F-51 / F-80C 10 Historical Scripted Campaign "Home by Christmas"

[Mikeoo21]

Thanks, Jaegermeister, for the speedy reply. I didn’t even take the outside temperature into consideration. I’ll pay more attention to it in the future. 

[AEthelraedUnraed]

Found a bug in Mission 2.

The flight leader got damaged over Chunghwa. As a result, the bastard defected to the North Koreans and landed at Pyongyang. The RTB then didn't trigger until he despawned after landing there.

[Jaegermeister]

2 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Found a bug in Mission 2.

The flight leader got damaged over Chunghwa. As a result, the bastard defected to the North Koreans and landed at Pyongyang. The RTB then didn't trigger until he despawned after landing there.

Weird, I'll look into that. You can't trust anybody these days.

[FeuerFliegen]

I'm glad I didn't shoot these two NK defectors in their NK truck... only didn't because they were being escorted by US Army soldiers, well within friendly territory.  They should be careful though.

[FeuerFliegen]

 

 

Then I landed at the airfield, and there were a bunch more!

(1st mission)

 

In the second mission, a green message said objective complete after a short attack, and all of my squad mates immediately shot their remaining rockets off into the air to get rid of them.  Then they said let's head north and search for more targets; they then just had to use their guns to attack the additional targets.

Edited August 16 by FeuerFliegen

[AndreiTomescu]

Off side impression: after a couple of weeks on... vacation leave, the game is truly cinematic. Incredibly beautiful .

On topic first impression:

I forgot how exceptionally immersive a quality scripted campaign can be. Despite the new career mode being awesome, this scripted campaign is simply better.

The first person approach , with such good story telling, is my favourite.

Just did the first 2 missions. Sooo good. The targets are everywhere (mis 2), the AI planes performed good, and the radio messages are much better and more complex (comparison with GB) 

The text instructions are just well timed and sufficient for a smooth experience.

In mis 2, nr 4 got out of ammo and landed in a hurry very shortly, so I suppose got on an enemy airfield, but we can just imagine it didn't, this didn't change much for the mission as a hole.

It would be nice to be able to use radio output even if you ain't the leader, but maybe this will change/improve in the future.

Have you noticed that the planes bounce a bit at engine start?

Mission 1 reminded me a bit of the first mission from the old Allmost scripted campaign.

Really can't wait to follow this campaign through.

@Jaegermeister: thank you, it's an awesome campaign. I might like it better than that masterpiece of yours, Greek Fire. (those actual fires in Greece are horrible, we've just run away at the last moment by car from Fourka, it was terrible there, poor people)

True that now you have better tools to play with, but the result is really, really excellent. Fantastic campaign.

Edited August 16 by AndreiTomescu

[Jaegermeister]

Thanks for the comments! I am glad you are enjoying it. I will probably keep the first person narrative thing going if/when I do another one, because it does give a better opportunity to add context to the missions. Since Korea is a new playing field, I wanted to do things a little differently. You will also find that you are not granted mission success automatically after 2 minutes, you have to reach the combat area and survive for a little while at least. Don't mistake the "Primary Objective Complete" notice for an indication that the mission is over, many of them continue well after that point. If people object to that concept, I will be interested to hear why.

You are the 2nd one to witness a friendly plane landing on an enemy base at Pyongyang. I double checked and that air base is designated as DPRK which is Eastern Block faction, so it actually is a bug. I will make a report as such. 

Be aware that in mission 3, there has been a couple of instances of the RTB command not triggering and the flight leader just circles around the last attack zone. If this happens, head for home base on your own and the mission will continue as normal. You can also fire all of your .50 cal ammo and that will trigger the RTB.

I am about to submit an update deleting the airfields in mission 2, correcting mission 3 and all other reported issues, optimizing airfield objects to reduce CPU load, and a few other things I have found that have not been reported. 

Let me know how it goes, I think you will find the rest of it amusing too!

[AndreiTomescu]

10 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

optimizing airfield objects to reduce CPU load

Forgot to say about this. It was pretty late last night.

During both first 2 missions, my capped 90 fps stayed glued at 90, with lows fps at 82-86, no stutter, none.

Compared to campaign, where there are drops, dunno how you did it, but the missions are perfect optimised.

Only issue about fps is at landing: bang, very short drops from capped 90 to 50, 75 fps, but quite short. If you could do something about that, it would be awesome.

To be noted that during combat, with heavy flak, trains, trucks, explosions, the fps stayed at 90.

Also the load was very low, at about 16-20 %.

I'm contemplating about raising my capped fps to 120 for your campaign, just to see how it goes.

[Jaegermeister]

39 minutes ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Compared to campaign, where there are drops, dunno how you did it, but the missions are perfect optimised.

Only issue about fps is at landing: bang, very short drops from capped 90 to 50, 75 fps, but quite short. If you could do something about that, it would be awesome.

