Mission Editor Bugs

[Cartres]

Hey there all!

 

I want to apologize if this is the wrong place to put a topic such as this, but I didn't find any sub-forums dedicated to the mission and campaign editors, so I wanted to just put this here. I'm in the process of writing a legitimate campaign to be released publically for the F-15C. While I'm not quite at the point of asking for voice acting and other potential goodies, I wanted to discuss a couple of issues I've run into while using the editor to build the campaign, just in case there are fixes that may exist that I'm unaware of.

 

Most of these issues are small, but they have a big impact when you're looking to have triggers line up and all that jazz.

 

1) Sometimes, planes will drop to minimum altitude and turn on the afterburner between a set of Waypoints, ignoring entirely their altitude and speed settings for both the previous and subsequent waypoints. Tested with no advanced waypoint actions, this still occurs.

 

2) Large planes, such as B-1B and B-52 bombers will not respect their speed settings - a B-52 traveling at 22,000ft and set to fly at 300kn will fly at 21,599ft and 256kn no matter what, for example.

 

3) Dozens of CAS planes, when set to search and engage in zone at waypoint 4, for example, will engage planes, helicopters, SAM sites, ships and everything else BEFORE waypoint 4.

 

3a) If they miraculously do not do what I just said above (or if I set them to ROE = Hold Fire), they will arrive at waypoint 4, ignore their target location and fly halfway across the map to engage a completely irrelevant target.

 

4) When Restrict Jettison is set to 'On', they jettison anyway. And often.

 

5) SEAD flights - if there is more than one jet - will fall out of formation and orbit VERY far away from the target while one single jet engages the entire SAM site. This usually leads to an unfinished SEAD mission, but the planes turn back to base anyway after their mission is complete.

 

Hopefully some folks have answers or advice for this, I want to start worrying less about this silly stuff and more about making the missions great!

[MadDog-IC]

I wanted to discuss a couple of issues I've run into while using the editor to build the campaign, just in case there are fixes that may exist that I'm unaware of.

 

1) Sometimes, planes will drop to minimum altitude and turn on the afterburner between a set of Waypoints, ignoring entirely their altitude and speed settings for both the previous and subsequent waypoints. Tested with no advanced waypoint actions, this still occurs.

 

I find that the AI in 1.5x is inferior to the previous version v1.2x when it comes to flying low in particular, it crashes into mountains far to easy, and lots of other bazar flying.

 

I found that if your speed is set to low for the type of aircraft, then they are actually stalling in the air and loosing altitude and need to afterburn to try and maintain the altitude you have assigned them, so give them faster speeds and it may fix that issue. I had this issue in a lot of the missions I fixed in the F-15 and Su-27 missions of FC3 for DCS 1.5x.

 

2) Large planes, such as B-1B and B-52 bombers will not respect their speed settings - a B-52 traveling at 22,000ft and set to fly at 300kn will fly at 21,599ft and 256kn no matter what, for example.

 

I had the same thoughts on this, but it might be that in the mission editor, the altitude and speed are at sea level, whilst in the game at different height and speed you will get different readings due to pressure differences, etc.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indicated_airspeed

 

 

3) Dozens of CAS planes, when set to search and engage in zone at waypoint 4, for example, will engage planes, helicopters, SAM sites, ships and everything else BEFORE waypoint 4.

To stop this from happening:

 

• Disable it so it reads (CAS -a -x) or remove the first CAS -a command altogether, same for any other flights such as SEAD -a, etc statement in the advanced waypoint commands for each flight, this tells the flight to engage any aircraft anywhere on the map by default, thus ignoring waypoints etc, by disabling this command, it will follow its waypoints and only engage what you tell it to with the search in zone and other commands.
  

4) When Restrict Jettison is set to 'On', they jettison anyway. And often.

From memory, I haven't seen this happen unless, the plane has been damaged in battle and is trying to RTB and only specific types of planes.

 

5) SEAD flights - if there is more than one jet - will fall out of formation and orbit VERY far away from the target while one single jet engages the entire SAM site. This usually leads to an unfinished SEAD mission, but the planes turn back to base anyway after their mission is complete.

Sead can be picky, but in general the way any flight works, that each plane will only pick a target that isn't engaged by another in its flight, so if only one sam then only one plane will attack at a time, if multiple sams then each aircraft should attack each sam simultaniously.

