Sandman Simulations

Progress has been made once again. The destruction of enemy strategic targets affects the enemy's ability to fight in the next mission. Destroying weapons factories, power plants, railway junctions, or oil refineries weakens the enemy's ground forces' combat capability as well as the resupply of the enemy's air forces. Important strategic targets are naturally protected by anti-aircraft defenses, and the enemy's air forces will try to keep the player-led squadrons at bay. Potential strike targets will be described in the initial briefing, and in the debriefing at the end of the mission, the successfully destroyed targets and their assumed impact on the enemy's operations in the next mission will be reviewed. There is still a lot of work to be done, so this campaign won’t be finished anytime soon. The campaign differs quite a bit from traditional campaigns and even from its predecessor, the Flaming Sunrise campaign, so I’m anxiously waiting to see if ED will approve it for sale, even though they initially gave the project the green light. Next up are the enemy airbases, along with the fighters and attack aircraft operating from them.

Hi, I wasn't able to find the problem. I had a normal AAR behavior in the mission and with DCS AAR training mission.

Hi, I'll check today. In this mission it's important that the lead contacts the tanker before you and you take the right basket. But this of course doesn't explain if there are problem in the default AAR mission.

Thanks. That helped a lot. For some reason Texaco 3 went too far and she took it instead of 4. It should stay west of Aleppo. I think adjustments I made should prevent that of happening.

Tested the mission couple of times but wasn't able to exactly replicate. Jaguar 2-1 took the Texaco 4 as she was supposed to do. But she didn't get any fuel. But didn't burn either during that endless refuel attempt. According to SA page her fuel state remained same for at leas 20 minutes. I can't fix the AI AAR problem and I really hope it won't happen in all missions as it would break lots of things in many campaigns. AI AAR problem is reported to ED countless times and they always do something about it and after a while problem returns. As I wasn't able to make J2-1 to go to the wrong tanker it's hard to say if I can fix it. I made some adjustments to make sure Texaco 4 is the closest tanker when she is ready to refuel. If you happen to have a track file or even better Tacview file of the mission it would help me to find the problem. In emergency situation you can take the Texaco 4 if she still confuses between 3 and 4.

Thanks again. The tanker should be free for you so something's wrong. I'll check.

That's what I hoped but when checking their fuel state via SA page they are empty before reaching the target. No more than 30 minutes after launching. The mission has worked without a problem for a year now but this is something new. As unlimited fuel wasn't an option by the time the mission is made it wasn't used.

Alright. I think I found the problem. The strike element turns home because it has burnt all it's fuel. For some reason Hornets seem to use full burner even when changing altitude for 1000 feet and as before they are climbing with very shallow angle and now it causes them to burn their tanks empty. I already made a fix for this mission by setting unlimited fuel for the strike element. As this wasn't the case before the latest DCS update I think there is something wrong with Hornets now. It might affect on other missions too. I reported this to ED and hope they'll find some root cause for this behavior.

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

Glad to hear you still made it Sould be bit easier when I get the patch out

You are right. Actually it seems to be the same situation in missions 8 to 15. Fortunately only the recovery tanker as it's mostly not needed. I have made a patch fixing this issue. Thanks for reporting.

Thanks for reporting. I'll check it

During my test it got corrected during taxi but please report if you still get a different result

Hi I think it's not user error but AWACS doesn't really see those low flying aircrafts. I think they could be seen if AWACs would be set to fly quite close over the enemy but that would be bit unrealistic. So unfortunately in this mission you just need to fly the intercept by AWACS radio calls and you should see the enemy quite far away with your radar.

Damn. That problem is back thenwith mission 13. Still no clue why it happens to some players. Previous update somehow fixed it. At least it seems that you can access the mission via mission editor if restart doesn't help.

Finally got the update out and should work now

This should be fixed now

The fuze problem should be fixed now

Should be working now

9/8/24 update All missions – Static Hornets liveries were messed up – fixed All missions – Formation flight requirements slightly eased All missions – Bug related to new fuzes fixed All missions with JTAC – Added player confirmation of target in sight Mission 1 – Typos fixed; AI flying adjusted to be bit smoother Mission 4 – Tiger 5 engagement adjusted Mission 5 – Hornets stuck on the deck – fixed Mission 8 – Flight lead waits for player after AAR Mission 11 – Callouts for Maverik and GBU missing the target fixed Mission 11 – Mission not proceeding if SAR helo doesn’t land – fixed Mission 12 – Flight lead not intercepting enemies - fixed

I don't know if this is a Hornet bug or feature. SA-page seems to be working correctly only after starting taxiing. The latest update introduced also this bug discussed in the topic below. There is already a fix for that when ED gets the next update out.

Thanks. I'll take a look what's going on.

Thank you for report. I have made a fix for this issue. Unfortunately deadline for the next update has gone week ago so it will take some time to get it out. Hope that the next update would fix the helo landing.

I was able to replicate it this time. Things start to go wrong at point when the landing command for the SAR helo is activated so it must have something to do with AI helo landing procedures. I don't know why it sometimes manages to land and sometimes not. I need to make some arrangements to make sure the mission will continue even if the SAR pilot is not showing his best all the time.

If there is something different from the first one please send it too. The SAR helo has pretty straight forward orders just to fly to the pilot, land, take off and fly back. I'll check the mission again if I could replicate the bug and find the cause. Are you using any unofficial mods (other than Tacview)? They can cause lots of problems with the ai. I also use Tacview so maybe it's not the suspect number one.