Cold War 1947 - 1991

[MarkMD]

Awesome mission. 
Alpenwolf has created an amazing mission. Tonight’s fight was epic, with the addition of those extra tanks have made a mission turn into a full on battle of the bulge. 
it’s been a fight that I’ve not had in many years. Thanks. 
worth every minute. 
cheers,

Mike-Delta

[=475FG= Dawger]

34 minutes ago, MarkMD said:

Awesome mission. 
Alpenwolf has created an amazing mission. Tonight’s fight was epic, with the addition of those extra tanks have made a mission turn into a full on battle of the bulge. 
it’s been a fight that I’ve not had in many years. Thanks. 
worth every minute. 
cheers,

Mike-Delta

Today was amazing fun and a tough fight. 

[MMI_Grim]

Did red win in the end?

Had to jump off because of a awake child just as I had a F-5 locked with my Hind. :*(

[Alpenwolf]

4 hours ago, MMI_Grim said:

Did red win in the end?

Had to jump off because of a awake child just as I had a F-5 locked with my Hind. :*(

Would love to know myself. Red was close to winning, but I also had to leave to wake up early the next day for work.

[Miccara]

Hey Alpen,

Possible bug...
Count and killed everything on Nalchik, but there were 2 trucks in the compound on the north side of the airport (around the middle of the airport), that could not be killed. Ultimately, we fired TOE missiles at them and the exploded against the trucks, but no damage. I mention it because we used to kill them previously and we thought these trucks were stopping us from capturing the base. We did notice one vehicle north of the base in the field, so that may have been the issue but the mission ended before we could get to that one.

Miccara

[rossmum]

Flying over an entire company of T-72s was a pretty awesome experience. Unfortunately summer is in effect hard here, and my already limited brainpower took a dive with the heat

12 hours ago, MMI_Grim said:

Did red win in the end?

Had to jump off because of a awake child just as I had a F-5 locked with my Hind. :*(

Might well have been me. I was coming in for my first ever attempt at using LGBs, Kub launched on me, and then MD vectored me onto a pair of Hinds. I probably should've jettisoned my bombs but got cocky and figured I could make it work... didn't get tone and I think my guns pass missed too. I either ripped myself due to the bombs or got hit by one of several SAMs that all came my way at once.

Edited January 5, 2022 by rossmum

[rossmum]

1 hour ago, Miccara said:

Hey Alpen,

Possible bug...
Count and killed everything on Nalchik, but there were 2 trucks in the compound on the north side of the airport (around the middle of the airport), that could not be killed. Ultimately, we fired TOE missiles at them and the exploded against the trucks, but no damage. I mention it because we used to kill them previously and we thought these trucks were stopping us from capturing the base. We did notice one vehicle north of the base in the field, so that may have been the issue but the mission ended before we could get to that one.

Miccara

Those are all default airfield scenery and don't affect capturing, unless a sneaky red tac comm hid an ammo truck in amongst them. They might've had something hidden somewhere else nearby - the airfield capture zones are a circular radius and fairly large. Sometimes you need to spend a while ratting through nearby neighbourhoods looking for units.

[Alpenwolf]

7 hours ago, rossmum said:

Those are all default airfield scenery and don't affect capturing, unless a sneaky red tac comm hid an ammo truck in amongst them. They might've had something hidden somewhere else nearby - the airfield capture zones are a circular radius and fairly large. Sometimes you need to spend a while ratting through nearby neighbourhoods looking for units.

This.

And that's why Combined Arms operators don't have access to control these units to avoid having anyone exploiting that and hiding the units in tough places to find.

What I sometimes do is fly the Mi-8 (UH-1) and let the door-gunners find the targets themselves. Maybe not in the beginning, but certainly when you're looking for the last remaining units.

[MMI_Grim]

8 hours ago, rossmum said:

Flying over an entire company of T-72s was a pretty awesome experience. Unfortunately summer is in effect hard here, and my already limited brainpower took a dive with the heat

Might well have been me. I was coming in for my first ever attempt at using LGBs, Kub launched on me, and then MD vectored me onto a pair of Hinds. I probably should've jettisoned my bombs but got cocky and figured I could make it work... didn't get tone and I think my guns pass missed too. I either ripped myself due to the bombs or got hit by one of several SAMs that all came my way at once.

 

I think I saw you too, you did get my buddy with guns but then got splashed by SAM before I could come to you...but another F5 crossed my path seconds after.

1 hour ago, Alpenwolf said:

This.

And that's why Combined Arms operators don't have access to control these units to avoid having anyone exploiting that and hiding the units in tough places to find.

What I sometimes do is fly the Mi-8 (UH-1) and let the door-gunners find the targets themselves. Maybe not in the beginning, but certainly when you're looking for the last remaining units.

