The Longest Day?
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Hi all
I was just flying a fairly lengthy mission and got me thinking what other player’s mission times have been, either single player or multi player, which I assume would be longer than single?
The longest mission I have flown has been about 1.5 hours.
As an aside, how does the campaign engine compress? the time in the mission? I mean, a real life BARCAP would probably be 4-5 hours, but in the sim a BARCAP from take off to completion, would be for me about 1.25 hours of playtime.
Thanks!
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BARCAP depends on how strongly the barrier gets tested. If you’re backstopping in WWIII then your weapons/fuel isn’t good for long. I’ve done some 3 hr DCAs. You can stretch out weapons if you threaten the Q-5s enough they abort without any shooting. The posturing doesn’t work if there’s nothing to back it up though.
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The longest mission I have ever flown was back in the days with 4.32. I was flying a mission in the Libya theater, made my own little Odyssey Dawn campaign like scenario. I was airborne for seven hours, did four AAR and had a successful mission attacking ground units that was trying to take a rebel controlled city called Sirte.
The RDAF operated from Sigonella on Sicily, but this part was just outside of the map so had to start from an Island called Lampedusa west of Malta. I will never do that long a flight again, so this one is burned into my memory. -
@NIL 7 hours ! I hope you had enough piddle-packs
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@Flow32 That’s the easy part when it’s a sim. You can actually take a moment and pause and go the restroom… But man my but hurt after that long session…
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Thanks for the replies.
What about how the campaign engine generates missions, particularly how does it take what would be IRL, as far as I know, would be a 5-6 hour mission, say a SEAD/OCA mission, and compress that down to a flight that takes about 1.5 hours?
Does the engine have a formula/algorithm that it uses to scale the in game flying time so that a real life mission doesn’t take the same length of time in the sim?
Thanks!!
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@CaptCanada In the sim the FLOT is much closer to where you take off from than real life conflicts I believe.
Only the transit to the conflict zone is very long IRL.
Also, when you T/O you have a task in the sim, you don’t go to a kill box / waiting zone waiting for the AWACS to task you, which can take a long time.
Some strike missions over Iraq took off from the red sea, in Vietnam they sometimes took off from Guam.
A sim makes that easier as the support for your plane / squadron is quite easy to move. In real life you don’t move a squadron with all the tools, parts, personnel so easily -
@CaptCanada Hi, Cap. That’s an interesting question that tbh I never thought of. Does BMS “compress time” beyond the 2x/4x options. I don’t think so. I think it’s a function of what’s going on in the mission. For example, I have been flying in Nevada recently. With the carrier off Los Angeles and the targets in north central Nevada you get some long missions. I’m looking at one such mission that is 700-plus miles round trip. The time on the briefing is 2 hours. But that is a strike mission. Add 30 minutes or more if BARCAP. Add who knows how much playtime at the target. Add about 40 minutes if you tank a 4-ship on ingress and egress. Add time at Marshall back at the Boat.
So, as you can see, it adds up. I would say my average mission is 3 hours. It doesn’t address your question but my longest session was 8. That was 3 consequent Pre- Planned CAS against a very large enemy column .