igormk

I’m glad you like the fog. :) and now I’m feeling curious how will you experience it on your way back home, since you have to land it safely on Senaki in order to complete the mission. :music_whistling: About your wingman… Yeah, ED could work a bit on AI. This is only one example, but believe me when I tell you that most of my frustrations during building and testing this campaign were due to AI. Very often they just don’t react logically. He, he, so you had close contact with the SAM. Just one more tip – it’s not just his position that matters here. :D And one more comment on shortage of radio-comms in this exact mission. I must admit that it was by purpose because I was short in time to finish the campaign :music_whistling: (shame on me). Now I’m thinking on adding some, but, hmmm… Would it be realistic that any aircraft is airborne in so thick fog, and if it is, than would it be realistic to schedule Ka-50 for that task, if you could send Su-25, or Su-24? Just curious of your opinion. I’m thinking now to add maybe some comms between ground units, just to create the atmosphere, but they would be working on different frequencies, so hmmmm again. Just to add that I have added some additional traffic and few more comms in previous missions, as you suggested. Looking forward to your next comments! And one more time – for all users of this campaign, CHANGE the last mission (ATO 5.3 Battle for Batumi) with the one attached above!!! S!

Ooopppssss! :doh: Previously attached mission don’t have labels turned off. So if you downloaded it, you will have to turn them off with Left Shift + F10. Sorry! :) Here it is with labels disabled. S! ATO.S5.3 Battle for Batumi.miz

OK guys, IF someone is feeling in mood to do some testing, I’m sending you changed version of the mission 15 (Battle for Batumi). I hope it will be OK now, it is significantly changed and revised, despite that I guess some of you will think “did he had to…….” do something. :D I’m looking forward to your Spoiler Comments, in order to fix eventual bugs, and to include it in the (hopefully) final v1.1, and to release it so I can move to some other projects. :) Salute!!! P.S. if you are using headsets, be careful with the volume level, you might experience some high dB. P.S.S. there is one 197 Flight communication missing (there is only subtitle), but I couldn’t wait for that guy to record it, anyway it will be included later! ATO.S5.3 Battle for Batumi.miz

Well, you have just a bit more Air Defense at the base, and slightly weakened Mi-24s. If that doesn’t work, give me an info, I was thinking on delaying the attack for a minute so you have more time to take off. S!

Hey! Still no feedback on revised mission No. 4? I would appreciate your experiences in order to know did I make it easy enough, but yet not too easy. :D Thanks!

OK guys, here is new version of 4th mission (FARP Attack). There were many complaints on difficulty of that mission, and mission itself had a small bug, so now the bug is fixed with new combination of triggers, and I with some extra features it is a bit easier, so I think it will be more passable now. Enjoy it, and if you notice something suspicious again, please report! P.S. you just have to replace it in the Georgian Havoc v1.0 folder. Changed last mission will also be available soon! S! ATO.S2.1 FARP Attack.rar

Well zdXu, we thought on adding some complex weather (it is very simple thing to do), but when I tested the missions (at least on my PC) result was less then 10 FPS! That is why we sacrificed the weather. On the other side, I tried to add at least some windy conditions since that shouldn’t affect FPS, but it changed the already set behavior of AI air units to the point where they didn’t perform their preplanned tasks correctly, so that is the reason that wind was also excluded. :( Ah, those Hinds are mean machines! Just like IRL. :D Yes, Chizzy101, it is one of most difficult missions in the campaign, where you don’t need only skill and knowledge, but also a bit of luck. Still, sorry for not being able to look your track file jet, but it is also possible that you (together with couple of other pilots) experienced a rare bug. I don’t want to be repetitive, so please read end of post #47 and post #54 of this thread, where everything is explained. Just to point it once again, v1.1 which should be released till the end of January will have the bug fixed and changed this mission just a little bit to be a bit easier. Till then I suggest that you skip mission 4 (as explained in the beginning of post #47, except that you will have to set mission no.5 instead of no.2). And I would like to add, that the team is now working intensively on the last mission of this campaign. This mission will be changed almost completely, since as I already stated that like it is now, it is unrealistic, suicidal and just doesn’t offers a decent end of the campaign (as an result of having only couple of days to make it and test it :music_whistling:). Plus with the new end, we are trying to make place for part 2 of the campaign. We hope that we will release it these days, and it will be out prior to v1.1.

