jmarso

It might well be a DCS issue, but I've noticed that since I've started to do AAR in missions, more often than not it just seems borked, especially in missions with more than one tanker. The tankers don't reply to comms (yes, I'm on the right freq with easy comms turned off), they refuse to extend a drogue as if they are hogging the last drop for themselves, and if a drogue does extend, I have to check six lest I be rammed by someone else moving in to plug when I thought I was supposed to be the one doing it. All in all it just doesn't seem to be working very well. M14 seems very, very ambitious from the design aspect, and M15 almost as much so. Hat's off to BD for trying to keep these things working through the regular game-breaking updates. That's one thing I've never understood about DCS- how updating one aspect of the game seems to break so much stuff that should be unrelated.

Tried a couple times to complete M14 and it repeatedly locks up when over the crash site. Game freeze, have to end task through task manager. Missions before and M15 worked fine. Not sure what's happening in this mission but the computer isn't digging it. Crashes at different points.

I'm only through M04 but I already think this is a better campaign than the original Raven One. I think it helps that you aren't trying to script out a novel- that's a tough thing to do. With this campaign you can tailor the story to the mission-making instead of vice-versa. Secondly, as much as I love it and am now intimately familiar with it, I'm glad to be out of the Persian Gulf for a while. I've owned the Syria map for quite some time and this campaign is the first time I've actually used it.

For keeping in your sector, head straight to WP2 which puts you roughly on the 60 degree line, and then freelance back and forth with your radar in the general direction of WP3. Lock up targets with your FLIR, RIG them, then occasionally bring WP3 back up for orientation. You can spot surface targets with your eyes as well as radar. If you see one nearby, just turn towards it and lock it with the FLIR, then execute a quick rig. On an unrelated note, I think I may have taken off too early on this mission. I found the destroyer and helicopters on the way to WP2 (freelancing) and at that point I hadn't had a single comm or frequency change since the radio checks on deck. When the quiet got suspicious I just switched over to Knight, but no F10 options came up. I figured at that point I'd borked the script somehow, but decided to keep going. Near WP2 comms suddenly started up, and Flip started making reports on RIGs. The rest of the mission seemed to go normally, up through the find of the ship and the fast mover, dropping a rockeye to stop them, and being relieved. Then on the way back I was on Marshal and got a message asking to confirm or ask Knight to repeat. So I switched back to Knight, asked for a repeat, and got vectored to the destroyer and helos again. This time I could report them, and when cleared to proceed to mission I just returned to marshal and finished the RTB. I got the feeling things were happening out of order, or I was hitting trigger points at the wrong time in the mission, or something. In any case, it all worked out in the end and I finished with a score of 100, so I must have hit the high points. Next time I'm going to wait for the signal that I can taxi (I was out of the chocks pretty early) and see if that fixes things.

When I do that second low level pass I make sure I've got a program ready to spit a minimum of 5 flares, I make sure I've got at least 500 knots of smack, and as soon as I hear the call it's flares and a hard turn, and I'm never in burner over the city on that second pass.

I just flew this full mission and did the AAR for the first time- I appear to finally be able to AAR in the Hornet, it'll only took me a couple years of trying! Anyway, the mission worked fine from start to finish. The only hangups were getting the tankers to respond right when I joined up. Seemed like I had to try multiple times to get them to acknowledge we were there and extend the refueling drogues. It takes me so long to refuel that the durn mission takes forever, but at least I was able to do it this time. Progress!

Yeah, I recently discovered in the Hornet that a lot of things I thought the Autopilot was being temperamental about have to do with what is boxed on the HSI page. I generally find that if I can't get a button push to work or something to cycle, the key is to either unbox the sequence or uncouple the autopilot temporarily if I'm using it. Then it all works as advertised, and you can re-box and/or re-couple. I will say that this was a great campaign to re-introduce myself to the Hornet after a year-long break from DCS. Every time I go back to the game I dread having to relearn everything after I forget it, including my own HOTAS mappings. Every time I come back to the game I spend a week or more refreshing my knowledge base. I spend half as much time re-watching old YouTube tutorial videos as I do playing the game.

Great campaign- just finished it. I also ran into the missing carrier issue on M12, but I renamed the the 'start from push' version of the mission so that it would fire in the campaign and I could progress. That'll work as a stopgap until the cold start version is fixed. It looks like this was meant to be released as a paid campaign- it's definitely that good. Really enjoyed playing these missions. That was also the first time I ever trapped a Hornet single engine in DCS. Glad I made it on the first try! Looking forward to trying more of your missions / campaigns! BZ!

