Cold War 1947 - 1991 *** 3rd Limited Edition ***

[Alpenwolf]

16 hours ago, Apok said:

Nuke mission was fun. Small problem arose - ships in harbour dont sink. We had them nuked with 0% dmg. Then made several passes  firing dozens of S25s. Some ships catch fire. But when you make return flight, smoke stops and you have no idea which ship is dead or alive cuz they dont sink.

Also jammer for 21s would be nice to have. I know nobody uses it but me, but still.

Also maybe implement that trigger zone for static sams we talked about few days ago. So they keep radars off till target in engagement zone. Would make SEAD harder/realistic.

 

 

- The nuke not causing damage is something ED must fix.

- The ships shouldn't sink anyway in relatively shallow waters at the harbour.

- I sometimes use the jammer as well. I'll add it.

- Thanks for reminding me about the thing with the SAM's. Will do

[Alpenwolf]

15 hours ago, QuiGon said:

That was a really fun mission! Great work @Alpenwolf!

 

The nuke attack is an interesting element. Even though I wasn't flying CAP I felt the tension and anxiety coming from the looming threat of a nuclear attack, especially when listening to the comms when @rossmum made his attack run! My buddy was just taking off from Khasab when the nuke was dropped and when the bomb went off he was already feet wet, but still got caught by the blast.

 

 

 

Can you also add the CBU-97? The CBU-105 is the GPS guided variant of the CBU-97 cluster bomb and I would like to use the dumb variant instead of the guided one.

 

 

I'll add some CBU-97's.

 

10 hours ago, Dagger 2-2 said:

Did you add the fuel tanks, KH-29s and more dumb A2G ordnance for the frogies as requested ?

 

Boiler

 

Fuel tanks were added, but nothing else. I don't want the Su-25T to be able to attack the ships as it is the Fishbeds' objective.

 

1 hour ago, QuiGon said:

 

I'm curious: Was there indeed something wrong with the trigger as this change suggests or have you just adjusted the trigger to better cope with the desync issue of F-16 LGBs?

While I'm sure about the desync issue of LGBs on the F-16 in multiplayer (other player seeing F-16 LGBs landing in different places than the F-16 player), I'm not so sure on how this affects bomb in zone triggers and their evaluation, hence my question

 

The trigger was fine, I changed something else. Tiny little details aren't necessary, let alone what was corrected and how. Superfluous information.

[Alpenwolf]

Mission's Change Log:

 

- Fuel tanks for Su-25T's were added.

- SPS-141-100 (jammer pod) for MiG-21's was added.

- The NASAMS at Khasab was replaced by a Hawk SAM site.. (I really wanted to test the NASAMS system and as anticipated it was rubbish).

- Added CBU-97's, but only at Ras Al Khaimah Intl Airbase.

- Corrected some flight paths of F-14A's, M-2000C's and F-15C's.

[rossmum]

22 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:

Mission's Upgrade:

 

- Red EWR at Bandar-e-Jask Airbase is now protected by the SA-2 SAM battery.

- F-16CM's unable to carry 6 x AGM-65H missiles (2 only) - Fixed.

- Sound file for the B-1 comms was too loud (Blue players were startled) - Fixed.

- Destroying the western taxiway at Qeshm Island Airasbe doesn't trigger any flags - Fixed.

- Added more fuel tanks for the F-16CM's.

- Added the following to the Objectives' Overview:

     "Note:
      Feel free to attack anything else as you see fit, but ONLY after finishing the aforementioned objectives."

- Added CBU-105 bombs (enabled for F-16CM's only).

 

Double check the B-1 triggers - when I checked out the video from Kebab's stream, it seemed to trigger the shootdown state instead of the attack state. We saw the correct trigger and Tacview (and ingame track) confirmed it hit the target safely, since we couldn't see it to intercept it, and then landed without incident. Also, whichever trigger you used to destroy the buildings at Khasab when an RN-28 was detected in-zone also fired about 5 seconds before the bomb itself hit. It isn't necessarily a bad thing (if the airburst function actually worked, I would've used it rather than a ground burst), but can be a bit discombobulating for people who don't realise that's what's going on.

