Su-25 mission - US landing at Sudak

[Weta43]

In the aftermath of a major earthquake US forces offered help from a naval task force exercising in the area.

After callously downing a civilian airliner that strayed into its airspace the task force has helped - itself to a beachhead around the coastal town of Sudak.

Ground forces are being ferried ashore and planes launched from the carrier group are patrolling the area.

The earthquake has caused major disruptions to military communications networks.

AWACs are still functioning, but because of the communications disruptions co-ordinating responses to the attack will be difficult. Our valliant forces can however be expected to put up fierce resistance to the invaders.

It is expected that the invading forces will strike West in an attempt to secure the coastal area around their beachhead.

You are to fly South West to the coast, passing South of Simferopol, then patrol East along the coast destroying any expeditionary forces you encounter.

Two Su-30 will escort your flight.

Su-25 mission US Landing at Sudak .zip

[Weta43]

^ Got to get them to war somehow...

 

(You might want to turn a few settings down - there's quite a lot going on.)

[suntrace1]

This is for v1.12a, right?

[Weta43]

Yep - well actually I made it as an Su-27 mission in 1.11, but I changed it to an Su-25 mission under 1.12a & have flown it & everything seems to work OK.

(if you leave out the bits where every so often you fly into the terrain mesh while still 20 metres above the ground as you fly through the mountains, but I've had a whine about that in the bugs thread...)

 

It's not that hard if you don't crash or get shot down :-)

 

I don't have any problem with anyone butchering it - if you'd rather fly the Su-25T, Su-27 or Mig-29 (there might even be some A-10 in there somewhere) just swap a plane in one of the flights to player & change the goals (to survive, or perhaps intercept specific packages & survive?).

 

Also - for those who play with labels on - I've attached a copy of my labels.lua file. Do you want to try it & see if it's better than default labels ?

[Weta43]

Does anyone ever go to the user missions section of the lockon.ru site?

I have another couple of missions I thought I'd post, but they'll disappear from here once the months up & I guess that’s the last anyone will ever see of them (like Christopher m’s thread is about to do…)

[Guest RamL]

suntrace1 Nice picture!

[Colt40Five]

Does anyone ever go to the user missions section of the lockon.ru site?

I have another couple of missions I thought I'd post, but they'll disappear from here once the months up & I guess that’s the last anyone will ever see of them (like Christopher m’s thread is about to do…)

 

Why not host them at lockonfiles.com? And I've never heard of the terrain thing..is it in a specific spot? I made a mission pack of some low-alt valley runs(available at lockonfiles). Some of them are quite long and I've never encountered this phenomena.

[Colt40Five]

Ok I finally got around to flying your mission....I'd say it's pretty realistic. My escorts and my flight were waxed by F-14's 10nm after take-off, which is exactly what I'd expect IRL if Tomcats are on the prowl. Doesn't make for compelling gameplay though...

 

Couple of suggestions...

 

First: No tomcats unless the player A/C is in a fighter and can do something about them... :)

 

Second: Many people will have problems running this mission due to the number of units in it. A good rule of thumb is to only place units on the map that are involved in the mission, or are visible eye-candy along the player flight path. For example you could do away with all the short-range red ADS that has no bearing on the target area. In a perfect world FC could have as many units as an F4 campaign and run great...but this ain't a perfect world. I'm gonna tweak it to my taste, and then if you want, I'll host it here and you can see what I'm talking about.

[Weta43]

It's not a site I go to - the only mod I have applied is the night skin for the Su-25T... I'll have a look.

 

The F-14's aren't a problem if you stay low & turn away & beam when they paint you. I make it to the target area maybe 4 out of 5 times.

 

The terrain mesh thing isn't in a particular spot, though it's worst around the mountains. It also isn't a problem in valleys - it's mostly along ridges - every so often you'll just get a puff of dust in mid air & you've hit a bit of invisible ground. (there's a thread in the bugs section that I started a few weeks ago).

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

Weta43, lockonfiles.com is one place you could upload it, lockonskins.co.uk also has a missions area, combatace.com (although it may still be down due to a recent hacking attack) ditto.

[Weta43]

Thanks for the advice all - I'll have a look at lockonfiles.

 

Colt40five - Yes it does get a bit tough on the FPS at first, but it eases off once everythings' spawned.

There's a lot of units in it so that if (you're unfortunate like me &) you get shot down you can respawn & try again & there will be somthing different happening continuously for about an hour - most are random skill so things do change each time.

