Belgeode

That's probably where I am getting confused in thinking the engines have to be off.

I downloaded this one too. Will try both missions out and let you know what I think.

Ooh. My interest has been piqued. What aircraft do I get to use in this one? Let me go find out and download this sucker.

Ok cool. Is this a recent change? I recall when I first started playing last year the ground crew would deny me if the engines were on in my Frogfoot.

Ok that makes more sense... Of course it also means that the manual is outdated. It is definitely missing info on some of the things I see in Mission Editor.

That is a most excellent idea. I am going to incorporate this. Thank you, Wrecking Crew! You are correct Snow... The wingmen you add AFTER setting up the loadout you want will take on the properties of the wing lead. Also handy if you want them to all fly for the same squadron colors. To do a custom loadout later you would use the radio command (or keyboard shortcut) for it. Bear in mind though, it ONLY affects your aircraft, not your entire flight. Criteria are: Be on the ground (parked at an airport, FARP, or on a carrier)... Engines off... Canopy open. Sounds like you are catching on fast here!! :-D

While that makes perfect logical sense... It really does not answer my question.

That fury looks like a really nice idea, and honestly MIGHT convince me to get the F-86. (I just have not had reason to get it yet). So... how about it Belsimtek? Hook us up?

Sorry to chime in here, but that brings to mind another manual related question: What version is the CURRENT version of the manual? I was looking something up about the mission editor commands that were not listed in the manual I have, from when I downloaded the game in November 2014. Has the manual been updated since then, to include some of the newer items in the Mission Editor?

Sure thing! Hit me!

What were you DOING that close to a Mig-28, Lieutenant?

NO problem, SnowTiger. I am always happy to help, because I learn things too!

Just as a sidenote, now that I got the boats to work right... there is no way in hell a Huey can even make it from Krymsk to Gelendzhik in time. From Novorossiysk yes, but not Krymsk. Especially from a cold start. I tried it twice from Krymsk and I got blown up before I had even made it to the hills near the coast. It's doable from Novorossiysk though, from a cold start... with enough time to spare. Might be better if you had the boats coming from the opposite direction?

Re- the boats: Snowtiger, Your scripting is awesome. Your triggers are logical, and really the only thing I would have changed is instead of listing all the units that could potentially be killed, just use GROUP DEAD "Speedboat Group". Since you want the helo to kill all 8 of them anyway, and they are all in one group, there is no need to list them individually when they are covered by the group name. HOWEVER... you appear to be running into what I call the ED problem. Naval vessels are an area that needs improvement. It almost looks like various things are happening here... Either the boats do not like other boats in their personal space, so they stop moving, or maybe they have a set amount of gas we do not know, and hey run out at some point? What I did as experiment one was to put instead of one group, FOUR groups of 2 boats a piece. That worked a little better, with MOST of the boats except for two making it all the way to the cargo ship in the dock. It is ALWAYS the trailers, never the group leaders who drop out of the race. For whatever reason though, they will not go as far as you have placed their DP to be. So to counter that, I enlarged the trigger zone. They seem to like being near that cargo ship, but won't go past it for whatever reason. For experiment two I made the DP for all the boats a little further into the dock area so they HAVE to pass by the big cargo ship to get to it. That worked. 5 of them got to the cargo ship and stopped because it was in the way, but that was sufficient enough to be in the trigger zone. Bel went boom. Experiment three involved making individual boats. No more groups to get hung up. 8 units speeding towards their nefarious ends! They ALL made it to the port but stopped short of the cargo ship... and the end zone. Clearly I needed to add an extra waypoint just before the DP... That worked. I made their path so they HAD to go THROUGH the cargo ship to get to the DP... but of course they stop right before it, which is right inside the zone and BOOM. Bel died. You also had it set to explode at the end zone too... not sure if these are supposed to be suicide boats or what... but I took that out. Here is the revised mission. Huey - Speedboat Attack 2.miz