 

19 hours ago, Apok said:

Nuke mission was fun. Small problem arose - ships in harbour dont sink. We had them nuked with 0% dmg. Then made several passes  firing dozens of S25s. Some ships catch fire. But when you make return flight, smoke stops and you have no idea which ship is dead or alive cuz they dont sink.

Also jammer for 21s would be nice to have. I know nobody uses it but me, but still.

Also maybe implement that trigger zone for static sams we talked about few days ago. So they keep radars off till target in engagement zone. Would make SEAD harder/realistic.

 

We actually had factored in the SPS-141s as part of our plan - I won't say for what purpose, though Luckily that contingency proved unnecessary.

 

Also, Alpen - could we get MiG-21 fuel tanks at all red airbases, rather than just Jiroft and Qeshm, by any chance?

Edited September 20, 2021 by rossmum

[Alpenwolf]

42 minutes ago, rossmum said:

 

Double check the B-1 triggers - when I checked out the video from Kebab's stream, it seemed to trigger the shootdown state instead of the attack state. We saw the correct trigger and Tacview (and ingame track) confirmed it hit the target safely, since we couldn't see it to intercept it, and then landed without incident. Also, whichever trigger you used to destroy the buildings at Khasab when an RN-28 was detected in-zone also fired about 5 seconds before the bomb itself hit. It isn't necessarily a bad thing (if the airburst function actually worked, I would've used it rather than a ground burst), but can be a bit discombobulating for people who don't realise that's what's going on.

 

 

We actually had factored in the SPS-141s as part of our plan - I won't say for what purpose, though Luckily that contingency proved unnecessary.

 

Also, Alpen - could we get MiG-21 fuel tanks at all red airbases, rather than just Jiroft and Qeshm, by any chance?

 

 

The explosions combined with the nuke hit might cause sever lag and perhaps crash the game for some. At least that's what I saw while testing the mission. I'll see what I can do.

 

I must've forgotten to add the fuel tanks back again after fixing the warehouses. Consider it done.

[rossmum]

If that's the case with the nuke trigger, it's not a big deal then, not really worth worrying about.

 

I didn't really get to talk through the mission after since I needed sleep, but if you're keen to swing by TS at some point today, there are a few points that I don't think really came up in the debrief afterwards and will probably affect the outcome when it's re-run in ways that perhaps aren't expected. Saves me writing walls of text here

[Alpenwolf]

Just now, rossmum said:

If that's the case with the nuke trigger, it's not a big deal then, not really worth worrying about.

 

I didn't really get to talk through the mission after since I needed sleep, but if you're keen to swing by TS at some point today, there are a few points that I don't think really came up in the debrief afterwards and will probably affect the outcome when it's re-run in ways that perhaps aren't expected. Saves me writing walls of text here

 

I'm on TS right now.

[rossmum]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Alpenwolf]

22 hours ago, rossmum said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very nice footage! Pretty much telling the whole story.

[Alpenwolf]

Round 2 kicks off this Saturday, 16.10.2021, 1800 zulu

 

* The server will be open for all and a password will not be required.

 

Note:

The last round (round 7) of Operation Tiberias  ran without putting a password on the server as was promised. Fortunately, it wasn't a disappointment! Quite some GCI operators on both sides and players showed up on SRS and contributed to a good teamwork. Therefore, and while hoping again for players to use comms, there will be no password for the upcoming event as stated above.

 

Some changes and adjustments are being made. A change log will be posted soon.

The motto for round 2 is: KILL rossmum!

[Alpenwolf]

Mission's Change Log:

 

- Added wind and turbulence.

- Added fuel tanks for Su-25T's.

- Some SAM's are now "smarter". They turn on and off when some conditions are met. Thanks to Aπok for testing out the SAM's for me. Saved me some time.

- Added SPS-141-100 (jammer pod) for MiG-21's.

- The NASAMS at Khasab was replaced by a Hawk SAM site.

- Added CBU-97's and CBU-105's for the F-16's, and only at Ras Al Khaimah Intl Airbase.

- Red EWR at Bandar-e-Jask Airbase is now protected by the SA-2 SAM battery.

- F-16CM's unable to carry 6 x AGM-65H missiles (2 only) - Fixed.

- Sound file for the B-1 comms was too loud (Blue players were startled) - Fixed.

