F-15C Single Player Campaign, "A Bitter Pill" (with 3 Su-27 side missions)

[Trailer]

After a few months of learning the sim and learning the campaign and mission builder, I think I'm ready to release A Bitter Pill to the public. A huge amount of thanks goes to Bel Geode for helping me learn the trigger system, the mission editor, and for helping me with testing. I really couldn't have done it without him.

 

The campaign is finished, but it's still an ongoing project, so if you have any ideas or additions you would like to add, please let me know. Also, definitely let me know if you find any bugs or mistakes that I may have overlooked; it's difficult to be objective when I've run the campaign umpteen times and know everything that happens. Please, PLEASE do not hesitate to point out bugs or problems...I've been working on it for so long that I just can't look at it anymore. My original aim was for it to be a learning project for me, but then it just kept getting bigger and bigger as I discovered more and more things about the mission builder.

 

The campaign is ten missions, aimed at novice pilots or pilots new to DCS, but only because the missions are made rather straight-forward, and the employment of forces is tilted in the favor of the Blue side. I designed the campaign to ease the new player into the sim, but by no means is every mission going to be a walk in the park. There is a 3 mission Su-27 parallel put into the storyline, which I've done on purpose to introduce both airframes to new players. I've also tried to add as much atmosphere as possible, so there will be other AI on their own simultaneous missions. Some will be on your freq and some won't. This campaign is trigger-heavy, and I've also added AWACS comm, which your flight will respond to. Think The Ultimate Argument without voice-overs. Unfortunately there aren't any voice-overs, but I'd like to add them soon. The AWACS controlling comm is realistic (I'm a former GCI controller), so if there are some terms you aren't familiar with, please ask and I'll explain it. It shouldn't be very difficult to understand, though. You won't find, however, ridiculous, cartoon-y comm between flights like, "So, what did you have for lunch today?".

 

The scenario is what I would call realistic but very improbable. I wanted to really use my imagination but keep it feasible, and I think I've found a good balance. Like I said, it's feasible but highly improbable, so just keep that in mind. It's quite long and detailed, so get ready for a wall of text:

 

A BITTER PILL

 

Introduction:

 

After two years of conflict with Ukraine, Russian-backed separatists were able to take over the Crimean Peninsula and eastern Ukrainian provinces, effectively creating a buffer zone between Russia and the West. Emboldened by such a relatively painless victory and a seemingly impotent NATO reluctant to accept Ukraine's bid for NATO membership, a new Georgian conflict began to rear its ugly head for a second time soon after. This time, however, Russian-backed forces pushed past South Ossetia and further into Georgia, effectively reclaiming it entirely under the Russian banner. The cat was out of the bag at this point and there was no doubting that the invasions into Ukraine and Georgia were orchestrated by the Kremlin, who now freely acknowledges their involvement.

 

While NATO partners may have been asleep at the wheel for the Ukrainian crisis, the second move into Georgia was a clear shot across the bow, and one they would not let go unpunished. After severely ratcheting up economic sanctions on Russia, Ukraine was given carte blanche by the US Department of Defense and other EU Ministries of Defense for arms agreements as well as full NATO membership. With the full backing of the western world including arms, support, as well as being a full member of NATO, Ukraine sprang into action, determined to take back what they saw was rightfully theirs. They took it all back and then some.

 

For Russia, severely crippling economic sanctions combined with the strain of two simultaneous conflicts was more than the rouble and the Russian people could bear. Determined to prove to the world that they, like the US, could successfully sustain two simultaneous conflicts, Russian leaders overreached and overspent while ignoring their own quickly dwindling forces and logistics required to supply said forces in both Ukraine and Georgia.

 

It is at this time that an emboldened and western-backed Ukraine makes its move, catching Russian forces in Crimea and in the eastern provinces completely by suprise and utterly decimating them before Russia even has a chance to respond. With NATO at the helm this time, Ukrainian and NATO forces continue to push past the Crimean Peninsula into Russia, effectively overtaking the area all the way from Anapa to Sochi, where they were finally stopped by Russian forces along the coast. As of right now there is a push eastward to overtake Mineralnye Vody and Mozdok in an effort to cut off and corner Russian forces in the southeast. At this point both sides are dug in and at a standoff.

 

Afraid of escalating an unpopular war that an already economically crippled Russia is losing, both NATO and Russian governments agree to not commit any more regular forces to the conflict in an effort to defuse the situation as much as they can, impossible as it may be to do so. However, there has not been a cease-fire, much less any sort of peace agreement. NATO is, in fact, at war with Russia.

 

Currently, NATO forces are not to encroach from the south upon the border stretching north from Anapa to just north of Mineralnya Vody. Russia, in turn, has agreed not to encroach upon the same border from the north. However, there have already been numerous violations, and one can only assume there will be more.

 

While Russia doesn't want to lose face on the world stage, neither does it want to lose territory to Western adversaries. If Russia cannot win this war, then it will have to balance losing it quickly enough to appease NATO into relinquishing lost territory in the post-war accords and at the same time not lose face.

 

In other words, NATO may have the upper hand but Russia is not about to make it easy for them.

 

I hope you enjoy it and if you'd like to add to it, feel free! I know the campaign is quite bare-bones and spartan, but I hope you still enjoy it.

 

UPDATED WITH FIXES 28/11/2015

A Bitter Pill 1.5.rar

Edited November 28, 2015 by Trailer

[Belgeode]

Woot! I can vouch for this one. It has been pretty fun to play!!

[feefifofum]

Thanks, Trailer! Can't wait to try these out.

 

If you need people for voice work, I'd be happy to help you out. You can find samples here http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?p=2349091#post2349091

[Trailer]

Yeah thanks! I'm currently playing your campaign too...nice work!

[MacEwan]

Sweeeet a new F-15 campaign. Thanks for doing this. Gonna try it soon as I get home.

[Trailer]

Re-download file for up-to-date fixes.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Trailer

[Trailer]

Sweeeet a new F-15 campaign. Thanks for doing this. Gonna try it soon as I get home.

 

Hope you like it!

[Trailer]

Adjusted some triggers in the Retaliation mission.

[feefifofum]

soooon

 

Since I'm a couple missions ahead of my buddies and most of the boards on my campaign from the looks of things, I'm going to make a point of getting my face out of the ME and trying out your campaign tomorrow afternoon.

 

Thanks for all your hard work, can't wait to fly something where I don't know what happens! :lol:

[Trailer]

Thanks! I've been flying yours and it's nice to have a break from your own stuff, I know! I'm finding little tweaks every time I fly my campaign, so you can expect regular updates to try and improve it.

 

I know how it is to be buried in the ME; it's a rabbit hole that's hard to get out of once you get started.

 

Your voice-overs are really good in your campaign, even if it's more of a casual nature. It's nice to have a break from the rigidity of realism. I developed mine to be rather realistic in terms of pacing as well, so you'll find that the missions are actually rather long and even boring sometimes, with very few surprises. I wanted it to be as realistic as possible with the tools I had available and with the little knowledge I have about the ME. Like I said, it's actually more of an opportunity to get better as a mission planner and creator rather than present the community with a perfect campaign, because you'll see very quickly that it's most definitely not perfect, hehe.

 

I'm finding certain triggers aren't working as planned in some missions; not because they don't work but because I subconsciously know what to do to make them work, and a player who is brand new to the campaign may not be able to set off the trigger. So, if you could, please let me know every time something doesn't work or needs tweaking. I've seen this campaign so many times that my objectivity has long gone.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Trailer

[feefifofum]

Will do!

I am totally fine with realism..I've been trying to find a balance between that true hardcore "fly a CAP for 4 hours over the border. nothing will happen" realism and the "60 migs inbound! you are the only fighter pilot in the country! gogogo!" game world.

I played a LOT of Strike Commander when I was a younger lad, so I think it's safe to say that I'm trying to channel Chris Roberts a little bit.

 

Also, one of the friends who I am playing with has severe ADD and if something isn't exploding in his face he tends to become disinterested, which is another reason things are paced the way they are haha. I put out some feelers with the flight back to Vaziani in M6 and he wasn't super thrilled (hence the "instant action" version.)

 

But I digress....I am dragging out all my silly cockpit paraphernalia and getting cracking! Will post some impressions here shortly. :pilotfly:

 

EDIT: Just played through missions 1 and 2. Really enjoyed them both; the takeoff into the sun over the ocean was a really nice visual to start off with in 2!

