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baltic_dragon

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Thanks guys. There will be a series of campaigns in the PG with the storyline described in the Red Flag - but for the moment M-2000C is not in the first line to be served, I think the Harrier will be no 1 (Raven One for F-18 doesn't count, as it has a different story). But I will return to Mirage at some point... unless I go for the Gazelle...

Hi, please do the Harrier first, I bet it would be fun...

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]| ARMA 3 | DCS MODULES : M2000C | HUEY | A10C | F/A 18 C | Ka-50 | Hawk T1A | Yak 52 | AV-8B | Su 27 | F15C | Persian Gulf | NTTR | Viper( loading:):):) )

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  • 2 months later...

Note of thanks to Baltic Dragon for creating this campaign and the tutorials. Really enjoyed them and the learning pace for a noob was just right. Voice acting, especially Berger was great too!

 

Well Done and thanks again

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  • 1 month later...

This campaign is so well crafted with so many small details that make all the immersion so great! One example that I saw this morning in Mission 12: while prepping my Mirage in the shelter with open doors (nice morning sky ahead), I get the numerous radio message all the while I see FANG (F-117s) taxiing in front of me... a couple minutes later, I see CLAW (Tornadoes) that I am supposed to protect later exit their shelters right in front of me and start taxiing, while in the distance I see both F-117s in their initial climb after takeoff..

 

That timing and geometry of sight must have taken a lot of trial and error and a lot of thinking to just get it right like that and it changes the whole immersion factor! Fantastic!

 

The whole process from the training missions to the campaign and its progression is so well done that we learn the Mirage really gradually and efficiently! Very pedagogical... and above all a lot of FUN!!!! Thanks Baltic Dragon and Merry Xmas!

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[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

In DCS I fly jets with thousands of pounds of thrust...

In real life I fly a humble Cessna Hawx XP II with 210 HP :D

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  • 2 months later...

The base campaign of the M2K is just... Wow. Previously I had just finished the F15 campaign, from Vaziani as well, and found it completely dull. Although this one is in the same region and the same geopolitical setting, it's a different experience. It is alive, well scripted, we have excellent voice acting and I learned something new about the jet every sortie - I think this is a great way to make people interested in the plane, step by step. I think other third-party devs should also think about adding campaigns with this level of quality to their modules.

 

And that final scene when returning to Vaziani in M13, once all is done... "We are on your 4'o'clock" says the F/A-18 guy. Sure, I thought, looking up high over my shoulder as I was pretty sure they wouldn't be near me. The shock, and pleasure, to see them actually flying in formation with me! My best moment in a DCS campaign so far, didn't think that was possible with IAs.

 

Hats off Baltic_Dragon. I'll be looking to buy a lot more of your DLC campaigns, not just to encourage you, but also because I am sure they will be entertaining as hell.

 

Oh, and please, continue the Coup d'Etat campaign. It is great but way too short! :)

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  • 3 months later...

I achieved the Caucasus and the SoH campaigns. Nice job !

Despite some bugs (such as this ou this), I lived these as an outstanding experience.

For the Caucasus campaign, I particularly appreciated the increasing difficulty of the missions well balanced and, as Qiou87 said, the final scene of the M13 really intense.

The SoH campaign is too short ! I hope a sequel !

Now, I'm polishing my M-2000 before the Red Flag campaign ...

images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcS0mArXNyUMIr5-NFzFmhcUSj1LCdyGxhtR2w&usqp=CAU

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  • 3 weeks later...

(waiting for the today DCS update ...)

 

No matter the order, all these projects sound good !

For Raven One, I didn't know but I started to read the novel.

For the Harrier, I have a special affection because my very first "simulator" was "Jump Jet" in 1985 on Amstrad CPC (click on the jacket below and look carefully at the screenshots !). Since that, I'm totally fond of the Harrier !

JumpJetCover.thumb.jpg.ec50ab3df350dba4ad1cbc3ffd171e48.jpg

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  • 4 months later...

Playing bundled campaign and love it. 🤩 But I have a few " issues" with it. I'm on the latest stable steam version. This, issues first appeared in traitor mission, when they fled in L-39. Well, I shot down A-10c (was tagged as enemy - red color) and completed mission 100% (tried three times...). Then last night in mission 10. Planes should be L-39 (as I reported back) but they are actually A-10c again... Is there something wrong with my DCS installation?

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52 minutes ago, Treker said:

 Is there something wrong with my DCS installation?

Perhaps.

 

In you Steam Library >

• right click on DCS World >

• select Properties > Local Files

• Verify integrity of game files

 

Steam will check and replace any corrupt files it finds.


Edited by Ramsay

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  • 2 weeks later...

Great job Baltic Dragon on this M2000 campaign.  Perfect learning pace, after the training missions, and just the right level of difficulty. Immersive storyline and great voice acting really add to it. Really well done.