- Destroying the western taxiway at Qeshm Island Airbase doesn't trigger any flags - Fixed.

- Added more fuel tanks for the F-16's.

- Added the following to the Objectives' Overview:

     "Note:
      Feel free to attack anything else as you see fit, but ONLY after finishing the aforementioned objectives."

 

Note:

Even though there is no password, it'd be nice to have players show up on TeamSpeak prior to the event, especially, the regular players. Why? Because I'd rather launch the mission when a good number of regulars are around, so that they are the first to fly whatever they want. Up to you.

[Alpenwolf]

Reminder:

 

Round 2 kicks off today around 1800 zulu. No password is needed, however, would be nice to see a few players on TS. I'd rather start the mission when at least players of the Cold War Community show up first.

[Cougar29]

Damn, I have no computer today.
Anyway, good hunting gents!!

[Sizzle]

 

B-1 carpet bombing Bandar-e-Jask.

[Alpenwolf]

Round 2:

Was lot of FUN! Blue won and dominated the round.

Blue completed all objectives, Red none.

Blue had more players at times, while Red had some in the "waiting room" hoping for those airborne to finish certain objectives to unlock more slots for Red.

There will be some changes made and announced soon for round 3.

[Alpenwolf]

Some Clarification Regarding Round 2:

 

There were claims that I had changed things in the mission in favour of Blue because they lost last time. No. I have not. Why? Because the Reds barely won the first round and it was mostly against a Blue team of which many players weren't really familiar with the mission, let alone the objectives. The only "changes" were mostly fixes. See here.

Another claim was that Blue had more aircraft available at mission start. Nope. Both coalitions start with 14 aircraft. Red aircraft being inferior is a separate issue, the claim was about the numbers of slots available.

F-18 and F-16 pilots were performing SEAD and strike missions and I made sure they do while being the only GCI for Blue. I told them all to be on SRS and they did. I told them to stick with their objectives and they did. Only when the objectives were completed they started flying CAP mostly, and mainly the F-18's because F-16's are limited to 2 x AIM-9M's for self defence purposes only. So, the claim that Blue players were just flying CAP is false.

Making radical changes is never the way to do things. Therefore, there were hardly any as stated above because the first round didn't really show what Blue would be capable of if...

I could run any mission for an x amount of times and almost every time we'd come to different conclusions. Why? Because almost every time the players' base is different. Hard to tell what changes should be made when a major factor (the players) is a variability. Nevertheless, some changes were made for round 3:

 

- Added 4 x MiG-21 slots at Havadarya Airbase.

- Instead of 4 x MiG-21 slots at Qeshm Island it's now 2.

- All MiG-21's are operational at mission start except for the MiG-21's at Jiroft Airbase (2 slots).

- Added 2 x Su-25T slots (a total of 4 now instead of 2) and moved them all to Bandar Abbas Airbase.

- Added 2 x F-14A slots at Bandar-e-Jast Airbase. It's now 4 slots instead of 2. The airbase allows for 2 slots only, so I had to figure out a script for it. Tested it and it works.

 

Now, if less players show up on the Blue side in round 3, well... See what I mean?

[Alpenwolf]

I just watched rossmum's stream:

And since it's a stream and public, I wouldn't mind replying publicly as well, because I owe it to myself when being accused of so much bogus and false allegations.

I only started watching streams when I was told about rossmum's and Mike-Delta's, so I thought to myself "that's something I could use to check out my missions from different perspectives to hopefully improve them better". And then today's stream happened...

All it takes is one rumour for the streamer, an igniter so to speak, delivered by one of the viewers who are watching live to start something like that. Note that I wrote the post above this one prior to watching the stream, so you might want to read that as well as it sheds some light on some of the issues you, rossmum, talked about.

There were no radical changes done in the mission as stated in the post above this one, so that alone diminishes most of the allegations you based your rant/critics/frustration on. Basically, I don't have to go on with my retort when your whole discourse mostly stands on false accusations like that. Nevertheless, I'll do it. Why? Because you're one of the Cold War players I know I can rely on, especially, when it comes to critics, providing constructive feedback and suggestions.