 

As far as problems, I didn't have any issues with the triggers that were apparent to me. I did a really sloppy job on the intercept in M1 and overshot him by a couple miles in my turn, but got the proper message when I caught up to a reasonable position to visually confirm the state of the bomb doors. There's some terminology I don't understand, as I have no real personal flight or military experience, but I was able to pick everything up from context.

The only thing I would do is add some kind of auditory cue when there's a message on the screen. In the middle of the dogfight in 2 (which I got very nearly my butt handed to me in, haha) the mission reports from the Hornets can get lost if you're in the middle of trying to dodge a missile. I've attached the placeholder sound file I use if it's something you'd find useful; just some radio beepery in morse code. Probably says "I'm an idiot" and I don't understand it, but it came from a public domain sound database I found online and gets your attention without being offensive.

 

The only other very minor issues I had were also in mission 2.

I took off and ran at full mil to the rendezvous, which didn't take a hit on my internal fuel at all; in fact, I was still running on externals until the moment of the dogfight. Wingmen 2 and 3 kept a nice tight formation, no problem the whole mission; but about 2 minutes after reaching the rendezvous 4 called bingo fuel. This may be because he was the last to take off and was doing the trademark AI full afterburner for 20 minutes catchup maneuver, but I wasn't going terribly fast so you may want to check his loadout. Shortly into the engagement with the Su-27s he ejected, though I forgot to check the track if he was hit or punched out from running out of gas.

I also did not have steerpoint 4 programmed into my NAV computer. Not a big deal, because you can just call ATC for a heading or follow the coastline, but I saw it was included in your briefing and wasn't sure if this was intentional.

 

 

Overall, I had a lot of fun! Looking forward to playing some more in a little bit, after I grab some lunch. I'll post again (or edit this one if there hasn't been a response) after I play some more!

radio 2.zip

Edited April 3, 2015 by feefifofum

[Trailer]

Great! Thanks so much, I will use that radio beep definitely! I actually wanted to add one but didn't know how to go about finding it or even adding it...I'll work on it in a bit.

 

Yeah, I need to eliminate WP 4 in the briefing...there used to be one but I eliminated it but forgot to update the brief.

 

4 calls bingo with me as well, and the only way to make him not burn all his fuel is to actually fly quite realistically towards WP1: no more than 5 degrees angle of bank and around 300 knots. Otherwise, he burns all his fuel trying to catch up with you. In fact, if we want to be really really anal about it, we should actually form up just after takeoff and fly towards WP1 as a flight, but I found that if you just take it easy towards WP1, it's not such a problem.

 

If you have any questions on the terminology, just lemme know and I'll be happy to help! Keep it comin'! Thanks a million!

[feefifofum]

Yea, I was kind of being a jackass and not thinking about the 4-man flight until 4 called bingo :D

 

As for adding the sound, just go into your trigger and add SOUND TO ALL, then browse to wherever you have extracted the .ogg file. The sound will automatically be pulled into the .MIZ file and attached to the mission for anyone who downloads it.

 

Off to mission 3!

[Trailer]

Awesome!

[feefifofum]

Alrighty, just played through 3 and 4! Enjoyed both of them, and as with the other two didn't have any noticeable issues with triggers. Briefings are very clear, and I'm not ever wondering what I'm supposed to be doing when I'm in flight and something goes down.

 

I wouldn't mind having some kind of status update from the Su-25 flight in mission 3. Maybe I missed their comms in the dogfight but I wasn't totally clear if they'd killed the ground units. These larger engagements are tons of fun though!

And man, that runway at Novorossisyk is short! I flared a little early and overshot the start of the runway by a few hundred feet, thought to myself "no big deal" being used to landing at Vaziani and Kobuleti. Got down to 110 or so and dropped the nose and was quite surprised to see the end of the runway in front of me haha. This will be great practice for getting landings 100% right though.

 

I didn't have any trouble with mission 4 from a technical standpoint, just a personal one :lol: I was following one of the MiGs in a dive after he evaded my initial shot, and lost my bearings in the pea soup. By the time I sorted out the HUD I was only about 1000 feet above the water pointed more or less straight down :doh: I did manage to kill two of the MiGs in my initial BVR volley from 26 miles though, which I was pretty happy with, and got the third guy with a followup shot before I tried to turn the Eagle into a submarine. I watched for a minute after I bought it, and the rest of my flight cleaned up the last MiG and got the RTB message. So a rather expensive outing for NATO, but possibly cheaper than if they'd been allowed to kill the AWACS...not sure on my military aircraft bluebook values because they're generally out of my price range haha.

