Gilligan

I'm 3 missions in so far, but preliminary impression is that this one is a banger. Great work.

I think there is some issue with AI and HARMs presently as I cannot get them to use them at all in this or other campaigns (like red flag). I usually just switch their loadout to MAV's and then everything works fine.

Just kind of spitballing, might be a dumb idea, but would it be/have been possible for your wingman to have data-linked you a coordinate for the downed pilot along with a throwaway line of dialogue like "I see him on the north side near the marina, sending a coordinate with his location"? That said, if I would have known it was going to be important, I would have been more diligent about finding the marina at the start of the mission when it is foreshadowed and set a mark point there, but at the time I just blew it off. From a narrative standpoint I should have known better, as there is no point in brandishing chekov's marina if it's not going to be used later.

I really enjoy this campaign, especially the SEAD missions, 2, 4, and 8. however I cannot seem to get my AI wingmen to engage SAM threats with the HARMS reliably on missions 2 and 8, and on mission 4 the Springfield flight of F18's tasked with SEAD fails to engage as well and just RTB's after flying a lap of the combat area. Also noteworthy that the 2nd F16 flight (COLT 2) will not engage the south SA-2 site on mission 2. They exhibit the same behavior as the Springfield flight during mission 4, and fail to engage anything. whether I tell the whole flight or individual wingmen to "engage mission & rejoin" they never really do anything aside from fly to each waypoint. They all acknowledge the command, but don't engage anything. The other missions with bombs or mavericks they engage (my) targets just fine, and abide the other commands (engage air defenses, engage ground targets) just fine. However more often than not they will fail to shoot their harms at anything. I understand they will prioritize defending or engage air threats, however this behavior is persistent regardless of air picture. Over multiple replays, one time one of the wingmen engaged an SA2 search radar with a HARM (mission 2) after I used the "engage Air Defenses" commend. I have been unable to reproduce this when trying the "engage air defense" command in lieu of the "engage target and rejoin" command to get them to engage their primary targets. This is the ONLY instance in several flights of these missions that I have seen the AI use a HARM at all. Looking at the mission planner, I did notice that the advanced waypoint command for the IP - "Search in Area & Engage" - that the search area is too small and the target sam sites are outside of the search area, however increasing the area radius or moving the area to cover the target sites doesn't seem to have any effect on their behavior either. Tacview-20241124-220922-DCS-Red Flag 21 F-16-04.zip.acmi Tacview-20241117-215623-DCS-Red Flag 21 F-16-02.zip.acmi Tacview-20241125-213643-DCS-Red Flag 21 F-16-08.zip.acmi

Not the Tpod as far as I'm aware, but I have seen it done where someone had slaved the AIM9 Seeker head to the JHMC and achieve the similar functionality without using the radar.

Yes they are very hard to see. The technical closer to the mosque that you need to target is easiest to spot and attack coming from the south/south east. It's right up against the western wall of the mosque. The mosque you're looking for is just south of the initial AAA battery you target. Look for the ground fire being exchanged between HABU and the IS fighters. Tacview-20240922-222350-DCS-Gamblers M12.zip.acmi

What do you mean get Tally? Your wing(wo)man is Callsign Tally, you mean you cant see her? Or you cant see the targets on the ground? It's been a while since I played this one, but IIRC, the three large plumes of smoke are fires that are already burning when you arrive. Habu puts down new blue smoke to help ID the target building with the AAA battery on the roof.

Single Flare, No intervals just spamming the counter measure switch down button.

You can speed up time on the ingress/egress portions of the mission by hitting L.Cntrl + Z. Return to normal speed with L.Shift + Z. This can significantly cut down on the transit times and makes the longer missions a lot more reasonable.

Tacview-20240914-112207-DCS-Gamblers M10.zip.acmiTacview-20240913-232639-DCS-Gamblers M10.zip.acmi Here are a couple tac view files of a success. One one of them I had to do a 2nd pass to get it to register and end up dodging 3 missiles. IMO it's mostly down to the flares and timing them right. Hope these help.

Agree completely. When he went down I tracked his parachute and it was near the southern marina. I kept looking around there for the target technical and other action but never found it for obvious reasons. It was jarring when I understood he had "teleported" to the other end of the lake and that I needed to have been looking over there.

How fast were you going?

Once you've created the markpoint, set it as the current steerpoint and TMS down to "unlock" or zero out the cursor, then re-set your lock with the area track. You can also use TMS down (once the cursor is unlocked) to set an INS track - similar to an area track but even less likely to lose the lock point when maneuvering.

Yes the viper gets very loaded down in CAT3. Remember, the Viper itself is very small and light compared to some other jets, so adding ordinance and fuel has a relatively greater impact than it would on larger jets. Slick it comes alive, however.

