sim experiences have been while flying either with a squad that you belong to, or with a group of guys/girls with whom you are comfortable with, and that they meet your expectations for the experience. Sometimes squad night turns into a dead bug bar game more than flying, but if your squad or group is well organized (notice that I didn’t use the word professional), there will be a palatable mix of simulated combat and good natured camaraderie.

Bf-109 pilot (relative beginner) reporting for MP duty!

I’m in the process of rebuilding my rig after the moving so… it might take a bit. Let’s say days. Not weeks.

Starting to feel myself getting into a slump in sims as well, part of why I’ve been super falconning like crazy the past week or two, looking for that immersion and suspension of disbelief that I can share with a buddy. I’m not worried about dcs or any of the others, I’ll launch them up again in the near future and the itch will be back. I’ve just definitely been bored as of late. If you want to get the most out of dcs then I recommend hopping on to the mudspike ts in the evenings. Nb has a capable server, and if I’m about I’ll talk tactics and teach bfm/ bvr tactics/ tactical formation/ whatever you want that i can, NBs not too bad at this stuff either :stuck_out_tongue:
From there you can start doing some really fun things with just a few people. 2v2 cam fights are a blast, or setting up a scenario with one side attacking something and the other defending, there are ways to make it realistic and pressured and realistic even with just a 2v2 or so.

Again the only reason I’ve played dcs or any flight sim this long is multiplayer, and having a few like minded individuals to fly with.

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