 

Going to give 5 a crack before heading off to work, but great work so far!

 

 

EDIT: And thanks for the rep, assuming that was you!

 

2ND EDIT:

Just gave 5 a try...and now I see why the "weapons hot" approach is not recommended haha. Got spiked and it first it looked like there were only two of them. By the time the ECM cleared up we were in big trouble. Took down at least two of them before I bought it to an IR missile I didn't see, but the mission was fun and I'll give it another go next time I have a little while to play!

Edited April 3, 2015 by feefifofum

[Trailer]

This is great stuff, I'm glad you liked it! Yeah, that runway at Novo is really short...but we just end up using it early on in the campaign.

 

As far as the Su-25s go, I'll add something in the trigger when they come off target to give people a bit more SA.

 

The 4th mission is designed to be somewhat disorienting due to the weather and darkness. It's rather straightforward, but if you don't pay attention you can end up in the drink really fast. There's no moon and it's overcast, so the ocean is just as black as the sky.

 

Thanks for all the feedback!

[Belgeode]

Is there an updated version within the last week Trailer? I am getting ready to start filming the campaign for youtube. I wanna make sure I have the most up to date version.

[Trailer]

Yep it's up-to-date as of right now...been tweaking daily. However, I've only tweaked it through the 5th mission. If you want, do a quick run-through of missions 6-10 before you film it to be sure. It's gonna work fine, but there may be a few things we overlooked as we were wrapping up. Be sure to download it again.

Edited April 4, 2015 by Trailer

[Belgeode]

Yep it's up-to-date as of right now...been tweaking daily. However, I've only tweaked it through the 5th mission. If you want, do a quick run-through of missions 6-10 before you film it to be sure. It's gonna work fine, but there may be a few things we overlooked as we were wrapping up. Be sure to download it again.

 

Will do. I checked the first five and they look as we left em.

[cobragva]

Great campaign but small issue

 

Congrats, I am flying your campaign and it is great work ..lot s of fun.

 

However, I have a small issue in the mission 4 (flying at night)...I follow the orders, turn to the heading provided, shoot down the 4 planes and then nothing happen. The result stays at 50. I tried to land too but nothing.

 

What I am suppose to do to get the success ?

 

best,

Cobra

[Steel Jaw]

Gonna try this, cheers.

[Trailer]

Congrats, I am flying your campaign and it is great work ..lot s of fun.

 

However, I have a small issue in the mission 4 (flying at night)...I follow the orders, turn to the heading provided, shoot down the 4 planes and then nothing happen. The result stays at 50. I tried to land too but nothing.

 

What I am suppose to do to get the success ?

 

best,

Cobra

 

As soon as you shoot down the jets, you should get a Mission Complete announcement...is that not happening? As soon as that happens, whether you're landed or not, it should advance you to the next mission. I'll take a look at it in a bit. Thanks for the input!

[cobragva]

No, the mission complete announcement isn't happening

 

to be precise, it is the mission that happen at night and we need to protect the Awacs by not allowing the Su-25 to go through our WP1

[Trailer]

Ok, that's the 4th mission. It's MiG-25s that you have to kill. If you're not getting the mission complete, then the only possible explanation is that you haven't killed all the MiGs. I'll run it later this evening and try to see what's going on. Thanks again for letting me know...if it's broken, I'll fix it ASAP.

 

EDIT: I just checked the triggers in mission 4, and they *should* be working properly, but I'll give it a try later today. Did you re-download the campaign? I've been updating it nearly daily and you may have an old copy. Re-download it and copy and paste the fourth mission into your campaign folder and let me know if that works.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Trailer

[cobragva]

Sorry , yes the mig 25. To make sure i kill every migs, i requested picture from awacs and also checked with F2 for about 10 minutes.

I did dowloaded it last thursday and simce then playing addictively on it :-)

 

I will download it again and retry .

 

Thanks for the great support

Best,

Cobra