Yes, I also think so. It is too bad that only 2 campaigns applied for the competition! I guess that probably a lot of teams started to work on their campaigns when the competition was announced, but since it is really complicated and time demanding to finish a good mission and not to talk about a good campaign – they quit their projects. Anyway I would like to use this opportunity to wish “Dogs of War” team all the best from “Georgian Havoc” team! Maybe in future we can work together on some other project. :) Salute!

Hi all! I’m sorry for my late reply to all your Spoiler comments, but I was a bit occupied with New Year and Christmas in the last period. Before starting with my comments I would like to wish a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you! Special thanks to slug88 with REEEAAALY detailed reviews on each mission. :thumbup: Yeah cobrabase, it is a rare bug you encountered. It is all described in posts #54 - #59 in this thread. As I mentioned, it will be corrected in campaign’s v1.1. Secret Mission 1.Actually F-16s are also triggered by destroying Inguri. It is by purpose and I tried to make it more interesting :music_whistling: (like Inguri’s escort reported the attack and called F-16s to roll in), just that my calculations should allow you to fast heads towards Kuz which would defend you. 2.True. I will change that. 3.Hmmm, there is a pair of Su-33s patrolling along separation line. They should chase away the F-16s, but maybe they didn’t do their job. About the forcing the war with Turkey , that is true, we don’t want it here. :D 4.I was thinking about that, but was wondering how would, let’s say, Operational Center know that Inguri is dead. Maybe I should make the mission success message to be triggered on let’s say 2-3 minutes after inguri is destroyed. 5.Also true, and it will be added in the briefing. 6.Code names are already in the list of changes. Anti Arty 1.That is already corrected. 2.Now I noticed this! :doh: It is also my mistake when I was making last minute testings. ;) 3.Will be added. 4.Again good point. It will be revised. 5.OK, and as goldfinger35 suggested, Grad will probably be changed by another artillery type which is less destructive, and leaves less visual reference when firing (Grad really leaves smoke trails visible from long distances, even in fog conditions). I just have to check their ranges and to choose which will be most suitable. 6.:D 7.Yes, this is made with triggers. More troopers can be activated, the only problem is that you have to add each solider as an individual “group”. If you make a group of let’s say 10 troopers and they are running along a route, they will automatically be set in trail with 50-100m between them. It doesn’t look nice, so to keep them more or less close to each other you have to do individual groups of one solder per group. 8.& 9. You can set the fog value between 0 and 10 (0 is no fog). Right now it is set to 2, so it is a light fog. I have experienced the same problem, and I have tried to tone the fog down a bit, but the result (on my PC) was the same. Even with fog set to “1”, targets were visible just below 3km, but it was looking stranger, because when you look outside of the cockpit with value of 1, the fog was barely visible. Therefore I have decided to leave it as it is (value of “2”), since the only other solution was to remove the fog completely, but then the mission wouldn’t be so challenging. 1.Thanks! :D 2.Aha, you are right. It will be revised and polished. 3.Ha, ha! It caught you unprepared! Don’t worry it was happening even to me when testing (by “me” I consider a person who knows exactly what will happen where in this campaign), so I had to open the script to see the coordinates. ;) Since you don’t have opportunity to ask “Say again the coordinates” you are right, it would be smart to repeat them at least one more time. 4.OK, that way you don’t have to be extremely fast and to leave the zone before enemy units show up. Nice one! I will definitely do this.

We are submitting Georgian Havoc v1.0 (again). Here is the link: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=48328 Unfortunately some bugs and polishing suggestions were discovered in the last 20 days of testing. Thanks to all guys that gave support!!! The team have started working on them, and managed to do more than 50% of the changes, but with good reasons it didn’t succeed to finish v1.1. Releasing v1.1 now would make it just more confusing for the end users since there is lack of synchronization between changes-briefings-radio comms-mission goals, so this is the reason we have decided to submit v1.0 again. I hope you will understand and respect that. Those who have tried to make complex mission knows how much time that takes. We have more relaxed schedule during second half of January, so even if we don’t meet standards of the competition with v1.0 and get kicked off, we will release v1.1 till the end of that month. Or maybe if ED releases LOFC 2.0 in early January, so we get very busy. :D I wish you all best in the New Year! S!

Thanks! P.S. Just briefings/subtitles, or all completely with radio comms?