I read all the posts by every user, but I do selectively listen closer to some more than others. And you my friend should do the same when having all types of people watching your stream cheering you on with your rants, speeches or whatever they were calling it. Why? Because quite many people (most actually if you ask me) are a bunch of... well, you and your viewers said it yourselves when thinking of me as some admin who so naively thinks "people around the world are so kind and would never exploit things" or whatever the exact words were, but you surely know what I'm talking about. Really?! I'm that naive?! Gotta take some anti-naivety pills, I guess.

Remember when I wrote on the main Cold War thread - not this one - that I'd love to have a big-enough Cold War community to finally be able to put a password on the server, so only those who want to play the missions as they're supposed to be played can join? And how my missions are by design (not randomly or unintentionally) more suited for 20-30 players rather than 30+ to get the most out of them? Why do you think I started putting a password on the server on some events as of late? Why do you think the limited editions and special events all of a sudden? Why do you think I make some exceptions here and there in the missions? All that and more is to get the attention of those players who are interested in a server with the very setup I have. And I do implement so many ideas and suggestions shared by so many users. And I do always emphasise the importance of that which is why I'm always asking for feedback after every mission, especially, when a new mission goes online for the first time. I need the the critics. I need the feedback. I need players' ideas and experience and knowledge of things in DCS, modules, assets, etc. I often write that and you know it. My hope is to have a closed community at some point, so no one jumps in and takes the very slot you wanted to take and flies around pointlessly. I'm aware of the fact that my missions can be very frustrating when the players' base is not the "right" one. And that they can be very enjoyable or the best as some say, NEVER me saying that, and I'm quoting an endless number of players from so many posts and pm's, including yourself. Even in today's rant you said that. So, you and your viewers think I'm not so aware of that after 8 years of hosting?! That I'm so narrow minded (I'm paraphrasing here to be fair, but you and your viewers went on for 2 hours) and so randomly make big sudden changes in the missions causing big problems in many of them? Interesting that you and your viewers seem to know more than me about the missions and the REASONS behind making any change in them. You assume that on the outcome of a mission. You literally and obviously do and based your whole speech on it.

You take one example from the Close Air Support mission when I wrote these exact words (I have most files archived and I just looked that particular one up): "Well, maybe I should replace the Merkavas by Abrams to counter the so many ATGM's on the Hind" and based pretty much every change I make on that?! You don't think I put that out there so we literally discuss what just happened in the mission and how I could improve? I mean, we literally sat there in TS and talked about it and it was open to all suggestions. Limiting pylons was still not an option in the ME, so until then I was looking for alternatives before Lazzy confirmed that the new tool will be available in the next patch. You think I don't know how op the Abrams is compared to the T-72?! And I've been implementing the CA module in my missions since DAY ONE! How's is that to you me reacting so radically to things in my missions is beyond me.

Take the SAM sites situation in yesterday's Eye for an Eye for instance. It was a Red veteran player of the Cold War community, whom you know very well, who suggested that I should make it harder for SEAD aircraft to destroy SAM's, because it was so easy for Red to do in the first round as claimed by him! I was on the Blue side in the first round, so I had no problem trusting in his judgement and only after watching your stream. Despite what he said, I implemented the "smarter" SAM's mainly for Blue while making it by comparison not that hard on Red. Why do you think it took 4-6 Hornets and Falcons "that long" to complete their SEAD at Bandar-e-Jask Airbase? And they were good pilots, but that made it a bit of a challenge for them and they didn't mind it at all.

I mean, they have the Hornets and Red only the bloody Frogfoot! What, I'm not aware of the differences?! You literally thought, preached as your viewers said and believed every word you said. You were getting way too emotional and your crowd loved it and pushed you on and on and on. That's not you, mate. Don't react so radically and easily to things said and heard here and there. You're accusing me of reacting so radically and easily to things in my missions, right? Well, guess what! I'm not. You totally misjudged me there. On the other hand, you did react so easily and radically in your stream to your viewers, didn't you? And let's be clear on one very important thing: No hard feelings at all from my side. Just remember that, please. And this is not a rant, but rather a response to your... frustration, I guess.

