Ok, so I'm making this follow-up because of some... thoughts I have upon reaching mission 4 of this campaign
Firstly: I like the idea of it. What bits and pieces of narrative are present are very neat, and I liking the narrative so far (at least what is present in the briefings)
Secondly: I don't want you to think that I'm being malicious with my critique, as I'd very much like this to be a working product
That being said, there's some major issues with this campaign that I'll approach with the caveat that I may well not be playing this on the settings you made it for.
The settings I'm using are near-full-switch real, with icons, speed bar, minimap path, and player map icon being the only exceptions. You may well have made this for different settings, but since there were no recommended settings, I used the ones I usually use unless the campaign maker directs otherwise.
Mission 1: Nothing really odd to note, although it seemed to be a bit long for what ended up being an establishing mission of the group of 4 flying to the airbase. If there was intended to be air contact, I didn't see anything.
Mission 2: This one is where issues that occur in the later missions first manifest. Firstly, this may be just my opinion, but the 109Ls aren't the greatest Jabos, which is the primary role you have them in (all combat missions up to mission 4), mainly because of it's light internal fuel capacity and performance more suited to interceptor duties. Secondly, it seems like you didn't playtest this with limited fuel on, since this mission was impossible to complete on the 109L's internal fuel load, and I ended up landing at the first available airbase back in friendly territory, since I wouldn't have made it to any other airbases farther in without running out, much less the intended one. Additionally, the darkness of the mission made locating ground targets impossible, aside from searchlights here and there. If those were intended to be the targets we were to attack, I didn't know, as the briefing only generally stated "ground targets/forces." I ended up attempting to drop my bomb on one, but I missed (that's all on me). There were a few Yaks I spotted before conducting my attack (a fair distance off), but any attempt to locate them after attacking the searchlight was fruitless. They didn't attempt to engage my flight.
Mission 3: This one went the most normally, although you had the waypoints doing way more backtracking and circling around than the 109L's fuel load could really handle. We ended up being intercepted by Yaks before bombing ground forces, I dumped my bomb to engage them and shot down 2, the other 2 disappeared, not sure if they disengaged or my wingman got them. I ended up strafing some AAA and returning to base, however I went straight back to the new airstrip (cutting across the waypoint paths) because if I followed the waypoint path home I would have run out of gas before making it home.
Mission 4: This is where I'm stuck, because as it stands it is impossible to take off. Starting on the runway, the plane immediately starts sliding to the right, before I've even turned on the engine. Locking chocks and tailwheel helped initially, however after repeated restarts the chocks stopped disengaging (i.e, they wouldn't unlock after I locked them). Sitting on the ground, the speed bar noted that my plane was moving at -14-17 km/h, which increased to -23-25 km/h after I started my engine. On the few times I managed to successfully get rolling, I would either veer uncontrollably to the right or would run along more or less straight until my tail came up, at which point my gear would break and I'd either belly in and grind to a halt, or explode.
Screenshots of the negative speed on the runway:
This is really quite frustrating, as I really want to like this campaign. It's a really neat premise, using a mod-plane that doesn't get a lot of coverage in missions or campaigns, so I really wanted to like this, but as it stands, there's a lot working against it, at least at this stage.
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Topic: 109L Campaign (Read 3431 times)
