Q. How long is each campaign mission?
A. We don’t have a preset number of missions for a campaign. Each campaign lasts a certain amount of calendar days, but there are many additional factors that determine how often you fly. Sometimes you may fly several missions a day, and at other times you will only fly one mission every few days. In general, a campaign may be anywhere from 20 to 50 and more missions.
Q. Are there reconnaissance missions? If so how do they affect the overall campaign or ground war?
A. You will fly a rare reconnaissance mission on the offline campaign, but these mostly serve to provide some excitement by placing the player in the harm’s way, outnumbered and outgunned. The same applies to historical online campaigns.
However in host’s choice campaigns your recon missions will have a direct influence on the course of the war. Successfully flying over the recon area, and successfully landing after the recon mission will each increase your side’s “recon level”, which is used by the campaign engine to calculate your side’s overall capabilities and effectiveness of ground strikes during the day.
Q. Will the new generator be able to set B-17s into historical combat box formations?
A. Absolutely. You can see the box in many of our screenshots, as well as the gameplay video that’s been released some time ago. All of these were taken straight from the generated missions, nothing was modified.
By the way, there’s of course a question of frame rate here, so you will not see hundreds of B-17s in the air at the same time. However one or two dozen B-17s, plus some escorting fighters, should be a pretty common thing in the skies over Ardennes or Normandy.
Q. Will bombers keep formation even when under fire?
A. The AI routines in Forgotten Battles are very complex, so the answer is both yes and no. It really depends on the overall situation in the mission. Usually when the flight leader is shot down the formation will get scattered for a little while as the remaining members reform; and in most cases when a wingman is shot down the formation will stay on course. This also depends on whether the bombers already completed their objective, and on the damage state of each formation member. There are really many factors that affect the planes’ behavior in the missions. The end result is that there’s always the element of unpredictability in the mission, and you never quite know what to expect when a flight of FW-190s saws through that box of B-17s.