Bahger

Thanks, guys, I appreciate the encouragement. However, I'm really PO-ed about this. Four GR4s with 4 ALARMs each, going against a grand total of two SA-6 batteries containing four launchers in all...and the SEAD flights miss with 6 out of 8 missiles, so the AI A-10s coming in behind them get hit. There must just be too many coders on the dev team and not enough of them actually playing the sim. SEAD was always a bit of a fudge in this engine but after all this time, they cannot even get ARMs to be effective against (rather ancient) SAM systems? Mid-level, medium-range battlefield systems (SA-19) that shoot down every ALARM and Maverick launched at them, rendering 4x GR4 SEAD jets and 2x F-15E strikers useless? It's just stupid. This mission is the most elaborate and ambitious I've made, with CAS in support of a battalion-scale assault. The first thing I made, and an indispensible element, was the SEAD. Now it's utterly useless and the AI governing SEAD AR missile accuracy is nonsensical, ridiculous. As I've said before, SEAD has always been a workaround, but now it's just idiotic. How can this not have been noticed? What were they thinking? I think I'm going to give up on this mission and on mission design in this sim.

Yes, it's stupid. I just don't think it was tested, so they'll correct it in the next update that will take 12 hours to download...and break something else. I think my mission design days are numbered, this is just a waste of my time.

OK, well, subsituting 2 Osas for for Tunguskas per battery, and removing the CP, the 4 SEAD flights can almost cope. I say almost because the accuracy of their ALARMS (with pilot AI set to Excellent) is awful, one hit per three missiles fired, so the F-15Es have to come in behind them and mop up. Sometimes I just despair. Doesn't anybody test this stuff before releasing it in an update?

Thanks, guys. Invader, all the launchers are set to Average, the lowest AI setting. They hit at least 85% of incoming ALARMs and Mavericks. I'm beginning to dread these updates. They always break my friggin' missions. This level of SA-19 effectiveness against ALARMS has to be wrong.

There has been a huge bump in SA-19 effectiveness against AR missiles, so much so that it has invalidated almost all SEAD/DEAD in my current mission-in-progress. I have two AD batteries, each consisting of a Sborka radar CP and 4 SA-19 launchers. I have tasked two flights of SEAD Tornado GR4s to shwack them with ALARMS, which in 1.2.3 they did very effectively, taking out the CPs first, then rolling back in to use their remaining ARMs on the launchers. In 1.2.4, however, SA-19s intercept ALARMS so effectively that the SEAD flights run out of these missiles long before the launchers are even half destroyed. Not only this, but an F-15E strike flight has little more luck, as the SA-19s will intercept and destroy Mavericks too. I'm wondering if this is realistic behavior and, if so, if it's been dialed up too far. Meanwhile, I need to fix my mission. I think I'll use "Attack Group" for the F-15s to get them to hit the SA-19 launchers with cluster munitions, hoping they won't stray into the Tunguskas' killzone below 20,000ft. If the above does not work, can anyone suggest another solution? For example, is there another integrated, battlefield (i.e. not long-range IADS) medium-range system I can use instead of SA-19s where, if SEAD hits the CP, the launchers' effectiveness will be vastly degraded? The problem with making the launchers a strike target is that it seems to invalidate having a SEAD flight in the first place. The DCS engine has never really simulated IADS and it seems to me now that if ARMs cannot hit SA-19 launchers (which are radar-guided, after all) how can I use SEAD against them? EDIT: Well, the strikers get the SA-19s, but only after multiple passes. They are too dispersed to be killed by the CBUs, the the Strike Eagles have to come back around with mavericks, which finally get through, but by now the ingressing A-10s have been shot down. I'm either going to have to find a battlefield SAM system that is vulnerable to ALARMS, or reduce the number of launchers in my batteries. Either way, it sticks in my craw to have to rely on strikers to do SEAD's work. 1.2.4 appears to have turned SA-19s into a super-weapon; since when can they intercept and destroy 80%+ of ALARMs fired at them by two Tornados per battery? I hate to see SEAD get neutralised in this way; it's iffy enough as it is, what with the way it tries to use guns against AAA and missile launchers. And unless I can find a way to decapitate a SAM battery by having SEAD hit the CP, there's no point in using SEAD in my mission. Even the first shots from 25,000ft against the CPs get intercepted. This has to be wrong. I had almost finished my mission but this will take a huge re-work. Sigh.

Take a look at my "Patrol By Force" mission, which has a fully executed helo insertion and extraction, including a security perimeter around the Chinook while it remains at the LZ. If this is what you are after, check it out in the ME and/or post here and I'll explain the process in detail. I use ME triggers exclusively, not scripting.

Yup, that's part of it. But given today's performance, DCS's number of customers and bandwidth they have to manage it all is not quite as well harmonised, wouldn't you say? I'm not complaining (really). Flight sims are a niche product and this one is at the very top of the heap. But they should really take a look at this.

Some perspective for you: This morning at 08:00 I got onto Steam and downloaded an entire game, "Wargame: Airland Battle" (oh, is that title grammatically offensive...). The download was finished by 10:30 (including today's 800MB update), at which point I started the DCSW 1.2.4. d/l via the updater. Now it's 17:00 and the progress bar is not yet half-full: 458.1/1267.2 MB @ 16.3 KB/s.

1.8 - 8.5 KB/s, downloading since mid-morning (i.e. 4 hours ago) and not a third done yet. At this rate, it'll take until tomorrow morning. It's silly. There has to be a better way than this (or downloading the whole program via Torrent when all you need is an update.)

Many thanks, good to know.

So, because it's looking like it'll take most of the day (and possibly even most of the night) can someone please confirm that, if I hit "Cancel" in the upload progress window (because someone else in my family might need the bandwidth), the upload will resume where it left off the next time I try to start the sim? or will I have to start the sim and then manually upload to resume? Thanks!

