Recommended DLC...?

[Kilo_60]

What DLC do you all recommend for this?

Thanks!

[SSerponi76]

All.

[Charles]

If you're a beginner, Shifting Sands would be the best; most scenarios are on the low complexity side. For an advanced player I'd say it's the least interesting pack unless you're really into seeing how historical situations played out, as around half of the scenarios are more basic.

Silent Service is great if you're into submarines; it's only about submarines though and as such lacks variety. LIVE Pole Positions is also a submarine only scenario.

The LIVE scenarios are awesome; usually much bigger than campaign scenarios, and playable on both sides. Be sure to read the LIVE News in the game launcher. The Spratly Sprat one is a good start, it's well balanced between ship, submarine, air strike, ASW, refueling.

The other ones I haven't played much yet, I picked up Chains of War recently though because it's set in the modern area (whereas most standalone scenarios are during the Cold War). I'm sure the other 2 are great too.

I've played more DLC scenarios than regular scenarios shipped with the base game, because the DLC offer a more focused experience, deep diving on a particular theme (apart from the LIVEs). With standalone scenarios you need to read new database entries in details each time, it's a bit exhausting.

[Secret45]

While Chains of War is my favourite, I can also recommend Northern Inferno. It is centered around WW3 during the mid 70s in the Northern atlantic. Scenarios start rather small but with a nice challenge and get bigger and more complex later in the campaign. Only downside for me is that it is only playable as Nato. Would have loved a few Scenarios as the Soviets.

[Kilo_60]

Does Chains of war play out as a dynamic campaign in that losses carry over between scenarios?

Or do you just select each mission in order to play the Campaigns and go with whats already setup?

[Secret45]

As it is at the moment, none of the campaigns is dynamic. You always start with the same setup no matter how you did in the previous one. Since you play both sides in Chains of War it is also questionable if this campaign would work as a dynamic one.

[Kilo_60]

Darn that’s a shame. Still a great game though!

[apache85]

The tools and resources to make a dynamic/linked campaign are available (Lua keyvalues can be passed between scenarios, for example) but no-one has taken up the challenge yet.

[Kilo_60]

Originally posted by apache85:

The tools and resources to make a dynamic/linked campaign are available (Lua keyvalues can be passed between scenarios, for example) but no-one has taken up the challenge yet.

Wow that's Great!

Sounds like you need to get busy making one for a new DLC!

My wallet stands ready!

LOL

[Kilo_60]

OK I picked up Chains of War and it looks great so far.

Even managed to get a Final Score of 3900 on the First Mission after several failed first attempts..

Question: Are you supposed to end the Campaign Mission when you get the Pop-Up that the scenario concluded or when the Mission timer is up (Total 9 Hour mission in Briefing)?

When are you supposed to end the Campaign missions?

Thanks!

[Secret45]

From my experience many missions end automaticly if you reach a certain amount of points. So I usually like to play until I got this amount of points or the time is up. But since the campaign lets you progress as soon as you reached a minor victory (what I think is to early for many of the bigger Scenarios) it should also be fine to end the Scenario by yourself, if you reached enough points and get bored with it. It's really the players preference.

[Often]

Originally posted by Secret45:

While Chains of War is my favourite, I can also recommend Northern Inferno. It is centered around WW3 during the mid 70s in the Northern atlantic. Scenarios start rather small but with a nice challenge and get bigger and more complex later in the campaign. Only downside for me is that it is only playable as Nato. Would have loved a few Scenarios as the Soviets.

WW3 and Cold War gone hot scenarios are my Jam. So this is my recommendation as well.

[DarkWing]

Northern Inferno. Interesting, not very complicated as Silent Service or Shifting Sands, interesting story.

[Cabal]

Originally posted by apache85:

The tools and resources to make a dynamic/linked campaign are available (Lua keyvalues can be passed between scenarios, for example) but no-one has taken up the challenge yet.

Since 1998, no one has taken up the challenge yet. Falcon 4.0 by Microprose was the last dynamic campaign which has been programmed mainly by almost one dude, Kevin Klemmick. His works are still very alive in todays Falcon BMS. Many products in general went down in regards to effort during the last decades, unable to do magic like back in the tdays... see Jagged Alliance 2 => no one is able (or wants to) recreate something like this.

DCS as a realistic combat flight simulation suffers from the problem of a missing dynamic campaign (which is being developed but... won't surpass Falcons DC), way more worse than CMO does because we have lots of scenarios to play around with so... it doesn't matter here all to much.

Besides, the scenarios I own are those I'm interested in:
- Northern Inferno (Cold War, subs, soviets, era-like technology used)
- Shifting Sands (Israels interesting conflicts with lots of different past-technologies... and I played Jane's IAF which makes it even more interesting)
- Desert Storm (Interesting, still freshly out of the Cold War, the aircrafts from these times are in action yet again incl. different more from the Coalition)

On my buy list:
- Silent Service (played 688(i), Sub Command, Dangerous Waters, watched lots of movies/read books... the best being: Blind's Man Bluff (watch the documentary afterwards))

Chains of War is not my cup of tea. (for now)