I had to fly circles around all the villages at the small lake so I would draw 50cal from the Abrams hid there. 

Putting them in dead ends and corners of three buildings isnt great sports imho. ^^

[=475FG= Dawger]

 

 

[Alpenwolf]

Server News:

Operation The Desert Has Eyes has been updated. Click here for the change log.

[reichenwald]

Search and destroy was really fun last time i played it. But I noticed L39s can only carry R3s. Wouldn't it make sense to allow R60Ms considering the Tomcats are around and they are more difficult to fire anyways on the 39?

[Apok]

Swedish delivery. Red farp Mi24 cant use/mount ATGMS.

Also blue farp has landing pads so it cant be bombed, while red still can be blown up.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Apok

[rogorogo]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Apok:

Swedish delivery. Red farp Mi24 cant use/mount ATGMS.

Also blue farp has landing pads so it cant be bombed, while red still can be blown up.

 

can confirm @Alpenwolf & @rossmum swedish deluvery - RED FARP Shpora has no ATMGs, no AAMs, no pods.
This seems very much not intentional but a bug. 
Hinds can't do anything on this mission until fixed, we tried several times to do something with mi8 deployed assets.. but between that, the sniper aI, how frag dmg is (not) modelled,  the wip DM and the frankly bizare DM of FC3 assets and the myriad of other issues on ED would have influence over... it really is a little beyond impossible  

Edited January 5, 2022 by rogorogo

[Miccara]

Swedish delivery. Blue farp. @Alpenwolf @rossmum
No Hueys at all.
No ground vehicles anywhere.

[Alpenwolf]

11 hours ago, reichenwald said:

Search and destroy was really fun last time i played it. But I noticed L39s can only carry R3s. Wouldn't it make sense to allow R60Ms considering the Tomcats are around and they are more difficult to fire anyways on the 39?

Yeah, good idea. I'll do the same for the C-101's.

5 hours ago, Miccara said:

Swedish delivery. Blue farp. @Alpenwolf @rossmum
No Hueys at all.
No ground vehicles anywhere.

As you know, Swedish Delivery has been causing some issues. I even deleted the single helipads and added new ones to make sure everything's fine and still no success.

@Apok:
Blue helicopters seem to be unable to take any loadout when operating from hidden single helipads in some missions. It's the same in Two Towns and Open Range. That's why it's normal single helipads there recently instead of hidden ones. In When The Mountains Cry however, Blue helicopters don't have any issues with the hidden single helipads. It's a very weird bug to say the least and I found nothing in the log files that could help me find the problem.

I ran some tests the other day with Miccara and Mike-Delta and we tried all types of helipads with different settings to eventually find out that normal single helipads (not the hidden ones) seem to work just fine. I then added UH-1's and SA342's to the Red side and they were able to carry weapons from hidden single helipads. So, does that mean Red hidden single helipads work, but not Blue hidden single helipads?! What's that got to do with Red or Blue?! I don't know, but these were the results of testing.

As I said, very weird. I'll try one more thing in Swedish Delivery and see if it works. The rest of the missions seems to be fine in that regard.

[rogorogo]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb Alpenwolf:

 

As you know, Swedish Delivery has been causing some issues. I even deleted the single helipads and added new ones to make sure everything's fine and still no success.

@Apok:
 So, does that mean Red hidden single helipads work, but not Blue hidden single helipads?! What's that got to do with Red or Blue?! I don't know, but these were the results of testing.

As I said, very weird. I'll try one more thing in Swedish Delivery and see if it works. The rest of the missions seems to be fine in that regard.

Well... as there were primary weapons missing, completely missing (no ATGMS, no AAMs, no gungpods, only S8 rockets), for everyone and from the beginning it may be that they do not work in this mission for some reason not matter on which faction side (aka on the red side not either, unless it is a warehouse count bug or a typo).

If the admins (aka @Alpenwolfand @rossmum) find time for any additional tests and debugs (real life comes first!) - please could you also adjust the Petrovich-crosshair (aka the minimized one without the superfluous and unnecessary boxes clogging visibility).
That was an extreme improvement where it was already implemented via serverside setting.

And an unrelated question - is it too early to ask for the MI-24 to be allowed to carry and deploy infantry and/or a jtac-infantry squad? 

[rossmum]

Not sure they need to be given the ability to do that as well as clean up ground targets... it'd put the Mi-8s out of a job and doubtless blue already have enough Hind headaches as it is. It was also almost never done in practice, as the helicopter is already overweight with almost any weapon load and defuelled to 70% fuel load. Adding a bunch of paratroopers and their equipment will just degrade performance even further and put the helicopter (plus the infantry) at risk.

[Apok]

10 hours ago, Miccara said:

Swedish delivery. Blue farp. @Alpenwolf @rossmum
No Hueys at all.
No ground vehicles anywhere.