Ok Let me see if I can address some questions. Hopefully others reading this thread with far more experience can chime in as needed. a) How or Why the Flags are created. From what I have gathered. Flags are created whenever you need to make a condition true or false, for a required item to happen. OR... in the case of one flag I had in that video, to keep track of time. So that something happens either before or after an allotted time. Example- I want if someone kills all the rats in one area, for the cheese delivery van to unload there. I use a flag that will represent either No rats are not dead (flag is FALSE, or not activated), or rats are all dead (flag is true). The truck is going to pass by anyway on its route. but the flag will be checked intermittently to see if the condition has been met. If by time the truck goes past the flag is still false, the truck will keep going. if the flag is true, truck stops, and i get cheese without having to worry about losing it to rats. Silly example, but gives you a basic idea about why you would use a flag for something. You have a lot of freedom when it comes to how to create a flag. you can assign any number you want. Sometimes you can use one number to flag conditions on many things. You can also have many flags "true" or "false" as you want, simultaneously. They don't do anything except flip a virtual switch to on or off. You still have to define WHAT the switch does. b) Why the Waypoints (WP's) are placed where they are in relationship to the Actual Landing Points (which if I recall correctly, were defined by the Flags ??!!). You can place the waypoints anywhere in relation to where you want something to land. In my video I placed the waypoints close by because I wanted the helo to move more realistically. SO basically for convenience sake, since in the flight plan I have the helo slowing down as it reaches the waypoint, I wanted it to be close to the landing spot so the AI does not do something ridiculous like a snap 180 degree turn and pitch down 90 degrees just to make the landing spot. That may not be a limitation down the road when ED makes AI a little more realistic flying in all aspects. One important point. The landing points are actually NOT defined by the flags. They are defined by a specific advanced waypoint action in the flight plan. Helos being what they are have the option of landing at or near any waypoint. However, they will not do it, if it is not already written into their flight plan. What I have flagged is the condition whether that landing is done (or anything else like orbitting, etc) You can, for example set a flag that basically means if X Y Z group of enemies is NOT killed... DO NOT LAND (in other words flag # = false). However if flag # = true (XYZ enemies have been killed beforehand) then go ahead and do your landing thing. It can get really complicated, really quickly when adding condition flags to stuff. c) Why some of the Triggers or "Advanced Waypoint Actions" were created in the Waypoint Editor (or whatever it's called) ?? For example: Could those same Advanced WP Actions have just been made as Triggers instead ? Not all waypoint actions apply to ALL waypoints. The ones created using the triggers usually refer to more persistent things (for example if XYZ enemy is dead, set your rules of engagement to WEAPON HOLD... something that will persist throughout the rest of the flight if you do not want the designated unit to go buck wild and attack everything within a 500 mile radius because it got bloodthirsty after killing the designated enemy.) Weird example, but it happens. Now I COULD have made in the waypoint editor- OPTIONS ROE Weapon hold. But I would have to do that for EVERY SINGLE WAYPOINT past that point in the flight plan. That's inefficient. Hence making it a triggered action. Things I would use as advanced waypoint actions (created in waypoint editor) would be things like landing, orbit, search and destroy tasks, etc. where triggers come in is if any of said tasks need to be stopped or delayed start for some reason. think of triggers as your timing keepers. Also how on earth did you ever figure out all the steps/commands needed to get the chopper to be situated so troops could get in ? That is... with regards to Speed/Altitude/Location bla bla bla etc etc etc ? There were 4 or 5 Conditions necessary for the Chopper to land OR for the Troops to jump in (I can't remember which). Answer to question 1... Trial and error my friend. I also looked at missions I have flown that had similar parameters. Campaigns are your best source to dissect how things work and what does what. Those conditions I added were not necessary for the helo to land. It is going to do that anyway because i told it to land in the waypoint editor. The conditions in the troop spawn trigger were to determine that it was IN FACT ON the ground. Once all those conditions are met, THEN it should spawn troops at the location I set. What I found was most useful were the logical ones that would add up to "hey this craft is landed"... Those are- Altitude is lower than... (whatever the altitude is in meters of the landing spot+ 1 meter) Speed is lower than... (1 self explanatory. Means it is stopped.) Vertical Speed in limits (-1 to 1 meaning it is neither gaining nor losing altitude... or in numerical terms... zero) Had I not done that, and just left it as "Is the helo in the landing zone" If yes ok spawn troops, you would have a scenario where the helo could be 500 meters up, and suddenly there are troops below it. Not very realistic. HOWEVER!!!!!!! If I wanted to simulate troops fast roping, I could have set the helo to orbit at zero forward speed at a given waypoint, then had troops spawn under it simply by making sure the helo was in the spawn zone. No need to bother with altitude this, speed lower that, etc. For the troops to jump in, all I need to do is set two triggers. 1- are the troops in the designated zone? Since AI is squirrelly and will walk wherever the hell they please sometimes, I am gonna set that to PART OF THE GROUP... instead of ALL of the group. That way only one soldier needs to cross the invisible line for that flag/trigger to become true. 2- as part of the helo's landing action at the waypoint, it has a STOP condition... or the thing to watch out for that will cause it to STOP landing. That condition is triggered (or had i used a flag for that, flag set to true) when that first soldier walks into the invisible circle around the helo's parking spot. When that happens (soldier walks into the zone) the helo will then stop the WAYPOINT ACTION: LANDING, and resume its flight path, and ALSO, the trigger for deactivating the soldiers (thus making it seem like they "got on board") will go off. Soldiers go poof. Helo goes flying. Bel Geode a happy mission editor. This is starting to read like an essay but I hope it helps A LITTLE to kind of sort things out. Best advice is always to dig deep into missions you have flown that work in ways you find interesting. It will come to you. The user manual helps me a lot too, as well as our fellow forum dwellers. If I can do it, anyone can. I JUST started playing this flight sim in November. Gonna download and check out your boats!