Thanks slug88 for your suggestions related to missions 9 & 10. Despite of lack of time lately, I will try to implement all of them. In mission 10 carrier is faced in opposite direction than the other ships (which are actually static objects) due to his desperate intentions to kill all of the ships in Georgian convoy, and ruin my mission concept. I will change that also. I will also try to play a bit with the Georgian ships (speed, distance between them…) in order to eliminate their warping around. Chopper pork, I hope you passed that mission where you have to take down Senaki airfield. You can do what NullCharacter suggested, or you can search for a clear field on the ridge, right towards the western slope. There you can hover very low and your view will not be disrupted by trees, so you will have clear shot on the far right SAM.

You can do it like this: Set trigger ONCE (choose name, let's say "insurgent SAM") -> UNIT INSIDE ZONE (Unit: Player's Ka-50; Zone: Your trigger zone around the village) -> ACTIVATE GROUP (Group: Insurgent SAM). It is important that you also set Time Hold of the Insurgent SAM Group to be 23 hours. That way it will be activated by trigger. If you don't set time hold it will be active from the start. I hope that helps. Have fun! S!

Voted!

Sure, reminder on how to operate Kh missile will be in brifing in v1.1! About Mission 14, did you try to hit the wrong house? Did you try to fly arround the designated area couple of times, trying to locate the house? You may face some unplasent surprises. :D I guess you did it well in the first try, since you didn't face any of them, good job!!!:thumbup:

Lol! It’s all clear slug88. Rework is in progress (thanks for your suggestions and scheme!), and besides that I will remake Georgian armor movement pattern in order to be more realistic, I’m also thinking to add another Ka-50 (or pair) under your command. That way you would have more firepower, which if smartly used could make this mission much easier. By the way, teaching players to respect ROE and to use your their wingman wisely was primary goal of this mission. Almost exact way I did it. Maybe it is not tactically correct to split flights in hostile environment, and that is the other reason why I want to add another Ka-50 or two to your flight. Mission 10: Uh, I’m sorry to hear it was frustrating experience for you! ·You can make low level flight much easier if you use ALT HOLD function of the auto-pilot system. If you engage it when you are on let’s say constant alt of 10m over the sea on your way to target area, you can almost forget to use your collective stick – your helicopter will remain that alt. And even when you get close to the target, and need to slow down, making larger inputs on both sticks, auto-pilot will try to keep the alt constant. Also setting radio-altimeter warning altitude on 5 meters will give you more chance to concentrate on other things than looking if you will crash into the sea. ·I knew that ship’s escort is trying to shoot down your missiles, but in my several tries, it never succeeded doing that (by the way, did you set laser mode to “laser designator”? If not, your “Kh” will not hit the target!) ·Didn’t know that. I will try to retest it, despite that I’m not sure how to correct it. Mission 11: Yeah! True! I was making some last minute testings, and forgot to put it back on the airport. Sorry! :cry: For all to play this mission, you can manually put it back on Senaki airfield and select “take off from ramp”, or if you want I can change it and upload only this mission that you will have to replace in the campaign. Off course, it will be corrected in v1.1. Mission 15: This mission was tested many times in the last week, and I also must admit that after fulfilling the task, I’ve never succeeded to egress and RTB. I was shot down every single time. So it is clear that this mission is suicidal and also a bit arcade, and very important I believe it have no obvious end for the campaign, so it will be completely remade in v1.1. NullCharacter thank you for all your notes! Did the other missions go well? No bugs or spoilers? I’m glad you like it! Depending on Georgian Havoc success it is possible that there will be Georgian Havoc 2, but you will fly A-10C, and progress through the campaign from South to North. :D Lol! OK, try not to fly too low (I think 100-200m AGL is good), and don’t go too in front of the convoy. It will give you time to react, to use your Shkval looking for threats, you will be less vulnerable to light artillery, and if your wingman is doing his job, he will warn you on SAMs.

Oh, I don't think it is a lack of your flying capabilities in this case, probably it is simply case of unbalanced forces in this mission. As I mentioned earlier, it is sometimes difficult to test your own missions, since I’ve tested this mission only couple of times, and passed, but not taking in account that I knew where and when will everything happen. First time player have to search, identify targets, spend a lot more intellectual resources on situational awareness… Still, I suggest it would be the best for you (or anyone else who experience mission failure on this particular mission) to rearrange your campaign so it will normally start from mission No. 9 (I think Fight Back is No.8 ). You can do it like this: Open “Campaign Builder” from the main menu, then press “Open”, find the “Georgian Havoc v1.0.cmp” file, open it, and then you can set “Start stage” to be “9”. Then save it. That way you should start the campaign from the 9th mission. It is pity that maybe the most boring mission is “bottleneck” of the campaign. In the meantime, it will be rearranged in order to be more passable.

