Official Campaign - "Achtung Spitfire!" - current status report.

[Kubert]

I finished this campaign today. I don't know if anyone is maintaining it, but I'll write a report here about a few anomalies I found. Maybe someone will fix them.

For all missions:

• Information about wind direction and strenght in all briefings is irrelevant. It doesn't match reality. Wind is always aligned with runway. I think it is convinient, especially for Spitfire, so the most practical fix would be just to remove information about wind from briefings.
• Concept of story written in diary is interesting, but picture of the diary didn't scale properly with my screen. Had purple frame around it. Just saying...it is not a big deal. Worst part about it was a music playing here. Was too loud so I removed it from directory to have silence instead.
• I think AI pilots who can die shouldn't have a name. Poor Mikhail Boranov and Evgraf Pahomov died at least two time each. 😄 It's kinda interfere with immersion. 
• Mission goals in briefings, like "destroy at least one plane or ground target" are irrelevant, because they are not needed to achieve for mission success.

For individual missions:

• In mission 1, after landing, I've got a black screen and picture with information that I have landed. I was aware of that, and black screen while taxiing was really not pleasant. Could be removed.
• In mission 2, are two Spitfires IX with Royal Air Force markings parked near starting location.
• In mission 3, during fly-by camera, there is text with airport name and time 16:29, but in reality is 16:45.
• In mission 4, are three Spitfires IX with Royal Air Force markings parked near starting location.
• In mission 5, in briefing and fly-by camera is written time 13:30, but the mission starts 15:30 which correspond with diary...so briefing and fly-by text should be corrected to 15:30.
• Spoiler

  • In mission 7, were our four fragile Spitfires tasked to supress AAA before armored IL-2s came. Does it make sense? I dunno...anyway, shortly after we did so, four BFs showed up and without a loss shot down all Spitfires except me. There was nothing that could be done about it....outdated Spitfires Vb are really helpless when flying low and slow against BFs. Maybe if there were only two BFs, or some allies nearby???
• Spoiler

  • In mission 11, during high altitude patrol, we've seen line formation of bombers and close to them formation of 6 BFs. I detached from our formation to outclimb BFs, what I did successfully, but they were inactive. I shot down one, attack second, and during my third pass on them, entire formation despawned less than 500 meters in front of me. I also saw my flight members climb after those BFs, so they couldn't be just some nearby flight for scenery.
• Spoiler

  • In mission 12, JU-87s started dogfighting us after we intercept them. Not sure if it's bug or intention. 
• In mission 13, I saw floating smoke on the north side of the hills between Novorossijsk and Krymskaya.

Spoiler

• Spoiler

  Mission 15, ended similar way as mentonied mission 7. By level design we were put low and slow tasked with ground attack, while IL-2s were on their way into the same area. In a meantime nobody cared about airspace, then BFs came and wiped us out completely, now included me while I was trying my best. It was frustrating, because I've seen them coming and was only one trying to gain altitude to fight them. If I was a flight leader, result would be different. It is not very realistic for Spitfires to ignore enemy fighters. They should be more flexibile...or some fighters could be nearby to make it more playable. In second attempt I was only survivor. 

• Spoiler

  In mission 17, briefing says time is 09:41. But mission start at 08:45. So briefing should be corrected to 08:45. In this mission we were also wiped out...well except me...together with four IL-2s, while enemy lost only 2 BFs. One of them because of me. 

• In missions 18 and 20 was superiority of BFs also noticable, some allies to distract them would be fine. Spitfire is so slow compared to them. Missions where is numerical parity in the air, or BFs start with altitude advantage are usually certain death for friendly AIs. 

Overall, campaign is in playable state, but some tweaks would be fine. 

Edited 12 hours ago by Kubert

[Jaegermeister]

@Kubert,

The Achtung Spitfire Scripted Campaign was updated in late 2023 to repair issues created by AI changes, specifically the increase of turning radius that caused AI waypoints to be missed. At the same time, new blank skins were added to the game allowing the addition of the tactical ID codes and the elimination of separate skin download files. This was done for all Official Scripted Campaigns about the same time. No changes were made to the campaign content regarding mission goals or functionality, text, mission briefings, graphics, or multi-media content.

The Achtung Spitfire campaign was produced by "The Syndicate" which is an online squad, and some of the members are still active on the forum, such as @SYN_Vander. If any changes were to be made to this campaign other than repairing non-functional mission logic caused by game engine changes, they would be the ones to do it at their own discretion.   

Edited 5 hours ago by Jaegermeister