Sandman Simulations

The liveries are ready. Lately, I’ve been working on testing and battle outcome calculations, trying to get the difficulty level balanced properly. The campaign documentation is also nearly complete—about 150 pages including instructions for playing the dynamic campaign, along with plenty of intelligence material for mission planning. Testing and fine-tuning will still take some time. In addition to that, both the campaign start and the various end scenarios are still missing.

Hi, Thank you for your report. Good to hear you made it back to the carrier and got the debrief as supposed. Still it sounds to me that everything didn't went just as is should. I suppose you don't have a track saved but if you are using Tacview please send me the file. I'll try to find out if there is some new bug introduced.

Thank you for your feedback. After playing the Arctic Thunder campaign, I’ve been planning to implement this innovative idea into my own campaigns. It’s a task that involves testing and will take some months to complete, so I haven’t had the chance to do it yet, but I believe it will happen at some point.

Hi, Thank you for your message. It would naturally be possible to create the campaign in such a way that all friendly and enemy units are visible on the map. However, the difficulty level of the campaign has been carefully balanced, and changing this setting would have a significant impact. It would not only make units visible on the map, but all units set to be visible would also be listed in the briefing — and to my understanding, this cannot be disabled. That would spoil many of the intended surprises. In reality, not everything the player is led to believe is happening around them is actually taking place. For the sake of performance, units may appear and disappear in areas where the player won’t notice — actions that would look strange if shown on the map. So unfortunately the answer is no.

A month has flown by again and intense testing continues. In addition to testing the campaign progression calculations, I've been working on briefing materials, including images of the target areas. However, this work is still largely unfinished. The campaign documents will inevitably become, shall we say, extensive. Voice actors have been working on the voice-overs, and I have been editing the recordings. I've also been working on aircraft liveries. Nothing too special, but unique side numbers for the four Tomcat squadrons, since it's not possible to change them in the editor like it is with the Hornets. This only means about 50 liveries. A fair amount of time will still be spent on these tasks.

Over the past month, I have been working on calculations to determine the impact of actions of our troops on the enemy's air force, air defenses, and logistics, and consequently on the progress of ground battles. Finding the right balance in terms of difficulty requires an immense amount of testing. At the beginning of the mission, the player receives a briefing on the progress of ground battles, active enemy air forces and air defenses, available friendly aircraft, and active enemy strategic targets. Based on this information, the player sets an objective for the mission and assigns flights to accomplish it. The assigned aircraft take off from two aircraft carriers and one land base, proceeding to designated holding areas. From there, the player orders flights to push at appropriate timings. The player can choose to participate in the mission as part of any squadron. It is advisable to neutralize enemy air defenses before escort, sweep, or strike flights enter the area. However, at the same time, enemy fighters may pose a threat to SEAD flights. Destroying airfields and SAM sites directly impacts enemy strength in the next mission. Depending on the overall situation, the enemy may be able to restore some destroyed bases or air defense positions. Ground forces can be supported by providing direct close air support. Destroying enemy strategic targets affects their ground forces' combat effectiveness, air force logistics, or attack helicopter activity, depending on the target. Eliminating enemy attack aircraft, in turn, reduces nullcasualties among friendly ground troops. At the end of the mission, the player receives a debriefing on the situation's progress during the mission.

Please report if the issue still happens after the update. If it's the same problem it was with both Hornet and Tomcat and in any mission.

Just tested and I wasn't able to replicate the issue. It shouldn't be the parking position as the wingman should never taxi befor the player unless there is a bug (again) with the deck crew. Do you have the latest version? In the last version there was a taxi issue where the wingman taxied immediately when the player saluted for taxi but that was fixed by ED.

Hi, Thank you for your report. I'll take a look.

19/03/2025 update Mission 6: Fixed Syrian ships killing each other

I checked it out and this time I was able to kill the Migs with first try. Usually they have beaten me couple of times first. So I think it's not harder than before. But I found that Syrian ships are shooting each other again. It doesn't break the mission but one vo trigger fires wrong time. Tacview-20250315-190436-DCS-Mission 6.zip.acmi

Thanks for your message. It's not easy mission but shouldn't be impossible either. I'll take a look if there has been some AI changes making it even harder than before.

Thanks. I just tested and the trigger fired normally. As it's counting the bomb in the zone and the trigger is checked once in a second there might be a small change the bomb would go through the zone and explode within that one second and not be counted. Just have'nt been able to replicate it.

There seems to be a bigger problem with the deck crew. The same happens in any mission and with F14 too and depending on the parking place it also might cause AI wingman to collide with player while taxing. I'm just reporting this to ED as this is problem I can't fix. Until it's fixed you can disable the deck crew and the campaign should work normally.