VAF [136] Striker

You don't need LUA to set that. It's "Units Life < Than, %". But to answer the other part of your question, I've noted that it's usually less that 50% but it depends on the vehicle. Some tanks can still function at various levels of health. You'll just have to experiment with putting damage bombs on the vehicle at different amounts and see when it stops spinning the tower I guess. Maybe someone else knows more specific info. I don't know how accurate the damage modeling for ground vehicles is but it does seem to be a little random.

I haven't written anything like this in a long time, so it really pleases me to do this now. All I can say is "WOW", that was amazing. And for anyone that dismisses choppers for what they can't do compared to the jets, I hope you take a second look. I bought the license for the Mi-8 about 4 or 5 years ago and learned enough to fly but other than a few lucky gun runs I really wasn't even OK. I had tried the Spring Tension campaign but I always felt like the older more limited map was kind of boring down low. And when 2.5 first came out I had tried a few missions and left it to go for future updates. I've recently been going through the older campaigns and just trying to understand the systems better and they've helped. So when I started the campaign, it was a little slow and mundane at first. But then all of the sudden I got smacked in the face by a realistic (enough) genuine old school WAR STORY! I was completely hooked and ran several missions a day at times to get through it. But this is anything but boring. (Make sure you read the stories and notes!) It's not just that the missions are complex and difficult to do but it's the story line that goes along with everything. And the voice overs are some of the best I've heard, studio quality and the scripting is so damn realistic, I really felt sucked into the missions. There are tons of surprises along the way as well. I don't want to give anything away but I strongly suggest that you put some time into training on the weapon systems or you might find yourself walking back to the FARP. And don't forget we have real, er digital real trees now for all of you that go back to the earlier times. There are some very minor (not game breakers in any way) down sides to some of the missions so you have to be patient and learn good control. The AI choppers tend to do a lot of speed changes flying NOA and it's a workout. I found flying sideways as they slowed and then rotating forward again as they sped up and staying more level then trying to follow their profile. The hills make it super difficult to keep near AI so keep working at it. The other super minor issue for me was there were a lot of missions with hot starts. I prefer to start my own bird. On mission 19 there's no loadout listed so when you go into the Mission Planner make sure you take SAB-100's. I also think there's a trigger reversed in that mission and you don't get the additional direction instructions but just listen to chief when he says you're over the area and do your job! The thing I like most is the story line. I'm a huge movie fan and like everything from Bogart & Bacall movies to Sci Fi, so when I see a story that brings me into it, I really appreciate the hard work and time that they put into this campaign. It was a big undertaking and just looking at some of the triggering makes me feel like a novice. It reminds me of some of the early computer games and the great stories they had in their campaigns or a really good book. And the ones in this campaign show how powerful the mission editor is and how you can make a complex and believable mission with just the built in stuff. I highly encourage anyone looking into making a campaign to do this first as an example. I also hope we see more of this level quality campaign from Eagle Dynamics or anyone for that matter in the years ahead. And I want to thank former Belsimtek and the gang at ED for keeping this one alive and working to improve it! You all deserve a big hand for producing something this good. WATCH OUT FOR THE TREES!!

I made a mistake on it. You can't use illumination rockets, instead you have to use the SAB-100 illumination bomb. The problem is that they are not in the preset loadouts because they were erased so I didn't know. There should probably be a notation in the briefing as to what ordnance you should take. I think that would be helpful. There is another problem though. The directional triggers are not working. I've been toying around with it and I'll post what I find later today.

I fly out to the waypoint and it tells me I'm over the target and then chief says to stand by for heading to illuminate and no more instructions after that. I looked at the trigger zones so I know roughly where they're at. I flew 0 degrees for at least 7 miles, turned back in, flew in circles around the target area at 3000m and still no further instructions. So whatever is supposed to work to trigger the set of instructions to launch illumination rockets is not working. I would really like to complete the campaign so if someone from ED reads this I would appreciate knowing if there's a fix or if one is coming or if I'm doing something wrong possibly. I know this campaign is pretty old and low priority now but it's turned out to be really fun and immersive and I would really like to finish it at some point. So please try to fix it if broken if and when you have time.

There are 5 missions in the campaign folder that you can easily change from single to multi. Just change the aircraft from player to client and make all of them client for the F-18. Most of the other missions are training. They are pretty good for a couple players.

I'm pretty sure that you need either the entire FC3 package, or the Su-27. It was posted back awhile ago that it should be available either way. I recommend that you get the entire FC3 package though. They are all great modules to play around with and there are several campaigns that come with FC3. You'll also save $25 from purchasing them separately.

Yes.

LOL, yeah, maybe not exact wording but I thought the general idea was that it wasn't in any plans for future releases.

Yes, I've had this happen too. Also random missile warnings but no missiles but those could be related to an old mission with script issues.

Not clickable anything, keyboard and HOTAS only. ED has said that this will never be HF cockpit, but who knows what the future will bring. Razbam is doing the high fidelity F-15E Strike Eagle.

How do you pronounce that?