I assume you mean compared to career missions. During career missions, all of the linked vehicles and AAA are active during the entire mission. When you get additional entities like enemy aircraft or ground targets spawning, and effects on top of that, it drops your FPS due to higher CPU usage. I have deleted all linked objects out of range of the player, so they don’t take up resources when they are not needed.

Rendering craters, tracers and napalm are what gives me FPS issues.

[Jaegermeister]

On 8/16/2026 at 1:28 AM, FeuerFliegen said:

I'm glad I didn't shoot these two NK defectors in their NK truck... only didn't because they were being escorted by US Army soldiers, well within friendly territory.  They should be careful though.

Wow, you were flying pretty close to them!

[MiGCap]

Started the mission and deployed to Suwon with my F-51D:

But in the second mission my PC shut down suddenly and I have to try it again at the weekend. At least I know now where the enemy train is!  

[Jaegermeister]

On 8/16/2026 at 1:34 AM, FeuerFliegen said:

In the second mission, a green message said objective complete after a short attack, and all of my squad mates immediately shot their remaining rockets off into the air to get rid of them.  Then they said let's head north and search for more targets; they then just had to use their guns to attack the additional targets.

The Primary objective complete message will come up after you have been in the designated combat area for a certain time.
 

The AI firing their rockets when ordered to move on to a new target is unrelated to that message and is a bug in the Force Complete MCU. They should not fire off their rockets, but sometimes they do. I think I have reported it, but I will do it again just to be sure.

 

Edited August 18 by Jaegermeister

[AndreiTomescu]

When doing mis 3 from the campaign, I got hit by flak, and managed somehow to belly land INTO the enemy fortified village with the pilot unharmed.

So I took a stroll.....

The enemy soldiers are unaware of the player by foot, true. But otherwise it was very cool to witness the Mustangs attack and the local defending units first hand.

5 hours ago, MiGCap said:

least I know now where the enemy train is!  

Hehehe......that would help more if it is only one....😄😄😄

The target area is sooo well populated, it's awesome.

[AndreiTomescu]

Mission 4. This is what I call a well designed and challenging mission.

Hard targets, crazy AAA ? No. Although those AAA hidden on top of hills, between trees, are hard to see and hit.

The mission was excellent due to something quite often neglected, but often encountered by real pilots: target selection.

With friends and foes less that 1 mile apart, choosing who to hit was challenging. Enemy convoy moving along river bank. Yep, but exactly the same was the allied convoy doing. Less than 1 mile apart. And when everybody started shooting, things were even better. Very cool.

Got "propeller damage" from flak. Really felt it , on site by sound and sparks, en route home by trepidation and uneven engine run. Tried to increase pitch to lower that, got home ok, and, despite being wounded, jumped slowly from the cockpit to check damage. In GB I loved those splinters from damaged wooden propeller, now I wanted to see what damage on a metal one looks like. Hmmm..... looked close from all angles, no damage to be seen. Maybe it was internal damage, like in the pitch system? No bullet holes in the nose. Strange.

[MiGCap]

8 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Hehehe......that would help more if it is only one....😄😄😄

The target area is sooo well populated, it's awesome.

Thank You for the hint! You are a good intel officer! 😄😄😄

[FeuerFliegen]

On 8/17/2026 at 1:21 PM, Jaegermeister said:

Wow, you were flying pretty close to them!

 

Was this just a mistake to use these NK trucks?  Trying to train myself to spot NK vs UN ground units for multiplayer missions.

23 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Got "propeller damage" from flak. Really felt it , on site by sound and sparks, en route home by trepidation and uneven engine run. Tried to increase pitch to lower that, got home ok, and, despite being wounded, jumped slowly from the cockpit to check damage. In GB I loved those splinters from damaged wooden propeller, now I wanted to see what damage on a metal one looks like. Hmmm..... looked close from all angles, no damage to be seen. Maybe it was internal damage, like in the pitch system? No bullet holes in the nose. Strange.

I thought that was a shame; I was hoping for something like this:

 

 

To be fair when comparing to Great Battles, Korea is more detailed when it comes to prop damage; GB didn't even have prop damage other than a completely destroyed propeller blade(s), where as now we can get minor prop damage to where the prop still functions.  GB was all or nothing.

[Jaegermeister]

7 hours ago, FeuerFliegen said:

Was this just a mistake to use these NK trucks?  Trying to train myself to spot NK vs UN ground units for multiplayer missions.

Yes, US made, but supplied to Russia through Lend-Lease according to what I have found. I will correct it when I revise the Campaign to have more ground and air traffic along with improved time skip functionality. I did not have time for as much detail as I would have liked before the release.

I have already submitted corrections for the logic errors that have an effect on actual mission progress but the rest will come later. I have been traveling for 2 weeks and can not put much time towards it at the moment.

[Mark_Krieger]

On 8/15/2026 at 1:45 AM, Jaegermeister said:

Weird, I'll look into that. You can't trust anybody these days.