 

Hopefully some folks have answers or advice for this, I want to start worrying less about this silly stuff and more about making the missions great!

yep can be a great time waster trying to get AI to do what you want, sometimes the issues are legitimite, sometimes it is just the conditions, ie the ai sensors will not detect the enemy because of wrong altitude or weather conditions, the will not shoot at enemy due the wrong weapon for the job.

 

You kind of have to be an expert in many things with DCS to understand why things work and why they don't. :smartass:

 

Good luck with the mission creation and hoped this helped you.

 

Regards, Ian.

[Cartres]

Hey Ian, thanks so much for your thorough response. A lot of this is helpful, but I want to clarify a couple of my initial points for you:

 

1) I actually figured out they do this to avoid Radar SAM sites. A flight of F-15Cs and Georgian SU-25Ts flew at max speed at about 300ft above the sea to avoid detection from a SA-6 Site I had setup at a nearby airport. Useful to know in case you ever encounter it.

 

2) That's understandable, but we're talking about a situation where a B-52 Stratofortress cannot fly in a straight line at 400kn and 22,000ft...that's a little surprising, no?

 

3) THANK YOU.

 

4) I kid you not: I set Restrict Jettison to 'On', and then my SEAD flights go off to engage an SA-6 or 3 site. The site fires, they evade, and eventually, they jettison. It's the most irritating thing ever.

 

5) Maybe it had to do with how I setup the SAM site? I would mix and match for ease - I'd set up a whole SA-6 site, and then throw in some tunguska for close-in defense against missiles (like a ground-based CWIS). The SEAD flight drops its wingmen, engages either the tunguskas, or the radar, but never both.

 

You're a great help, and thank you for fixing those campaigns.

[MadDog-IC]

Hey Ian, thanks so much for your thorough response. A lot of this is helpful, but I want to clarify a couple of my initial points for you:

 

1) I actually figured out they do this to avoid Radar SAM sites. A flight of F-15Cs and Georgian SU-25Ts flew at max speed at about 300ft above the sea to avoid detection from a SA-6 Site I had setup at a nearby airport. Useful to know in case you ever encounter it.

No problems, unfortunately with my memory I forget half of the stuff I already know and have to figure it out all over again when I do some other missions in the future.

 

2) That's understandable, but we're talking about a situation where a B-52 Stratofortress cannot fly in a straight line at 400kn and 22,000ft...that's a little surprising, no?

Yes a little surprising, with the limited knowledge I just read about.

 

Just tested in dcs 1.5x with no payload

 

• B-52H - ME set for 50000 feet at 541kn
  
• B-52H - In mission reads 50000 and starts stalling / falling at IAS 234kn, so it can't maintain this altitude at that speed.
  

 

 

 

• B-52H - ME set for 25000 feet at 541kn
  
• B-52H - In mission reads 25000 and maintaining altitude fine at IAS 346kn.
  

Conclusions:

--------------

Not performing at real world published specs or IAS is incorrect for that height, I can't help anymore than that, as this technical stuff gives me a headache.

 

Real Specs for B-52H (wiki)

 

1. Cruise speed 442kn, Max speed 560kn.
   
2. Max altitude 50,000ft
   

4) I kid you not: I set Restrict Jettison to 'On', and then my SEAD flights go off to engage an SA-6 or 3 site. The site fires, they evade, and eventually, they jettison. It's the most irritating thing ever.

I know how irritating it is, I had to get my missions working under dcs v1.2x that never had that option at all, it may be a new bug introduced recently.

 

A work around from old days for any SEAD or BOMBING type operations:

 

• Add an advanced waypoint command Option > Reaction to threat = No Reaction or Passive Defense (Default behaviour is to abort mission if locked up with radar / missile, causing dump of all weapons and run home).
  
• Make the flight fly low and terrain mask so it can't be seen by radar and pop up at last minute to fire on SAM, and use the longest range weapon you can that keeps you out of their kill zone.
  
• Provide overwatch flights to keep fighters off of them, usually the player.
  

 

5) Maybe it had to do with how I setup the SAM site? I would mix and match for ease - I'd set up a whole SA-6 site, and then throw in some tunguska for close-in defense against missiles (like a ground-based CWIS). The SEAD flight drops its wingmen, engages either the tunguskas, or the radar, but never both.

 

You're a great help, and thank you for fixing those campaigns.

Your welcome.

 

Cheers, Ian.