I've always used the Torrent before but I do not want to do what really amounts to a full reinstall and, even with a good, seemingly reputable Torrent downloader (uTorrent), I am skeezed out by all the malware warnings I get from the various AM/AS programs I run in the background. Torrenting seems to be open season on insecure PC systems.

I'm noticing gigantic variations in d/l speed for the auto-uploader, from 3.2 KB/s to 300 KB/s. Very rough estimate of the average d/l speed appears to be 30 KB/s, so this will be a long march.

Glad you liked it, Bra1n. Let us know how the MP sortie goes!

Thanks, guys. Grimes, is Flag X the same value across all three conditions? Or is it Flag X, Flag Y and Flag Z? I tried to think it through but gave myself a headache.

I have a mission with three victory conditions based on survival of ground units being CAS-ed by the player. The problem is that some combat can still be occurring after the trigger to evaluate the player's performance fires, thus, he can be informed he's earned a "Victory" (All objectives taken and > 80% of the vehicles intact), only to receive another message as he RTBs that he's won a "Minor Victory" (All objectives taken and > 50% of the vehicles intact). Since I have to draw the line somewhere -- i.e. the point at which all objectives are taken -- and because I cannot control a few subsequent skirmishes (short of enforcing a ceasefire, which would be interesting, come to think of it, anyone know how, can I put everyone on ROE>Weapons Hold by trigger...?) my question is: How can I make sure that, when one victory message shows as true, the others do not pop up subsequently, even when they come true? I think there's probably a Flag # increase/decrease mechanism for this but I cannot remember exactly what. Thanks!

Yeah, the "mark...no mark" glitch is infuriating. It has sabotaged mark with smoke and lase functions and, by making JTAC work less effectively than it did in Beta, it has weakened the very heart of this sim, which is the JTAC capability. I don't know why there has been no acknowledgement of this really ugly bug. As for getting JTAC to target statics: Certain user-placed objects can work for this but not objects like bridges and buildings that are part of the map's permanent ambience. So the best thing to do is to place a static object, like a bunker or a FARP, rather than try to make pre-existing structures a tactical focus for JTAC. The JTAC will target user-placed objects very effectively.

I can't argue with any of the above, ENO. I know what a powerful and elegant tool MIST / SLMOD must be, but I am SUCH a moron with code/programming logic that, if I did dip a toe in it, I'd drive Grimes and Speed completely crazy in this forum with my dumbass questions. My upcoming mission is a very big, battalion-scale set-piece battle; luckily I'm much better with military tactics and doctrine than I am with code. It's so promising that, if it plays out, as I think it will, I'll never be able to better it, so it might be the end of my ME career.

How would this work, using ME only: I do not want to make individual triggers for every unit or vehicle (there are way too many) so the concept is to deduct points for every mobile vehicle group, of ten, that is attrited more than 20%. So: To give Flag 99 a value of 100: ONCE > TIME LESS, 2 > FLAG INCREASE 99,100 Then, for each group of the ten: ONCE > GROUP ALIVE LESS THAN 81% > FLAG DECREASE 99, 10 I would then make scoring triggers awarding Major Victory, Minor Victory and Defeat based on the player's points total as determined at the end of the mission by the above triggers.

Yes, that's a good solution, msalama, especially for MP. Bear in mind that the "unit alive" trigger is not strictly necessary as, if a player does not select a client flight, that flight does not exist at mission start, so you can use a trigger zone to assess which flights exist and spawn an AI ringer for any flight which does not. My mistake was to make a trigger zone that a flight could exit, thereby telling the sim that it no longer existed and triggering the redundant AI flight. My assumption had been that a "once" trigger would only check once, but apparently not, if the condition gets reversed, it will declare a previously true condition untrue. Since giving the "spawn AI" trigger zone a radius of 250000, I've had no problems!

Excellent! Thanks yet again, Grimes.

I have three groups of 10 red tanks. Blue forces engaging each group are triggered to advance when each group is "alive less than 21%", i.e. when there are only two tanks left. I'm wondering if I can randomize this condition in the trigger setup, so that the trigger will fire randomly as long as the unit it applies to is "alive less than" between 50% and 20% (i.e. between 5 and 2 tanks still alive.) Can this be done?

Thanks, Eno. I bet you're right. Maybe it will work if I make the spawn zone cover the entire map area. Spawn when the equivalent flight is not in zone is useful because if a client flight is not taken by a player, it's counted as not in zone at mission start, and the AI version therefore appears.

There are four client flights altogether, organised in pairs so that when the player selects one client flight, the other will spawn as an AI flight. I've used a combination of triggers to ensure that when a player takes a client flight, the identially-tasked AI flight will not spawn as well. However, something is going wrong, and when I take, say, Ford flight, its AI version launches a little later. I'm sure this is to do with the combination of "late activation" and "uncontrolled" I've used to get all the right flights to appear on the ramp at mission start (i.e. always only two flights max, in any combo of client and AI) but there is obviously a logic glitch that I cannot pin down. If I have to use "activate" alone to control this problem, I will, but I'd rather have the right flights show up at the start of the mission, then start up when "uncontrolled" is superseded by a triggered action. Could someone possibly take a look? The solution is probably very simple but I cannot figure it out. As always, thanks! TF_Snow_Leopard_SP_Beta.miz

All you need is Audacity, an excellent free sound recording utility, and I will provide precise instructions. For my new mission, I am looking for the following voices: - F-15E pilot - Task force c/o - 3x platoon commanders Please PM me an email address if interested and I will forward scripts and instructions. There are only about two custom messages per role. Thanks!