There were ground units. Vulcans,trucks, chaparral...

You got on maybe when they got destroyed?

[rogorogo]

well, @rossmum, tradeoffs, a conscious choice of more munitions (pew pew) or have an asset that can be deployed in the AO - would not detriment to further  layer gameplay loops (not that it would change anything for me, I tend to find something that evaporates me anyway, even if I fly a detour akin to sightseeing far away from the AO  ).

Also simply a question of numbers - the Mi-8s are not that plentifull in the skies to not be tasked with heavier loads the entire time.. and at least when I participated the two airframes tried to work together.. and an extra infantry-squad (that is either a jtac or at least has a single Igla in it) would have often helped a lot.

I can't see that many headaches the Shaitan-Arba is causing... teamwork aka the spontaneous self-organization of chaotic system - while pleasant and suprisingly intense here and there - overall is not that nuanced that the usual swarm of Tigers would not be vectored on any Crocodile and Hip by someone in a CA JTac slot, or someone hopping into a Tiger from a JTac slot (something which in the end only Eagle could adress, like the ominiscient team-table, like the ominiscient role-table - and all of it is as likely to happen as is World Peace).

It is also not really about "paratroopers" - the Hind is an assault helicopter - it in fact did (in its early iterations) more often than popculture has us all believe deploy squads in an AO via an LZ-drop (although technically the infantry deployed belonged to paratrooper regiments most of the time - red tape, literally in this case).
So by that alone there is another tradeoff. 
And again - the Hips I encounter are overburdened all the time and some of them even raised the very issue on SRS (before all of us inevitably blew up midair  )

In the end there is no right and wrong answer, no good and bad anything. It is a choice of the admins and the serverrunner, and either decision taken or not taken will be suitable in the overall picture.

It is just something I - on my personal cellular level - keep noticing as missing. Especially since with the upcoming Apache (which is a D!) we will have another chopper flying around that will be made era-suitable (A++) by loadout, while still flying around with is post-era avionics, optics, system upgrades (like the AJS made AJ via pylon restrictions, which btw take the pylon wiring issue of the AJ/AJS not into account, not that I get to fail in my smoerebröd, as numbers do not really permit it, so I shall stay even more inept in it than in other modules...). 

But again, it is up to the admins that have to balance and take the overall picture into consideration, including the Tigers' wrong RWR array, the Fishbeds' overperforming radar (that underperforms for others due to once again core Eagle issues, not 3rd party module issues), the weird missile issues with the very same type performing differently with different modules, aso aso aso, all of it.
A humongous task in which server-runners and admins are pretty much left abandoned by the product provider anyway.

But the compartment is there, it may even receive proper inner render modeling at some time (the outer render already shows the benches fe), it was used, so why not use it (since the server is in the correct era on top), limited to a period correct, fidelic and suitable "haul"?

Edited January 6, 2022 by rogorogo

[Alpenwolf]

4 hours ago, rossmum said:

Not sure they need to be given the ability to do that as well as clean up ground targets... it'd put the Mi-8s out of a job and doubtless blue already have enough Hind headaches as it is. It was also almost never done in practice, as the helicopter is already overweight with almost any weapon load and defuelled to 70% fuel load. Adding a bunch of paratroopers and their equipment will just degrade performance even further and put the helicopter (plus the infantry) at risk.

Exactly this.

We still see Blue struggling to keep up with Red helicopters, so allowing more Red helicopters to carry and deploy assets would make it even harder on Blue. The removal of Ka-50's and adding some Tanks to Blue in the mission Search & Destroy allowed us to play the mission for quite a while, rather than having Red winning it within 2 hours as it had been the case often enough. The point is, Blue lacks proper helicopters like the AH-1 and a better transport helicopter like the UH-60 or CH-47. Unless developers are cooking something in the dark without us knowing it, it'd probably be years before we see any Cold War Blue helicopter.

 

Server News:

- Operation Search & Destroy kicks off tomorrow, Friday, 07.01.2022, around 1900 zulu.
- Operation Battle Over Sukhumi Unleashed kicks off this Saturday, 08.01.2022, around 1900 zulu.
- Operation Prince of Persia kicks off this Sunday, 09.01.2022, around 1900 zulu.

[Miccara]

2 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:

"We still see Blue struggling to keep up with Red helicopters, so allowing more Red helicopters to carry and deploy assets would make it even harder on Blue."

 

 

This is a balancing point which allows the game to be both challenging AND fun. The Huey's are much slower, way more fragile, less potent, and its only navigation is a compass. The Gazelle is slow & fragile, extremely difficult to fly with fine finesse, requires you to hover, then change seats to fire (I believe these are some of the reasons it lacks players that choose to fly it often). Too many subtractions and additions risk what made the Cold War server popular to begin with. Challenging without the fun isn't going to make for popularity, and it's a busy server that makes the game fun & challenging. It's still the best place to be in my opinion. Nice to work with the team mentality and some real decent people.

