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I've noticed the endless trimming as well, even just flying straight and level. I just turn on altitude hold when I'm between waypoints and look around. The Su-27 is practically steam-powered in comparison to jets like the Su-30 or 35. I think we should manage our expectations. I'd love to see a flyable Su-30 with that glass cockpit and thrust vectoring.

Sweet!

Here you go, Belgeode...again, no rush, just checking that things are working properly before I add the frills and gee-whiz stuff. 1BearIntercept.miz

Thank you very much. Purchasing now.

I DID look on the forums, and all I found in reference to my question were people worried about using up all their activations. If there were unlimited activations it wouldn't be an issue with people, correct? Do you have to ask for more activations and prove proof of purchase? Are you exempt if you purchased it on Steam? I simply don't know what this means, that if your activations count down to 0, will you have to purchase the game again? Yes, it sounds ridiculous but the entire reason I asked the question is because, well, it sounds ridiculous and I wanted to be sure that was not the case. Hopefully this will clear it up: I want to buy The Ultimate Argument. I do not want to buy The Ultimate Argument if there are only a fixed number of times I can play it due to fixed activations. This is what I understood by other people's posts and I'm writing now for clarification. Yes, it sounds ridiculous and a little stupid, but I'd rather ask a stupid question than stupidly spend money on something I can't keep.

Please elaborate upon the 3 activations. Does this mean that you have to use an activation every time you finish the campaign? Are we renting campaigns now? So if my hard drive crashes and I have to reinstall DCS, will I have to use up an activation? If you're telling me that after a person purchases the campaign, he or she can only play it a limited number of times, that's just weak sauce, man. Again, IF that's what you're telling me. I understand that making campaigns is a huge undertaking; I'm currently developing a very basic low to medium level air-to-air campaign aimed at familiarizing the "casual" player with fairly realistic scenarios, a believable back story and employment while trying to balance the fun factor at the same time. It's basically an exercise in bettering myself with mission and campaign building while reaching out to the player base for help and collaboration where possible and having a final product that, while simple, possibly a tad buggy due to inexperience in mission building, and it doesn't have any voiceovers or anything, it will be 100% free. The triggers combined with the testing is a huge headache and I've been working on it for nearly a month to get it just right. I don't even want to know the amount of expertise it took to pull off something so professional as The Ultimate Argument. However... Please tell me that we're not renting campaigns and missions now. I really would like to purchase this campaign and I think selling big, whopping campaigns like this for all the modules would be a dream come true...as long as you buy it once and keep it forever.

I'm finishing up my newbie campaign and since it's an air to air SP campaign, there are a few SEAD escort missions. I was wondering if it's possible to have a Mission Accomplished trigger by protecting SEAD assets from specific aircraft. In other words, if they get shot down by a SAM site, that's on them and you shouldn't receive a mission failure since they weren't shot down by enemy aircraft. However, if you failed to protect them from said enemy aircraft, you would then get the Mission Fail trigger. I'm asking because in some scenarios it may be possible for the SEAD assets to do their job without having to engage enemy aircraft, but it doesn't help any if the trigger has a GROUP ALIVE condition when they may be shot down by arty or other SAM sites: something you have no control over as it's not your job. What I'm looking for is a GROUP NOT KILLED BY condition, or something of the sort. Does anyone have any idea if this can be done?

This is actually what I find the most fun part of the entire process: attention to detail. It can also be very time-consuming and difficult to manage. I really want to create a life-like world with other things going on simultaneously that you'll never see but know are there doing their own thing. I'm working on having empty jets parked on the ramp, having some landing and some taking off at different points of the runways (if it's a multiple runway airport) as well as trying to integrate naval assets into the picture. In short, I want it to be like a Falcon 4 campaign mission, where you have your own simple mission to complete but make up part of the bigger picture without getting in each other's way. I'm still learning how it all works, though.

Exactly. I think imagination is key because anything is possible, really.

It should also be said that western doctrine is often like shooting fish in a barrel. A prime example is the Balkans conflict in the late 90s. As soon as the Serbian forces took off, they would just get lit up by everyone, as everyone was eager to get a kill. They didn't even have a chance. This is the way it's done in reality, with overwhelming firepower. It's extremely rare to see an actual 2v2 or 4v4 in reality because there will be so much support denying the enemy the use of their own weapons. Don't think that building a lop-sided mission isn't realistic because it's probably more realistic than building an evenly-matched one.

For me it's employment realism. People may not realize this, but real-world ops tend to be actually quite boring and monotonous, with only short, brief bursts of intense situations. Most air-to-air missions are just flying out to a CAP point and burning holes in the sky, or holding in a killbox burning holes in the sky waiting for a TIC. Missions that overtax the pilot and inundate him/her with nearly impossible outcomes are a little ridiculous. That doesn't mean we can't be creative and be a little unrealistic every now and then, but sending a four ship against 10 adversaries while simultaneously having to react to SAM threats and not having any other support or backup is really annoying. Also, sending jets to do a task that not only isn't really their responsibility but also goes against their own employment doctrine just makes me smh.

