Drug War MP COOP minicampaign

This is a set of missions I have been tinkering with since the DCS A-10C came out but only after 1.1.1.0 the mission editor features and infantry movement logic had been improved enough for me to complete these missions. Missions have been designed to be played with about 2-6x A-10C and 1-2x Ka-50. Player slots are available for 8x A-10C and 4x Ka-50 in all of the missions. A mix of Ka-50 and A-10C is the ideal package for these missions as you will need JTAC and to provide close cover for infantry in contact with enemy. You can complete these missions with just A-10 or Ka-50 but it will be harder and take longer. Especially with Ka-50 you might need re-arming or re-fueling.

All missions have all the scripted radio traffic with speech created by speech synthesizer. https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php

Mission 1: First Strike

Fairly simple night mission where players witness B-52 carpet bombing a enemy base and then mop up remaining enemy units. There's one quite challenging helicopter hunt that will test your ability to find targets with TGP and process bullseye calls quickly if you want to do it fast and clean. They can't really escape the player as they are followed by a UAV all the way to their final destination providing position updates along the way.

No randomization. Mission will take about 2-3h to complete with 4 players, more with less players and less with more players.

Mission 2: Dawn Strike

Early morning strike to airfield to kill enemy Mig's on the ground. The problem is two of them are already in the air that requires a stealthy ingress through mountain valleys at low altitude. F-15 Eagles will swat the Migs at the last moment to prevent the others from getting airborne before A-10s and Ka-50s are shooting Mavericks and Vikhrs at them. After the Mig threat is dealt with it's time to take out the main target which is enemy base with some ammo bunkers and lots of short range AD assets. When the base is cleared transport helicopters will drop infantry to investigate and clear the place. A-10s and Ka-50s will need to provide cover until the base is completely cleared of enemy presence. You will fail this mission if one of the infantry teams gets killed in it's entirety.

This mission will require at least one player who has a good understanding of the whole briefing who can then lead the others or this mission will end before it has even properly begun.

Enemy positions and composure at the two target sites are random. Mission will take about 2-3h to complete with 4 players, more with less players.

Mission 3: Urban Strike

Most ambitious of the three. Friendly ground forces conduct a night time raid in Nalchik to capture enemy high value personnel and intelligence. Raid party is 8x Strykers carrying 8x infantry squads. Initial plan is to enter the city covertly and surround the target bloc and then blow in the doors at the target building and go get the target. Air support is supposed to keep the city at a bay while ground forces conduct the raid. After the initial raid the next step is decided by the raid commander according to the intelligence gathered. OH-58 AFAC will provide targeting coordinates and sometimes laser illumination if it has LOS to target. Enemy forces consists almost entirely of infantry with small arms and RPGs scattered randomly around the city and springing in to action according to mission events. If any of the Stryker sections or infantry teams is completely killed the mission is a failure.

Enemy positions are random. Friendly units follow a static plan. Mission will take about 2-3h depending how good the players are at finding infantry at night in a city.

Infantry in all missions will freeze for about 5 minutes if there's any gunfire or explosions within about 1km of them or enemy units within 600m of them. If friendly infantry won't advance it's because there's enemy infantry hiding nearby. After the enemy is killed the friendly infantry will start going again after a while.

Mission 1 is made prior to 1.1.1.0 and might be unstable at current version. Please report if clients suffer from CTDs. Mission 2 and 3 have worked fine in multiplayer tests. All missions have been tested for trigger logic errors but if you find one please report.

Link to the mission files:

http://files.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/201812/

This looks NIFTY! I'm going to get my squadron to fly it with our A-10 buddies soon =)

Thanks for all the hard work!

Alright, we're just finishing up our dry run of mission #1. It was kind of a bugger. The enemy choppers lifted off basically as soon as we were airborne. The carpet bombing was cool, but hunting down the trucks was also pretty tough. I think we might switch the mission time to dawn or early morning so that we can get a visual on targets a little better.

