Mistermann

What do you fly, @MAXsenna? There are MP/coop "campaigns" out there in user files for Hornet, Apache and Kiowa. There are limitations to what can be done with some minor mission immersion triggers, however there are no fundamental blockers to creating compelling MP campaign content.

@CommandT Here's the latest announcement from Tobi.

My wife and I have a saying that feels pretty appropriate for this particular situation ... "No response IS a response". Usually a two-word response. Disappointing to say the least, @Stearmandriver, but can't say I'm surprised.

We actually started out with those mods in place and opted to remove for a variety of reasons - mostly reducing barrier of entry for people and mods. Our group prefers the supercarrier but recognizes it isn't "period appropriate". Good idea! @Devil 505 is our resident A4 jock and always uses the carrier. Never even thought of putting A4s over at Andersen. I'll update the mission with some A4 client slots per your suggestion. Appreciate that, thanks.

Its pretty difficult to remain positive sometimes, Stearmandriver. A simple acknowledgement. I'm sure those guys get inundated with all sorts of @mentions each day, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that this particular one fell through the cracks. Let's try again, shall we? Adding @Grimes as he's responded to many bug inquiries over the years as well. @BIGNEWY, @NineLine

Why? Is something not working?

Thanks!! I updated the OP and file download.

We could for sure - we're trying to limit the number of required mods. Given people can download the miz those that want to add additional mods to the environment if they choose.

Official download link updated in OP

Isn't that fun? The Bronco is a blast. Great to hear from you, NinpoFox.

Give the download link in OP a try. The file hasn't been "approved" yet, but it appears to allow me to download using this link. YMMV on this one as it may only work for me as the author. I've had approvals take up to 5 days in the past, so hopefully this will work in the meantime.

FAQ Q: Is this a public server announcement? A: No. We are not hosting this mission publicly. However, anyone who wants to host for their friends is more than welcome to do so. This mission is not designed or intended to support large scale multi-player events. Q: Whenever I select a helo, I am spawned in the air, drop to the ground and explode. What's the problem? A: As of v2.006, all client slots now start as statics so airfields and FARPs are populated. When players select a slot, the static is replaced by their client aircraft. This is using @cfrag StopGaps script. NOTE: Those hosting this (locally or via dedicated server) MUST install a small script ('stopGapGUI.lua') in their SAVED GAMES\Scripts\Hooks folder to prevent clients from spawning in the air, falling to the ground, and self destructing. This is due to a MP synch issue. This lua is found here - https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3331434/

