Sandman Simulations

I made my first tests and it seems that air-to-air voice overs are not working in mission two but they work in mission one. Weird because its made with the same method in both missions. I'm next going for mission 3 and trying to find the reason. Tanker in mission 2 is on right frequency and preset 4 is also right. But you are right it's not answering. Trying to find why. You can fly the mission 2 without AAR and even your wingman can make it if you are not speeding too much. But of course you should have the tanker available anyway.

Please let me know if you find these problems (voice overs etc.) from other missions too. I'll check those too but propably may miss something. And of course everything else you find. Unfortunately new bugs may rise after DCS updates when something under the hood is changed.

Hi, Thank you for your feedback. 1. I'll take a look what's wrong with voiceovers. Have worked fine before 2. & 3. Wingman should go to tanker if ordered if tanker is close enough. I'll take a look at this too. And is there a problem with frequency or what. 4. In this campaign DCS build-in AWACS is mostly silenced and there are only voiceover calls from AWACS operator. If DCS AWACS is operating on the same frequency it will fill the frequency with chatter about distant unimportant targets and talk over voiceovers. But you are right that in some points it would be very useful to get real time bullseye or BRA calls. It would be possible to set AWACS on some other frequency and player could tune to it when needed. But then you would miss voice overs. I need to think about that.

Change log for 10/04/2024 update All missions – Air defense visibility adjusted to get AI SEAD flights attack higher priority targets over Rapiers and AAA

I was almost ready to get angry but it is there. Finally! DCS: F/A-18C Flaming Sunrise Campaign by Sandman Simulations All missions – Air defense visibility adjusted to get AI SEAD flights attack higher priority targets over Rapiers and AAA

Tests showed that the execution of SEAD flights was not effective. I had to redesign some parts, but now enemy air defense and about half of the AI aircraft flying SEAD missions are coded. Just the normal campaign development process. About 3500 lines of triggers are ready so far. Once the SEAD missions are ready, Close Air Support missions will be next in line. These are a challenging part because a large number of ground units are quite resource-intensive. I don't yet know how this will be implemented while avoiding performance issues.

Great to hear! Hope you'll enjoy the campaign. It's good not to bind spacebar or backspace for any commands cause they are the keys which can be used for player action to create some interaction. I have no idea why DCS sets spacebar as default key for trigger.

It's not easy task at all. Air Tasking Order gives you guidelines what is wanted from your squadron but it doesn't tie your hands from doing whatever you see is best. I have no death proof way how it's done but there are many ways to the victory. I think the most satisfying is to find your own way to do it.

Did the campaign end because enemy did infiltrate too deep into Emirates territory? Your mission is to help ground forces to win the war. How you do it is up to you. If enemy is not pushed back the coalition loses. It can happen after fifth mission if all the fights are lost. If the coalition pushes enemy back to the sea and even more the coalition wins. If all fights are won it can happen after mission 8. For me it usually takes 15-20 missions. If the war is still unresolved after mission 26 campaign will end in cease fire.

I tested it with settings below and found that if trigger is set behind keyboard "spacebar" it won't work if there are any active "PRESS SPACEBAR" commands in the mission even if they are not visible for the player. But setting trigger only behind stick button it works normally. If you have trigger set only to keyboard spacebar button remove it and try to set it behind stick button.

Hi, Thank you for your message. I haven't heard about this kind of problem before other than configuration problems. You propably already have but still make sure that you have made few things: - You have F/A-18C Gun Trigger: Second detent configured to you trigger button. If it's first detent it won't work. - You have your Master arm set ARM - You have selected A/A or A/G I'll make some tests also today but let me know if these did/didn't help

Hi, Thank you for your message. Loadout for DEVILs 2 to 5 are automatic and are defined by given task. The loadouts are selected so that AI aircraft can accomplish the given mission with this armament. Unfortunately, AI tends to be a bit sensitive and may refrain from completing the task if the armament is not to its liking. Therefore, armaments cannot be changed by the player for anyone other than the player themselves and their wingman. Enemy aircraft are not visible on the map. I made this choice as a compromise between gameplay and realism. Most of the Blue team's aircraft are visible. This attempts to simulate the situation where, in a real life, aircraft would be able to communicate their positions to each other or have their location relayed via AWACS. Instead, for example, low-flying USAF A-10s are not visible on the map. Aircraft visible for AWACS radar can be seen on your SA page via datalink. AWACS also calls enemy aircraft position if enemy is within its radar range.

I have made some progress regarding the campaign. Once again, hundreds of lines of triggers. A few rather laborious stages have now been completed. The AI aircraft spawning on the carrier deck in such an order and at suitable intervals so that they do not collide or get stuck requires quite a bit of testing. This is a somewhat risky part to break when ED changes deck behavior next time. However, with suitable timing, it is possible to get all aircraft airborne regardless of the order in which the player selects different AI flights to spawn. Another challenge in a dynamic campaign is radio messages, which easily overlap and interrupt the previous message. DCS cannot queue radio messages, so to prevent overlaps, another considerable set of triggers was needed. So far, no insurmountable challenges have arisen. The main concern still lies with the performance issue caused by a large number of units. All possible units must be hidden whenever the player is not nearby or when an AI aircraft is not performing a task related to them.

