Troutish

Thanks! I might make a campaign - not sure yet, but I will be making more missions. I know what you mean by the heavy sam environment that exists in many missions and campaigns. I think it should be fairly rare for an attack pilot to go up against such lethal threats, especially without a fac marking them or a more exact briefing about the location. SU25s and A10s would not last very long in these situations - so I think they would only be deployed in a heavy sam space as a last, dire resort. Im finding surviving sams in online play VERY difficult and annoying. They often are not at the WP, there are no facs for SU25 and unless you fly with a group using voice, you cant really hunt for them by watching them launch at other pilots. This is why I made anti-insurgent missions there is barely a sam threat and the pilot should focus on a) finding and hitting targets, not friendlies, and b) not taking ANY damage or undue risk. This should include being aware of the elevations around you and not using overly steep dive angles on rocket runs.

Now that we have CA and 2 playable helicopters we need: 1) Earthen infantry bunker with LMG/ HMG/ or AT weapon. This would be a object about 1 foot high, 10 wide and 5 deep, covered in cammo (foliage) with a long black rectangle along the front for the bunker slit. Its basically a hole in the ground covered with logs, earth and foliage that you can fire out of. Placeing a few of these along a treeline would represent a dug in infantry company 2) prone infantrymen 3) 2 man uncovered foxhole. this is basically a small dark oval texture on the ground with two heads poking out of it (maybe also with a small dirt mound in front?) 4) sand bagged tents I'm kinda suprised that we dont already have these given that DCS is mainly offering a mud mover sim. I'd rather not make 60's or 70's era huey missions without these

This is inspiring me to get the huey....... I'll try making some missions that have a "vietnam" feel to them. If you want some good reading on huey's in vietnam, read this novel by the author of Hunt for Red October: http://www.amazon.com/CW2-L-HEATH/dp/0380710005

agreed - and i cant believe that DCS included such a difficult campaign in a product that they know will be used by novices (and I dont mean flight sim novices - ive got almost 30 years under my belt and i find those missions too challenging) you are right about deploying fighter bombers in a sam environment like that - it would only happen as a last resort in dire circumstances. The other thing to consider is that real life CAS pilots would not fly these missions the way we do (trying to get a kill with every missle and bomb we have). They would do a run or two and then RTB - happy with just a few kills. I consider a 4 vehicle kill mission a success in the SU25, and if you are playing online, loitering in the target area for longer than that means you are just waiting to be splashed by some dude in his fighter.. My suggestion to you is to edit the campaign missions by deleting some of the sams (remember you will have to unhide them first in the editor)

punt

This is the 3rd in a series of single player SU25 anti-insurgency missions for novice pilots. The difficulty level is slightly higher than the last 2 missions. The mission plays much better with labels off. Fly CAS in support of a Georgian Army ground offensive against insurgent infantry. The ground attack has multiple engagments so you may have to resupply if things get out of hand. Trout Operation Gamayun 3.zip

Punt1

any thoughts or criticism welcome. I thought about adding a briefing map but since this is an "emergency" CAS mission, there would not necessarily be recon photos availiable.

Rowan's Mig Alley had this very cool effect where light would twinkle off the canopies of the enemy migs. not a lot, just occasionally, which allowed you to spot them MUCh easier. I agree that IRL its far easier to spot detail on the ground than it is in any flight sim I've played.

I dont think we should confuse what CA offers with what a DC would offer. A DC is what would unlock the game's potential as BOTH a fight sim and a ground combat sim. If anything, CA illustrates again how there is hardly any content out there that makes DCS products enjoyable beyond the short term. I'll say again, you should not have to be a mission or campaign designer to enjoy any kind of sim. The only market DCS is catering to right now are people willing or happy to do both, as well as the even smaller number of people who play online, but dont fit the first category. Now, if there were hundreds of great player made missions and campaigns, things would be different, but there are not, nor do I think there will ever be.

This is the second in what will be a series of missions against an insurgent threat. Provide close CAS to an allied ground column that has been ambushed. This is an SU25t mission for novice pilots. Fly carefully though, you Can get killed. Designed for play with labels off. Operation Gamayun 2.zip

I'm having difficulty as well. Have your wingman loiter in a safe area until some of the threats are eliminated (otherwise he will just get shot down). If you let him take out a AD target, call him back as soon as he fires or he will loiter (and get shot down) make your runs on the target and then pull back right away with countermeasures popin'. take your time, and gradually you will have a better sense of the environment and where the threats are, and you will have taken some out too. dont forget you can land and re-arm/ repair I dont know how anyone could play that mission with labels off.....