About the only thing I truly dislike now is the limiting of the number of crates I can put out. Worse when there are three or four Hueys. The kinds of crates are highly limited in most missions anyway, and when I'm prevented from putting out what is available to help in the defense of a base or FARP or the attacking of an enemy base or FARP, then the fun has ended for me, and mission can still go on for a couple of hours easily. Let's not forget it's a game. If it stops being that, then it stops being fun and people leave. 

[Miccara]

And I can't spawn at FARP London in Open Range. Slot is disabled. I have to make the 40 mile sling trip to free up F14's first, before I can work defense at the FARP?

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by Miccara

[Alpenwolf]

4 hours ago, Miccara said:

This is a balancing point which allows the game to be both challenging AND fun. The Huey's are much slower, way more fragile, less potent, and its only navigation is a compass. The Gazelle is slow & fragile, extremely difficult to fly with fine finesse, requires you to hover, then change seats to fire (I believe these are some of the reasons it lacks players that choose to fly it often). Too many subtractions and additions risk what made the Cold War server popular to begin with. Challenging without the fun isn't going to make for popularity, and it's a busy server that makes the game fun & challenging. It's still the best place to be in my opinion. Nice to work with the team mentality and some real decent people.

About the only thing I truly dislike now is the limiting of the number of crates I can put out. Worse when there are three or four Hueys. The kinds of crates are highly limited in most missions anyway, and when I'm prevented from putting out what is available to help in the defense of a base or FARP or the attacking of an enemy base or FARP, then the fun has ended for me, and mission can still go on for a couple of hours easily. Let's not forget it's a game. If it stops being that, then it stops being fun and people leave. 

Most of the things I change are quite often as a result of what some players do. And it's quite often a handful of players. Any restrictions, any annoying rules or limitations regarding anything are quite often the result of some individuals either exploiting bugs or playing within the rules and fairly, but take it a bit too far.

It is known to players that when you and Mike-Delta are online (and you make a very good and challenging duo, and I can only hope to have a replica of you for the Red side) sometimes air-to-ground missions become a bit frustrating for Red. And because it is a game and we're here to have fun as we all agree on that, I had to start limiting the amount of crates transport helicopters can deploy.
Take the mission The Desert Has Eyes as one example. I was in the Hind once with rossmum in the front seat. We went out on a strike mission to finish the job at the Blue second and last remaining EWR station. Turned out you guys (probably mainly you ) were deploying Avengers nonstop. I believe there were about 15 Avengers around that EWR station deployed by UH-1's. That's insane, mate While you were playing fairly and within the given settings of the mission trying to protect your assets (and rightfully so), one could argue it was rather a bit too much. In other words, when the challenge becomes rather fulsome or excessively challenging, the fun part of it (which is why we're all here) goes away. Quite some players reached out to me about that over the last weeks and months, and here I am once again trying to react and not overreact to something that seems to frustrate some. Limiting the crates is realistic, since aircraft and weapons are limited in the missions anyway, right? It would only make more sense while following the same protocol so to speak, regarding the limiting of things. Did I push it too far though? Maybe. Maybe I should not limit the crates that much. Perhaps I did overract there. I'll see what I can do.

About realism while maintaining fun:
It's a very tough challenge to say the least. We know that Mi-8's and especially UH-1's don't just sling load APC's or tanks around like that. On the other hand, infantries are still not very reliable in DCS, so we work with what we have and pretend a bit... You must've noticed that I've been removing some crates from the CTLD list, so we don't have to pretend too much. Strelas and Avengers are being removed from the crates' list while MANPAD's are being added as part of an infantry squad (1 x MANPAD, 2 x MG's and 2 x RPG's). I recently did that in the mission The Desert Has Eyes after updating it. I wouldn't mind adding the amount of crates to compensate for the lack of Strelas and Avengers, I guess. I thought I did well there, but you are kind of giving me the impression that I exaggerated a bit I'll try and check it tomorrow when I'm back home.

3 hours ago, Miccara said:

And I can't spawn at FARP London in Open Range. Slot is disabled. I have to make the 40 mile sling trip to free up F14's first, before I can work defense at the FARP?

 

 

I'm at work right now, so if rossmum is around, ask him to restart the server or just the mission Open Range itself by clicking on the mission itself. He'll know what to do.

Edited January 6, 2022 by Alpenwolf

[=475FG= Dawger]

The Desert Has Eyes: Is no fuel tanks for Mig-19's at Havadarya intentional?

Thanks in advance.