Yeah it definitely can get time consuming, that is for sure. What starts out as a brilliant idea on paper does seem to become a 7 headed hydra when you try to put it into practice. Question. Are the boats all part of the same physical group, or are they individual "groups" of boats (single units with similar paths)? I know that boats and naval combat itself are areas that are sorely lacking in DCS at the moment.

Cool beans. Will download and check it out. Sorry I been busy this weekend.

Oh, sorry I should have mentioned. The video in question is "The Defectors". In the first five minutes you should see not one but three carrier flybys. Hahahahah. OMG... Yeah you definitely have to make Colin a bit more docile somehow. I appreciate a combat pilot who really gets into his work, but remind him there is no I in team! LOL Btw thanks so much for the subscription! I've got two more videos going up sometime today and tomorrow.

I can vouch for at least ONE mission being pretty cool!

SnowTiger... What I do when coming up with a mission is what I call the "JAFO" approach. (If you have ever seen the movie- Blue Thunder, you know what JAFO means). I design the mission then make the aircraft I am planning on flying an AI (which sometimes mean I have to add extra triggers and stuff). Then I create on player controlled vehicle for myself as observer, and put it somewhere away from the action. That way I can play the mission, speed up time, etc to observe what happens, and TAKE NOTES. If everything works according to plan (rare), I remove the observer craft, and put myself back in the proper aircraft. If not, I tweak, and observe some more how it all unfolds. I posted an example of how I do things on youtube a few days ago, so it is funny that this subject even popped up.

Sure! sounds good to me. I'd like to try it out. As far as flight models, from what I hear both the F-15 and Su-27 are on par with their complexity. Su-33 is still using an older flight model, which, while more forgiving, is not nearly as "realistic" as the other two. As a huge carrier ops buff, I'd take the Su-33 any day of the week..... at least until we get a Hornet and/or Tomcat!

Well you could use some of the default missions as a guide. What I usually do is write something up with the general situation, the flights involved, and of course your flight's tasking.... Everything else is up to the discretion of the mission designer. Btw... I made some final edits. I think this should do the trick now. The enemy AI was getting a little too aggressive, even when I safely made it through the gauntlet and called for RTB... also I upped the amount of gas by a small amount in the Flankers, as they barely had enough for me to make it to Nalchik. Awesome little mission here. If one thing it has taught me, is that I clearly need more practice in the Su-27. I have been flying the Su-33 a lot and the flight models are night and day different. Attached is my final edit. Good luck with your campaign. Let me know when the whole thing is ready to roll, and I will gladly play it! LowRadarSearch.miz

OH YES! I found your surprise all right. It had me going holy sh**...

Ok try this one on for size. Edits made: 1- changed Radio Item Add for EAGLES RTB from where it was before (radio remove, switch wp) to (Mission Complete) So now what will happen is after you push Eagle flight, they come to your rescue but you will not see the option to send them RTB UNLESS you complete your mission. If you do not need them at all, they will circle forever and when you get your mission complete you will see two options, 1- push them to wp 2, or 2- send them RTB. Either will work, but if you push them to wp 2, it will trigger the enemy. 2- Enemy is set to weapons free if triggered by player or eagles being in the response zone. They WILL prosecute. (They kicked my butt a couple times now). Enemy is also set to weapons hold if you decide to cut and run, and also give eagles the order to cut and run... that way they should not chase you all over russia for having a look at their naughty toys. 3- used command RADIO ITEM ADD instead of RADIO ITEM ADD FOR GROUP. The way I see it... and correct me if wrong, if this is to be a single player mission... you are the only one who will ever see the radio item. add for group sounds to me like it would be if you had multiple player groups and wanted only one group to have a radio option at that time. Ok download this version, and let me know how it works for you. So far this has been a fun little mission that has really tested my Su-27 defensive skills. LowRadarSearch.miz

The flag can be anything you want really as long as it is not a number you used before. UNLESS... you specifically want to launch/ push multiple flights at the same time. Now that I am playing it through again (I set everything to AI except I added myself as an observer in an Mi-8 at Beslan)... I notice one thing. The radio calls in the same trigger seem to be ab it problematic. Here's what I propose... I am gonna take out the radio RTB out of its current spot, and make it trigger when the player gets the mission accomplished message. That way you have a choice right then and there to either engage the migs and call for back up, or bug out of there and tell the eagles to go home. Will attach in a reply assuming it works.