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Oil In The Water SP & CO Campaign


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Tensions are high between Iran and the United States as progress on a new nuclear weapons treaty falters and a series of unsolved bombings damage oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Fly a US Navy F/A-18C Hornet as part of the USS George Washington carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf as conflict escalates to all out war in a series of confrontations inspired by the events of May and June 2019 and the Tanker Wars of 1987 and 1988.

**Requires the F/A-18C Hornet, Persian Gulf Map, and Super Carrier Module**

This is a 16 mission single-player campaign, along with 2-player co-op variants of every mission. Each mission is fully robo-voiced. 

 

 

The Hot Start version can be downloaded here: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3305852/

 

The Cold Start version can be downloaded here: https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3315461/

 

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Edited by Bunny Clark
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  • 1 year later...

This campaign is actually not dead!

 

I've been working on it in spurts as new DCS World stuff gets released that I want to incorporate. Finally, I've got something I'm comfortable releasing again. I did not expect this to take a year, yikes! Life and DCS bugs kept getting in my way.

 

The update adds the Super Carrier module, re-works the existing missions for new weapons and capabilities (since the FLIR pod wasn't out yet when I built the first version), adds 4 new missions bringing the total to 7, and I created a proper DCS campaign for the missions that are done so far. As before, 2-player co-op versions of all missions are included.

 

I've also added more planned missions, with the campaign now scripted out to be 16 missions long. I have a feeling as I keep working that number will keep going up.

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Hi, I have a problem with the second mission. the thing is, the wingman doesn't shoot the boats and the missiles miss a lot against the helicopters. so I always run out of weapons to destroy all the boats and helicopters. any ideas?

 

Thks

 

Telling your wingman to "Engage Primary Targets" should make him attack the boats.

 

The helicopters can be a challenge. Your wingman can help here too with an "Engage Bandits" command. But it's not uncommon for me to need to finish them off with guns.

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I played through the first two missions this weekend, had fun with it. thanks for sharing. I really like the briefings and setting, esp the link to real world events.

 

Agreed with the comment above, would be good to have most enemy units hidden on the briefing map (and triggers etc too) so I don't 'spoil' it for myself by checking the flightplan.

 

 

I do wonder about the volume of targets in these missions? e.g mission 1 has 10 ground targets (primary & secondary) and two air targets. Similar for mission 2. Quite a lot of work for a single flight, and maybe doesn't fit the 'real world' setting you've put together around the campaign?

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Yah, I should go through and hide some units. I'm still actively tinkering with missions, and hiding units makes it more difficult to troubleshoot and tweak.

 

In each mission I'm trying to strike a balance between realism, difficulty, and storytelling. In the first mission for example I've considered splitting the core mission into two flights, each one handling one island. I've also considered if I did split it having one aircraft from the other flight get shot down, causing the player to have to pick up the slack as the remaining aircraft from the other flight transitioned to SAR. But I also want a transition through the campaign, with the early missions having only a few friendly flights and the player doing most of the work to show a more limited conflict. As the campaign progresses and the conflict escalates, the player should notice more and more friendly units becoming involved, and their own personal role diminish. Later in the campaign, in the missions I haven't built yet, the player should feel like a small piece in much larger operations as the USN, USAF, and UAE mount combined operations over Bandar Abbas.

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That's cool. It's not necessarily a bad thing, just a different sort of challenge.

 

Oh - for hidden units theres a tickbox in editor unit list to 'show all hidden units' or similar. So you can hide them for player, but show them for you as you edit.

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Raise your hand if you think Oil in the Water is superior to Raven One!:clap:

Wow, really? I haven't played Raven One yet because I'm on Stable (and waiting, impatiently, for it and Syria).

 

The idea what anyone would compare my work favorably to Baltic Dragon is flattering beyond words.

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I have hit a bit of a roadblock on mission 4 as the fast attack boats are generally too small to pick up in either flir or nvg, and my wingman will not engage. This mission has me wondering why am I engaging invisible tiny targets with 500 pound bombs in a hornet (and not a gunship doing the job).

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I have hit a bit of a roadblock on mission 4 as the fast attack boats are generally too small to pick up in either flir or nvg, and my wingman will not engage. This mission has me wondering why am I engaging invisible tiny targets with 500 pound bombs in a hornet (and not a gunship doing the job).

Yah, this mission is really hard right now without labels on. As a cheat you can order your wingman to attack primary targets, he can see them perfectly.

 

I was originally wanting the drone to serve as a FAC-A and designate them, but couldn't get it to work with boats. I'm hopeful the mission gets easier when we have SEA radar mode.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hey Bunny,

 

I've been playing your Oil in the Water campaign and really enjoy it. I am on the nigh mission and attempting to bomb fast attack boat in my kill box. However, I am having a real problem trying to find the boats with the FLIR (even with labels ON). I tried using the ground radar and did not have any luck there either. So far I having only been able to drop on one boat which I killed. Another thing is the wingman will not engage the boats. He says AFFIRM and flys out to them but does not attack and rejoins.

Do you have any suggestions?

 

Also, I have noticed that if I fail a mission and end it, the next mission is the one I completed to get to the one I failed on. Is this the way it was coded?