 

It was dinner time when I read your post so I had to wait a bit, but I had a few goes myself again & of the 4 times I tried:

The first time I dodged a couple of AIM-54 then an AIM-7 got me.

Second time I turned east as soon as I was picked up on radar, beamed till I got to the hills flew with the escort to the target, got shot down by a LAV-25 (the shame of it..)

me raining down - sorry about the odd resizing - courtesy of photobucket.

the escort a few seconds earlier-

Third time again I turned west & beamed the radar till I got to the hills, then going past a ridge - bang! see the impact point mid air?

see the puff of brown dust in the air.

Fourth time flew with the escort to the target, got 2 of the four then was coming around agin when - Bang again -

another ground impact in mid air.

me falling in the background again

another angle

Result from 4 attempts after dinner - got to the target 2 x. Shot down 2x (once F-14 with AIM-54, once by LAV-25 -shamed) - 2/4 missions crashes because of the terrain mesh not fitting (one on the way, one at the target area), one of which counted as a partial success (43 is me).

 

Re staying away from fighters - I agree, but the Su-25's not so bad.

After dinner I had a go at an excellent F-14. I lost sight of him & he got me but not first shot...

& sometimes I get them -

also a result -

[suntrace1]

OT: Tnx RamL, appreciate it :)

[Colt40Five]

I'm not opposed to lots of units in a mission if they are directly involved in the player A/C's mission, but I think it's a waste of computer resources to have all kinds of activity going on around the map that the player will never see. It would be different if you could hear the comms of the other flights (like F4), but you can't so all that extra activity is just sucking up cycles unnecesarily. Just my humble opinion...

 

Give me a few and I'll post the tweaked version of you mission(in this thread) as well as a couple of my own missions(in a new thread) that use a ton of units for a single goal.

[Colt40Five]

Okay here is my version of your mission. It can still get hairy, but most all of the stuff that does not directly affect the players mission has been removed for performance.

C45-Su-25 mission US Landing at Sudak .rar

[Weta43]

Cheers, I'll give it a try after I can take it to work to unpack it & I'll tell you what I think.

Without seeing yours & accepting your comments about performance with lots of units about (though on my machine FPS recover about 5 minutes into the play), this is why I made it the way I did

- the fact that you can't hear comms between planes can make LO 'sterile' but this way you get a WHOLE lot of shouts from AWACs about bandits which means there's radio chatter & it feels like there's something going on more than your flight, + you don't know if the bandits being called are going to turn your way, so you have to try to keep out of all their way even though some are tied up with someone else entirely.

- There are ground units driving a route through the countryside shooting up vehicles & towns. This does affect FPS, but it also makes the countryside look like there's a battle raging - fires keep popping up on the horizon etc - & those units can become targets later - trying to get rid of that LO mission in isolation thing.

- not all the air units are directly engaging or engaged by the player, but more of them can be than seems at first glance. I've tried this a few times now & sometimes the first F-14s to launch get sucked into fights with Mig-29's or Su-27 & ignore my flight completely & a couple of times I've ended up trying to dogfight F-18A over the beach that are out doing ground attack or SEAD or something & only have a couple of sidewinders. (Once I assumed the radar was my escort & he got me from behind without my knowing he was there & once we got into a dogfight & both ended up with no missiles going guns R-60M are cr*p), but though they're on a mission which has nothing to do with the player, they can still end up engaging you, depending on your timing. If the F-117 take out the airfields that are their target, the GAI units that spawn later can't take off & there's more bandits out there looking for you instead of trying to shoot them down.

I checked to make sure it was do-able first up while surviving, but the idea was that instead of quitting when you're shot down/crash/eject you respawn, then the battle will continue till in the end (usually) the carrier group get destroyed, Blue side runs out of planes in the area & the SAM site on the beach (That the choppers are dropping off & which activates after some set up time) get destroyed, then you can go through & clean up some of the ground units shooting the place up.

It does eat performance a bit (though my machines not that grunty & with water on low, shadows to all planar & 1600 * 1200 & everything else on high (except the one everyone leaves on Med) it's pretty much fine by the time you get away from your airfield & its cities), but most units are random skill which means you can try play for an hour or more & after the first 5 minutes have the situation be different each time you come to it - & if you finish the goal you're given too easily, unhide some of the ground units that leave town & head off into the surrounding countryside & try to take them out too.

Once you've got rid of the primary target - but before that carrier is destroyed - if you go looking for other targets in the area North & East of the Carrier you're going to feel 'exposed', but not every nation is in a position to expect air superiority - or even ballance - all the time, & there's supposed to have been an earthquake disrupting co-ordination... Plus if you play that long, at the end there's only red air left.