Haha, that's actually what my new beginner, I'm-just-learning-how-to-build-campaigns campaign is like. The backstory is that the war in the Ukraine has come to a head, Russia tried to expand even further into Georgia, NATO (for the first time in their existence) actually decided to do something by pushing eastwards while Russia had foolishly tried to fight a war on two fronts, the Ukraine and Georgia. They ended up losing Crimea but taking a strong hold in Georgia. NATO forces continued in their push to free Georgia by occupying the coastal region that is now Russia, including Sochi, which was particularly insulting to the Russians, obviously. However, now Russia is backed into a corner, occupying Georgia while NATO forces are trying to surround it in an attempt to loosen their grip and get a peace agreement when the Russians see that it's a lost cause. However, the push to surround them by taking over other bases which are practically in Russia is daunting and obviously not too realistic, but it is plausible. If you suspend the knowledge you have about NATO as a defensive mission and turn it into an offensive mission (which some may say it is already), the scenario is possible. At this point in time, this is a few years in the future and Russia has been suffering under severe sanctions from the US and EU, so they don't have unlimited funds, and if you remember correctly, the Russian military is just now getting out from underneath a very difficult period. These sanctions combined with the exponential costs of supporting their aging military while being completely ostracized by the western world and simultaneously invaded by the west in order to take back Georgia has put them in a difficult position. I think that although the occupation of bases in Russia by the west in and around Crimea isn't very realistic at the moment, you need a good backstory to sell it, using both geopolitics with a mixture of realistic capabilities and current events. That is the backstory and scenario of my upcoming easy campaign designed to warm-up newbies to DCS; it's a microcosm, sure, but the entire DCS theater is one big microcosm. NATO forces attacking Russian forces in Russia from Georgia isn't very realistic either because Russia would just swarm them, so the creators didn't really make it easy on us to begin with and the scenario isn't very realistic in the first place. Were it from the eastern Ukraine side pushing east towards Moscow, north to St. Petersburg, etc., that would be a different story. As I see it, the entire theater is one big WHAT IF scenario, and you can't be too anal about realism, at least geopolitically.

Can we sticky this? This is the 500 millionth post about SHIFT-L.

I've got a few more coming your way if you wanna check them out!

Great! It's currently a work-in-progress, but I'll post it as soon as it's finished. It's gonna be "open source" so feel free to manipulate it how you want. It's a single player campaign.

Great! Thanks so much for your help and input...I'll let you know as soon as it's finished. I'm so glad you liked it! I didn't know the Su-33 was so starkly different from the Su-27 in terms of flight modeling; I tend to use the F-15 because it's my favorite, but I'm an old Flanker fan since Flanker 2.0. The campaign is actually an F-15 campaign with a tangent where the Ukraine defects and Ukrainian Flankers start flying NATO missions, just a few to give the player a taste of the other airframe without having to break out the manual to remember. Almost like a refresher course. EDIT: I've got another one if you're interested...it's an earlier mission in the campaign but there's a lot more going on. If you'd like to try it out, lemme know and I'll give you the brief on who does what so you can check that I got all the triggers and stuff right.

HAHAHA! :megalol: Working as intended. It will be much more fleshed out when I write the scenario and backstory to all of this. BTW, is there a sort of module where you can sorta fill in the blanks of the mission briefing and scenario, or do you just have to type what you think should be there?

Wow, you're really going all out, thanks a bunch! I'll check it out and report back. I'm still going through the trigger actions to sort of memorize/learn them and to try and figure out the logic of the ME. Yep, this mission is part of my campaign that I'm building, and I'm pretty much a stickler for realism unless it gets in the way of enjoyment. However, I'm trying to strike a balance between the fun and the real because I can't stand campaigns where you have to jump through arbitrary hoops to finish the mission. Mine are gonna be, "you complete your task and your mission is complete". No Eagles winding through mountain passes as if they were strikers on a strike mission, trying to fly in low to take out a Russian AWACS with Su-27 escort at altitude. "Oh look, I've got 5 AMRAAMskis in my face as I'm trying to come out of the weeds and get some altitude, how nice." It's like they're trying to make you ragequit. However, neither do I shy away from a little challenge even if the mission is a simple and straightforward one. Yes, those MiGs don't necessarily have the SA or the upper hand at the start, but if you screw around down there long enough, they'll schwack you. The choice is up to the pilot: do you dilly dally and see what they have in store for you or do you complete the mission quickly with little action or fanfare and RTB? All my missions in this campaign are going to have a sort of duplicitous simplicity to it, meaning that they can either be really easy or really hard just by how far you're willing to go if you decide to go above and beyond. They will all be very straightforward and simple, with a few surprises here and there. The biggest thing I want is to make sure the employment of forces is feasible and realistic. In other words, certain packages behaving like they should. Air Force assets not behaving like Navy assets; the Navy is more of a roving biker gang than a geographical footprint. Therefore, you won't have Hornets (from the carrier) flying CAP over Mozdok, Viper drivers operating like Eagle drivers and such, or the Kutz battling it out with an entire carrier battle group. Of course I want it to be entertaining so I'm trying to be as inventive as possible, but I want to keep the roles as realistic as I can. Did you find my little ground surprise around WP 3? That story will continue in the next mission.

