Mission 12 - play through

[Lt_Jaeger]

The goods and the others ....

 

 

[Reflected]

Nice! This is probably my favorite mission to play in the campaign

I really hope ED will fix the stop follow bug soon. 

[Jayhawk1971]

What happened on that second drop? Did Jester somehow freeze or something?

On my playthrough, both drops went fine (= destroyed both targets) , and Paco did not come in to "clean up". 

Have you tried the mission one more time after recording?

[Lt_Jaeger]

I have no idea what went wrong there. I think I did not do anything wrong. 

I did the same mission twice, because on the first try, where both bombs found their mark, I did not find the carrier.

That's why I especially payed attention for signs of an borked INS in the second try. 

22 minutes ago, Reflected said:

Nice! This is probably my favorite mission to play in the campaign

I really hope ED will fix the stop follow bug soon. 

I might opt for 13 (wonder what else is to come). That mission gave me a huge headache but I think it is very challenging. 

 

[Jayhawk1971]

Gerade eben schrieb Lt_Jaeger:

I have no idea what went wrong there. I think I did not do anything wrong. 

I did the same mission twice, because on the first try, where both bombs found their mark, I did not find the carrier.

That's why I especially payed attention for signs of an borked INS in the second try. 

Yeah, from what I saw you were on parameters. Jester completely stopped talking after he called "pickle": no TTI calls, nothing. So I assume some Jester AI glitch.

Did you opt to strafe those fast boats on your first playthrough? If so, how did it go for you?

That bonus task really gave me a hard time, as I felt something was way off with the gun sight. Probably also INS related?

 

[Lt_Jaeger]

If I'm completely honest, I could not find them. After two circles I gave up frustrated , but not without calling Chig all the names I could come up with. 

That's the only grief I have with this campaign. Even so it is very nice how Chig is scripted, it is still that, a script. It would be so great to do this as a multicrew, but I also understand why it won't happen. 

[Jayhawk1971]

I agree, that is the one major downside of scripting. Highly immersive as long as you stay within the confines of the script. Stray but a little -as Galadriel would say - and it would fail, to the ruin of all.*  

Then again, I assume it should be possible for Heatblur to add a "spot ground target" function to Jester's capabilities. After all, he can do it with air targets (just not very accurately ). I suppose adding a function for mission designers to designate a mission target that Jester could track should be within the realm of the possible? He could give steering commands like he does with LANTIRN.

I hope that, before wiping out humanity completely, the recent advances in AI can at least provide us with flexible, life-like wingmen and RIOs. And a reasonable amount of time to enjoy it before Judgement Day would be nice.

Although, the prospect of sitting  in some Wall-e esque floating chair (full fidelity motion range) and state of the art VR headset, virtually flying a Tomcat (or Viper, or Mud Hen, or Phantom, or Apache, or.....) all day, doesn't fill me with as much horror as one not afflicted by the simming bug would think.  

*although, Reflected built in a nice "fail safe" for the event of JDAM missing, it seems.  And "press spacebar to call bingo" is a nice option to sneak off while saving face  (not finding the target, or dumping two-thirds of the mag into the Pacific)

Edited March 1, 2023 by Jayhawk1971
added some stuff

[Viking 1-1]

Hmm, I wonder how you get past this. I´m struggling and struggling and struggling with the first A2A encounter. Either I get shot down, or I run out of gas when I´m in the turnfight with the 2nd flanker.

I shoot down the first, then turn in, fox 1, crank right. The fox 1 always misses. Then I dodge his missile (or don´t sometimes) turn back in, Fox 2, miss. turn back in, next fox 2, miss, dodging missiles, and the its the turnfight and I dont get him with guns. And neither Paco or the CAP joins in to help me. I´m just there circling till I ran out of gas, with 3 allied fighters not supporting at all.

Nice. I know, my skill ist not high enough. But it is kind of annoying of you are in a 4vs1 situation and nobody supports you...

 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Viking 1-1

[Jayhawk1971]

Get your speed up before turning back in for your Fox 1 shot, and wait until you're well within 10 nm (6-7-ish miles should be about right). The Flanker will probably launch at you at around 5, so be prepared for that. It's good practice to constantly drop a flare or two every 2 seconds while WVR. With the AI's perfect notch, give him as little time as possible; a fast missile at close range makes it harder for the AI to dodge.

In that situation, I'd rather crank to the left after the Fox 1 shot, because the Flanker seems to prefer cranking to his left (your right). Contrary to the player, the AI has perfect SA and notches just enough to spoof your missile, then immediately turns hot again. So cranking left gives you more turning room, in case your Sparrow gets trashed. Aim to fly to his six (lag pursuit), that should get you behind the Flanker, where your Fox 2 have a much better chance to hit.

At least that's how it worked for me. 

Interestingly, my subjective observation is that AI behavior might have changed since the last patch; before the patch, the A2A parts of all missions seemed to be easier, as the AI ate the Sparrows more often than not. Post-patch, either Sparrows got easier to spoof, or the AI got even better at notching them. Again, subjective observation, no hard data to back it up (and no desire to test that hypothesis, because, well, life and stuff  ).

[Viking 1-1]

Feel free to have a look at my last try...

 

I just don´t get him with guns, and all other missiles get evaded. So i run out of ammo and dthen the mission is a fail, since nobody from the ai helps. Quite annoying, I think I have now 10 tries or so (today I tried it 4x, all with me not able to do the gun kill)

 

Guess A2A is just not for me.

Tacview-20230316-152349-DCS-Speed and Angels - 12b.zip.acmi

[Jayhawk1971]

The J-11 is notching your AIM-7, as the AI can do so easily ATM.

Try to get a lot closer before you fire your Sparrow. Right now you launch at around 13 miles. Try 6 or so.