Again, I don't mind what many say, but I do care to listen to what you say among other players of the Cold War server whom you could probably guess the names of. Let it be here and now known that your feedback has always been of high importance to me. Every single server in every single game out there has its fan base and haters. I listen to them all, but know well where to find constructive words of advice to which I should/could/must react. So, do yourself a favour and don't react to everything your viewers say. The Kh-58's weren't reduced in numbers! Why on God's earth would I want to do that?! In round one some assets in the warehouses were missing, so I deleted the warehouses' file and started from scratch. Remember the warehouses' bug that used to kill me? Well, it's kind of back, but not as bad. Still, I had to fix the file after the latest update and what the bug used to always do and did this last time, it deletes some assets from the warehouses and moves the remaining assets up and down on the list of available weapons due to some assets being missing. That means for instance, if there were 200 x R-60's and the R-60 was somehow deleted from the warehouses after ED's patch, the number 200 moves down in line and all of a sudden you have 200 x R-60M's because that's the missile that comes next in line under the R-60. Sometimes the number disappears, other times it jumps up or down multiple weapon types and all of a sudden it enables some other type of weapon. There were supposed to be 36 x Kh-58's and 16 x Keglers. Well, they swapped places! I also noticed that at Jiroft Airbase the wing fuel tanks of the MiG-21 moved up on the list and enabled the AJS37 fuel tanks instead. In other words, always keep in mind the bugs a mission designer has in DCS. And man can they ruin it for you, despite all the tests you run and when you think you've checked out everything, they come out of nowhere!

I really could go on and on and reply to everything you said, but I hope you get the point.

 

Take care, mate, and keep the good work.

Edited October 17, 2021 by Alpenwolf

[The_Tau]

@Alpenwolfif you like watching streams for other perspectives I also steamed mine

https://www.twitch.tv/the0tau/v/1178557985?sr=a

Even though this time was kinda eventful. Except that pesky sa13...

[rossmum]

Fair enough about the warehousing issue, though maybe it'd be worth putting an extra bit of time in missions like this so each side can slot up and check their inventories without worrying about eating into time needed to complete the actual objective. A lot of the other big events do this and it helps guard against one team having a dumpster fire from the start because people slotted into the wrong thing or (as we had) not knowing how to change their SRS frequency and suiciding several planes into the entire enemy team before finally figuring it out.

If you know the differences between their jets and ours, you should also know that they have things like prebrief mode to lean on. We have to wait for the radar to begin broadcasting before we can even get a shot off. We lost every single SAM at Qeshm after a single sortie, which unlocked their F-16s and made the numbers situation even worse for us (not everyone has/can fly the 14, and we had at least one who was not on comms and was teamkilling), and the reason Jask held out was that the Tor intercepted most of the first wave of missiles (except the one that killed the eastern EWR again) and then died to the last missile of the first wave. The second wave killed everything except the last Kub site which was inactive, presumably reloading since it was eventually killed by strafing. They also dispatched what few fighters we had over there quite handily in the process, during both sorties.

You're right that I got frustrated, but I hope you were listening about the differences in objectives and tools available to accomplish them. We have three SAMs to kill, all in a small valley across open water from us. Blue have a lot more targets (but also more aircraft and more missiles per aircraft to accomplish the objective with), and so all they have to do to stonewall us is mount an effective CAP over Khasab and there's literally nothing we can do about it, especially because we have to get close enough to trigger the Hawk radars with a pair of aircraft that can barely get out of its own way. Meanwhile, we have to prevent them from attacking two widely spaced areas at the same time as gaining enough air superiority to get the Su-25s close enough. We just barely managed it in one sortie last time, because our Su-25s didn't waver when pressed and got unbelievably lucky. One of them had a Sparrow miss by a few metres because the F-15 guiding it was killed at the last second. Blue don't need to send a mass of fighters to either objective, because their SEAD aircraft are fighters and can defend themselves competently. They also get where they're going much faster and have generally better situational awareness. So you're right, it was wrong for me to say you changed it to make it impossible - perhaps what I should've said was that it was only ever possible in the first place because we got lucky against a team assembled at the last minute, last time. Perhaps if we'd been fighting a more organised force we would've realised it then, or maybe we should've realised it when checking Tacview afterwards and noticing how close it was.