[Colt40Five]

Hmm interesting, so you made the mission to go on for longer than you expect the player to fly or live? I wondered why you had the SEAD flights coming into the targets waaay after I was winchester and landed. So what do you do then just sit and watch?

 

And as far as the burning vehicles making atmosphere I agree completely! If you check the thread I posted with my missions, fly the CAS one...lots of arty going off everywhere and lots of burning stuff...that poor town gets hosed! In your mission I never saw any of that because going any closer to the carrier force than my target was suicide, and no pilot in their right mind (short of a kamikaze) would go into that hornets nest without some major firepower.

 

and I can see your point about not having air superiority, but I don't think any military would send their planes and crews into a confrontation they know they couldn't win (unless it was a last ditch, desperation move). which is why in my version of your mission the SEAD and Strike flights are getting to attack WPT about the time I do. Which means there's still all the threats up when I get to the target, but while I'm there all hell is breaking loose :)

 

It's really interesting to get your take on mission building. I hope you will fly mine and critique them as well! Oh and if you registered at lockonfiles make sure you download my "machine crusher" mission. Basically it's a WWII style carpet bombing mission I made to push my system to its limits. Fun! Fun! Fun! that whole town burns real good when you drop 70,000lbs of explosives on it :)

[Weta43]

I originally made it as an Su-27 mission so I was going out & joining the escorts of various flights (SEAD etc) or hunting for the other ground attack flights as they came onto the HDD from outside the area. Go out, patrol or join a flight, go home re-fuel & re-arm, go out again. Because I set a lot of things to random skill sometimes they'd be there & sometimes someone else would have already got them (or not..) - a few times I took off after re-fueling & almost literaly bumped into the F-117 that had slipped in past AWACs to strike my airfield, or if you're around at the time you can go after the B1s when they arrive. (but I always had the idea of changing the plane I flew so the ground groups that head way out into the country were always there partly as targets for ground pounding).

I made it to entertain myself & practice flying the Su-27. There were no goals set - I tried to stay alive as long as I could while still being reasonably engaged in the action (not being a chicken), which is why I made it long..

Originaly you didn't spawn till about 6 minutes in & after the airliner went down you followed some trucks into town where they met up with an Igla & had a go at the helicopters, then an M2A2 rolled in & took them out so you got to see the town get taken apart & the F-14s taking off - an intro movie...

After a while a fair number of the active vehicles are destroyed & the US gound forces leave town so things quieten down a bit & the FPS get better (but not good :-).

A few of the F-18 flights are a bit nobbled - of the four 2 will be doing ground attack with only a couple of sidewinders & some other ballast - to give the player a chance if they come across the flight on their own. A few are not.

Like I said earlier - I figured if I left everything in there people could either stay with the Su-25 or change it & fly the Su-25T missions, or the red fighters or maybe the A-10s (I think there's some somewhere)

If we didn't have to change profiles to switch between SFM & AFM planes the player could just unhide all the red flights & pick a mission to fly as they like.

I guess what it realy needs is some of the start times playing with & being fed through the mission randomiser before hitting go...

Here's the thread for the Su-27 version if you're interested:

http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=11664

 

I will fly your missions & get back to you, but I don't have winrar at home - zip only.

[Weta43]

Here's an Su-25 campaign I did in January (maybe you tried it?)

http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=13577

It'll give you a better feel for how I normaly set things up as far as unit numbers go. Still got things blowing up but only where you fly over them :-)

I quite like trying to get away from fighters in the frog, so there's a mission with that, & you make several landings in town on a road, 'cause the frogs made for unimproved strips.

I think for the most part it's relatively easy, but here's one mission from it tightened up a bit: (in post 13)

http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=15658&page=2

[christopher m]

US Landing @ Sudak

 

Weta,

 

I've got to admit your missions do tend to dim the lights in the neighborhood when I first click "FLY"

 

No problem, I just call the PP and tell them to dial up the voltage a bit.

 

That said part of the problem is of course individule machine performance and

individule machine performance settings.

 

I really like all the detail in your missions.

 

It's great to get a mission so built up that you can literally play it for an hour if your endurance is that good.

 

I think these mud moving missions lately are a small preview of whats comming in another month and a half.

 

I just hope the effects for explosions and different kinds of ordnance are

improved (also sound effects)

 

Can you imagine 25t'sand Ka-50's and 52's all pounding a single target area?

With all the response fire comming back ?

 

(What kind of processor will I need ?)

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks,