Why you should check out Dynamic Campaign.

[Kophka]

Hey all you new players coming from Steam, welcome to War Thunder! If you haven't yet, you should take the time to check out Dynamic Campaign, under the "Missions" on the "Game Mode" tab. Here's a little AAR from when I first started DC.


I suggested flying a Dynamic Campaign to end the gaming session tonight, and two of my friends were up for it. Both of them are low level players, with barely any experience outside of Arcade Battles. I talked them into flying on Historic difficulty, explaining that the damage model was better, and that they'd get kills faster with the proper aiming. They agreed to it, and I made a room for us to play in.



It took us a good 10 minutes to get together in the mission room, because they had a hard time finding me. Once we got in, I decided we would play the Soviet side of the Kuban mission. This would work out perfect, because one of my friends was only Rank 1 in Soviet, and a low and slow biplane would give him a good chance to get used to the difficulty settings.



Our first mission was a "Head to Head Combat", with our I-15's and I-153's squaring off against a horde of He 112's. I had forgotten to change the settings to take off from airfield and head to objective, so we started in the air, and were immediately engaged by the enemy. After a frantic furball that ended with each of us scoring one kill apiece, and the bots cleaning up all of the damaged enemies, we headed out of the engagement area. At this time, one of my friends accidentally switched to cockpit view, and fell in love. After exclaiming over the detail of the cockpit, the beautiful sounds of the engine and guns, and the detail of the environment around us, all three of us decided we would play the rest of the campaign only in cockpit view. We completed our mission, and prepared for the next.



Mission two took us into a Combat Patrol. I had remembered to change the settings to "take off from the airfield and head to objective". The wisest among us stated "ok, let me go first and get airborne", since we were all blind in cockpit view, with our noses still pointed at the sky. While he was making that statement, the other one and I were busy taxiing down the runway. After narrowly avoiding a collision once we were airborne, we agreed that taxiing one at a time was probably a good idea. We got into formation at 500m, and headed to the patrol area with a minimum of near wing brushes and "omg watch outs".



Our first patrol area was crawling with CR.42's, and we were seriously hampered by our decision to fly in cockpit view. After a few tense minutes of combat, finding and losing the enemy, trying to land blind bursts for the proper amount of lead and deflection, we managed to take them down, losing only my m62 in the process. After moving on with our losses, we approached the second patrol area. After reaching it, we scouted around, and declared it to be "All Clear". The third leg of our patrol found us once more surrounded by hostile Falco biplanes, but with our new experience, we made short work of them, once again only losing one plane. We returned home, but the mission ended itself before we got a chance to land on the runway.



With that mission a success, we now had two wins to our name, and we only needed three to win the Campaign. After reading the list of available missions, my friends latched on to the idea of attacking enemy bombers. With a warning that our biplanes might be outmatched, we signed up and launched the mission.



We managed to take off in a sort-of orderly fashion, got into formation, and made the long flight to the staging point. Arriving there, we found our visibility severely hampered by haze and cloud cover. After losing each other a couple of times, we managed to climb above the clouds, and found ourselves in what appeared to be the "eye" of a huge cloud formation. With the clouds forming a ring around us, we throttled down and marveled at the beauty of the sun reaching through the eye and illuminating the town below us. Before we knew it, a large horde of bombers was approaching, with a mass of Falco's as escort. We throttled back up, spread ourselves out, and raced to the attack. Within seconds, two of us were down from Ju.88 tail gunners. Getting back into the fight in our Lagg-3 and I-16 (the lone survivor of us was still in his biplane), we managed to bring down four of the bombers, being heavily damaged in the process by the combination of tail gunners and a furball with their fighter escort. The bombers were able to complete their mission before we could stop them, and gave us our first loss of the Campaign.



Our final mission of the Campaign was an attack on enemy artillery emplacements. We managed a picture-perfect take off and formation this time, even though one of our biplanes had been replaced by an I-16 type 18. After flying to and reaching the staging area, we were greeted with yet another horde of Falco biplanes. They were desperate to screen us from their ground forces, and the engagement was brutal. We managed to kill a number of them, when we noticed that the time we had to complete our mission was winding down, so we disengaged. We just had to hope that our ai friends could handle what was left of their fighters, and prepared ourselves to attack the objective. At the same time that I voiced a warning to beware of enemy AAA and to watch their altitude closely, our I-16 managed to clip a large building, and explode into a fire ball. As the I-16 was being replaced by a Lagg-3, me and the other remaining biplane moved to attack. One pass took out two of our three objectives, and we reformed for a second pass. As we moved in for the second and (hopefully) final pass, we heard the distinctive sound of a 20mm cannon firing. It was our Lagg, screaming through our formation of two biplanes, and taking out his rage against the enemy light tanks. We followed right on his tail as best we could, with the third and final objective falling to my friends 4x7.62's. After disengaging and running from the enemy fighters that our friends hadn't managed to shoot down, we reformed, and headed back to home.



This third win was enough to win the Campaign for us, and we enjoyed reading the Battle Logs with their statistics and messages of victory and defeat. We all agreed that we would definitely be doing this again, with our next Campaign probably being Midway or some other Pacific theater.


Also, as an aside... Some of us are really hoping that Dynamic Campaign will give a taste of the rumored "World War Mode", with objectives and whatnot.

[Fletchlock]

That was a great read. Thanks for that...downloading as I type. :)

[Kophka]

Glad you enjoyed it! All of the Dynamic Campaigns are a blast with friends, and in the Custom Missions (single), you can even set the weather, time of day, and the aircraft that both friendly and enemy AI use (it's based on what year you choose).

[Hiten]

+1 and I agree (though you didn't state it directly) - it needs to be easier to find your friends/squad in joining Dynamic Campaign, and other single missions. I'm sure it will come in time and patches. :)

[Kophka]

They actually recently (in the very latest patch) gave us the ability to password lock/set it to friends only in DC/Single Missions. It used to be pretty bad with random strangers joining, and mucking about, but it's much better now.

[Hiten]

Kophka eredeti hozzászólása:

They actually recently (in the very latest patch) gave us the ability to password lock/set it to friends only in DC/Single Missions. It used to be pretty bad with random strangers joining, and mucking about, but it's much better now.

I saw that option as well, however you don't always want to lock it to just friends. For example, I may have only 1 buddy online, but we want to fly a 4 person mission. No probs, except that it's difficult-ish for my friend to find my game. If I were to lock it to friends only, it would only be a 2 man mission, heh.

Again, it's just a minor thing that I'm sure will get tweaked and improved. It's definitely not a game-breaker or impossible to do, as you have so vividly shown. :D

[Kophka]

Once you guys try Dynamic Campaign, and decide if you like it or not, be sure to spread the word. I'd love Gaijin to see that we love it, and put developing more content for it on their "ASAP" list.

[nirriti]

hi
very interresting reading thanks
i don't already have tried the game mostly because there is still a few things i am still don't surre to understand.
These Dynamic Campaing are a randomly generated serie of battle chosen by the game between a preexisted list of battle ?
Or is it's a totally randomly created battle (like the campaings of il2 1946) ?

thk

[Yggdrasil]

OK, dynamic campaigns. Now I'm interested...

[Sisifos]

Very nice reading! Thanks for your AAR.

[Kophka]

nirriti eredeti hozzászólása:

hi
very interresting reading thanks
i don't already have tried the game mostly because there is still a few things i am still don't surre to understand.
These Dynamic Campaing are a randomly generated serie of battle chosen by the game between a preexisted list of battle ?
Or is it's a totally randomly created battle (like the campaings of il2 1946) ?

thk

The Dynamic Campaign is basically a map of the historic area in question. When you begin the Dynamic Campaign, you can choose the "front line advantage" of your chosen faction, which will determine how much of the map you or the enemy controls. Once in the DC, you will be able to choose missions such as "Combat Patrol", "Escort the Bombers", or "Attack the Enemy Tanks". Each victory you achieve will give you a sector of the map, and each loss will cost you one. At the end of every mission, you will have a "battle log" that you can check out, which will tell you what happened in the Sector you fought in, combat losses of you and the enemy, etc. It's still rough, and there will be more content and better information/events coming along eventually.

[Kophka]

=GR=Sisifos eredeti hozzászólása:

Very nice reading! Thanks for your AAR.

Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

[Scar99]

I like the coop aspect of Dynamic Campaign, too bad that the rewards are so small it's ridiculous...no rewards for kills ? Seriously ? And that "Daily Mission Limit" thingy kicking in only after three missions, cutting already pathetic rewards in half everytime you play from that point until no reward at all is a joke.

[Gared]

Thanks for sharing

[Flowbee602]

Nice write-up!

Sounds brilliant. Still trying to figure it all out but already flying in 3D looks quite stunning apart from some minor glitches.

Can't wait to get involved.

[Kophka]

Scar99 eredeti hozzászólása:

I like the coop aspect of Dynamic Campaign, too bad that the rewards are so small it's ridiculous...no rewards for kills ? Seriously ? And that "Daily Mission Limit" thingy kicking in only after three missions, cutting already pathetic rewards in half everytime you play from that point until no reward at all is a joke.

Yeah, the rewards are pretty tiny, but it's still a good time. It's a great showcase of the game, from graphics to mechanics, and will only get better as the game is further developed. Increases in content and functionality will make a good game-mode great.