Brown Floyd

Yeah, that was a lesson learned: Blue can bomb the bombs and take out the nukes before you get a chance to deploy them, so Red should focus on that mission in the first hour, including CAP over the chemical factory and maybe an escort for the slingloading helo.

Just watched Mike Delta's Twitch video of the new event, and it was one of the most gripping shows I've seen in a long time. Very exciting mission, well done to everyone. I think Alpen hit a homerun with limiting the player-controlled CA vehicles to AFVs and let the AI control all the air defenses. I think he did it to balance the playing field with some of the more experienced CA players who are real sharpshooters, but it had the happy accident of creating more tank battles and it was pretty slick. I think there might be some growing pains with the hidden helicopters, but it just means that players will need to do a better job of keeping teammates informed on where they are and what they're doing...just like real life in the 70s and 80s. All in all, very fun experience!

Doing Behind Enemy Lines right now, and seems like the Blue ground units didn't spawn in. Only Red.

Red's nuke attack on Khasab airfield

Seems like the mission is live right now, at Saturday, 11.09.2021, 0700 zulu (unless my math is wrong). Edit: Nevermind, it rotated after a few minutes. A.W. must have been doing some server maintenance or something...

Alpen, can you check on the C-101 spawn points in Open Range? Seems like they start out hovering a few hundred feet above Maykop.

Feeling a bit nostalgic...any chance of getting Supervision or the original Five Points added back to the lineup?

Just wanted to say that When the Mountains Cry is my all-time favorite mission and I'm very happy that it's back online and updated. When the new volumetric clouds are finally implemented in the next few months, it'll be even better as players will be able to duck into and out of weather around the target areas around the mountains.

In Homs (and I think a couple other missions, too), each side is limited to just one helo-deployed long-range SAM site (Hawk or Kub) and it really adds a new dimension to the helicopter gameplay. Instead of the helicopters sprinkling SAM sites all over the battlefield, there's just one point that you need to defend from attacks, which leads to the enemy attempting more SEAD strikes to hit the one good SAM site, followed by frantic repair runs out to the SAM, beefing up the SAM radar defenses with MANPADS, armor, etc. In the older missions with essentially unlimited SAM sites (Two Towns et al), there's not much point in repairing a downed site when you can just assemble another, plus it gets discouraging for the jets when they log on and there's 4 interlocking SA-6 sites around the mission goal (which also may not be entirely realistic...) Long story short, it might be a bit counter-intuitive but limiting the number of the deployed SAM sites actually improves the helicopter gameplay, and I think limiting the radar SAM sites to just a single operating site in other missions is something we should try.

Found a bug on Street Fight: the first C-101 listed spawns in the air 3000 feet over the airfield.

Speaking of which...from the latest patch notes: Maybe some Flak and Bofors in the missions now, Hanoi-style?

I think the mission is pretty well-balanced as it is. One or two more Ka-50s airborne, another ground unit commander, some more coordination among the fighters, all the F-14 slots taken: any of those could have turned the tide towards Red. But if the lack of Red SEAD is a problem, then maybe downgrade the Patriots to Hawk batteries instead of shoehorning the Su-25Ts into the mission. You could rationalize it by saying the Patriots have their hands full off-screen dealing with Scuds or something. All in all, I had a great time today. Well worth waking up at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning!

Just watched the tacview for yesterday's event. Amazing action; well done to everyone!

Anybody have a recap of the latest Tiberias mission? Who won? Edit: Ah, right, I forgot there's a separate thread for it. Thanks!

As someone who plays a lot during off-peak hours, I think Prince of Persia would be improved if each side started the mission with one of the objective airbases already captured: Ras Al Khaimah for Red and Al Maktoum for Blue. Those two are usually captured pretty quick anyway and having them stocked with enemy ground units will give players something to do with fixed-wing aircraft if the other side is empty. It'll also slow down the "3 Mi-8 vs. 0 Blue" rush that sometimes happens which ends the mission quickly. (I've participated in those myself. Fun for Red, maybe not so fun for Blue when it happens.) Battle Over Sukhumi Unleashed gave me the idea; it's nice in that one to be able to soften up the FARPs and Batumi if you're the only person on the server at the start of the mission.

I don't know how they spawn or where they came from (this was my first go at the new mission), but the objective base is right now swarming with tanks from both sides at hour 5.

Looks like they're actually A-10Cs.

If it's anything like the previous tournaments, the briefing on Teamspeak is where they give out the password for the server.

If the sides are too imbalanced and it's not too much trouble to mess with the mission, maybe the number of units at the artillery sites can be adjusted? Remove 30% or so of the Red units or something.

Ah, I see that now that I've caused a bunch of confusion. From my posts earlier, I meant that the Magic 2 shouldn't be in the missions with weapons restrictions but, re-reading them, I now realize it sounds like I was arguing that they should be included. My sincere apologies for wasting everyone's time.

I just checked the C-101s on Swedish Delivery and the Magic 2 is not listed as an option for them now. And the Mirage 2000 of course carries them as well.

Just pulled a muscle sprinting to my computer to see if I could sneak a quick C-101CC CAP mission in before anybody noticed, but no dice: the Magic 2 is already gone as well. :cry: Of all the minor little nagging issues with DCS World that will likely not be fixed within the next 10 years, none is more vexing than the inability of the mission editor to lock down and limit weapons loadouts on individual aircraft slots, because that's a basic function that happens to almost literally every single military aircraft sortie every day around the world. I'm sitting here imagining a O-2 Hornet pilot saying "Hey skipper, I know the strike planners and the weaponeers and the ordnance guys have been working hard on today's mission, but I'd really rather swap out all these Mk82s for Mavericks. I've been practicing with them and I really think they'd work a lot better." The guy would get murdered. I know that this a game and in most cases we'll want to let the pilot choose whatever they want for fun, but the option for the loadout to be constrained should at least exist. Other multiplayer servers do it using bespoke code that validates your loadout before you takeoff but they're all very kludgy, often-broken workarounds for something that should be in the base game.

Edit: Thanks, man!

Brown Floyd - Mi-8

Hard agree on this whenever the weapons restrictions go back into place. It's one thing for the F-86s and MiG-15s to be overmatched on this server, they're one generation older, but the MiG-19 was a frontline fighter that fought alongside the MiG-21 in the Middle East and Vietnam. I feel bad that it really can't compete on the server when unrestricted weapons are in use. To get a little philosophical on you all, this sorta ties back into the previous discussions about the BK90, tactical commander slots, etc. Almost by definition, people who use this server are at least partly history buffs who want to examine or re-live the glory days of the Cold War and so using obsolete aircraft and challenging weapons systems is part of the fun. But on the other hand, we all want to win the mission or at least give a good fight to the enemy, which leads to always selecting the best tech even if ahistorical or using min-max strategies like capturing multiple base with one helo sortie or pushing the boundaries of the tac commander slot. For example, when I'm Viggening it up I usually want to roleplay that I'm in the Swedish Air Force and plan the whole mission out with waypoints, ingress and egress points, use rockets or high-drag bombs, i.e., do everything like-the-book and try to survive to return-to-base. But I also want to help out My Boys who've been flying the Hueys around for an hour trying to win the mission and probably don't appreciate me memeing it up with RB05s or whatever. So instead I'll load up with mavericks or BK90s or 6 RB-74s. So there's a yin-and-yang going on here that you don't really see on other PvP servers where it's usually about winning at all costs. Just something that we all should keep in mind both when we're flying around and also here on the forums.