M2000 is my 'learning' plane on DCS (still a newbie) and this campaign has hooked me to this Sim.

 

Merry Xmas to all

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i9 14900K / 64GB / RTX 4090 / Varjo Aero / Winwing Orion2 + F15EX / Virpil Wrbrd + Alpha Stick + ACE pedals

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  • 4 weeks later...

Sorry to be the downer here. The quality of the writing, voiceovers, and content all seems to be really high. But I'm getting seriously soured to the campaign.

 

I've gotten up to mission 4. So far EVERY mission has been a headache of  things not triggering. Especially around startup. Sometimes because of what seems like bugs, sometimes because of poorly designed triggers.

 

I understand that ED sometimes makes breaking changes.

 

But the big issue that seems to come up over and over is that the campaign seems to always assume a perfect happy path. There is little to no allowance for mistakes, misunderstandings, miscommunication, or player confusion. Players are expected to act in PRECISELY a single way or they will need to restart the mission. 

 

It gets to the point where before any given mission you have to check online to see what quirks and expectations any given mission might have. 

 

The whole experience would be improved a LOT if there was some assumption of players not following the happy path. If the players haven't passed a trigger box or done a certain action after a certain amoutn of time they could be reminded or given more specific instructions.

 

Linked to this is that you really don't KNOW when you're off the rails. Your wingman might not have said anything for 5-10m. Is that because you made a mistake? Or is it because you're off the rails and have broken the mission? Who knows. Guess you're going to have to just keep flying for another 5-10 minutes. If they say something, yay. If not, whelp, it's time to start the mission over. Again. Even though you're now 30+ minutes into it, and have no idea what you did to mess things up.

 

Which makes me think of something else: fail conditions. Let me know if I've failed or I'm off the rails! Or if I've NOT failed. A 5-10m flight between waypoints with NO interaction is VERY disconcerting when I don't know if I'm still on the rails.

 

So, yeah. That's just my thoughts on things. Again, the quality of the experience when working as intended is excellent. But the tight expectations of player actions seem very problematic. And some of the bugs are just experience breaking. I had to give up and mission 3 because it was so inconsistent.

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Hey! Thanks for your feedback!

 

Unfortunately, there is no way to get a good campaign with an assumption that player is not following orders - it  just can't be done due to how trigger system works. 

 

The best way to be on track with the campaign is to follow the flight plan (yes, many events are triggers by player being in a certain spot, there is really no way around it either) and have correct radio discipline. I've checked several bug reports recently and all of them were due to user errors, and not broken triggers. 

 

Now I understand perfectly what you are saying - and I wish there was a way to predict different things player could do, but that would take a lot of guessing. So far the campaign had very positive reviews and really a lot of them. Sure, things got broken by ED (or updates to M-2000C), then got fixed. It is possible not all of them - for instance one new thing to me is the fact that without engine on, you need to have your ground power connected for the radios to work. But as far as I know triggers work as expected - if player is doing what is expected of him. Which is a way it would work in real Air Force - if you had a flight plan, you'd be expected to follow it. 

 

Still, if you encounter specific problem, let me know - I'll try to fix them as soon as possible! 

ce535d_9d347b62819c4372b3c485a4f95d2004~mv2.png
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In some respect, the 'trigger risk' creates the stress for the player to make sure he follows the plan very strickly and does not mess up.  Can add to the atmosphere and make it more 'real' as opposed to 'game style'.   Being glass half full here 🙂

 

i9 14900K / 64GB / RTX 4090 / Varjo Aero / Winwing Orion2 + F15EX / Virpil Wrbrd + Alpha Stick + ACE pedals

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 1/18/2021 at 6:43 PM, riplikash said:

Sorry to be the downer here. The quality of the writing, voiceovers, and content all seems to be really high. But I'm getting seriously soured to the campaign.

 

I've gotten up to mission 4. So far EVERY mission has been a headache of  things not triggering. Especially around startup. Sometimes because of what seems like bugs, sometimes because of poorly designed triggers.

 

I understand that ED sometimes makes breaking changes.

 

But the big issue that seems to come up over and over is that the campaign seems to always assume a perfect happy path. There is little to no allowance for mistakes, misunderstandings, miscommunication, or player confusion. Players are expected to act in PRECISELY a single way or they will need to restart the mission. 

 

It gets to the point where before any given mission you have to check online to see what quirks and expectations any given mission might have. 

 

The whole experience would be improved a LOT if there was some assumption of players not following the happy path. If the players haven't passed a trigger box or done a certain action after a certain amoutn of time they could be reminded or given more specific instructions.