All my flight landed at a NK airfield after achieving objective at that mission too. 

[AndreiTomescu]

Just finished the first F-80 mission. It was pretty hard to dodge all that flak, and it was pretty coordinated. Out of all,only m myself (Victor 3), Uncle 2, Uncle 4 and Victor 2 made it back home.

And what a long journey that was! Plane damaged, leaking fuel (good thing i didn't drop wing tanks prior to the attack), used that fuel a bit even on the return trip.

Tried to use the time skip feature, but it failed, I guess if you have tank damage it doesn't work.

Well, another great mission.

The P-80 is indeed wonderful.

The surviving allied planes returned to home airfield.

Notes:

The F-80 with 1 bomb dropped and 1 still attached is very , very unstable.

I was sure some Migs will show up, but I didn't have the pleasure  🙂 

[Jaegermeister]

3 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Tried to use the time skip feature, but it failed, I guess if you have tank damage it doesn't work.

As you probably know, the flak was pretty intense around there.

The F-80s rarely dropped their wing tanks unless they were jumped by enemy fighters. They didn’t have many spares laying around like the ones they used for napalm.

If you have a fuel leak and the time skip feature appears, it apparently calculates whether you will make it to the respawn point at your current throttle setting and altitude. If you go higher to reduce fuel consumption or reduce the power setting that changes the math. 

3 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

I was sure some Migs will show up, but I didn't have the pleasure  🙂 

That seems pretty early for MiGs… they did not appear until later in November 🙂

Edited Thursday at 02:33 AM by Jaegermeister

[AndreiTomescu]

5 hours ago, Jaegermeister said:

to reduce fuel consumption

i found out in this scenario, forced by the situation, that the P-80 has a fuel consumption counter! located middle low, a bit right on the dashboard. didn't know what it was, thought it was a gallons in a specific tank counter. But no, it's actually a instant fuel consumption meter. found that out in the museum description of the aircraft. Very usefull tool is you want to make it home.

[Jaegermeister]

16 hours ago, AndreiTomescu said:

...didn't know what it was, thought it was a gallons in a specific tank counter. But no, it's actually a instant fuel consumption meter. found that out in the museum description of the aircraft. Very usefull tool is you want to make it home.

It seems that you are referring to this...

The Fuel Flow Meter? Yes and no.

It displays the total fuel in US gallons you have on board and the rate at which it is being consumed. It is manually set (automatically) at the beginning of the mission to match what is in the loadout screen. The fuel gauge above it displays the contents of the Main fuselage fuel tank, but the wing tip drop tanks, leading edge tanks, and wing tanks all flow into the main tank controlled by float valves, so you will not see the 200 gallon main tank gauge move until the other auxiliary tanks are empty.

The fuel flow valve does in fact show gallons of fuel, but it is what was in all of the tanks at takeoff, not a specific one. It also would not account for leakage from a damaged tank because that fuel would not be flowing past the meter through the fuel supply line. It would be flowing overboard through a hole in the tank, and there would be no way to measure that until the tank was empty. Also if the main fuselage tank is damaged, there is a bypass valve that can be activated to prevent all of the fuel being leaked overboard as it is gravity fed into the main tank. In that case, you would have a different quantity of fuel left in the main tank to use after the leak stopped either from self sealing or from the leak being above the fuel level. If the damage is in the bottom of the tank then it could drain dry, which would show on your main fuel gauge after the bypass valve was activated. You could then subtract whatever part of the 200 gallons is gone in the main tank from the total displayed on the fuel flow meter and then you would have a total figure of fuel remaining on board after the leak stopped or was bypassed.

If the leak occurs in one of the auxiliary tanks, there would really be no way to know how much was lost until the main tank started to drain, and then you could calculate the difference between the fuel flow meter and the main tank gauge to determine how much was lost. It would not matter at that point though, because you would have an accurate reading from your main tank gauge on what was left.

Simple, right? 

 

 

Edited Friday at 12:28 AM by Jaegermeister

[MiGCap]

Finished the second mission now without PC blackout.

Was too eager to hit the first train and bombed in low level while the three others bombed from above. So got some debris into my aircraft - and missed the train with my bombs by several yards.

But the second train was mine:

Long mission, over an hour. I do not use the acceleration in campaigns, I want the missions as realistic as can be.

[LukeFF]

Just flew the first two missions as well.  Great job as always. But it does seem like the cruise speed is a little too high. Even at Max continuous power I could not keep up with my wingmen. 

[Juri_JS]

Just flew mission 2 and noticed that the the enemy smaller caliber anti-aircraft guns (smaller than 20 mm) rarely fire. It seems like they only begin to track their target when it is within firing range, once they have it in their sights, the targeted aircraft is often already outside the firing range. No idea if this is to some extent also influenced by the skill level.

Edited Friday at 04:23 PM by Juri_JS