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Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away……….it would appear that games developers started projects based on what they could achieve rather than what time and money constrained them to achieving! …..So brings our hero in this story a certain Mr Kevin Klemmick who on his first ever job found himself being given quite a challenge: Initially I was hired as an intern and asked to design and develop a dynamic campaign. For better or worse there wasn’t a lot of direction on what that would entail – the directive was mostly to make something that would be a persistent world and generate dynamic missions instead of the pre-scripted model which was the norm. In case you are wondering the Dynamic Campaign of Falcon 4.0 is still a gem of the modern flight sim world, so some brief quotes on what it involved to create such a thing are in order: I was given a pretty blank check in designing the Dynamic Campaign, so I approached it as I would a strategy game. The idea being that this game would be running in the background whether or not the player flew any missions. In fact, it could be played as a strategy game from the tool I wrote to monitor it. The AI was broken into three tiers, a strategic level, operational level and tactical level. Yet another level of AI would operate in the Simulation itself to drive the vehicles or aircraft. The missions were generated as a by-product of this AI, and in fact used real world planning techniques. For example, once a priority list of targets was determined, a package would be put together to time suppression of air defence, air superiority, refuelling, AWACS, etc. All these missions would be timed out and planned much like a real-world commander would, but were generated as a response to decisions made by the campaign’s AI. While my primary goal was to make something fun to play, we were very fortunate to get a lot of advice from military sources about how things work in the real world and I tried to match that as closely as possible while keeping the game play elements that I felt were important. However, all of this had to work within a very tiny slice of the CPU, which was a huge limitation given all the AI/planning work that was going on. That was probably the biggest challenge of this system. So, got that right. What was the difference between this dynamic thingy and a pre-scripted model? An example of pre-scripted from the Strike Fighters series would be someone creating missions with the Mission Editor or before the Mission Editor existed, Yankee Air Pirate creating missions for players. There are some advantages to this such as recreating historical missions or providing a story or backdrop for the player beforehand. The main disadvantage is that once you have played the mission a few times it’s basically the same thing each time. Of course, Falcon 4.0 does also have a Mission Editor (Tactical Editor) and you can create missions or training scenarios. DCS also has a Mission Editor that includes some quite advanced features for mission designers. Nostalgia and story based missions from yesteryear (Novalogic) Campaign Mode Although it can appear to be just a set of single missions Strike Fighters does have a basic dynamic campaign. DCS campaigns on the other hand are currently a set of scripted missions, but that doesn’t mean you cannot have some very good campaigns in this sense! A Falcon campaign starts with a ticking clock on day one, and the whole thing runs on a massive scale putting the player either in a 2D map mode or joining the campaign by flying in the 3D world as part of it. Even in the 2D map mode the player can see most of the things happening (there is still a fog of war) and also gets news updates on major events. Of course, the missions you do fly will be different and often unpredictable, and that is the extra challenge! Here you can plan and influence things.........bet you didn't plan for that big purple blob.........looks like the space ship from Independence day is here! Yes, the player can run the campaign as default and just join auto fragged missions every now and then – or they have a lot of power to create packages, flights, to frag their own missions, change package loadouts, join other squadrons etc, etc. Anyway, I won’t go any further because the scale is rather large. Note, that if you do just run a campaign without changing the initial mission types and PAK's you will be given non-stop suicide missions and so will your AI buddies! (so, change them!) And yes BMS 4.33 comes with a full set of manuals created by other heroes telling you all you need in the Docs folder in your install (e.g. C:\BMS-433-U1\Docs\Falcon BMS Manuals) The default campaign is Korea in which you can club Kim Jong Un's Cold War museum collection with a multitude of modern weapons like AIM-9X and HMCS. For an extra challenge select Korea Strong and prepare to eat AMRAAMSKI from the Flanker Hoards. By 2014 the North Korean air force went through a massive modernization program which included (or perhaps involved entirely of) employment of beautiful young women (Yonhap News / Aviationist) Of course, as mentioned in part 1 there are many other campaigns and theatres to try from the modding community for BMS 4.33. Totally new Allied Force campaigns - joy! New additions & changes to BMS 4.33 Default loadouts Thank the maker! Any past players may have noted that when 4 x Su-30s appeared on the horizon, your escorts armed to the teeth with 2 x AIM-9Ps and a CBU-52 would be nothing more than useful missile decoys! This may have prompted some like myself to spend ages before missions tweaking loadouts of other flights! But it seems someone has finally improved things here for the better! Ground war You can now control the ground units if you like, one benefit of this is to finish campaigns a lot quicker. And yes, this feature was in the 2005 Falcon 4.0 Allied Force. MANPADs Less welcoming from Allied Force is the addition of MANPADs that make going below the clouds a bit of a no no unless you like jumping out of airplanes! MANPADs were there before 4.33 but were somewhat lackluster in comparison. Reduced weapon supply You may want to try to hold onto those drop tanks a bit longer because unlimited supply may no longer be the case……………you can of course just frag those super brave tanker boys to get you that juice. The little things Adding detail onto the campaign map to be saved to your data cartridge for use in flight is now made better just by the fact that it persists after each mission instead of having to redo it every time! Be a king of Situational Awareness with Bullseye positions, FLOT, Radar coverage, flight path SAM rings and data link tracks! Weather with you From manual: Weather management has been drastically improved, with a dynamic weather system which changes with time as it moves across the BMS terrain. Bad weather effects have also been improved, with better visibility management and new cumulus cloud layers. If you like a challenge you can get pretty good random weather in the campaigns that will require some thought on how you do things when neither you or a targeting pod can actually see the targets! Anyone who learnt their A-G radar mode skills back in the day will still find they still come in handy. A shout out to the rain effect in Falcon which is by far my favourite in any sim so far: Artificial Intelligence (AI) From manual: The AI is now much better at energy management, timing and fuel efficiency thanks to updated climb profiles, top of climb and top of descent management. Holding points and push points have been improved. AI now perform baseline intercepts much more effectively (be warned). This is important for BVR combat but also for tanker rendezvous. The ATO features new target selection logic and package constitution. AI ATC has been drastically improved, providing reliable management of the traffic queue. New options for autonomous approach have been created to allow human players to approach airbases without having to listen to ATC vectoring you through the pattern (useful when you are flying IFR for instance). Note on the last paragraph, which provides a happy medium between the full talk down and the emergency landing…………the full talk down is still fantastic in pea soup weather where there is no ILS at the air base. So, there you have it, still an addictive pleasure that will lead you into a false sense of security before kicking your A! Well, it’s just really hard to do. Looking back on it, I think the only reason we took on what we did is because we were too inexperienced to know better. Knowing what I do now, even given my experience on Falcon, the cost to develop such an engine would be substantial. Since flight sims don’t bring in that kind of revenue companies look at it from a cost to benefit standpoint and Dynamic Campaigns score pretty low in that regard. There is also the argument that scripted missions are more interesting which has some merit. I think if I were to do it over I would do a mix of scripted/generated missions, so that the player still feels like they’re involved in the world, but there is also some variety thrown in to keep things interesting. Kevin Klemmick 2012 Disclaimer - this article may contain Star Wars quotes.

