I had to hit the silk after that rail junction mission, but fortunately I was able to make it back over to friendly territory before I did that. That was a tough one. There was another one, I believe one where we had to attack a marshalling yard, and I made the big mistake of droping my bombs at low altitude. Depsite the fact that I was doing 400 mph and had a 6 second delay on the bombs, that doesn't mean much if they hit something immediately. All that was left of my plane was the cockpit and engine, and amazingly I was still alive for the 2 seconds that it took to hit the ground.

I just finished the P47 campaign Wednesday night (awesome! I wish there were more missions), I'm a little more then halfway through the Tempest campaign, and about 8 mission into the Dora campaign. I'm having a blast.

I was having some major successes with the Dora until a recent mission where I had to patrol for fighter/bombers at low altitude in some bad weather, my flight got bounced by some Mustangs. After about 5 minutes I found myself gliding in for a belly landing after losing my engine. I believe the next mission is a high altitude bomber intercept.

I hope to get some more time with these campaigns this weekend.

The Thunderbolt campaign IS fun.
A few more pics.



Portait.
I tried different things with contrast gamma, brightness to try and replicate the real images we sometimes see.

quote:

I was having some major successes with the Dora until a recent mission where I had to patrol for fighter/bombers at low altitude in some bad weather, my flight got bounced by some Mustangs.

Dunno if it applies to that mission, but in the Dora campaign I really found that you have to follow the waypoints to avoid getting bounced by large groups of enemy fighters--at first I thought I would be clever and fly straight for the nearest enemy, but usually I would end up getting overwhelmed. Then I followed the waypoints and everything worked out much better.

Except for the one where you have to fight off something like 12 spits with 4 Doras.

quote:

I believe the next mission is a high altitude bomber intercept.

Good luck with those missions. I was only able to shoot down one or two bombers before getting my engine blown out by 50 cal snipers. I need to work on my anti-bomber tactics obviously.

quote:

Originally posted by Ba5tard5word:
Dunno if it applies to that mission, but in the Dora campaign I really found that you have to follow the waypoints to avoid getting bounced by large groups of enemy fighters--at first I thought I would be clever and fly straight for the nearest enemy, but usually I would end up getting overwhelmed. Then I followed the waypoints and everything worked out much better.

Except for the one where you have to fight off something like 12 spits with 4 Doras.

LOL! In this case, I was following the waypoints, and the mission brief. Normally, I'll take the Dora up high so I can try to have altitude advantage against the the enemy, and that worked, allowing me to rack up a boatload of kills during the first few missions.

For this example, it was in blind weather with the clouds at around 1000 meters. I was "ordered" (per the briefing) to stay low in order to catch any fighter-bombers on their runs. Makes sense, the cloud cover would make high altitude recon a bitch, so I stayed below the clouds, and above the turbulence, so between 400-600 meters. The Mustangs came down from on high, and since I was below the clouds I didn't see them until it was too late. With the clouds so thick, it was tough to sort them out from my own guys, and I paid the price, or at least my Dora did.

If I had gone from my base right to the general area of patrol without following the waypoints, I might have missed the mustangs, but there might have been something else I missed as well, like my objective.

@IceFire -
I finished the Thunderbolt campaign. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to playing the other two parts, too.

Comments
Like others mentioned, two missions, the one where the planned mission is scrubbed to defend the airfield, and the second last mission both had me in the wrong plane. The former had me in an A-20, the latter in a different flight that airstarted in the NW corner. I had selected the highest rank.

Maybe 'more stuff' could have been added to most missions. This is a personal preference though.

Other than that, everything went perfectly. There was a good amount of activity around the target area and always enough flak to make it interesting but still doable.

I think it would have been fine to have added more objects in some of the targets without worrying about playability on older PCs, especially the last one. I was looking for a sizeable concentration of tanks and artillery but it was hard to spot. That is partly due to the really annoying viewable distance of objects though.

Nice skins, and I liked the way each flight/squadron had it's own one. Bases were populated pretty well and naturally (you know,dispersed, not lining the runway).

My performance was hardly stellar but I just played it for fun and to see what happened.

Got hit at close range by flak in the last mission and consequently had one of those fun, nerve-stretching flights home, even though the nearest friendly base was quite close. Pretty much the only time I fly home these days is if I am shot up.
Anyway, I made it back - just - thanks to my faithful partner. She did her work perfectly until the end, delivering her pilot back safely.





Halcyon Days.

Thanks for the comments all!

A couple of things from me ...I've been getting a number of reports of little bugs that managed to sneak through. With this many missions...inevitably I was going to overlook something. I'm going to put together a new package for download and maybe a patch to solve these. The fixes take a few moments at the most. Hope to have that soon so if you want to replay then you can bug free!

Regarding the Dora campaign...I built that one a bit like my Kurland campaign. The odds are often against you and you have to focus on surviving and conducting your best hit and run capabilities. I tried to balance it out so its not impossible if you want to stay and fight...but you'll have to be an exemplary pilot to do it. In any case I hope its fun and challenging!

I had one last night that was chaotic to say the least. A 2-flight armed recon in the Tempest, we ran into around an equal number of Fw190s, and were seriously pressed. I was able to get two, but I was fighting off at least two more the whole time. Then, what I think is a smoking plane is actually a He 162, and surprisingly I was able to shoot him down. I'm just starting to point my way back to base when I see a flight of Ta 152s in the landing pattern. I get one right off the bat, the rest scatter. I see another one and as I'm pecking away at him I hear the tell-tail sounds of a 30mm blasting away behind me. Split-S and make a beeline for base, they don't pursue. That last Ta 152 I was pecking away at goes down, so I make out with 5. Awesome!

Special note about the Storm Clouds 2.0 release. I've updated the campaign on M4T to version 2.0.1 to solve a few bugs with the Thunderbolt and Tempest campaigns. Sorry about those...I strive for perfect releases but something always sneaks through! :|

The update is now up so you can re-download it or wait for me to post a temporary patch which I will do later.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to catch everything. There's always some missed skin (my particular forte), a typo, player in the wrong flight (why does that have to be so hard to achieve?). Anyway, I'll try out the Tempest part soon.