Hi, Thank you for your feedback and nice to hear you enjoyed the campaign. ED mostly fixed the issue about Hornets stalling all the way down when approaching tanker with too high angle. Unfortunately it still persists but not as bad as previously. In scripted campaign I can make something about it by timing AI arriving to the tanker. But in dynamic mission it's not possible and sometimes they still crash if they get nose to nose with the tanker. Only flights tasked for CAP or SEAD area Foxtrot or for strike mission to Shiraz use Texaco 1 & 2. Texaco 3 & 4 should be used by flights tasked for CAP or SEAD area Golf or strike mission to Kerman or Jiroft. Tested it and they seem to do like they should. You are right that there could be one tanker between those two pairs. In this campaign structure mission scoring is a way to tell DCS which mission should come next. So your scoring doesn't tell about your success but just gives you the right mission to play. How well you and AI did is told in the mission debriefing. You can't get Succes from "The End" mission and proceed to the generic campaign success page. I didn't set there any scoring for this mission cause DCS campaign engine doesn't understand that campaign has ended until you are in the final stage. In this dynamic campaign structure there are more missions to come if you fail to pass "The Last Effort" mission. When you get FAIL it will jus repeat "The End" mission making sure that player understands that campaign has really ended. If you would get some score campaign engine would give you either "The Last Effort" or "Push to East" mission depending on your scores. DCS campaign structure is not designed for this kind of campaign.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I must admit that I have had a lot to learn while working on the first two campaigns. I believe(and hope) next one will be even better. If you remember the mission having problems with mission goals I could take a look.

I sent ED a patch to fix this SAM/SEAD issue 9th of January but for some reason it wasn't released in todays update. I'm very sorry about that and I'm trying to make them release it asap. Patch will make SEAD flights prioritize SA-10 and SA-6 over Rapiers. They should have done it in first place but AI just ignores those commands. Now Rapiers of each SEAD area will be visible for AI only after SA-10 and SA-6 sites of the area are destroyed.

22/02/2024 update DCS: F-14B Operation Sandworm Campaign by Sandman Simulations All missions – Some adjustments made to prevent premature landing list activation

I'm trying to balance between playability and challenge so that the campaign wouldn't be too complicated to play. However, this kind of campaign is still aimed at players who are willing to put in some effort into planning tasks before diving in. I'll report here on progress from time to time.

I've been working on a new dynamic campaign for about a month now. It's still uncertain whether it will ever see the light of day. Still some progress though. Hundreds of lines of triggers and an F10 menu structure for inputting an eight-character mission code. This gives around 24 billion different scenarios, so it should be enough. The plan is to create a campaign where the player acts as an Air Wing commander and aims to advance goals by assigning tasks to four F-14 and six F/A-18 squadrons. The squadrons operate from two aircraft carriers and one land base. The player can personally fly missions they design as part of either the Tomcat or Hornet squadrons. Probably within a year, we'll see if it's possible to make such a campaign performance-friendly enough and if ED even approves this type of campaign.

I have done that same mistake so many times

Tested it now and it seems to me working like it should. I can given commands to AI wingman and he's completing given tasks. Right frequency of course needs to be used.

Hi, Thank you for your report. I can't make any tests for few days but you should be able to command your wingman to attack enemy aircraft (attack my target command or engage bandits command), air defense and ground targets. At least wingman should give you "negative" answer if he's not going to do it. Are you giving orders on right frequency 305.0?

Great to hear. Thanks for the report.

Hi, Thank you for your feedback. Could you specify the problem a bit. What tasks you gave to flights of your squadron and what exactly happened? If you have a Tacview file of the mission it would be very helpful. In mission 2 enemy has air superiority and full air defense capabilities. A careful planning is needed. One SEAD flight might do it with SA-10 but it's not certain at all. There are no F-14s in the campaign and F-18s are not unbeatable against MIG-29s. So it's definitely possible to get beaten by the enemy. Tacview-20240129-184535-DCS-STAGE 2 80 perf.zip.acmi

Thanks for reply. All suggestions are welcome no matter how impossible they are. Some players have asked multiple modules to fly in same campaign.. I think it's not totally impossible, at least if there are two or three. Need to think about it. In Flaming Sunrise campaign there is freedom to choose tasks to AI and for yourself but all AI tasks need to be preplanned. Otherwice they won't do what you want. Tacview is a quite good application to check afterwards what happened in detail. In dynamic campaign there is a big performance problem if all units are visible. In Flaming Sunrise air defense units only appear when enemy gets close enough and front line battles only happen for certain time period or if some of the good guys is close enough. If they are fighting all the time mission would be unplayable due to low fps.