Operation "Blue Flag" - 24/7 PvP Campaign

[xcom]

Sochi is bugged. We cleared out everything twice and it still wont close. Redfor tac commander confirmed the base is cleared. Nothing we can do.

 

Sochi has been a pain all last night!

But I know the process of capturing works flawlessly.

 

Basically if someone of blue side has dropped troops at Sochi before it was closed, it will not close.

Troops must be dropped after the base is closed.

 

I'm planning to change part of this in the script to allow dropping troops before an airbase is closed and once it closes they can capture.

But until then, you most check that there are no troops before it is closed. This is correct for all objectives - aerodromes/FARPs/cities.

[Sierra99]

"Mongol General: What is best in life?

Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

 

Today was a blast! Whoever was operating as Magic during the afternoon est was doing a damn fine job!

 

Sierra99

[Frostie]

"Mongol General: What is best in life?

Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

 

Or just wait until they go to bed.

 

Red really need some American pilots, at the moment it's Europe (Red) vs Europe and America (Blue).

 

The difference in this battle is now down to a good Blue contingent consistently present whilst Red don't have the pilots to fill the hours giving Blue a free run, I don't see Blue taking land when the sides are close it's usually Red doing the pushing. Blue only take it back and some when Red sleep.

Edited September 4, 2015 by Frostie

[gregzagk]

Or just wait until they go to bed.

 

Red really need some American pilots, at the moment it's Europe (Red) vs Europe and America (Blue).

 

The difference in this battle is now down to a good Blue contingent consistently present whilst Red don't have the pilots to fill the hours giving Blue a free run, I don't see Blue taking land when the sides are close it's usually Red doing the pushing. Blue only take it back and some when Red sleep.

 

Hey.

A 24/7 campaign can not be balanced during all days as it simulates a war . But I can assure that we lost Vody and Mozdok when reds were almost on same numbers with blue.

 

North amerikan pilots joined red side though.

 

Let's fight until the end :)

[Sierra99]

Hey quick question...

 

When using the Label Mod is it permissible to change the color of the dot without failing the integrity check? Also, the Labels.lua goes in saved games/ view?

[gregzagk]

Hey quick question...

 

When using the Label Mod is it permissible to change the color of the dot without failing the integrity check? Also, the Labels.lua goes in saved games/ view?

 

Hey the labels mod is not needed in the server as the mission has no labels on.

 

Maybe you saw this for the ace of spades event? (it's not needed there also anymore)

 

Greg

[Rivvern]

Do we have any AWACS or is everyone flying around blind? Would be awesome if we could use LotATC.

 

Me and my guys will have a go tonight.

[xcom]

LotATC is currently not working on the server because in previous versions that we tested there were constant problems that affected stability.

 

We will test this in the future and in case we don't find any issues, it will surely be incorporated in the campaigns as it is an excellent tool!

[QuiGon]

Do we have any AWACS or is everyone flying around blind? Would be awesome if we could use LotATC.

 

Me and my guys will have a go tonight.

 

Yeah, especially for the Fishbeds it would be a huge improvement.

[ViFF]

Do we have any AWACS or is everyone flying around blind? Would be awesome if we could use LotATC.

 

Me and my guys will have a go tonight.

 

Hi Rivvern! Welcome to the campaign!

 

The EWR units at every base are supplying radar coverage and triggering the AI F-4E (Blue) / MiG-23 (Red) interceptors, so long as the EWR units are not destroyed.

 

We have the option of increasing radar coverage by heli transporting mobile radar units.

 

The more Air Bases and FARPS owned by a side the better the coverage.

 

The tactical commander (CA) slots are able to see the radar picture, hence play the JTAC / AWACS role.

 

We have some very good Blue players that have been consistently playing this role very well: IASGATG and =42=Mule are two good examples for human JTAC / AWACS. They have managed very well the F-15 assets: dispatching and guiding them across the breadth of the theatre where needed, as opposed to just having F-15 pilots operating each on their own without coordination, without support.

 

I will recommend them for a medal at the end of the campaign!

 

S!