As for the password - this is why every single other special event uses signups on the forums, or uses some sort of community organising tool. Most use Discord. I know you don't like Discord, I know why you don't like Discord, and I think your points are very valid about it bear out to be true more often than not - but in the end it makes no difference, because people will make their own anyway, and the forum thread regularly turns into an absolute circus in exactly the same way a Discord server would. You don't need to use it, but it would probably help avoid the last-second scramble for players or people grabbing the wrong slots because people would be able to discuss it beforehand. I know you have an attachment to Teamspeak but the reality is that almost nobody else does. I still have it installed because we use it for ingame and radio comms in ArmA, that's it. A bunch of our players didn't even have it installed. You can definitely use it for organisation, but you're going to be at a disadvantage because you're requiring people to be physically present at a specific time on a platform that most people haven't used for years - at least text-based organisation takes the physical presence aspect out, which helps keep chaos and confusion at the 11th hour to a minimum. Forum signups would probably be better for it and I honestly don't know why you haven't done them, since you do usually post threads for each special event. There are only limited slots on the server and it's not outside the realms of possibility (actually I think it happened during one or two runs of Tiberias) that there are more people wanting to play than there are aircraft slots. Blue may have even had that problem today, judging by how many JTACs they had on a mission without a ground war - though at least then you have more GCIs so you can coordinate better. I still think that of all the missions, this is the only one that genuinely warrants one, and mainly because the entire focal point of the misison revolves around a fairly difficult objective that absolutely requires coordination to achieve. If it wasn't for that it wouldn't matter so much.

The main reason this one in particular caused so much frustration is because of that - the point of the mission requires us to do something pretty difficult. If we can't do that, we're pretty much reduced to exactly the thing you hate: airquake. That's all it was for us after the first hour, because at that point we wouldn't have had time to do much else. Our Su-25s may have actually cleared the way if they hadn't run out of missiles, but it was too little, too late.

The Scuds are a separate matter - I'm not sure what happened there, I saw some back-and-forth about the helicopter's hidden state in chat. Tacview shows a Hornet beelining for it from quite a ways out so I'm not sure if it popped up despite being set to hidden, or if Tau just used his initiative to scan low to the south of Fujairah knowing that there was probably a helicopter coming from that direction. It doesn't really matter which, the end result is that Salty got shot down before reaching the target, the next person to occupy the slot just sat in it for a considerable amount of time and then despawned, so nobody else could use it while they were doing sio, and then the final player to take it also got popped by express post from Ras Al Khaimah. The AWACS must be a lot better at spotting low-flying helicopters than I thought and I'm surprised it could see them at all given their altitude and the terrain in the way, or perhaps it was just a case of knowing where they'd be coming from and flying directly there. At least they still got to have their fun even without us triggering the Scuds, so one team still enjoyed it despite the mission's main events not playing out.

I'm glad you took the time to watch it and reply - seriously. If it's any consolation, my repeating of something you suspected another player of doing a year and a half ago has resulted in endless unwanted drama for me ever since, so maybe we can call ourselves even now I have ArmA in ~7 hours but if you're around and happy to hop on TS, I'll be there for a bit. I actually forgot I was still in the channel until several hours later because I didn't think I'd have anything to add to the debrief that others wouldn't bring up first.

Edited October 17, 2021 by rossmum

[Alpenwolf]

6 hours ago, rossmum said:

Fair enough about the warehousing issue, though maybe it'd be worth putting an extra bit of time in missions like this so each side can slot up and check their inventories without worrying about eating into time needed to complete the actual objective. A lot of the other big events do this and it helps guard against one team having a dumpster fire from the start because people slotted into the wrong thing or (as we had) not knowing how to change their SRS frequency and suiciding several planes into the entire enemy team before finally figuring it out.

If you know the differences between their jets and ours, you should also know that they have things like prebrief mode to lean on. We have to wait for the radar to begin broadcasting before we can even get a shot off. We lost every single SAM at Qeshm after a single sortie, which unlocked their F-16s and made the numbers situation even worse for us (not everyone has/can fly the 14, and we had at least one who was not on comms and was teamkilling), and the reason Jask held out was that the Tor intercepted most of the first wave of missiles (except the one that killed the eastern EWR again) and then died to the last missile of the first wave. The second wave killed everything except the last Kub site which was inactive, presumably reloading since it was eventually killed by strafing. They also dispatched what few fighters we had over there quite handily in the process, during both sorties.