Also, if I were to set up another set of fighters to CAP, would the flag be 3 for them since 1 is already taken by the Eagles and 2 is taken by the RTB in the same mission?

Ah, thanks for that...didn't know I had the plural written. Was actually wondering that earlier. EDIT: I just checked it and it looks great! Thanks so much. One last question (for now, hehe): why "Flag (9)"? What is the deal with the flag numbers, and why is this one 9? I've looked in the manual and it mentioned something about each number standing for certain things, but I've seen ppl build triggers with 60 and 70 before and I just don't understand how it works.

Yes! That's exactly what I'm looking for, thanks so much! Can you attach it so I can replace mine with yours? I'm still trying to keep everything straight with the triggers, and I'd like to use this as an example of how to set up push triggers. Thanks again!

Yeah it's supposed to be like that. In the finished mission, threats will be hidden and your task is to do a flyover for a bit of visual recon over a suspected radar site. The success of this mission will be the prerequisite for the next mission, which will be an escort of SEAD and strike packages. The flight of eagles are there as a standard air defense CAP, much like killboxes for ground attacks we used to have in Iraq. When I was in the AF, I was a GCI controller and we would hold Hornets or Vipers or sometimes even Harriers in a CAP point in another kill box and wait for a TIC (troops in contact). Once air support was requested, we would push those fighters burning holes in the sky to either a FAC or a JTAC and then when they were done they would pass BDA to us and come back up on our freq and get back in their holding pattern. This is kinda like that only for air-to-air; they're there if I need them because I'm gonna be flying low and relatively slow, and if they have an ambush CAP set up on the other side of those mountains, I may be dead. The Eagles are positioned strategically there. EDIT: Originally there was another four ship of Hornets in a CAP further to the west, but when I started having problems with the triggers I deleted them so as to simplify the problem as best I could until I figured out how to fix it.

Yes, that's stock skin...third one from the top on the loadout list and my favorite. I actually prefer the Ukrainian camo to the Russian. EDIT: I was also wondering about the flag triggers if I added another allied group to hold...would I use Flag (1) again or do they have to go in order? In other words, since I have already used 2 flags, would it have to be Flag (3)? EDIT2: If you want, you can completely re-do the triggers how you would do them. I'll take anything as long as it works. From my understanding, you can either have them push either from a triggered SWITCH WAYPOINT or set the trigger to turn the flag to true and get them to push through the STOP CONDITION in the orbit menu in the Advanced Waypoints menu. Personally, I prefer the SWITCH WAYPOINT and Triggered Actions like you mentioned, but I've been experimenting with this for a day now and I'll take anything at this point. EDIT3: I just deleted the RTB call because it's unnecessary and I need to keep it simple for the time being until I get these push triggers down.

Yes, the MiGs are working correctly because they have a very simple trigger: anything hostile enters Zone X, they push from their holding points and attack. The fighter logic at that point takes over and their only job is to engage. Whatever happens after that is moot because they're either dead or I'm dead.

I had it like that because I was reading online last night about people setting it up the same way. In the beginning I had him just orbit in a circle over WP1 and then attempt to continue on after being pushed. In any case it had the same result: they went home. I'll go back to the way I had it for simplicity. I usually put everything in the Triggered Actions until I noticed Djent's mission and he said it worked without RTB, so it was just a shot in the dark. In any case, I think you only need triggered actions for the triggers themselves, and from my understanding the STOP CONDITION eliminates the need for it. But then again, I'm lost as a goose in a snowstorm right now and will just take whatever works at this point. EDIT to your edit: Ah! You're right! While we're on the subject, could you explain to me how to use these flags? I understand what they are and what they do, but I kinda need it dumbed-down for me on their use and application for these triggers. IMO, ED could've done the exact same thing in a much easier and more user-friendly way. It's just confusing and convoluted for no reason. From my understanding, flags are like a light switch that turns on whenever someone does something you've set. At this point, the light switch is "True" and you can do certain things only as long as this switch is "True", and those things must correspond with the "True" status or else they won't work.