Overview Several months ago, @tobi and @Eight Ball released a little gem known as the OH-6A Cayuse. Immediately my small group of DCS friends downloaded and consumed it like someone was going to take it away. We already had a Marianas playground mission we used for all things Vietnam era and naturally dropped this helo down and started cruising through the jungle on make believe jungle ops missions in a multi-player scenario. It didn't take long for us to brainstorm a random environment providing unexpected encounters centered on the South portion of Guam simulating the jungles of Vietnam. From those early ideas, the original "Into The Jungle" mission concept was born. Since then, we've played this mission for 100's of hours and it remains fresh. No exaggeration. Over the past 10 months we've refined the experience and at this point, have something we're proud to share with the community. Anyone following @Devil5O5Youtube channel knows what I mean as he often posts videos our MP Jungle experiences. Download For those who want to jump right in, the TLDR experience is right here - Get the download here [https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3342301/] Required Mods OH-6A: by EightBall & Tobi - https://github.com/tobi-be/DCS-OH-6A Vietnam Assets Pack: by EightBall & Tobi - https://github.com/tobi-be/DCS-OH-6A Seaking: by EightBall - https://forum.dcs.world/topic/346587-ai-seaking-mod-sh-3h-mk48/ A-4E-C: by Community Project - https://08jne01.github.io/community-a4e-c/#installation OV-10A: by Split Air - https://splitair.gumroad.com/l/fwzxn Simple Mission Restart - https://forum.dcs.world/topic/308147-simple-mission-restart-smr-server-script-to-simplify-mission-restart/ [Required for your Dedicated Server, not Client installs] Civilian Asset Pack - Naval by 8Ball - https://forum.dcs.world/topic/270558-civilian-objects-and-vehicles/ Vietnam Boats by upaut - see this video for instructions on wh ere to download https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdqoourYGw8 Original forum post from 2014 - https://forum.dcs.world/topic/103564-addon-tents-watchtower-uh-1-cargo/ Details First and foremost, this is designed for MP dedicated servers. Yes, you can play this solo if you want and it’s pretty fun that way, but I highly recommend sharing it with friends on a local or public server. You'll have an absolute blast. If someone wants to toss this up on a public server, please do. Have fun with it, make changes, let us know how its received. From the beginning, we wanted to create a dynamic jungle environment where we could take off from a Jungle FARP and scout the surrounding area for "VC" soldiers and equipment. 8Ball's Vietnam Assets Pack (VAP) made an excellent source of period appropriate assets. Using the Cayuse to mark and attack these random groups drove collaborative cooperation – there’s nothing better than marking targets for your buddies coming in with firepower. Concentrating both helo and fast movers on targets in a real-time randomized environment just never gets old. This cooperation fueled our weekly MP experiences and fed our desire to improve the mission and ultimately share with the community. Currently, this mission supports 18 different "groups" ranging from some "VC" soldiers in the brush all the way up to village level camps. Each group has a probability of spawning at mission start. It is rare for back to back missions to start with same number of spawns which makes scouting an important element of this experience. More on spawning below. All the action is centered on the southern portion of Guam [inside the yellow box on the map below]. This box is roughly 85 square miles of territory making it large enough to require scouting, yet small enough to experience action almost immediately. Most of the activity takes place in the general vicinity of Fena Lake which is the only significant water landmark on the island. This results in an easy to reference directional aid for all players. Additionally, there are two significant spawn points on the lake. They are labeled Alpha Hill and Bunker Hill and again aide in MP coordination. You’ll hear ejecting pilots reference these landmarks further assisting players in finding them if they’re interested in CSAR. CSAR The more we played, the more we longed for the ability to perform CSAR on the map. This was mostly driven by us getting shot down and thinking it would be cool to go and rescue ourselves. It didn't take long for us to find @Ciribob's excellent CSAR script from all the way back in 2015. It still works brilliantly today! Immediately on insertion, we were getting CSAR missions spawned whenever we'd crash/die making the experience comical as we'd getting missions to rescue ourselves - often over very hostile areas. From there, we wanted the ability to ensure CSAR missions that didn't rely on us dying and creating one ourselves. This idea fostered the concept of random CSAR events similar to the random group spawns at the beginning of the mission. Now, along with CSAR being naturally triggered by players getting killed, we added random F4-E shootdowns occurring periodically over the first 2+ hours of gameplay. Once we got those working, we went back in and added custom voiceovers for any random spawned CSAR event to further liven up the mission experience. Lastly, along with the base CSAR text messages in Ciribob's script, we added pilot voiceovers for all relevant CSAR messages. With all these gameplay elements we've managed to create a darn compelling Jungle experience that hasn't gotten old – at least for us it hasn’t. We've had so much fun with this mission we felt obligated to share with you. But before doing so, we wanted to put a little more icing on the cake. That icing comes by way of assets. From our original hidden jungle FARP we expanded gameplay into 4 jungle FARPS, a militarized airstrip, a carrier strike group and Andersen AFB. Each is a spawn point and each is as authentic as we could go without overtaxing our PCs. With the exception of the VAP, all assets are base DCS. Lastly, with recent announcement on immersive weather and fog coming to DCS, we tested the legacy fog option and were pleasantly surprised/pleased with the results and included that as a final piece of eye candy for you. I sincerely hope you get many hours of fun out of this mission. My only ask, in return for this, is your feedback in this thread. We plan on building on this experience and would love to hear thoughts from folks who've played. Additional Details Performance The guys in our small group all play exclusively in VR (Pimax 8K, 8KX, Crystal) and are lucky to have fairly beefy machines including RTX4090s. We have not experienced any issues playing this mission (I host on a private dedicated server). If you experience performance issues, we'd appreciate hearing about it, so we can adjust accordingly for future updates. Supported Aircraft - A-4E-C Skyhawk - OV-10A Bronco - F-4E45MC Phantom II - F-5E-3 Tiger II - OH-58D Kiowa - OH-6A Cayuse - UH-1H Huey Contributors A huge thanks to my partners in crime here Devil505 and @Wulf103. This creation is the result of many different play sessions over many months. Couldn’t have happened without the three of us. Known Issues There are a handful of known “issues” or limitations in the mission. None are show stoppers. - Some [N.Jungle] spawns are blocked due to static placement. This happened late in the development and we've opted to leave it "as-is" until we get the ME grouping features in the next patch enabling a cleaner debugging environment. Hopefully this won't be too difficult to correct. Corrected. - Not an issue per se, but something players should be aware of. Whenever a random CSAR spawn happens, I block future random CSAR events from triggering so we don't oversaturate the AO with downed pilots. When players return CSAR pilots to MASH locations, the mission resets the trigger allowing new random CSAR events. [see F10 Radio options] - A4 Tacan needs LUA update to work - https://forum.dcs.world/topic/290302-community-a-4e-c-v22-october-2023/page/41/#findComment-5556247 - OH-58D in state of limbo due to "half patch" release by ED. Should be fixed whenever official patch from PC released properly. ED corrected. MASH locations There are two MASH locations on the map. When rescuing downed CSAR pilots (random spawns or fellow players), the CSAR helo player must deliver the rescued pilot to one of these two locations to get credit for rescue (and resetting the CSAR trigger flag). After playing the mission a bit, you'll know exactly where these locations are on the map. Until then, use the map below for guidance (the 2 locations have ** after the name). Note: the MASH tents are identified by the + marking on the tent and is easily identified from the air. F10 Radio Menu There are a handful of player options available via the F10 radio menu. - Restart Mission: Using a handy script from @cfrag, this menu option restarts this mission on the server. This ONLY works in a dedicated server environment and requires his script on the server itself. See [Required Mods]. - How many groups: This is a handy way to see how many active groups exist on the map. This number is the real time count of groups remaining on the map. Once all originally spawned groups are eliminated from the map, all remaining groups spawn. - Spawn all groups: The number of groups that spawn at the beginning of the mission is based on a probability calculation made for each group (18 total) in the mission. If, at any time, players want all possible groups on the map, this option brings them all in. - Reset CSAR spawns: As described in the Known Issues section, random CSAR spawning is turned off until a rescued pilot is returned to MASH. If, for any reason, a player can't return a pilot to MASH (most often due to death), this option resets the trigger and enables a new CSAR spawn chance - CSAR: This is the base CSAR menu from Ciribob Random Spawning All random spawn are handled in ME triggers (not LUA code). Within the mission itself, there are 2 types of spawns, enemy ground units and friendly ejecting pilots. Enemy Ground The probabilities of each group's spawn are handled in the initialization trigger in the ME. For example the probability of Group 1 [RANDO1] spawning is 50%. At the beginning of the mission each random unit is assigned a random number between 1-100. The group will spawn if that random number is greater than the probability percentage number. If you wish to change the probability of spawning, you simply have to change the spawn percentage number. Whenever an entire spawn group is destroyed the mission creates an explosion and smoke marker over the main unit of the group. This is an easy indication that the group is dead and to move onto other areas of the map. Ejecting Pilots Whenever a pilot survives an ejection, the CSAR script creates an event. Unlike the random ground units, this mission always spawns at least one downed pilot. This event always happens 25 minutes after the mission begins. There are 4 total downed pilot events that can trigger during gameplay but come with a degree of randomness to minimize redundancy. During play testing there were times when we had far too many pilots raining down on us and I added a governor to the trigger system to reduce the number of CSAR missions. Some features of the governor are: - Scripted downed pilots are paused until a pilot is rescued and delivered to MASH. - If players decide to leave downed pilots in the field and forego rescuing, the mission ceases generating downed pilots. Should players get shot down, the CSAR script will generate a rescue event regardless. - If a player dies while carrying a rescue pilot to the MASH and the death doesn’t trigger a CSAR event, there’s a chance the governor logic never triggers another random CSAR. There’s an F10 radio option allowing players to re-start CSAR events to cover this condition. Scripts included in mission - Splash Damage 2.0 by Grimm from Dec 2022 + small power nerf by me - MIST v.5.126 - CSAR v1.9.2 plus some changes by me. All my changes are mod marked and commented - Simple Mission Restart: a tiny server script that allows any mission to restart when they set flag "simpleMissionRestart" to 1 by Cfrag Installation Run it on a dedicated server like any other mission. You can also play solo by running this like any other mission. Recommend you play the mission as a multiplayer option, however. Future expansion(s) We have lots of ideas for future expansion which may or may not see the light of day. We’ll see where this goes and what type of feedback we receive. Below are some ideas we’ve discussed. -New Fog: When this is released, I want to revisit the fog settings and have the fog dissipate as the sun comes up. We can definitely make this happen along with re-appearing sometime in pre-dawn for those that keep the server up and running. Released -CAS on my location: We’ve kicked around this concept a time or two. When no one wants to hop into a fast mover and perform CAS, we imagine it’d be nice to spawn in an AI CAS flight to attack units near the helo that called for CAS on the F10 radio menu. I am no scripting guru, so this may be something beyond my skills and/or not worth the time and effort. -Logistics: If/When ED gets this into the base game, there might be value in resupplying weapons to FARPs. We’re thinking we could limit weapons stores at FARPs and require replenishment from Chinhooks from time to time. Might be an interesting gameplay element. - Further CSAR randomness + voiceovers: Depending on staying power of this mission, the spawned downed pilots might become redundant and while there is randomness to them, there’s only 12 possible outcomes. I may opt to add additional planes and appropriate voiceovers to expand replayability. - SEAD: We do have 2 SA-2 batteries up at Tinian if anyone wants to venture up there with Phantoms or Skyhawks. You can spawn up on Saipan if you want to engage via helo’s. There’s really nothing else up there which makes the experience pretty light. We’re considering expanding gameplay to those northern islands and may focus on SEAD for that expansion. Have fun!!