Use Devrim's cockpit mods. The Su-27 one works for the J-11. There are some super minor missing labels on some of the buttons but nothing critical or really noticeable. If you install them in the user folder they never get deleted. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/?set_filter=Y&arrFilter_pf%5Bfiletype%5D=&arrFilter_pf%5Bgameversion%5D=&arrFilter_pf%5Bfilelang%5D=&arrFilter_pf%5Baircraft%5D=&arrFilter_DATE_CREATE_1_DAYS_TO_BACK=&CREATED_BY=Devrim&sort_by_order=TIMESTAMP_X_DESC&set_filter=Filter

Great campaign and tons of fun. I have spent quite a bit of time in the F-15C but have never done any of the campaigns. Was cool to hear Wags voice in the first mission but disappointed that there were no other missions with VO. Didn't take away from the campaign though. There is a slight problem with mission #5 "OCA on Nalchik". The AI SEAD can not complete their task because there are two SA-10 systems, one at Mozdok and one at Nalchik. It looks like it should have been an SA-11 though because of the way the units were laid out. And the AI F-16's could not get close enough to launch their JSOW's. I tried half a dozen times and gave up and changed the SA-10 to an SA-11 and they were able to take it out. Definitely not a negative criticism of the campaign and it may still work a percentage of the time, but I lost patience after the number of times I tried. Just be prepared to do it over if they fail on the SEAD. That's the only issue I saw though and I didn't really want to alter the campaign but I didn't see any other way. The AI sams have been improved over the last few years so a lot of what worked in the past doesn't now. But it's a really fun campaign and good for learning how to handle the Eagle. I hate to admit it but this is the first time I've actually observed the JSOW-A's in action and I can't believe how devastating they are. I saw two of them take out an entire SA-11 site in one pass. They are going to be absolutely amazing when they're released for the F-18 and building missions will be a whole new exercise.

Does anyone know how to reduce the size or set the size of the message box and spacing between the lines. We love using this but the boxes are so huge and take up so much space it makes it difficult when there are a lot of pilots in the server.

Thank you for your response and description of the problems. I knew it was changes to the AI since previous versions. And I know under the circumstances that it's very difficult to keep everything working as advertised but please do what you can because it is a very good campaign.

Maybe not, but I say it for the new. I will say as I please, when and where I please to say it.

DCS campaign missions have absolutely nothing to do with realism or "Ramboing" as you put it. In fact they couldn't be any further from anything bearing anything close to real. They are meant to be fun and a learning experience. When the AI constantly fail to do their job you lose all sense of any accomplishment. The mission should function in a way that requires the player to have a certain level of proficiency to complete the task at hand while relying on the AI to accomplish their job with their built in level of proficiency. When they fail to do that it becomes an exercise in beating your head against a wall and forces players to give up thinking that they are not doing something right. I played the mission close to a dozen times and the AI FAILED to do their job every time. I had to change the conditions slightly to get them to complete their task. What Panthera is saying is that it was a complete fluke that they were actually able to complete their task. My point from the get go is that for this to be a fun exercise you should not have to do a mission a dozen times hoping that the AI are able to finish the job. It should work the first time as constructed as long as the human player does their job right within some narrow conditions like not calling in the SEAD or the Strike package too late or too early. I know for a fact (self included in the past before I really understood the DCS mission construction) that people have given up on campaigns because of a missions failure to function correctly. I also know that some of these are very old campaigns and I was only posting this to give people some perspective on what it is like to go back and do some of them for the first time. I want others to understand that it's not their fault when they fail under circumstances like this, nothing more. I wasn't bashing the campaign in general and I know that they will probably never get changed or at least not soon. But if they are going to continue to distribute them with stuff like FC3 or however they're distributed or provided then people should know that there are some downsides to them. That's the only point I was trying to get across. In other words, it's one thing if you are failing the mission, but a whole other problem if the mission is failing you.

Yup, my thoughts exactly.

RGR, I just thought it would be fun to identify the actual city he was flying over.

It's Haifa Israel that he's flying over. At 1:05 in the video is the Sail Tower and you can see the port in the background. At 2:26 you can see the V shaped jetty at the port. But that's only a tiny slice of the map. So yeah, it's Syria and the surrounding area.

OK, good to know.

I am aware of everything you stated and yes, I know that these are very old campaigns and I know how to use GS. I'm just posting my reviews for anyone new that has never tried them before. Also, they have been updating some of the very old campaigns so the VO was just a suggestion if they do anything to this one. Stennis was just a goofy mistake on my end. I know it's the Vinson so I corrected that. By the way for anyone interested, MadDog-IC has a zip file on the users section of the digitalcombatsimulator.com website that apparently fixes a lot of the mission issues. I was not aware of this when I did the campaign but it might be worthwhile to download them and try instead of the default versions. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3303252/

Yes, it is impossible the way it's currently designed. I would really like to see ED fix the minor problems and redo the VO if possible.

This is a really good campaign to learn the Su-33. The missions range from easy to difficult and are fairly immersive. There are some minor problems that can be corrected in the mission planner, mostly loadouts that are too heavy for taking off since the max on the forward position is 64,000. Some takeoff and landing times are bad as well because of the new lighting problems. It's impossible to see the carrier or airfields in the dark and no night vision on FC3 birds. It would be really nice to see some of these original campaigns with updated voice overs. The original ones are really out of place compared to recent campaigns. The biggest problem is that the final mission is pretty much impossible to complete. The Vinson carrier group shoots down every missile that are sent at it. The mission is dependent on the SEAD being completed and then the Tu-22 bombers actually sinking the Stennis. I had to edit the mission and make the carrier group hold fire after they were hit with SEAD missiles which still kept it within the spirit of the campaign but I would like to have completed without having to edit a mission. If someone has come up with a different solution to finish the campaign I would like to know what that is. The newer ship modeling in DCS World is probably making it too hard to actually attack and destroy ships now so I couldn't figure out a better solution. EDIT: By the way for anyone interested, MadDog-IC has a zip file on the users section of the digitalcombatsimulator.com website that apparently fixes a lot of the mission issues. I was not aware of this when I did the campaign but it might be worthwhile to download them and try instead of the default versions. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.c...files/3303252/

Really good campaign, lot's of fun. Just completed and everything seems to work great. Only issue is that the mavericks currently have trouble locking in some lighting conditions, specifically right at dawn. Have a similar problem in the A-10C so I just changed the time in the mission with the problem and was able to lock. Very short flight times so it was get in, hit targets and get out quick. A+ and really cool on the new map.