investigating Mission 2 + 3 Experiences

[SGT Coyle]

On 1/2/2022 at 8:36 PM, Sr. said:

 get past the banter about the callsigns, the mountain/trees while heading to wp 3 and Creech... then nothing. I continue to follow the waypoints all the way to Tonopah....nothing. Even tried flying the waypoints in reverse.

Same here.
Must have been a glitch.  Ran through it twice since and got through it fine.

Game vers Beta 2.7.16.28157

Edited August 23, 2022 by SGT Coyle

[id275etac]

Mission 3.
I sat in the chocks fiddling around with stuff.

-2 (BIFF) started taxiing on his own, took off, crashed off departure end of runway.

 

Otherwise, enjoying so far. Thanks!!

[baltic_dragon]

Was it after you got taxi clearance or randomly during the startup?

[rough_edges]

On 9/30/2022 at 9:46 PM, id275etac said:

Mission 3.
I sat in the chocks fiddling around with stuff.

-2 (BIFF) started taxiing on his own, took off, crashed off departure end of runway.

 

Otherwise, enjoying so far. Thanks!!

Got the same, wasn't told to start my engines, checked the messages to make sure I hadn't mis-heard it. Hit space got taxi, was expecting start up clearance and the Biff taxied out on his own. Spun up the engines and by the time I got out to the runway I saw a burning wreck about 2 miles north of the field. Got airborne and then released the burning wreck was my wingman. RIP Biff. 

[Biga42]

After the Biff had the HSI problem and get clearance to land he still fly in formation  orbit with me and do not land.....

[baltic_dragon]

OK, thanks - I will check this.

[5EVC Tiger]

Tried Mission 2 in the last couple of days. On my 2nd try, Biff did not taxi at all. I might have been taxiing a little fast though (25 knots). The first time I tried the mission, Biff started taxiing when I was taxiing in front of the APRON where the Strike Eagles are. 

On the approach after being instructed by Approach to descend and maintain 5000' , radio-silence.

[baltic_dragon]

Hey. The radio silence may be because of the new radio system introduced recently by ED. Looks like all my campaigns will need to be adjusted, which will take some time. We're currently working on Iron Flag to have it ready for the November patch. As for taxi and AI - this is something I have very little control over and it seems that Nellis is much more buggy than any other map...

[Highwayman-Ed]

On 10/1/2022 at 6:46 AM, id275etac said:

Mission 3.
I sat in the chocks fiddling around with stuff.

-2 (BIFF) started taxiing on his own, took off, crashed off departure end of runway.

 

Otherwise, enjoying so far. Thanks!!

OK, this is a little bit of an oversight with the wording of the startup process. It took us much longer to diagnose than it should have because when you know how things are supposed to work, you make assumptions... Sorry!

The way the mission should flow is that once the IFCC part is complete, you should complete your aircraft startup prior to contacting ground. THEN you should contact ground for clearance and start to taxi, and Biff will follow shortly afterward.

 

The current wording of the messages is ambiguous and does indicate that you should press Space to let Biff know that you've started up and are about to contact ground, but isn't clear that this should be done only when you are ready to taxi.

 

Updated the on-screen prompt.

 

Thanks for the report  

Edited November 12, 2023 by Highwayman-Ed

[Snakepit92]

Bought the campaign yesterday and am loving it so far. Just finished mission 2, but had a few issues. After waypoint 2 I stopped hearing Biff at all until waypoint 3, then after waypoint 3 he'd come through garbled and broken. I'm guessing it's related to what Baltic Dragon just posted above but figured I would mention it anyway.

[baltic_dragon]

Thanks. @Highwayman-Ed can you have a look at this?

[nikoel]

On 11/27/2023 at 10:50 PM, baltic_dragon said:

Thanks. @Highwayman-Ed can you have a look at this?

I had exactly the same behaviour. I restarted the mission completely, and got the same outcome the second time through. After waypoint 2 there is no Biff, but I do get the "other" menu after a while with options to repeat etc...

[nikoel]

Hey Guys a bit more feedback on Mission Six, Air to Air Refueling + ILS Approach

I am not going to lie, she is a bit of a dog's breakfast at the moment and needs attention. A grand shame as I can clearly see that there was a lot of work that has been put into the campaign and there are a few oversights that are a really letting the entire experience down. Some of them very simple, but make a big difference

Altitudes are all over the place. Some kneeboard pages state to be overhead Mormon at 18,000ft. Others state 19,000ft. During the emergency exercise Biff tells you you put in a deck of 16,000ft and then promptly tells you to make sure you doubly check that you do the simulated HYD failure at 15,000ft; below the deck. In the story however the hard deck is at 15,000ft. There are many of these instances littered across the campaign

TACAN for Aerial Refueling did not work, had to use F10 Map worked everywhere else though. Probably DCS Error, not a biggie

The following error happens in a lot of missions. Pre-recorded campaign ATC Says descend and maintain 5000ft. But does not provide further descent instructions afterwards, either via 'Cleared Visual Approach', or continue descent etc... thankfully when I saw the glide-slope hit the floor I promptly ignored instructions and continued the approach. ATC Finally clears you to land, but too late for a pilot who is observing instructions. This error is not a one off and appears in other missions

You can really make things *a lot* easier for VR users by having the knee-board pages sequenced correctly. There are 20 pages between the frequencies and the ILS approach that is burred between all the other irrelevant approaches. This one really grinded my gears and made this whole thing really tedious

Biff stops communicating when we are flying back leaving me to do the entire ILS exercise by myself without his help. Since I still get the press space messages every now and then, I believe this is an other ARC210 issue that keeps coming and going. The other missions suffer from the same issues

Anyway, I am putting the entire campaign down as it's not enjoyable with the current bugs and errors in place

I hope you will decide to fix it soon

Edited December 26, 2023 by nikoel

[baltic_dragon]

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of issues are linked with changes in core DCS between the release of the campaign and now (TACAN - I assume you used it in A/A mode, and now it works only in A/G even with airborne tankers; Biff probably stopped communicating because of the new DCS radio system that completely messed up a lot of missions and campaigns - but it may also be user error, check if you are not on FM band when changing the freq). There should be further ATC comms, perhaps you were in a wrong position.. or perhaps something else got borked, it 100% worked OK before, but DCS updates have tendency to break things. Bif

I am only one person and it is very difficult to keep up with updating already released stuff - and I have to rely on reports like yours, but even then it usually takes time to get to bottom of all the issues and have them properly fixed (also because when I fix some things, others get broken with DCS updates). It is a vicious circle which unfortunately probably will never change, so I'd like to ask you (and others) for more patience and to keep supporting our (3rd party campaign devs) work, as it is not super easy

I'll try to put things in order for next patch, although it may be tough as I am away from my gaming rig till almost half of January. 

Anyway, thanks for the report!

Edited December 27, 2023 by baltic_dragon

[nikoel]

On 12/27/2023 at 7:44 PM, baltic_dragon said:

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of issues are linked with changes in core DCS between the release of the campaign and now (TACAN - I assume you used it in A/A mode, and now it works only in A/G even with airborne tankers; Biff probably stopped communicating because of the new DCS radio system that completely messed up a lot of missions and campaigns - but it may also be user error, check if you are not on FM band when changing the freq). There should be further ATC comms, perhaps you were in a wrong position.. or perhaps something else got borked, it 100% worked OK before, but DCS updates have tendency to break things. Bif

I am only one person and it is very difficult to keep up with updating already released stuff - and I have to rely on reports like yours, but even then it usually takes time to get to bottom of all the issues and have them properly fixed (also because when I fix some things, others get broken with DCS updates). It is a vicious circle which unfortunately probably will never change, so I'd like to ask you (and others) for more patience and to keep supporting our (3rd party campaign devs) work, as it is not super easy

I'll try to put things in order for next patch, although it may be tough as I am away from my gaming rig till almost half of January. 

Anyway, thanks for the report!

 

I understand. FYI, I sat down with the campaign again and got up to mission 8

I did the ground checks yesterday and quit. Today I chose to skip them and go straight into the flight

Took off as per normal up to Waypoint 2. Got Instructions to fly FYYTR Direct by Nellis Departure. So I skipped WP3, WP4 and went to FYYTR direct. This entire leg was done in silence at 14,000ft. When I reached FYYTR Biff finally spoke and said to turn to waypoint 6. Which I promptly did and overflew it. I then went to Waypoint 7, overflew that too by 0.5nm and entered into a right hand orbit. After three orbits I quit the mission as nothing was happening

Edited December 28, 2023 by nikoel

[baltic_dragon]

Don't skip any waypoints, a lot of triggers are linked to zones so better follow the flight plan. Might be a simplification on our part with the FYYTR Direct. Can't remember now how it is scripted, but pretty sure some waypoints were missed. I'll have a look when able (away from gaming rig till mid January unfortunately)

[Brainspiller]

On 12/29/2023 at 11:35 PM, baltic_dragon said:

Don't skip any waypoints, a lot of triggers are linked to zones so better follow the flight plan. Might be a simplification on our part with the FYYTR Direct. Can't remember now how it is scripted, but pretty sure some waypoints were missed. I'll have a look when able (away from gaming rig till mid January unfortunately)

Hello everyone.

First, thanks for this great campaign. Very well done.
I do have some trouble with waypoint 1 though. Biff instructs me to turn to waypoint 2 and contact him. After passing WP1 (checked on the TAD that I am passed it, and the HUD is also jumped to WP2) and finishing the turn for WP2 and pressing Space only an "." appears in the dialog box and that's it. I haven't found a way to continue.

Edited January 27 by Brainspiller

[Spike88]

4 hours ago, Brainspiller said:

Hello everyone.

First, thanks for this great campaign. Very well done.
I do have some trouble with waypoint 1 though. Biff instructs me to turn to waypoint 2 and contact him. After passing WP1 (checked on the TAD that I am passed it, and the HUD is also jumped to WP2) and finishing the turn for WP2 and pressing Space only an "." appears in the dialog box and that's it. I haven't found a way to continue.

Another thing I always reproduce but probably not related to the mission: after startup all SAS buttons and EAC are switched off (they are on before). It seems to be quite windy at Nellis, and having to enable those switches again while the aircraft is going crazy is quite a challenge.

Check this thread, it details what’s happening . OP suggests switching the ARC-210 into FM modulation to fix it, but I haven’t tried yet. 

[baltic_dragon]

On 1/20/2024 at 11:53 AM, Brainspiller said:

Hello everyone.

First, thanks for this great campaign. Very well done.
I do have some trouble with waypoint 1 though. Biff instructs me to turn to waypoint 2 and contact him. After passing WP1 (checked on the TAD that I am passed it, and the HUD is also jumped to WP2) and finishing the turn for WP2 and pressing Space only an "." appears in the dialog box and that's it. I haven't found a way to continue.

Another thing I always reproduce but probably not related to the mission: after startup all SAS buttons and EAC are switched off (they are on before). It seems to be quite windy at Nellis, and having to enable those switches again while the aircraft is going crazy is quite a challenge.

Hm, it would take a lot of extra triggers to change the position of the switches in the mission, so it is not me. Maybe you pressed something by mistake (IIRC turning off any SAS switch will disengage the EAC too)? Pretty certain something happened there in the cockpit and it wasn't my fault

On 1/20/2024 at 4:13 PM, Spike88 said:

Check this thread, it details what’s happening . OP suggests switching the ARC-210 into FM modulation to fix it, but I haven’t tried yet. 

You should switch the ARC-210 OUT of FM and into AM. It defaults to FM for some reason, but it won't work at the default freq in that modulation anyway IIRC. This radio is causing a lot of trouble and people think this is a bug... we're planning to add additional instructions on it, but things are moving ahead very slowly. 

[Chief_Biv]

On 12/27/2023 at 8:44 PM, baltic_dragon said:

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of issues are linked with changes in core DCS between the release of the campaign and now (TACAN - I assume you used it in A/A mode, and now it works only in A/G even with airborne tankers; Biff probably stopped communicating because of the new DCS radio system that completely messed up a lot of missions and campaigns - but it may also be user error, check if you are not on FM band when changing the freq). There should be further ATC comms, perhaps you were in a wrong position.. or perhaps something else got borked, it 100% worked OK before, but DCS updates have tendency to break things. Bif

I am only one person and it is very difficult to keep up with updating already released stuff - and I have to rely on reports like yours, but even then it usually takes time to get to bottom of all the issues and have them properly fixed (also because when I fix some things, others get broken with DCS updates). It is a vicious circle which unfortunately probably will never change, so I'd like to ask you (and others) for more patience and to keep supporting our (3rd party campaign devs) work, as it is not super easy

I'll try to put things in order for next patch, although it may be tough as I am away from my gaming rig till almost half of January. 

Anyway, thanks for the report!

 

Hi BD,

I decided to relearn CDU stuff and tried Mission 2 again after completing the Campaign some months ago. I also experienced No Bif voice or on screen messages on the way to Wpt 3. Has there been a opportunity to check and patch fix this since December?

[baltic_dragon]

We're working to fix this issue and should have it sorted for the next patch!

[Chief_Biv]

Thanks. Love your work.

[PD919]

In the meantime, try tuning to Biff's channel on the ARC-210 radio.  Sometimes it won't come in on the VHF but will on the ARC.  I'm sure this is directly related to the radio bug that has effected all of Baltic's campaigns.

Edited January 31 by PD919