It isn't available yet. When we do upload there will be an announcement thread with link to download in ED files.

I definitely support this idea. Until folks experience the massive FOV of the 8K/8KX series its difficult to express how limiting the PCL and PCS FOV actually is. Unfortunately, I think this ship has sailed.

That's great to hear! Acknowledging there's a challenge and committing to change. That approach goes a long way.

Well, there is "sorta" this feature. This may work under certain use cases. The value shown here is a percentage chance that the group will exist at mission start. Its not a late activated unit, but might work to help randomize things. I don't use it because there's a chance ALL units spawn or NONE so I prefer to control it with triggers. Yes, it can get complex. I find using names for variables instead of numbers makes the triggers much easier to read and debug. This % chance to appear seems to be one of those ME mysteries that many don't know about. Heck, I didn't know about it for years.

Thanks - haven't gone back to the comments on YT so I would have missed that. Good to know.

Wags just released a new video showcasing the new plane directors coming in the next patch. He uses Auto-Throttle for the entire trap. At 9:54 when he gets the LSO grade what do you think popped up ... yup, EGIW. The man told us in the video his hand was OFF the throttle and on ATC, so how does the jet not have enough recovery power? IDK, maybe this is real life behavior? Maybe someone with real life experience can explain? @BIGNEWY or @NineLine is it possible for the team to acknowledge this is a known defect within the DCS ecosystem? This EGIW concern has been around for years. Maybe its just too low a priority or too difficult to correct to be worked on or possibly working as intended - and I appreciate those are possibilities, especially after all this time. Any type of status update ED can provide would be appreciated. Thank you.

Same here - jaw dropped and fully immersed in Wags' experience. Looking forward to the patch with great anticipation. Personally, I am not too concerned about the Auto180 and suspect they had to make some compromises for various reasons. I can live with it for now. Not ideal, but a workable solution for their first release. I am more concerned about the speed of recovery operations in MP and the spacing required now that Plane Directors keep players in the way by making them stop to fold wings and foul the deck. Again, not a show stopper, but something I hope they acknowledge as a problem and commit to addressing. Overall this looks like an great addition and something my gang will very much appreciate. Thanks ED!

I did similar testing when tinkering with the scaled power factor setting, I just didn't record it to compare like you did - great idea. There's no wrong answer here, just your personal preference. What settings did you settle on? Glad I could lend some assistance.

This is a couple of years ago, but it should still work unless someone changed the inner workings of how Grimm calculated the "scaled power factor". I reduced it for my personal use and have been happy with it since I made the post above. Below is the LUA code.

