The Campaign...

[starbage1]

Having played numerous ww2 strategy simulators on land and in the air, including ww2 fighters, attack squadron, IL-2 series, and reading many books, articles and information about the war on the European front. I have spent at least 5 years studying the European front from A-Z, tactics to tanks. I have learned a ton of stuff. When it comes to games I usually put the slider to normal each side for it's historic setting no advantages etc. I don't like using cheats as I think it is a weak way to play a game. A campaign to me is the backbone of a game. No good campaign, the game is ****. There is nothing historic or to my disappointment, strategic about the campaign at ALL.


Yes the single player game missions are amazing, the scenery is from what I can tell accurate and beautiful, The aircraft seems to be accurate. The game seems to have been made way ahead of it's time and is still rolling on. The game plays beautifully after some hard core tweaks. But after al of that I truly see why, now the game has flubbed face down hard in the past and had never crawled out of it's hole.

Onto the Campaign (The spine of any single player game)... THE CFS3 CAMPAIGN IS ABHORRENT, IT'S BROKE.. IT'S NO GOOD. I have firepower 1.8 installed and I have played the American side as fighter 6 times and I have played it as American bomber 4 times.... I lost 10 times. the line hardly moves and if it does it is always in the axis favor no matter how many 3 star campaign missions I have won. In the last campaign I went to November of 1943 with only 3 missions failed out of all of those. The Axis turns around and captures Britain within 6 days. I sat there and attacked ship after ship after ship after ship with success trying to keep the enemy away from my invasion zones in Britain. The line did not go anywhere in the sea. The others times I attacked targets inland with no effect on the line. I can't be everywhere bombing the production centers, factories and shipyards in Germany too, that's the job of the big bombers, the lancaster, b-25s, marauders, b-17s, mesquites, etc. But I also tried that as the bomber campaign and it didn't do a thing either. I guess they can't seem to bomb right..

Oddities and errors..
-The campaign is the most oddest bunged up campaign I have ever played in any game, IT SUCKS.
-The same old marshalling areas get old and boring after awhile.
-The tanks are not true to date, for instance the pershing tank is rolling down the road in 1943, king tigers were not out yet and it would be rare to see an elephant tank in Normandy.
-Machine guns will not stop shooting and no clue where the sound is coming from.
-Enemy tanks still cross the bridge you just destroyed.... WHY?
-My wingmen bang into each other constantly.

[MajorMagee]

Go try this version http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...landers_Fields as it has developed into the most accurate campaign engine in all of flight simulation.

Specifically http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...FF#Post4172054

[gecko]

Yeah, it doesn't take long to discover how pathetic the campaign is, along with lots of other parts of the stock sim. Fortunately, there are mods for pretty much every aspect of the sim which make it unrecognizably awesome.

and I second MajorMagee's recommendation. WOFF is truly first rate, especially if you enjoy WWI. Only downside is it's a bit pricy, but well worth the money.

[Led Zeppelin]

WOFF does not use the CFS3 campaign game engine, it's a specific tool.

CFS3 campaign XML files can be setup, there are many, many parameters which, combined with specific spawns, can do something as you want. I did it for ETO but it's a so taime consuming job.

As an exemple, in the Phoney War campaign I built, the frontline will never move.


Have fun if you want to play with the campaign xml files!!!

[starbage1]

UPDATE
I cleared Firepower from the game and did a complete re-install. For some reason the game installs to both program files x86 and the regular. So I kept the regular at the
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Combat Flight Simulator 3 location. Got rid of the x86 one. So far the bombs are doing the damage they are suppose to after removing firepower. But before putting all the blame on fire power and having not installed it yet, something is still very very wrong still with the campaign itself... The front line just doesn't go anywhere still, something must be wrong with my campaign.xml file. It must be on my end I don;t see how Microsoft could have released this to the public with the campaign acting the way it does so my conclusion may be that it is on my side with a certain file. Too bad we can;t check file integrity to revert files back to stock 3.1a

Does anyone have a stock campaign.xml I can look at? I am doing bit by bit hair pulling tests to see where the campaign problem lies in the campaign file and which line or what file I have to edit or get it returned to the stock version to get the front line moving in my favor after winning missions. It's not moving after my successes. Enemy just gets stronger.

[Daiwilletti]

I took a look at the Firepower campaign yesterday. Used Winmerge to compare the xml file with the stock campaign. There are one or two "issues" with the Firepower campaign which make it harder to win.

I can only assume you were using the Firepower campaign, not the stock one, given your difficulties?

Also in my backed up files there is someone's attempt to improve the Firepower campaign xml, together with a new set of air spawns.

Not at my CFS computer unfortunately, will try to remember to provide more info later.

[starbage1]

There is a possibility when using warp that the campaign air/ground force ai do not complete their own missions properly, causing mass campaign mission failures, but I have to do more testing. The bad thing is if you don't use warp and let ai just use autopilot some 300 mile plus missions can last over 2 hours... No one is going to want to do that especially allied bomber campaign. I have over 50 hours of testing this game so far, I'm still testing constantly to see where the problem lies. Bare with me.