You're right that I got frustrated, but I hope you were listening about the differences in objectives and tools available to accomplish them. We have three SAMs to kill, all in a small valley across open water from us. Blue have a lot more targets (but also more aircraft and more missiles per aircraft to accomplish the objective with), and so all they have to do to stonewall us is mount an effective CAP over Khasab and there's literally nothing we can do about it, especially because we have to get close enough to trigger the Hawk radars with a pair of aircraft that can barely get out of its own way. Meanwhile, we have to prevent them from attacking two widely spaced areas at the same time as gaining enough air superiority to get the Su-25s close enough. We just barely managed it in one sortie last time, because our Su-25s didn't waver when pressed and got unbelievably lucky. One of them had a Sparrow miss by a few metres because the F-15 guiding it was killed at the last second. Blue don't need to send a mass of fighters to either objective, because their SEAD aircraft are fighters and can defend themselves competently. They also get where they're going much faster and have generally better situational awareness. So you're right, it was wrong for me to say you changed it to make it impossible - perhaps what I should've said was that it was only ever possible in the first place because we got lucky against a team assembled at the last minute, last time. Perhaps if we'd been fighting a more organised force we would've realised it then, or maybe we should've realised it when checking Tacview afterwards and noticing how close it was.

As for the password - this is why every single other special event uses signups on the forums, or uses some sort of community organising tool. Most use Discord. I know you don't like Discord, I know why you don't like Discord, and I think your points are very valid about it bear out to be true more often than not - but in the end it makes no difference, because people will make their own anyway, and the forum thread regularly turns into an absolute circus in exactly the same way a Discord server would. You don't need to use it, but it would probably help avoid the last-second scramble for players or people grabbing the wrong slots because people would be able to discuss it beforehand. I know you have an attachment to Teamspeak but the reality is that almost nobody else does. I still have it installed because we use it for ingame and radio comms in ArmA, that's it. A bunch of our players didn't even have it installed. You can definitely use it for organisation, but you're going to be at a disadvantage because you're requiring people to be physically present at a specific time on a platform that most people haven't used for years - at least text-based organisation takes the physical presence aspect out, which helps keep chaos and confusion at the 11th hour to a minimum. Forum signups would probably be better for it and I honestly don't know why you haven't done them, since you do usually post threads for each special event. There are only limited slots on the server and it's not outside the realms of possibility (actually I think it happened during one or two runs of Tiberias) that there are more people wanting to play than there are aircraft slots. Blue may have even had that problem today, judging by how many JTACs they had on a mission without a ground war - though at least then you have more GCIs so you can coordinate better. I still think that of all the missions, this is the only one that genuinely warrants one, and mainly because the entire focal point of the misison revolves around a fairly difficult objective that absolutely requires coordination to achieve. If it wasn't for that it wouldn't matter so much.

The main reason this one in particular caused so much frustration is because of that - the point of the mission requires us to do something pretty difficult. If we can't do that, we're pretty much reduced to exactly the thing you hate: airquake. That's all it was for us after the first hour, because at that point we wouldn't have had time to do much else. Our Su-25s may have actually cleared the way if they hadn't run out of missiles, but it was too little, too late.

The Scuds are a separate matter - I'm not sure what happened there, I saw some back-and-forth about the helicopter's hidden state in chat. Tacview shows a Hornet beelining for it from quite a ways out so I'm not sure if it popped up despite being set to hidden, or if Tau just used his initiative to scan low to the south of Fujairah knowing that there was probably a helicopter coming from that direction. It doesn't really matter which, the end result is that Salty got shot down before reaching the target, the next person to occupy the slot just sat in it for a considerable amount of time and then despawned, so nobody else could use it while they were doing sio, and then the final player to take it also got popped by express post from Ras Al Khaimah. The AWACS must be a lot better at spotting low-flying helicopters than I thought and I'm surprised it could see them at all given their altitude and the terrain in the way, or perhaps it was just a case of knowing where they'd be coming from and flying directly there. At least they still got to have their fun even without us triggering the Scuds, so one team still enjoyed it despite the mission's main events not playing out.

I'm glad you took the time to watch it and reply - seriously. If it's any consolation, my repeating of something you suspected another player of doing a year and a half ago has resulted in endless unwanted drama for me ever since, so maybe we can call ourselves even now I have ArmA in ~7 hours but if you're around and happy to hop on TS, I'll be there for a bit. I actually forgot I was still in the channel until several hours later because I didn't think I'd have anything to add to the debrief that others wouldn't bring up first.

 

 

Good chat on TS, mate. As always.

[QuiGon]

I had a lot of fun in round 2 and from my (blue) perspective everything worked pretty nice (the smarter SAMs were a welcomed challenge), so I don't have much to say, except that I'm looking forward to round 3

Oh, there is actually something: Me and my buddies (Baron squad) are usually open to play on either side, so if there is any way to predict the balance before mission start we can join the side that needs more players

[Alpenwolf]

Mission's Change Log From 17.10.2021:

- Added 4 x MiG-21 slots at Havadarya Airbase.
- Instead of 4 x MiG-21 slots at Qeshm Island it's now 2.
- All MiG-21's are operational at mission start except for the MiG-21's at Jiroft Airbase (2 slots).
- Added 2 x Su-25T slots (a total of 4 now instead of 2) and moved them all to Bandar Abbas Airbase.
- Added 2 x F-14A slots at Bandar-e-Jast Airbase. It's now 4 slots instead of 2. The airbase allows for 2 slots only, so I had to figure out a script for it. Tested it and it works.

In addition to the above, the following changes were made:

- MiG-21's starting at Jiroft Airbase (where nuke bombs are available) remain disabled for the first 70 minutes.
- After that, and with 110 minutes remaining (3 hours total), Iran (Red) unleashes its MiG-21's with nuke bombs as if pulling the trigger on a major attack, despite all the odds!
- Instead of 3 x Hawk SAM sites at Khasab Airbase it's now 2.
- Destroying the radar units of the 2 x Hawk SAM sites enables MiG-21's at Jiroft Airbase instantly.

Edited November 1, 2021 by Alpenwolf

[QuiGon]

2 hours ago, Alpenwolf said:

Mission's Change Log From 17.10.2021:

- Added 4 x MiG-21 slots at Havadarya Airbase.
- Instead of 4 x MiG-21 slots at Qeshm Island it's now 2.
- All MiG-21's are operational at mission start except for the MiG-21's at Jiroft Airbase (2 slots).
- Added 2 x Su-25T slots (a total of 4 now instead of 2) and moved them all to Bandar Abbas Airbase.
- Added 2 x F-14A slots at Bandar-e-Jast Airbase. It's now 4 slots instead of 2. The airbase allows for 2 slots only, so I had to figure out a script for it. Tested it and it works.

In addition to the above, the following changes were made:

- MiG-21's starting at Jiroft Airbase (where nuke bombs are available) remain disabled for the first 70 minutes.
- After that, and with 110 minutes remaining (3 hours total), Iran (Red) unleashes its MiG-21's with nuke bombs as if pulling the trigger on a major attack, despite all the odds!
- Instead of 3 x Hawk SAM sites at Khasab Airbase it's now 2.
- Destroy the radar units of the 2 x Hawk SAM sites enables MiG-21's at Jiroft Airbase instantly.

That's quite a big buff for REDFOR. I'm curious how this works out, as REDFOR was already able to win the first round without these changes.
I'm looking forward to round 3

[Alpenwolf]

19 minutes ago, QuiGon said:

That's quite a big buff for REDFOR. I'm curious how this works out, as REDFOR was already able to win the first round without these changes.
I'm looking forward to round 3

They barely won it and with tons of luck!
I watched rossmum's twitch video and I saw how he got incredibly lucky surviving the Avenger's missiles (not taking away from his efforts. Top MiG-21 player he is!). So on another day he or someone else might not be that lucky and nuke bomb is gone. To be honest, and despite these changes, I still think Blue can wins and stop Red from completing their tasks, especially if there's a GCI operator for Blue. I'm going to be Red in round 3, so I hope Mike-Delta or someone else takes my spot on Blue for GCI.

Watch rossmum's video and you'll see how not so dominant the Reds were. I couldn't find it, so I can't share it. Maybe he deleted it? Hope not.

[QuiGon]

1 hour ago, Alpenwolf said:

I'm going to be Red in round 3

Damn, that's the biggest buff for redfor

Edited November 1, 2021 by QuiGon