System Specs:

AMD 5950X (liquid-cooled), Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Pro Motherboard, 32 GB RAM DDR4 3200MHz, Samsung Evo 970 Plus 2 TB, Seagate 2TB SSD, Geforce RTX 4080 GPU, Rosewill Glacier 1000W Power Supply, Thrustmaster Warthog HOTAS (Stick, Throttle), Thrustmaster TPR Rudder Pedals, NaturalPoint TrackIR 5 w/ProClip, (1) Vizio 40" 4K Monitor, TPLink Dual Band Wireless Card, Window 11 OS

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Yup, that can be a hard one. The best technique I've found so far with labels on is to put the FLIR in VVSLV mode, fly the FLIR onto a boat and designate it. If you're fast and efficient at it you can make the drop in the same pass.

 

The wingman should attack the 4 primary targets with the "Attack Mission Targets" command. At least it worked on my end the last time I tried it, it's always possible an update broke something since then. The wingman won't attack the two additional boats that pop up mid mission, you'll need to handle those yourself.

 

Hmmm, the campaign should let you advance with a failed mission. I'll double check the campaign programming. This is my first time with the campaign editor, so it's totally possible I screwed something up.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Alight, I had a mission objective in Mission 4 that assigned negative points if you let the attack boats get too close to the SEAL Team, I'm guessing that's what was causing the campaign to jump you to a older mission. I've changed that to a more elegant solution, and I'll look at the other missions to see if there are similar problems with scoring.

 

Well, the AI wingman used to attack the boats just fine. But nope, now he just flies around in full burner at 550 knots until he either runs out of fuel and crashes or decides to rejoin of his own volition. Typical DCS AI: spend hours trying to find the arcane combination of settings that gets them to do what you want, and then an update breaks it all. I haven't had any luck yet finding a new combination of settings that will actually get him to work, so for now I guess you'll need to complete the mission alone.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Alright, finally figured out what was causing the problems with the AI wingman in Mission 4 - apparently Hornets won't attack things with Mavericks at night if there is no moon :wassat:

 

I'm broadly going through the whole campaign and tweaking all the AI programming with the goal of making the wingman useful in every mission, and making the other flights behave as reliably as possible. There should hopefully be an update soon, with a few new missions too.

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Hi,

Is It possible to start mission in cold start ?

 

At present you could modify the missions to make them cold start. It would break the timing on some missions however. Once I've finished all the missions in the campaign I may make a cold start version.

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I just released another hefty update. Version 2.1 includes:

 

3 new missions, bringing the total to 10.

 

Complete re-work of AI scripting. Wingmen should be useful in every mission now, and non-flight AI should behave more reliably. I've also added notes in many of the briefings letting you know what the AI wingman can do.

 

Reworked all the scoring so negative scores are no longer possible.

 

Fixed an issue in mission 2 where damaging the Mi-8s and causing them to flee wasn’t counted as a win.

 

Added NVGs equipped by default in night missions.

 

Added custom kneeboards to every mission.

 

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I just released another hefty update. Version 2.1 includes:

 

3 new missions, bringing the total to 10.

 

Complete re-work of AI scripting. Wingmen should be useful in every mission now, and non-flight AI should behave more reliably. I've also added notes in many of the briefings letting you know what the AI wingman can do.

 

Reworked all the scoring so negative scores are no longer possible.

 

Fixed an issue in mission 2 where damaging the Mi-8s and causing them to flee wasn’t counted as a win.

 

Added NVGs equipped by default in night missions.

 

Added custom kneeboards to every mission.

 

OitW is one of the best campaigns! Looking forward to playing the updated version!

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  • 3 weeks later...
34 minutes ago, Bombay26 said:

In co-op mode, does completing a mission advance the campaign or do you just select the next co-op mission in the mp server list? Is there scoring?

Unfortunately, DCS has no system which allows a structured campaign to be played in multiplayer and progress saved. I wish it did. To play through the campaign in multiplayer you'll need to sequentially load each mission in the server once you beat the previous one. The multiplayer versions of the mission do score the results, but it's not as easy to find as it is in SP. If you get the "MISSION COMPLETE" message you've beaten the mission, if you want to find your exact score after you've exited the mission you'll need to check the server logs. 

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Version 2.2 is now live: 

 

Added missions 11 and 12. 

 

Minor tweaks to briefings and environment in multiple missions. 

 

Corrected some static object placement on carrier deck for more reliable AI taxiing. 

 

File and name changes in the campaign means a simple overwrite probably won’t work for updating a campaign in progress this time. That should no longer be an issue moving forward from this point. If you have a campaign in progress you’d like to update removing the “HS” from the end of the campaign file name should let you overwrite it. 

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On 9/19/2020 at 2:10 PM, lt_d4n said:

Hi, I have a problem with the second mission. the thing is, the wingman doesn't shoot the boats and the missiles miss a lot against the helicopters. so I always run out of weapons to destroy all the boats and helicopters. any ideas?

 

Thks

Hi this is what I do. First I  take out the helicopters out with sidewinders and aim 120'sIf you miss with air to air missiles you can use the mav's to take out the remainder of the helo's .  I give the wingman the order mission and rejoin. The wingman will always take out the boats with that order at least he does for me. While he is taking out the boats I go after the helo's. Like I said the mavs can be used take out the helo's but I prefer side winders. So I rearm replacing 2 of the mavs with a rack of 2 sidewinders giving you four extra sidewinders. Plenty of chances to take the helo's out with air to air missoles. While you take out the helo's your wingman takes out the boats then with the 2 mav's you have you can take out the remaining 2 boats. If by chance you waste a mav you can take the boats out with guns or order your wingman too with mission rejoin command. Works for me.

On 11/14/2020 at 10:15 AM, Blackflys56 said:

Hi,

Is It possible to start mission in cold start ?

 

I change all missions to a cold start. so far haven't had a problem

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