Im thinking about making a mini-campaign and ive got a couple questions. I want to have multiple stages with a random path forward, but not failures that would hold you at a stage or set you back. There are 2 reasons for this, a) repeating missions is an immersion spoiler IMHO, and b) in most cases the activities of a single pilot should not greatly influence the outcome of a campaign. I want the pilot to just focus on specific mission objectives, feel gratified when he gets a "mission success" message, and try to survive the campaign. So... If I award the pilot with 51 points upon take off, that ensures he gets to the next stage, right? and if I set the value range of each mission within each stage to 0-100, mission selection at each stage will happen randomly, right?

thanks, By target pictures i guess you mean screen shots from a recon flight?

Su25T Thanks (my first mission btw)

Yes fix this please Is the idea that they don't want to encourage su25 missions fo that people have to buy a dcs product?

Can I get some feedback on this? Remember it is a simple mission for new pilots Thanks By the way, there are no single player missions for the su25 in dcs world

can sombody suggest a free wav file recorder? Thanks Trout

Here is an easy single player mission for novice pilots, flying the SU25. Strike an insurgent target in the mountains - although the threat level is low, fly it like a real pilot would and be careful! This is meant to be flown with labels off. Stick to the waypoints and dont get lost. Trout Operation Gamayun.zip

As I understand it, only certain types of vehicles can perform JTAC (humvee, for example). if this is the same for russian equipment, then what vehicles can I use?

I know how to do it for a10s, but not russian....

do they want a dynamic campaign or a campaign generator? The former would be somthing similar to F4 The latter would be like the mission generator they have now, except that there would be overall campaign objectives and equipment assigned to each side at the start, and then each generated mission would take into account the results from the previous one. In its simplest form, the aggressor side would need to travel to one or several distant locations using the forces in their order of battle, but the process of getting there would be carved up into missions and time increments.

.....well.... the idea is that if you give your customers a better experience they are more likely to buy your products. At least with Rise of Flight (a ww1 flight sim) they provide all sorts of canned missions and campaigns, but the online play is very similar to what DCS offers. In both cases there are frequently times when there are not enough people online.

After playing Rise of Flight recently it occured to me (again), that it is not necessarily a good thing for military sim devs like 777 studios or DCS to not have a dedicated "official" server. I feel sometimes the player-base gets dispersed, even when it does not want to be. With a dedicated official server that is CLEARLY featured as a choice in the server menu, the company takes on more responsibility for ensuring its customers fully enjoy the product. They have to provide either a good mission/map rotation or dynamic campaign, high server quality and availiabilty, no need for people to DL special mods, but best of all, they can concentrate the player base into a single world, thereby creating larger battles and more populated servers 24/7. They also gain vauable data (if they want it) about how customers interact with the product. Squads and individuals could still run their own servers, but they should not be seen as the "bread and butter" of online play -more like an added feature for a smaller segment of people who are particular about how, and with whom, they want to play. Im sure most people here are big advocates of a wide, ungoverned and free server ecology, but what do you think? Trout

SOme more thoughts about how to do a DC..... The player should have a number of setup choice to make before starting the campaing, such as 2) choose aggressor side 3) choose relative force size 5) campaign duration or size 6) various difficulty settings. Choose to generate any or all of these randomly, or for experienced users, modify the files to fully customize things.. Units are then given starting locations (chosen randomly from a number of templates), and then a number of ultimate destinations that need to be reached for the desired end state. These could also be templates. So lets say you had 5 different orbat templates that included starting locations for units, and then 5 different templates for the final destinations (objectives) that had to be reached and occupied for the campaign to be scored a victory for the aggressor, how many times could you replay this sort of campaign before you noticed a pattern, or otherwise felt like it was groundhog day? What if unit quality were also factored in? what if certain conditions triggered general, or local counter-offensives by the defender? What if unit replacement status was configured randomly, or if there were points in a campaign where one side (or both), were suddenly reinforced with a new division or wing? Better yet, what if the condition of bridges, wherehouses, transportation, power and supply infrastructure influenced resupply? (this is already a capability of the mission editor, right?) My point is that a DC, or DC generator does not have to have too many variables before the player is unable to see a pattern and get bored. Furthermore, if you were to fight multiple campaigns in the same part of the world IRL, the local geography, culture, politics etc. would probably dictate similar battle plans anyway.