Another thing is that currently, the AIM-9M's don't seem to like head-on shots very much. Try to get into better parameters before you launch, preferably a rear quarter aspect.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Jayhawk1971

[jmarso]

Not sure if I did something wrong, but what needs to happen after joining up with Paco over the boat to get the mission to proceed? I joined up, and we just kept orbiting. And orbiting. And orbiting.... 

Finally I got bored and pressed to Pagan myself, where nothing happened because I assume some flags and such didn't get tripped the way they were supposed to. 

What conditions actually need to be met in order for the mission to leave the joinup and head over to Pagan?

[Reflected]

You only need to get in formation. Unless you have any unofficial mods installed that mess up the core game. 

[jmarso]

I'll disable what mods I have installed, do a repair, and give it another whirl. 

 

I did open the mission in the ME just to take a look, and noticed the condition to stop orbiting was Flag 81 = True. But I could find no other reference to that flag anywhere. I'm not a lua scripter, so I'm assuming that flag is set somewhere in a script and not in the typical ME fashion? 

[Reflected]

5 minutes ago, jmarso said:

I'll disable what mods I have installed, do a repair, and give it another whirl. 

 

I did open the mission in the ME just to take a look, and noticed the condition to stop orbiting was Flag 81 = True. But I could find no other reference to that flag anywhere. I'm not a lua scripter, so I'm assuming that flag is set somewhere in a script and not in the typical ME fashion? 

The mission has hundreds of trigger lines but they are hidden for the users for copyright protection. 
 

make sure you run a slow repair after removing the mods. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Reflected

[jmarso]

This is not working. 

 

Did the slow repair, and read in another thread that you have to be within 1400 ft of Paco. I've been a lot closer than that. Does breaking the 1400 ft alone trip the flag, or is something else necessary? Any altitude restriction on when it happens?

 

EDIT: Finally got it to work. Nothing different EXCEPT I waited to start until after the boat turn and I used SHIFT-U to launch instead of a spoken 'salute' command using VAICOM. Don't know if that made the difference, but something tripped right. Enjoyed a Jolly Rancher, scored my 4th kill, and then DIED in flames. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by jmarso

[jmarso]

Finally beat it on try #4. I still have that glitch where sometimes when I fire, both my sidewinders go instead of just one. Happened to me here, so I had to chase that Flanker all over creation until I could finally gun him. Had to skip tanking because I would have run myself dry trying to do it, abandoned Paco at the tanker, and found USS Boat by the grace of the Almighty himself. Trapped with about 2k of gas. Whew! 

 

When I went back and watched it all in TACVIEW, I could see what a sandbagger Paco is. Could have used some help, there, lead!

Edited December 29, 2023 by jmarso

[Reflected]

I had the double sidewinder issue once, turned out it was a double assignment. 
 

I’m hearing Vaicom causes many issues too, I never used it myself. 

[jmarso]

Never thought it might be a double assignment. Next time I select heaters I'll check those little missile windows and see what's what. Good tip.

[Reflected]

These are the only requirements for the push. 2 seconds later there is a switch to WP command. It has nothing to do with how you salute or when you start up.

However, it made me think of something else: Multithreading was introduced a year ago, but  in a very rough way, and since then DCS is known to let flags and pushed commands slip by because the new MT logic is so painfully slow in detecting them. Of course this is a major game breaker, a fundamental show stopping bug. ED is aware and hopefully they'll fix the core engine soon - but it's already been a year..

BTW this issue seems to be exacerbated by the use of voice attack and VAICOM.

@[ED]Ben FYI, looks like another stop flag that went unnoticed.

[jmarso]

I've been using VAICOM for a long time and it's a mixed bag of pros and cons. Giving voice commands to Jester and wingmen in the heat of battle is a huge plus. On further reflection, though, you don't really need it for this campaign. Chig acts like a sentient RIO in the back, handling the systems and switchology better during these scripted events than Jester can in an unscripted free-for-all. Something to consider on future playthroughs. 

[Сиваш]

On 12/28/2023 at 6:12 PM, jmarso said:

Not sure if I did something wrong, but what needs to happen after joining up with Paco over the boat to get the mission to proceed? I joined up, and we just kept orbiting. And orbiting. And orbiting.... 

Finally I got bored and pressed to Pagan myself, where nothing happened because I assume some flags and such didn't get tripped the way they were supposed to. 

What conditions actually need to be met in order for the mission to leave the joinup and head over to Pagan?

I have the same problem, I launched the mission 4 times, but Paco continues to circle.

 

Edited January 19 by Reflected

[Reflected]

2 hours ago, Сиваш said:

I have the same problem, I launched the mission 4 times, but Paco continues to circle.

 

 

1) remove unofficial mods

2) run a repair

3) remove vaicom

4) if it still happens reduce your gfx settings

5) if it still happens join me in banging on ED’s table for not fixing such a game breaking bug for over a year  

Edited January 19 by Reflected

[Сиваш]

16 часов назад, Reflected сказал:

1) remove unofficial mods

2) run a repair

3) remove vaicom

4) if it still happens reduce your gfx settings

5) if it still happens join me in banging on ED’s table for not fixing such a game breaking bug for over a year  

 

Unfortunately, nothing helped, Paco continues to fly in a circle, and does not want to move on. And there Chig should switch the radio to channel 3, but he doesn’t switch either.
Where can I see the key assignments for the supercarrier?

 

[Reflected]

Can you try one last thing? When you launch, use the salute key assignment instead of the radio menu?

the forver orbit could be related to the bugged MT engine, but if Chig doesn’t even switch for you, it sounds like somehow your dcs install is corrupted, I just don’t know how. 
 

when you ran a repair, did you selece slow repair with ‘remove extra files’?