Looking at some of the bug reports in the main f16 section, if you have you WPN page pulled up on one MFD with the HAD on the other then the HAD will not lock. I was able to repeat this bug so I do believe that is the case. If you have any other page pulled up on the other MFD (HSD, SMS, etc) it will lock on the HAD page, fire, and track just fine.

If you are flight lead you generally need to order your wingmen to do whatever it is you want them to do, even if your flight is cleared hot, you still need to direct your wingmen. Although that said there was one mission where they engage without me going into the coms menu and ordering them to, however there is an audio file that plays ordering them to attack. As far as the other campaigns I've done, it varies. Sometimes there are scripted actions that take place regardless, especially if it's something like a pre planned strike, but a majority of times you have to order your wingmen what and when to engage if you are the flight lead. Agreed on the AI fuel management, they really struggle and bail out 30 seconds after calling bingo. Don't know what you mean on the audio thing. It's supposed to sound like a radio. There are radio volume controls in the cockpit but i'm not sure if they work for the pre-recorded audio lines.

Mission 13 - the second one with boat touching NPC Heli flight 2-3 lands on top of NPC heli fight 2-2. Fireball ensues. Tested a few times. Happens every time.

My bad. It was the Seal team extract mission, which ever that was.

MIssion 8 rife with audio bugs Some missing lines here and there that appear in text but don't play. During the F15E's cas role, there's a point where some text appears with "Rife, Rifle..." but the ATC take off approval audio plays. The Rifle audio plays a few minutes later with no text on screen and is followed again by the same ATC take off approval.

Something I've noticed going through the campaign documents, the text for the loadout line for each one is incredibly small. I have to zoom way in to be able to see it, and even then it's not super legible. There is plenty of room available in the box so I don't think this is a necessity because of a space constraint or anything. It's a super small issue, as I tend to double check everything in the mission planner anyway. Still, thought I would mention it. Normal Zoom and Full Zoom captures attached.

LOL yeah no sweat man. Campaign is blast so far. The AI in DCS never ceases to amaze me, and usually not in a good way. They probably just ran out of crayons to snack on.

Mission 7, is the entire flight of f18's supposed to crash on landing? lol 2nd attempt they pulled it off. Marines, man.

Ah. That was it then. One of the J15's survived a 9M to the face from one of the eagles and went straight to RTB. I let him go, focusing on the IL76's.

Instead of cluttering up the forum should I just update this thread as I find potential bugs? Mission 6 possible trigger bug:

There is supposedly some problem that lots of players are having with the HARMS and the HTS pod/HAD mode. I haven't experienced the problem, but lots of others have. I have read in the past that using the ECM pod can interfere with the HTS pod tracking and locking ground radar emitters. If I were you I would try turning it off when attempting to use the HTS Pod. Honestly, the ALQ ECM pods are mostly useless in the current state of the game for the Viper so I usually just pull them off my Jet and add extra fuel. I was able to complete this mission (albeit with heavy blue casualties) by more or less the following process: I put the radar codes for the target ships (409, 410, 411) as briefed into table 3 in the HARM menu via the DED (AG MODE -> LIST -> 0(MISC) -> 0(HARM)). I don't think it matters which table you put them in, that's just where I put them. On ingress I got an approximate location on the enemy ships using the HTS pod and then created a Mark Point with the TGP. The HTS pod got me pretty close, roughly in the center of the ship formation. I didn't really have to search much to confirm the location and create the MKPT. Flew to roughly within range (Had to fly moderately defensively and at an angle to the SAMs to reduce their range while I closed distance) and launched all 4 harms using POS mode, with the Markpoint I had created as their target. I sent two at the Type 52B radar, and one each at the Type 52C and Type 54A radars. NOTE: I was not really expecting these shots to hit anything. As I read the briefing the goal was to try and deplete as many of the ships missiles as possible, and in my experience sending a full volley of harms likes that tends to draw the most repeat shots from SAMs. All 4 missiles were shot down but the ship shot about a dozen missiles at them to achieve that. I told my flight to engage mission and rejoin before I launched my HARMS, but I honestly don't remember if they did anything. I was having an issue with them running out of fuel and ejecting near STPT 3. Once I sent the HARMs I went defensive and flew as low as I could before coming back nose hot to engage the J-15's, staying low. I did a popup attack against them and took out 3 or 4 in about as many passes, getting low again each time I went defensive. The F15's may have gotten a couple. The other F16's didn't do much if the were even still around at this point. The SAMs on the ships inflicted massive losses on most of the Blue Air. The Buffs were able to get their missiles out though, and maybe a half dozen got through and sunk at least one ship. It did take 3 tries to succeed, and this approach was refined over the prior couple attempts, however even in my first shot at it I was able to track and lock the ships radars with the HTS pod and fired all 4 harms using that process. This one feels like a suicide mission but it is doable. Details were all confirmed in TACVIEW. I'll see about attaching the tacview file after work if anyone wants to review it.