 

Linked to this is that you really don't KNOW when you're off the rails. Your wingman might not have said anything for 5-10m. Is that because you made a mistake? Or is it because you're off the rails and have broken the mission? Who knows. Guess you're going to have to just keep flying for another 5-10 minutes. If they say something, yay. If not, whelp, it's time to start the mission over. Again. Even though you're now 30+ minutes into it, and have no idea what you did to mess things up.

 

Which makes me think of something else: fail conditions. Let me know if I've failed or I'm off the rails! Or if I've NOT failed. A 5-10m flight between waypoints with NO interaction is VERY disconcerting when I don't know if I'm still on the rails.

 

So, yeah. That's just my thoughts on things. Again, the quality of the experience when working as intended is excellent. But the tight expectations of player actions seem very problematic. And some of the bugs are just experience breaking. I had to give up and mission 3 because it was so inconsistent.

 

I was going to write some feedback myself & saw that riplikash has essentially summarised my feelings about the campaign so far.

 

This is the first DCS campaign that I am playing through (recently acquired the M2000C), so I have no frame of reference for quality, polish or robustness of other campaigns for DCS.

 

So far, I love

  • The atmosphere
  • The context
  • The radio chatter & personality/stories of the various characters
  • The build up of the campaign is great (just completed mission 3) & I am looking forward to playing through the entirety of the campaign.

That being said, and similarly to what riplikash posted above, I am playing through it on tip-toes, not because the missions are hard but because the missions/game seems so easy to break & it can be a while before you realise it is completely borked. In total :

  • I had to restart the first mission 5 times due to radio issues & scripts not triggering until I finally figured out that the frequencies in the kneeboard didn't match with those in the briefing
  • I restarted mission 2 three times because a script didn't trigger, because I didn't realise I was actually meant to deviate from the mission and finally because I couldn't actually spot the target.
  • I restarted mission 3 three times because I was on the wrong frequency when triggering the script to taxi and that broke the mission, and subsequently because the Chevy 1-1 wouldn't taxi ahead as per the briefing (turns out, I was the one who had to take the lead and take off first, which contradicts the briefing).

 

Essentially for what could have been 3 hours of perfect immersion, I have spent about 5 hours redoing some missions and having to play through them obsessing over 'triggers' and 'scripts' rather than the actual mission/story for fear of breaking anything, constantly anxious that a script may or may not be triggering until the very end of a mission. The discrepancies between the dialogue, briefing notes and kneeboard, and the occasional bug further exacerbates what otherwise feels like a great campaign. I am staying strong and pushing through the frustrations of having to replay what should be fairly mundane missions but I am secretly hoping this on-rails & trigger-senstive nature of the campaign becomes less of an issue later down the line.

 

I realise DCS is a simulator but in the context of campaigns & due to how rigid the script/trigger system can be for anything but the simplest of missions, I feel like there should be more feedback (even if it is a bit 'gamey') for the player, in the form of a 'F10' list of completed/pending objectives just so that the player can be at ease that he/she has/hasn't been completed yet just to put him/her at ease that the mission is still ticking along as it should. Similarly, a recap/repeat of the last instruction would be extremely useful : I've had instances where I was listening to some dialogue, absorbing, then expecting a prompt afterwards only to forget what the instructions were and not being able to recall them.

 

I love that the campaign strives to be realistic but there is a rift between what the mission expects you to know and as the seasoned pilot in the US airforce you portray and the actual average skill / knowledge of the player who probably isn't flying fighter jets for a career & will need hand-holding a bit more.


Edited by Althar93
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  • 1 month later...
On 2/23/2021 at 2:39 AM, Althar93 said:

 

I was going to write some feedback myself & saw that riplikash has essentially summarised my feelings about the campaign so far.

 

This is the first DCS campaign that I am playing through (recently acquired the M2000C), so I have no frame of reference for quality, polish or robustness of other campaigns for DCS.

 

So far, I love

  • The atmosphere
  • The context
  • The radio chatter & personality/stories of the various characters
  • The build up of the campaign is great (just completed mission 3) & I am looking forward to playing through the entirety of the campaign.

That being said, and similarly to what riplikash posted above, I am playing through it on tip-toes, not because the missions are hard but because the missions/game seems so easy to break & it can be a while before you realise it is completely borked. In total :

  • I had to restart the first mission 5 times due to radio issues & scripts not triggering until I finally figured out that the frequencies in the kneeboard didn't match with those in the briefing
  • I restarted mission 2 three times because a script didn't trigger, because I didn't realise I was actually meant to deviate from the mission and finally because I couldn't actually spot the target.
  • I restarted mission 3 three times because I was on the wrong frequency when triggering the script to taxi and that broke the mission, and subsequently because the Chevy 1-1 wouldn't taxi ahead as per the briefing (turns out, I was the one who had to take the lead and take off first, which contradicts the briefing).