"Su-27 - The Ultimate Argument" Campaign is available! The Fighter Collection and Eagle Dynamics are pleased to announce that first payware DCS campaign: Su-27 - The Ultimate Argument is now available for download via ingame Model Manager and as separate module from the DCS E-Shop “Su-27 - The Ultimate Argument” is the storyline campaign for the Russian Air Force pilot flying the Su-27 aircraft for the Digital Combat Simulator. The campaign is based on a fictional Caucasus conflict scenario, into which border states of the region got involved. Throughout 20 missions you will have to put up intense air combat, to escort and protect your aircraft, combat air patrols, ground strikes, search for enemy in mountains and gorges, fly day and night. Features of the campaign “Su-27 - The Ultimate Argument”: 20 storyline missions for a single player. More than 300 triggers for interactive environment. 126 voice-overs. Briefing’s art with maps. Russian and English localizations. Voice-overs are recorded in Russian. In the English localization the voices are provided with English subtitles. The DCS: Flaming Cliffs 3 or DCS: Su-27 modules are required to be installed and activated into the DCS World for the campaign.

Hello all, another noob question coming up; I am having an issue with attempting to win campaigns on NA and Vietnam. I always preform my (mainly strike) missions and take out all of the primary targets, and usually many targets of opportunity. If I don't, I usually Re-fly the mission. Yet, after many missions, I get the "this campaign is finished" and if I click accept, it's all over. (If I'm playing NA, I'm responsible for destroying the world!) I've checked that I still have planes, pilots and ordance remaining. Could anyone provide my some suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong? I always hit all of my strike objectives, yet I still lose the campaign. Frustrating! Thanks! - Jake

Plz help me, how to add third party aircraft in stock campign ? :help: :help: :help: :help: :help: :help: :help:

Hi guys! I'm building a campaign for central america terrain and i have some problems: The campaigns that i build were modifications of anothers (change of airport, names, aircraft) But with central america there isnt another file so i have a complication with the attack objetives, strategic nodes etc. I made test version but when i choose it goes to windows desktop I f anywone can help me, Thanks!

Hi guys, i have a question: Yesterday I finished a campaign modified from the Falklands 82, but the aircraft add, when I choose, do not show any weapons to use, what i have to do to fix it? Thanks.