@theIRIEone, @Lace gave some good tips above. I'll throw in my $0.02 here. Randomness is something you can do 100% from the ME without using any external scripting or LUA magic. You will have to get creative with trigger logic, but the good news is you can do it all with triggers. It might not be "pretty" for the traditional LUA coders out there, but it gets the job done for those of us who aren't versed in modern programming environments. At a high level, you can create different sets of late activated groups and associate random probabilities that these will activate. For instance maybe you're creating a SEAD mission against mobile targets. In this example you could create 4 different mobile SAM groups as late activated. At mission start (or whenever you desire) have a trigger set a random value between 1-4 in a flag called "Mobile_SAM_Spawn" or whatever name you want. Then in another trigger activate group1 if the value of "Mobile_SAM_Spawn" equals 1 and repeat for the other 3 groups accordingly. Now you have a mission where you don't know what's out there with a 1 in 4 chance (25%) that the mission plays out the way it did the last time your played. Depending on your needs you can mix up groups and probabilities and get a pretty diverse and "random" set of targets. Yes, as the mission creator you know the possibilities of things that might show up, but you don't know until you get there. I have some missions that have more that 20 different groups that can spawn in using this approach. I am the mission custodian for my small group of MP friends and this is the approach I take to keep missions fresh and feeling new even after months of playing the same mission.

Love those images, @Eight Ball

Cfrag - you never cease to amaze me, sir. Thank you for the detailed and thoughtful response - and miz! Here are some comments back from me. Oh, I hear you. I formally received a Computer Science degree and started my career as a "consultant" which was a lofty term for "coder" back in the day. I haven't programmed for my job in more than 25 years. Trying to decipher, copy, tweak and test LUA code is slow and arduous for this semi-old timer. I use your debugger for a lot of this . A little more background on what I am trying to pull off here. I have a multiplayer dynamic mission that serves as a playground for me and my buddies. We mostly fly Helos on this map, but sprinkle in some fixed wing as well. This mission heavily features Tobi and 8Ball's Cayuse. We use the Marianas map as our stand-in for a Vietnam setting. Here's a recent video from my wingman @Devil 505 that showcases the mission. I recently added Ciribob's CSAR script to the mission which added a pretty cool SAR element to our play. I added some random spawned ejecting pilots along with voiceovers that ensure we've got some downed pilots to pickup. Its been a neat experience. One thing we thought might be cool to add is the ability to call in a CAS mission at our position. The downed pilots often come down over very contested land. This makes the CSAR very exciting for us, but without some CAS can become overwhelming. Often none of us wants to hop out of our helo and do CAS ourselves, so this is where the idea was born. I was thinking we could take a menu option that says "CAS on my location" that triggers a period appropriate fixed wing asset to spawn in on the map that comes in and provides some aerial firepower for us. This is where my 1-5 back of the napkin steps come from in the OP. Yessir. The z-axis would have tripped me up for sure on this one. Making everyone their own group also makes sense and I've been used to doing this back when Pretense was being supported. I dove into that monster script to add some things and recall single unit groups were a requirement for it as well. Oh, I hear you on this. I could easily just blow stuff up and call it a day. I often do that in my missions to add what I call Hollywood FX to regular explosions. Adding smoke/fire on those explosions provides much needed character to the battlefield. BUT ... my guys are all about experiencing this as authentically as possible. We want to see an aircraft come in, take fire, possibly evade and go around and eventually put down some ordinance. If it hits targets, great. If it misses and makes more passes, awesome. If it gets shot down and the pilot ejects ... bonus CSAR! Hope that helps frame up the "why" on this one. Seriously, Cfrag - you are the best!! The service you provide this community is unreal. I honestly believe most of us around these parts share a very similar combat sim passion and could each sit together over an adult beverage or two and be instant friends sharing common passions. Like brothers from different mothers! Anyway... I cobbled together some thoughts and have a hacked together template right now that leverages MOOSE, MIST and some old code I wrote plagiarized years ago to spawn late activated units. I made the exercise as trivial as possible by limiting as many variables as possible just to prove I could do it. So, I've been able to 1) Spawn in an F4 with CAS loadout 2) Using MOOSE gave it a patrol zone (in ME, not dynamic) 3) Using MOOSE gave it a command to CAS on a fixed zone (in ME, not dynamic) This currently works and was a small victory for me. Granted I am more or less "assembling" code, not creating it. Its not pretty, nor efficient ... but delivering the result I am going for. Thanks for the miz. Downloading it right now and will check it out.