1989 - Task Force Challenger Alternate OCA Mission This is a slightly altered mission file for the final mission of Task Force Challenger. All credit for the original mission and campaign goes to the creator. After failing to beat this mission after 10000 attempts, I have pulled a James T. Kirk 'Kobayashi Maru' maneuver and reprogrammed the simulation. I moved the waypoint and engagement zone for one section of Tomcats, allowing them to engage the 4 MiG-29's that enter the mission area. It does not ensure mission success but gives the player some CAP cover for this mission. Be advised: The Tomcats almost never get all four MiGs, but they do help quite a bit. See README file in the zip file for installation instructions. A backup file of the original mission file is included in the zipfile. License: Freeware - Free version, Unlimited distribution Language: English Size: 2.09 Mb File is now available in the user files section on the main DCS page. https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3342632/

Finished the campaign this morning. Great campaign in a great setting. Loved the crew of Finnish pilots! Of all the paid campaigns I've purchased and played so far, I think this one was the 'cleanest' in terms of the fewest hang-ups, misfires on triggers, and so on. With only a couple exceptions, the missions went off as scripted with no issues. Hopefully this lasts through future game updates which have an unfortunate way of breaking mission sets. I did not use easy (invulnerable) mode on any of the missions. 70% of the missions I had to play more than once in order to complete / win. M04 took me about a dozen tries; the damn Grison got me darn near every time. My only gripe is that a little more air-to-air action would have been nice. Still managed to bag five kills, though, so fair enough. All told, probably the best paid campaign I've played in DCS so far. Thanks to Baltic Dragon and his team for another great experience. Highly recommend. 9.5/10

Actually, it's a nice break being 'away from the Boat.' Plus, you fly the missions from a highway runway with parking spots dispersed in the forest, which is pretty dang cool. Up to mission 7 and have enjoyed it. It's heavy on CAS and light on A/A, which is my only real gripe, but it's hella fun. And, at times, hella frustrating. Not because of bugs, but because of the difficulty of the missions and my own junior varsity proficiency with Hornet A/G sensors. In the limited A/A arena I've done a lot better. 4 kills by mission 7 and hoping for a chance at ace status!

Yeah, I figured that out soon after. I was still living in the days when the ONLY available laser code for DCS was 1688.

I looked up the Grison after I finally beat the mission. With the weather, you really end up flirting on the edges of its engagement range in order to get a maverick to lock onto it.

I swear I had to replay this f----g mission about a dozen times because every time I went after that second Grison, it got me. Finally nailed the little bastard but even then it was chaff and flares city at the end- I saw the missile come off the rail on the FLIR right after I pickled my last Maverick, broke hard, hit dispense, and let the auto program do its thing. Got lucky on the umpteenth try. I was getting to that point where I was about ready to put my fist through my monitor. DCS needs an in-game save function like no other game ever made. It just SUCKS to get an hour into a mission, get wasted, and then have to go back and start at zero, cold and dark on the ramp.

Targeting the lead vehicle in the convoy is a real bitch. And if you hit the wrong vehicle (which I did about half the time), re-attack is made even harder by the smoke plume from the first hit. Agree that the CBU-99 would be a better choice for cluster munitions, but a 2000 lb dumb bomb would actually be easier and faster.

Not a bug, but a heads-up to players who missed what happened in a past update with LGBs, as I did: Apparently the laser codes have to be changed on the ground before takeoff using the rearming page. You cannot change them in the air anymore. Discovered this handy little tidbit while doing some research into why my GBUs kept missing. The code set on the bombs in this mission is 1678, while the pod is set to 1688. User error there on my part until I figured it out. Laser guided bombs work a lot better when they can track the laser!

I found them mostly by pure luck. I did get down to the altitudes they were reported at so the radar was more level with their altitude, got a sniff, and homed in on it. I only just learned about it, but next time I'm going to set up Bullseye as an A/A waypoint and that should help with the SA as well in terms of where the hell they are. If you stay high when the quails are reported low, the radar might have trouble picking them up out of the clutter or they may be below your beam.

