A pair of related stories surrounding two key mission and campaign developers for DCS World have come out in the last couple of days. Both Baltic Dragon and Reflected Simulations have previously announced a campaign series for the forthcoming DCS: Kola Peninsula map and now we have a name and some more details. Reflected also released a new video talking about why he has stopped work on a Mosquito co-op mission for now.

Introducing ‘Arctic Thunder’

Both Baltic Dragon and Reflected Simulations have produced some outstanding, story driven, campaigns for DCS World and they are plotting a significant release following the launch of Orbx’s DCS: Kola Peninsula – a map that we saw some new images of just recently.

The new campaign series is called Arctic Thunder and the missions making up the campaign are being jointly produced by both campaign creators. The DCS: F-16C missions will be done by Reflected Simulations while Baltic Dragon is doing the DCS: F/A-18C missions – featuring a Finnish Hornet squadron.

Here’s a background to the series:

As a reminder: they will be set in 2023, where NATO forces fend off Russian attack against Finland. Many missions will be intertwined which means you will experience the same situation seen from the cockpit of US Viper (Reflected) or Finnish Hornet (BD) as parts of the same strike package – or just flying separate sorties at the same time.

The statement also indicates that the pair are already well at work on the missions, however, they are going to have to wait until the map itself releases prior to launch for obvious reasons.

Release date of course depends on the pace of the development of the map itself, but we’re working closely with Orbx to have everything we need for good set of missions implemented at the release. Stay tuned for more information!

Some DCS World maps have launched with little in the way of mission and campaign support from the start so this should offer a unique opportunity.

Read more about Baltic Dragon here on his Facebook page.

Reflected talks candidly about co-op missions

Many of us have often asked about flying coop missions together with our friends using some of our favourite missions and campaigns. Although it seems like a simple enough change from the outside, a candid message from Reflected on why he is not releasing a new coop mission for the Mosquito goes into some detail on why its such a challenge to make this work.

Listen in below.

Then, within the comments for this video we have similar messaging coming from another well regarded mission maker, Sedlo, who has brought us some great campaigns like Eastern Friendship and Bold Cheetah.

Sedlo writes some of the similar challenges that he’s dealt with while he has looked at making some of his missions into coop experiences.

It’s a good video, thanks for sharing. I do get asked a lot about why don’t I make COOP/Multiplayer missions. People really seem to enjoy what I make single-player, and really want to play them with their friends online. Some even tell me it’s easy, just convert the aircraft to client! 😉

The missions I like to make involve exactly what Reflected says, triggers that monitor cockpit switch conditions, radio frequencies, radar contacts, RWR spikes, things like that. They DO NOT WORK in a multiplayer environment. It’s not a question of not being scripted right, it’s just does not work in multiplayer. You cannot use them.

These are the things that make our style of missions special and immersive, and it just can’t converted over.

SEDLO in the comments section on YouTube

So, if you’ve been wondering why we don’t have a lot of coop experiences from the scripted campaign makers this is a good series of reasons why they have tried and failed to provide the same kind of experience. It sounds like a real challenge.