The carpet bombing WAS cool =)

Yeah, the pitch black night is a bugger but I liked it and the challenge associated to it so it stayed even if my testers had the same trouble as you. It might be wise to set the take-off time two or three hours later if you are not fond of the extra challenge of not seeing your targets with naked eye.

The mission has a timetable assigned in briefing which dictates you should get airborne about 10 minutes after mission start to be on-target on-time. If you follow it the choppers should lift off when you are about half-way there and able to see them with TGP before take-off and consequently follow them with TGP afterwards. A good trick is to have one A-10 to follow them with TGP from farther away and mark them with IR laser making it easy for the rest to engage them without fear of losing them.

And don't forget you have SUU-2 illumination flares loaded on A-10s.

Played the first two missions online and with friends and here is our feedback.

1. The first mission is impossible to complete as you can't find the units you need to destroy to complete the mission

2. In the second mission the migs aren't really a threat at all. The F-15s destroy them before they are even a concern.

3. The helicopter you are supposed to protect goes straight into the enemy area before you even call them in to clear the village.

Other than those points, great missions and fun as hell.

1. Yeah, change the take-off time if that's an issue. I suppose the units you couldn't find were the choppers as anything else should be pretty much on a serving plate. They will stop eventually and you will be given their locations as a bullseye call, until then just scan the river they are following with TGP or follow the river at low altitude and scan with NVGs. You could also try the trick described in my previous post.

2. Thats how it's supposed to be as who would task A-10s to air-to-air fight their way in to the target? Or do you mean the Migs on the ground taking off also get easily spanked by Eagles? Anyway, you can actually quite easily kill the airborne Migs yourself if you have some clue of what you are doing as they only have R-60s that are easy to dodge and have less range than AIM-9s you are carrying. I didn't want to make it too hard as my impression is that not too many can handle A-to-A in A-10 that well.

3. I checked the triggers and found one possible bug. The back-up go-signal of buzzing the choppers at close distance can trigger before they start their orbit so if you pass them at close distance in the canyon they will not stop to orbit. In testing phase the choppers had different starting point and as such you didn't fly close to them in the canyon and I missed this possibility. Thanks for reporting. I tweaked the trigger so that they need to be orbiting before the close fly-by can trigger the go-signal. Updated file should be available sometime soon.

1. Yeah, change the take-off time if that's an issue. I suppose the units you couldn't find were the choppers as anything else should be pretty much on a serving plate. They will stop eventually and you will be given their locations as a bullseye call, until then just scan the river they are following with TGP or follow the river at low altitude and scan with NVGs. You could also try the trick described in my previous post.

 

2. Thats how it's supposed to be as who would task A-10s to air-to-air fight their way in to the target? Or do you mean the Migs on the ground taking off also get easily spanked by Eagles? Anyway, you can actually quite easily kill the airborne Migs yourself if you have some clue of what you are doing as they only have R-60s that are easy to dodge and have less range than AIM-9s you are carrying. I didn't want to make it too hard as my impression is that not too many can handle A-to-A in A-10 that well.

 

3. I checked the triggers and found one possible bug. The back-up go-signal of buzzing the choppers at close distance can trigger before they start their orbit so if you pass them at close distance in the canyon they will not stop to orbit. In testing phase the choppers had different starting point and as such you didn't fly close to them in the canyon and I missed this possibility. Thanks for reporting. I tweaked the trigger so that they need to be orbiting before the close fly-by can trigger the go-signal. Updated file should be available sometime soon.

Thanks for the reply - looking forward to the update.

Just played the second mission last night, really enjoyed it Bushmanni. The only problem was (we reviewed the ACMI) that the Chinooks got shot down while they were waiting at their holding point (WP 26) by the Mig 29s before we got there (we were running late). This made it an instant mission fail. We continued on anyway and cleared the airfield and second target, however it was a shame we could not clear the Chinooks in.

Cheers

Glad you liked it and thanks for your feedback. I will probably add a note about the Chinook timetable in the briefing if there's need for new update and maybe adjust flight path or triggers for Chinooks. But as it's not a proper bug I won't release another version yet. When people get to the third mission there's good chance people will find bugs to fix.