Edited September 4, 2015 by ViFF

[Frostie]

Hey.

A 24/7 campaign can not be balanced during all days as it simulates a war . But I can assure that we lost Vody and Mozdok when reds were almost on same numbers with blue.

 

North amerikan pilots joined red side though.

 

Let's fight until the end :)

 

Ok, i'm seeing it getting a bit silly though, just from observation what something like this needs is heavier ruling and strict participants. The other day a Red guy apparently joined Blue CA to start shooting down Blue planes, we're also seeing nonsense like kamikazing units, quitting mid air to get different platforms and all measure of gamey behaviour to achieve objectives. It does stink it up a bit but I guess that's something that comes with having such an open campaign.

 

As a side note I think the Kh58 could be removed, its not necessary it makes neutralising defenses too easy. Its easy enough to kill Buks without that stand off weapon. Also those that dedicate themselves to other platforms such as A10 won't feel pressured to fly the Toad.

[Pikey]

Despite being the person that organised, conducted and completed the multi squadron capture of Nalchik & Vody in the afternoon my observations is that if Reds had not just had an equal numbers but equal SQN and TS enabled players at the time, they could have prevented Vody, yet the majority were simply PvP'ing down south. My feedback remains that

 

1. A vast number of unregistered players enter for PvP and haven't a clue that whilst they do laps in the mountains they are missing the chopper capture right under their nose because they aren't interested in playing strategically. It's easy to defeat this because we simply don't get involved as last night shows, a simple 2 ship cap can defend 3-4 ground operations if the other side aren't thinking. 3 times I had to direct fighters AWAY from Sochi to defend Vody attacks, reassure them their RWR was only showing Sochi fighting and get them lined up on the in routes from the red farps to sweep and clear, which they did with brutal efficiency yesterday.

 

2. Unregistered players account for a lot of the unusual hours progress, for example blue overnight two days ago. I'm wanting a more sqn feel - despite this all my best fun has been vs the 373 and other registered sqns. Never against unregistered. There is no value, that's the TAW or 104th server playstyle.

 

3. The emphaisis is sliding into fighter vs fighter and a slot balancing may help.

 

As for cheating/rules, meh, i've seen several nukes, SU27's bombing farps, moving units across the map, into houses and glitching, tac commanders destroying bases, side switching and actually, it's not that bad and hasn't ever affected any operations except a little "Hunt the hidden BRD" which only takes time.

 

I don't want this server to be the next goto pvp server which is why i've been asking for the restriction on unregistered via either password or tagging.

 

I heard just last night, "Is this the new server we all go to?" Brilliant. But at the same time, not.

[xcom]

Ok, i'm seeing it getting a bit silly though, just from observation what something like this needs is heavier ruling and strict participants. The other day a Red guy apparently joined Blue CA to start shooting down Blue planes, we're also seeing nonsense like kamikazing units, quitting mid air to get different platforms and all measure of gamey behaviour to achieve objectives. It does stink it up a bit but I guess that's something that comes with having such an open campaign.

 

As a side note I think the Kh58 could be removed, its not necessary it makes neutralising defenses too easy. Its easy enough to kill Buks without that stand off weapon. Also those that dedicate themselves to other platforms such as A10 won't feel pressured to fly the Toad.

 

Unfortunately, there will always be players that would join and kill stuff that they shouldn't either by mistake or because they want to create some chaos.

However, we are attempting to keep strict lists on those players and will add them to a constant ban list which they will not find so easy to get out of, I can promise you that!

So be this a warning to anyone who tries to stir up things on the server, although it is open, you will eventually lose the ability to participate in all of our upcoming campaigns and events, because you will be placed into a very strict ban list.

 

About taking missions more seriously by trying to stay alive and not just jumping out of the plane. We are working on future features that would include statistics and most probably plane/helicopter limits.

This will make sure people respect their plane as it will not only hurt their overall statistic, it will hit the manifest of available airplane/helicopter of the whole squad/coalition.