 

Essentially for what could have been 3 hours of perfect immersion, I have spent about 5 hours redoing some missions and having to play through them obsessing over 'triggers' and 'scripts' rather than the actual mission/story for fear of breaking anything, constantly anxious that a script may or may not be triggering until the very end of a mission. The discrepancies between the dialogue, briefing notes and kneeboard, and the occasional bug further exacerbates what otherwise feels like a great campaign. I am staying strong and pushing through the frustrations of having to replay what should be fairly mundane missions but I am secretly hoping this on-rails & trigger-senstive nature of the campaign becomes less of an issue later down the line.

 

I realise DCS is a simulator but in the context of campaigns & due to how rigid the script/trigger system can be for anything but the simplest of missions, I feel like there should be more feedback (even if it is a bit 'gamey') for the player, in the form of a 'F10' list of completed/pending objectives just so that the player can be at ease that he/she has/hasn't been completed yet just to put him/her at ease that the mission is still ticking along as it should. Similarly, a recap/repeat of the last instruction would be extremely useful : I've had instances where I was listening to some dialogue, absorbing, then expecting a prompt afterwards only to forget what the instructions were and not being able to recall them.

 

I love that the campaign strives to be realistic but there is a rift between what the mission expects you to know and as the seasoned pilot in the US airforce you portray and the actual average skill / knowledge of the player who probably isn't flying fighter jets for a career & will need hand-holding a bit more.

 

Hey! I did some updates for 2.7, hope it will run better now. I hear you and I do admit I learned and progressed a lot since I built this campaign - if I find some time, I’d be happy to make an overhaul and bring it up to speed with my skills now 🙂

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/1/2021 at 6:05 PM, baltic_dragon said:

Hey! I did some updates for 2.7, hope it will run better now. I hear you and I do admit I learned and progressed a lot since I built this campaign - if I find some time, I’d be happy to make an overhaul and bring it up to speed with my skills now 🙂

 

Thanks a lot for taking our feedback onboard & I look forward to 2.7! After reading my post from a few weeks ago again, I realise it might have been a bit brash/unfair in places. I just wanted to clarify that my intention was not to be insulting or discouraging & want to reiterate that you have done a stellar job with making the most immersive & engaging DCS campaign that I've played so far.

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J’ai fait la première campagne en achetant le mirage, j’ai tellement aimé la progression linéaire que je me suis renseigné sur qui avait fait cette campagne et acheté le drapeau rouge. Je suis sur la première mission parce que je suis Français et je dois tout traduire avec MZEDIT pour être en mesure de comprendre, et c’est super long, j’ai l’habitude de prendre 45 minutes pour traduire une mission, c’est ce qui me dérange le plus , les sous-titres qui ne sont pas en Français

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just finished the Caucasus campaign yesterday. This was a great and very immersive experience, thank you! I'm new to DCS (5 months in) and after the L-39 Kursant campaign this was only my second campaign. The M-2000C is an awesome plane and I loved the campaign. Voice acting was brilliant, all in all the missions worked really well and were suited for my skill level - and I felt like I learnt quite a bit as well towards the end (in terms of A/A engagements in which I had 0 experience I now feel a lot more confident after the last few missions. Although I'm aware there is a LOT that I don't know yet, the difference with not knowing anything at all is a big step).

 

Really looking forward to starting the Red Flag campaign now followed by Coup d'Etat, before I dig in to the F/A-18C and it's numerous campaigns.

 

Very impressive work and I'm following your website and the forums to see what else you bring out 🙂

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  • 2 months later...

I know it's been said before but I'm going to add to it. This campaign is awesome, possibly the best campaign I've played yet although I also have the enemy within but haven't tried it yet.

 

There's no single reason it's awesome, it just comes together really nicely. It's exciting but at the same time believable. It is rare I play an entire mission without accelerating time, I just don't feel the need on these missions, the pace is perfect.

 

I wish all modules came with a campaign of this length and quality.

 

Well done Baltic.


Edited by Shibbyland
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  • 3 months later...

" perhaps expanding the Coup d'Etat one in Persian Gulf.. we'll see. "

+1

On 11/4/2021 at 7:37 PM, baltic_dragon said:

Wow I am late to the party here, but thanks a lot! 
Actually, I am thinking about returning to M-2000C and updating this campaign or creating some follow-up, perhaps expanding the Coup d'Etat one in Persian Gulf.. we'll see.

 

M2000 | Mig-21 | Mig-15 | F-14 | UH-1H HUEY | A-10C II | MB-339A | A-4E-C | F-18 | F-86 | KA-50 | F-16 |AH-64D| NTTR | PG |

 

AMD RYZEN 5 2400G 3.9GHz + RX 580 8GB OC + 32Gb + 1TB SSD

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