Well, it took three tries and a detour to some YouTube tutorials but I finally completed the first mission with a score of 100. First try: Got lost trying to plug in offsets and grid coordinates. Gave up in frustration and resorted to tutorials to brush up on procedures. This is something I've had to do a lot with the Hornet, especially since I spend the lion's share of my time in DCS in the Tomcat. Second try: Made it to the air intercept and . . . oops. Ran the intercept on one of the tankers by mistake. Totally missed the backfire. Swanned around until I ran out of gas, totally clueless. Made a note to play closer attention to Chainsaw's calls the next time. Third try: Completed the mission. Actually got a visual on some of the Russkis I was looking for on the ground. This time I intercepted the right air target, and things went well after that. Enjoyed the landing portion and felt like the astronaut's prayer had been answered when I got the mission complete message. Didn't feel great about my overall performance. Did not tap burner once the entire scenario (this was deliberate) and still landed very low on gas at the end; I think I was probably taking too long with the recon portion and being really slow programming coordinates for the FLIR. Very immersive so far. Probably less challenging for players fully in tune with the F-18 and its systems, but each mission will probably take me a couple tries. I do well with the air to air stuff but targeting pods and precision weapons are my Achilles heel with this jet. Practice makes perfect, eh? Side note: I don't speak Finnish, but I'm a quarter Finn by blood and Nightwish is my favorite band after Van Halen. So I'm definitely feeling the Finland love here!

Didn't take a hit but I'm not sure how it missed me; I was dead astern. Fortunately I was expecting shenanigans, had him locked up, and all I had to do was select sidewinder and pull the trigger once the tracers started to fly. He was going down in flames before my wingman even reported he was shooting at me. It was the ONLY moment of the mission that I thought I did well. The rest was mostly me wrestling with the litening pod.

When I had this happen I had an overheat issue in my computer. My recommendation would be to check your heat sink (or have it checked at a repair shop.) There's an app called Speccy which you can download that will show you your component temps.

And a big one: Shapeable trigger zones, using up to a dozen vertices

Others may have posted these as well... 1. The ability to hover a helo instead of having it orbit. If this ability already exists, I've missed it. 2. Ability of a player to query AI wingmen concerning their fuel states. Since the player's radio reports a wingman's 'low state' to marshal on a carrier recovery, we know the game is tracking wingmen fuel states. As a player I'd like to ask directly and make the decision to send a wingman to the tanker or not before contacting marshal. 3. Ability to have a unit report its fuel state over comms or a message in the ME. (As a response to a scripted query.)

Accidental double posting of this thread. Mods please delete this one.

Okay, found part of the problem. When I tell Jester to set 'link host Stennis', he isn't putting the right frequency into the datalink. According to my kneeboard card, the DL freq was supposed to be 321.2. When I jumped in the back seat to check it, it came up on alternate starts of the mission as 312.0 or 30x.0 By manually inputting the frequency, the VOICE light came on in both cockpits and the ACLS worked as advertised after that. Would this have something to do with me changing frequency presets in the two comm radios in the ME, or is something else in play here? I thought that telling where Jester to set the link host would automatically result in the right frequency being set to use ICLS/ACLS. Is that not correct? On a side note, and this isn't really a Heatblur specific question but I'll ask it here anyway, when you place a carrier into the ME, how is the link frequency determined? Is it set by the game and always the same, or does it vary, or can it be set manually? Anyone know the answer to that one?

I'm currently revamping an old mission which involved a night Case III recovery. ACLS used to work great. Now, I can't even get the Voice light to activate. I don't start these things assuming the game or module is borked, but rather that I have done something wrong. However, I've been through the guides and procedures so many times, tried again so many times, and made sure my switchology is correct that I'm at a loss so... 1st question: Is ACLS actually working normally as of Jan 18 2024? (Latest version of DCS Beta) 2nd question: Am I missing something glaring here? Carrier is set up to activate TCN 74X and ICLS 5 at mission start. Call for Jester to set link mode tactical Call for Jester to set link host Stennis (Carrier in use) TCN is set to 74X, T/R, Pwr on, ICLS is set to CH 5, power on. HUD mode is set to Landing, HUD AWL and VDI AWL modes set to ACL. Steering command set AWL/PCD. Autopilot switches set ACL and On. AP REF light comes on as advertised. A/C fully configured, on speed (AOA), autothrottles on, and at 6 miles . . . nothing. I never get the voice light, I never get the landing check light. Needles locked at center, but the comms indicate 'ACLS lockon.' So... any ideas? I was wondering if maybe there is something I missed in carrier or aircraft setup in the ME, or am I missing something vital from the above laundry list?