Yes, actualy I used that trigger - IF "Mi-24 is damaged" and IF "Mi-24 altitude is lower than XXm", THEN "Explode unit Mi-24". That was supposed to force-kill all damaged Mi-24s that were intending to emergency land and blow up my trigger concept, but problem was that in "Unit altitude lower than" trigger, altitude is in QNH, and not in AGL. On the other side, ALL Mi-24s will be more or less damaged in this mission, and if I choose wrong altitude for the trigger, they would explode even in normal low level flight. So I find out that if some Mi-24 is badly damaged and wont to emergency land, they do it close to a Heliport, which is positioned on a large flat area with more or less constant elevation. Then I set the altitude in “Unit altitude lower than” to be couple of meters higher than the field’s altitude (no AI aircraft fly so low in the sim), and in my testing it always eliminated those problematic Mi-24. In your case a single Mi-24 despite badly damaged, succeeded to fly away from the Heliport (but still not enough to activate another security trigger IF “Mi-24 damaged” AND “Mi-24 outside zone Heliport” THEN “Explode unit Mi-24”), and land on a higher ground. Complicated, huh? ;) So I will have to use an Extra, extra trigger in order to eliminate the chance of that happening again. :D

Yes, it will be something like that Poko24. But we will have to combine it with "Time More" trigger (plus a little extra spice :D) because the other way we will achive our goal at the start of the mission, and we don't want that :music_whistling:. At the start FARP is undamaged, and we are alive. S!

Bug! Hardcore, I saw your Track file and here is the problem. As I explained earlier, quote: “4th mission’s goal is to survive the attack, but also to prevent all friendly vehicles at the heliport from being destroyed in the attack. At least 1 vehicle must survive. To do that you will have to assist your air defense in the battle because in most occasions they are not capable to repel the attack by them self. So all Mi-24s have to be shot down, since they will attack the Heliport as long as they fly.” Hardcore, you did well. I saw your track, and in this attempt, you was lucky since SEADs did a terrible job (missed a lot!). Therefore, your AD made big damage to Georgian Mi-24s, and you only had to kill the last Mi-24 which was chasing you, and you did it good (by the way, don’t you think it is strictly forbidden to fly under power lines?). Most of the vehicles and the infrastructure at your Heliport survived, and that would be it – Mission Completed. But… Mission goal is defined with flag that gathers: -You are alive, -Mi-24 Group is dead, -Heliport vehicles Group is alive. First and third conditions are OK. Second condition is OK, but… One Mi-24 was badly damaged and had to emergency land, and despite inactive, it was still “alive”. I was afraid that this could happen, since I’ve noticed that all of the helicopters in DCS are made very tough, and very often survive multiple hits by AAA and SAMs or (in Hardcore’s case) 3 Vikhors (!!!), so I added some extra triggers to prevent that happen. I won’t go too deep into it, but I know what am I supposed to do to eliminate this bug. Hardcore thank you for finding it :thumbup:, but all I can do right now is to apologize for it, and ask you to play this mission one more time, since this is the first time that those “extra preventive triggers” failed to do the job.

Well it could be explained in the comms in some way, but here is quote of Pogrom’s instruction (before transmission is interrupted): “Fighter support is unavailable for the next 10 minutes, so try to defend as much as….” But OK, if you have idea on how to do it and not to be like “…try to defend as much as you can, at least one heliport vehicle must survive…”, put it here, and if we like it it will be in v1.1. I will investigate your track file ASAP and report back. :crazy: UHHHH!!! No idea from me. Anybody? I hope that uploaded file is not corrupted in some way. If it is, we will upload it again. ------------------------------------------------------- On the other side I’m starting to be a bit worried since there are tons of positive/negative comments on first third (or fourth) part of the campaign, and let’s say almost nothing on the remaining part. Sorry if I’m impatient, but I’m really curious on how will DCS Black Shark pilots react on some of the future missions, since I think you will experience many nonstandard things there, but still with our try to put the focus on reality. In that manner, 7th mission will be rearranged in v1.1. As suggested earlier by slug88, after you finish your primary objective, you will have to RTB, or to a safe location, instead of landing on captured and unsecured airport. Previously I explained that we believed that probably most of the people would hate to fly back all the way to base after mission success, but it is so unrealistic that right now I’m shamed! :)