 

About removing certain weapons, at the moment we try to avoid enforcing or limiting weapons because of 2 reasons -

1. Each time we limit something there will always be people on the other side who would not like it.

2. And this is the major reason, stability is everything in this campaign, we found that touching the weapons/fuel/unit limits on airbases create big tables in the mission file which eventually is translated into lag in large scale mission.

Therefore, we want to try and avoid doing this at the moment, but we certainly do not cancel it for future options and will keep all feedback and notes from you guys to look after and consider for the future events!

[Pikey]

"Mongol General: What is best in life?

Conan: To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

 

Today was a blast! Whoever was operating as Magic during the afternoon est was doing a damn fine job!

 

Sierra99

 

 

That will be me, you are most welcome, I've long had aspirations for being a minicab office controller :P

 

The big picture you guys took part in was something you unfortunately couldn't entirely witness as much as I could, but enough to say there were people in all the right places doing all the right things at all the right times. Every person that contributed to that, even the backup choppers (for those that were falling asleep) contributed to a crushing and absolute blow, a tight and coordinated defence and an excellent game. I enjoyed your performances as much in return.

[xcom]

Despite being the person that organised, conducted and completed the multi squadron capture of Nalchik & Vody in the afternoon my observations is that if Reds had not just had an equal numbers but equal SQN and TS enabled players at the time, they could have prevented Vody, yet the majority were simply PvP'ing down south. My feedback remains that

 

1. A vast number of unregistered players enter for PvP and haven't a clue that whilst they do laps in the mountains they are missing the chopper capture right under their nose because they aren't interested in playing strategically. It's easy to defeat this because we simply don't get involved as last night shows, a simple 2 ship cap can defend 3-4 ground operations if the other side aren't thinking. 3 times I had to direct fighters AWAY from Sochi to defend Vody attacks, reassure them their RWR was only showing Sochi fighting and get them lined up on the in routes from the red farps to sweep and clear, which they did with brutal efficiency yesterday.

 

While you were bz up there, I was getting the lonewolves to attack Sochi, it was organized and we did a great job and I'm sure that because of our attempts a big number of fighters went our way instead of north towards the Vody mission.

 

2. Unregistered players account for a lot of the unusual hours progress, for example blue overnight two days ago. I'm wanting a more sqn feel - despite this all my best fun has been vs the 373 and other registered sqns. Never against unregistered. There is no value, that's the TAW or 104th server playstyle.

 

We also though of a way to accommodate this, we will place them into a lonewolves squadron like which will be under some rules.

Still in future features that we are working on.

 

3. The emphaisis is sliding into fighter vs fighter and a slot balancing may help.

 

As for cheating/rules, meh, i've seen several nukes, SU27's bombing farps, moving units across the map, into houses and glitching, tac commanders destroying bases, side switching and actually, it's not that bad and hasn't ever affected any operations except a little "Hunt the hidden BRD" which only takes time.

 

I don't want this server to be the next goto pvp server which is why i've been asking for the restriction on unregistered via either password or tagging.

 

I heard just last night, "Is this the new server we all go to?" Brilliant. But at the same time, not.

 

The goal eventually is to have these campaigns as manageable as possible.

All deductions from these feedbacks will be made and action will be taken in future events, that's a promise :)

[Pikey]

Unfortunately, there will always be players that would join and kill stuff that they shouldn't either by mistake or because they want to create some chaos.

However, we are attempting to keep strict lists on those players and will add them to a constant ban list which they will not find so easy to get out of, I can promise you that!

So be this a warning to anyone who tries to stir up things on the server, although it is open, you will eventually lose the ability to participate in all of our upcoming campaigns and events, because you will be placed into a very strict ban list.

 

About taking missions more seriously by trying to stay alive and not just jumping out of the plane. We are working on future features that would include statistics and most probably plane/helicopter limits.

This will make sure people respect their plane as it will not only hurt their overall statistic, it will hit the manifest of available airplane/helicopter of the whole squad/coalition.

 

About removing certain weapons, at the moment we try to avoid enforcing or limiting weapons because of 2 reasons -

1. Each time we limit something there will always be people on the other side who would not like it.

2. And this is the major reason, stability is everything in this campaign, we found that touching the weapons/fuel/unit limits on airbases create big tables in the mission file which eventually is translated into lag in large scale mission.

Therefore, we want to try and avoid doing this at the moment, but we certainly do not cancel it for future options and will keep all feedback and notes from you guys to look after and consider for the future events!

 

 

Just to add, hanging on to the choppers and F-15C's during the Vody defence was VERY much on the agenda for us, we had to account for refuelling cycles to maintain the CAP and choppers with 30 minute inbound legs and refuelling stops and re-arming. But I agree in principal statistics would add to a personal achievement to prevent some more of the "Hot-swapping". And thus again, leads to the registration issue.

 

The weapon banning/restrictions Xcom explained to me is a DCS limitation, the warehouses cumulate the mission load size to something measured in several megabytes, I'm sure any more ON EVENT triggers would be painful to implement also as the mission in progress is pretty hefty.

[Pikey]

+1 for LotATC. I'd love to provide this more often. The challenge in the south side is radar coverage, it's odd, the Eagles and radar in the flat north plains are contribnuting to an easier attack conversely a harder defence in the south. EWR is a massive asset for the team, choppers, i wanna see more on top of hills :)

 

The VEAF also asked about LotATC.

 

With the current pilot balance and peak numbers you would need to divide into sector control as Air Battle Managers, one could not have taken on the Sochi battle and the Vody sector last night, I suspect with 30 players you could make use of many more.

 

The campaign has definitely demonstrated that this new element of DCS cough cough "strategy" :) seems to be a lot of fun and seemingly very worthwhile. Most if not ALL people I have spoken to have experessed their enjoyment of the campaign which allows for choppers to be the vital king piece, strike aircraft to be fast, Fighters to not chase fighters but deny and escort.

 

Again, thanks 373 and Xcom for their work for opening our eyes, true strategical DCS evangelists

 

 

Hi Rivvern! Welcome to the campaign!

 

The EWR units at every base are supplying radar coverage and triggering the AI F-4E (Blue) / MiG-23 (Red) interceptors, so long as the EWR units are not destroyed.

 

We have the option of increasing radar coverage by heli transporting mobile radar units.

 

The more Air Bases and FARPS owned by a side the better the coverage.

 

The tactical commander (CA) slots are able to see the radar picture, hence play the JTAC / AWACS role.

 

We have some very good Blue players that have been consistently playing this role very well: IASGATG and =42=Mule are two good examples for human JTAC / AWACS. They have managed very well the F-15 assets: dispatching and guiding them across the breadth of the theatre where needed, as opposed to just having F-15 pilots operating each on their own without coordination, without support.

 

I will recommend them for a medal at the end of the campaign!

 

S!

Edited September 4, 2015 by Pikey
oops unfinished sentences

[gregzagk]

These events as you say "force" everybody in a good way to deal with strategies and tactics that would be not necessary in other occasions.

 

Squadrons must check their active members readiness, their aircraft availability (who flies choppers at a specific moment etc) and eventually take part in the big picture by coordinatig with the other squadrons and lonewolves at specific timezones.

 

It's really different from a limited time event when you control everything and have more time to think.

 

Most of the lonewolves are acting like squadrons until now and had a great impact in the campaign and as Xcom said will be worked in the near future to help them enjoy more their missions.

 

As this campaign showed that it's needed by the DCS Community and the Sim community in general we simple cann't leave people out of this like by setting limitations. What we can do and will is to keep working on implementing stuff by default DCS functions or scripts to help issues been worked out.

 

We tried to bring this to DCS from our past experience step by step and we got here after some time. That means that as this is the first step we can move forward by adding features and eventually get to better levels time to time.

 

The nice thing is that we mostly get positive or negative feedback with valid points and not whining which can make these events better.

So thanks for that.

 

Greg

[Ashilta]

One feature I'd like to see in future and could significantly sway the strategic thinking of each team:

 

When we took Vody, we knew quite quickly that we'd have to put a lot of CAP around Vody and Nalchik to prevent re-takes. Consequently, a number of us piled into all of the F-15s from VZ, SB and elsewhere and flew them up, re-armed and re-fuelled at Beslan or Nalchik and set up TARCAP. What I'd love to see in the future is the ability to 'ferry' aircraft between slots; we know when an aircraft leaves an airfield and arrives somewhere else - is it possible that if I take off from VZ and land at Beslan, the slot moves with it until the aircraft is destroyed?

[Pikey]

Interesting! Jmigreen said last night, "I wish I could hand this F-15C to someone". I felt the same after getting a chopper up to Vody, wanted to pass it on.

 

I dabble in mission design, but can't think of a solution, but absolutely love the concept!

 

One feature I'd like to see in future and could significantly sway the strategic thinking of each team:

 

When we took Vody, we knew quite quickly that we'd have to put a lot of CAP around Vody and Nalchik to prevent re-takes. Consequently, a number of us piled into all of the F-15s from VZ, SB and elsewhere and flew them up, re-armed and re-fuelled at Beslan or Nalchik and set up TARCAP. What I'd love to see in the future is the ability to 'ferry' aircraft between slots; we know when an aircraft leaves an airfield and arrives somewhere else - is it possible that if I take off from VZ and land at Beslan, the slot moves with it until the aircraft is destroyed?

[gregzagk]

One feature I'd like to see in future and could significantly sway the strategic thinking of each team:

 

When we took Vody, we knew quite quickly that we'd have to put a lot of CAP around Vody and Nalchik to prevent re-takes. Consequently, a number of us piled into all of the F-15s from VZ, SB and elsewhere and flew them up, re-armed and re-fuelled at Beslan or Nalchik and set up TARCAP. What I'd love to see in the future is the ability to 'ferry' aircraft between slots; we know when an aircraft leaves an airfield and arrives somewhere else - is it possible that if I take off from VZ and land at Beslan, the slot moves with it until the aircraft is destroyed?

 

 

 

These are the things I ask Xcom to add in his scripts and then he hunts me down with a fork :D

 

Interesting indeed!

 

Greg

Edited September 4, 2015 by gregzagk

[Ashilta]

Another one from me, sorry...

 

I noticed a post earlier that I now can't find again (page 15 or 17?) that in the same 'patch' that night missions were added, slots for attack and transport helicopters were meant to be added when airfields were taken. From our captures of Nalchik and Vody last night, it seems that this isn't happening - a bug, or was the plan changed?

 

Adam

[xcom]

All I gotta say is ...

 

[gregzagk]

Another one from me, sorry...

 

I noticed a post earlier that I now can't find again (page 15 or 17?) that in the same 'patch' that night missions were added, slots for attack and transport helicopters were meant to be added when airfields were taken. From our captures of Nalchik and Vody last night, it seems that this isn't happening - a bug, or was the plan changed?

 

Adam

 

No the maintenance in the server is not done unfortunately yet. It's scheduled for tomorrow.

Only nights were added until now. Choppers will be up tomorrow along with newly register squadrons slots.

 

Greg

[Pikey]

I guess you have to handle tracking landings and enable slots dynamically. The issue is avoiding the current DCS warehouse system and then tallying this somewhere, perhaps in an ini file. The difficulty is there doesn't seem a way to express the slot availability in game and we already have MANY! So some pseudo code like on event blue land at blue airbase get airbase name, if airbase is on this list, write LUA flat file "plane, airbase, amount". Then on enter slot, check exists plane, airbase, amount, delete one and allow slot else mist.message "no chance buddy"?

 

edit; this also needs a lot of housekeeping and error checking of course. We have to handle server crashes, regular restarts.

 

Maybe its better to do it via the F10 menu? Make a menu "FERRY". If the airplane is at no speed, inside an airfield radius trigger of blue, execute LUA to add the plane to a list. else give error message?

 

2nd edit, if this is worth further thought, we can break out into a script discusison outside this threas, sorry i was rambling.

Edited September 4, 2015 by Pikey
different idea