Give me some "holy sh... did that just happen" ideas

[kendo65]

Hi Luthier,

I think Feuerfalke hit the nail on the head:

"It's an absolute immersion killer if you can be sure you're alone in the sky, maybe one other friendly squad and 1-4 enemy squads, maybe, but groundtargets only at your base and in your targetarea.
In games like Falcon, however, you have a feeling of being part of an actual war going on. There are numerous other plans and groups acting together, bombing targets, capping, etc."

Building on this - would it be possible to code a "randomise" function (I'm thinking of something similar to DGen where you could set levels of random friendly and enemy flights / ground activity, but much more powerful).

The difficulty lies in breaking out of the 'scripted' element of the missions - in real life you could NEVER be sure that intelligence / briefings were correct. So, how about REALLY screwing up the predictability of a mission by deliberately including the possibility (through the "randomise"function above) that what you actually experience flying the mission bears little or no resemblance to the briefing?

I can already hear the protests so let me try to explain:

In a proportion of the missions the randomised elements would completely overwhelm the scripted/briefed elements - eg you are expecting / briefed to fly a fighter-bomber mission over enemy territory - what you actually experience is being bounced shortly after take-off by enemy fighters. But here's the key - this happens on a random probabilistic basis (9 times out of 10 it won't occur. Other things will. Maybe you make the target and drop your bombs as planned)

I understand this has the potential to completely screw up BALANCE - so it would probably have to be switchable by players, but it definitely provides the possiblity to experience the unexpected (at the expense of truly 'balanced' missions)

For some possible examples of randomised occurences I quote from vpmedia's post:

returning smoking bomber/recon plane over the Channel coming from the opposite direction, maybe escorted by few fighters

- seeing a returning smoking fighter coming home, while waiting for takeoff

- being jumped by a pair of fighters at unexpected locations where you feel secure otherwise

- seeing few aircraft battle over your field while takeoff, your side is in advantage

- seeing convoy of ships being attacked by stukas or coast artillery

- german speedboat formation engaging ships

- smoking/burning damaged ship, leaking oil maybe, sailors in lifeboats

- floatplanes operating, rescue operation in progress, pilots in water

- huge smoke columns in the distance, distant artillery fire

- trafic on the roads being attacked

- fishing boats operating and being attacked

- barrage balloon being hit by pair of fighters

- sudden starfing attacks out of nowhere

- enemy plane hitting ground while escaping in panic at low alt (for rookie pilots)

Along the same lines I'd add:

on your way to your mission you see a damaged friendly bomber coming home low under attack from enemy fighters. What do you do? Try to help or press on as per your briefing?