I think you can open “Campaign Builder” from the main menu, then press “Open”, find the “Georgian Havoc v1.0.cmp” file, open it, and then you can set “Start stage” to be “2”. Then save it. That way you should start the campaign from the second mission. Or you can play individual missions, as previously suggested. Yeah, maybe that would help to keep FPS at higher rates. That didn't cross my mind, I should try it. :thumbup: Yeah, we tried that too, but eventually decided that it could be confusing, so we decided to keep it as it is. Maybe you need some extra codec that can play .ogg sound formats? The goal of the 4th mission’s goal is to survive the attack, but also to prevent all friendly vehicles at the heliport from being destroyed in the attack. At least 1 vehicle must survive. To do that you will have to assist your air defense in the battle because in most occasions they are not capable to repel the attack by them self. So all Mi-24s have to be shot down, since they will attack the Heliport as long as they fly. We did this with purpose, because if the goal was only to survive, it would be too easy – take off and run away… This way you have to fight. But, on the other side, it is possible that it is a bug, so if you can, please send me TRK file and I will investigate it. Also if most of you complain that it is too hard to finish it, we will make it easier in v1.1.

Then air traffic controller should be suspended ;) . OK, I got the point, in v1.1 Su-25s will be ordered to land on Gaduata airfield. Yes, unfortunately there is no way practically to report it. You will find many similar situations throughout the campaign. But we put them in just to add more realism, and to make it a bit more “personal”. I hope we didn’t achieve opposite effect. I think military also use “Heads out!”, but I can’t find it right now. Searching. Yes, a lot of people are complaining on FPS. That is exactly why in later missions with a lot of friendly and enemy units there are not so many sweet not so necessary details. I can delete some more units/static objects, but I think we will use some of the campaign’s charisma. If S-5KO rockets were fired at you, I think 10meters would be safe distance since they have anti-armor cumulative warhead. Hmm, I think we mentioned Air Force only when we talk about “you” in manner of coming straight from the Air Force Academy. I’m not sure on this one (how it is in Russia). Here is a question for our Russian colleagues, is there separate Army Aviation Academy, or all pilots are trained in the Air Force Academy, and then transferred to Army aviation, or Navy.

Well yes, 4th mission is a bit hard. Maybe you noticed, but the attack starts with SEAD aircraft, and they take down most of base’s AD (element of surprise). AAA in the base is very active, and MOSTLY they take down some of enemies. Then you are there to take off ASAP and to contribute in base’s defense. Also there are another fixed and rotary friendly aircraft coming in to help… Still, from my experience every time you play this mission it is different. Only once I didn’t even had to take off since our AD shot everything down. http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_008a.html Check the last group of examples before Conclusion, and more precisely Example 2. But, since that radio call is mostly making confusion, it will be changed in v1.1 Sure, sure EtherealN, I’m fine with it! I was just thinking how to do the upload, so thank you! :thumbup: First, thanks! :D Yap! Mistake! It will also be changed to 307 in v1.1. Mostly when there is no wind (like in this mission) pilots can request to land on both sides of runway. From the other side, in this mission I didn’t influence Su-25s to land form this side – it is their decision! You can see ETA relative to your present airspeed on your ABRIS (if you choose Gudauta airport for active waypoint). Air traffic controllers or FACs are often asking pilots to report ETA or distance to waypoint. Most of the accents came naturally in this campaign. OK, as far as I see, first couple of missions need only minor changes. I'm waiting to hear comments on later missions, since they are getting more and more complicated, increasing possibility for bugs. So, I'm looking forward to your Feed Back!

Hardcore, related to english conversations, uhhh we had a lot of problems recording it. First of all we are not professional actors, and second it was problem to find so many people who speaks english, and were willing to participate at the same time. So options were: 1. English - as most frequently spoken language in my county (with Macedonian accent) - as it is now 2. Macedonian (allmost nobody would understand it) 3. No recorded communications (I wouldn't like it) About bugs: 1 - Train: I didn't put any train in the mission, so probably it is game's bug, 2 - Mi-8 pilot said: "Left 1 o'clock" which is oftenly used for "11 o'clock" in breavity terms. Thanks for your notes, and keep me informed! :thumbup: