Persion Lion campaign - mission bugs

[SHazmak]

Just want to report a couple of bugs I've come across so far with the campaign. I'm loving it so far but the bug I came across just now in Mission 9 was especially frustrating.

The mission 9 bug is that the Abe ATC refuses to respond to Inbound and I can't initiate any comms for recovery. I 100% did everything right, called inbound within 50nm after successful plug, COM1 was on channel 1, 127.5. The first time I did this mission I had this problem and thought maybe I screwed something up so I quit out and did it again with the same result. I was still able to successfully finish the campaign the second time by just doing my own Case I with no comms but this soured what was otherwise my favourite mission in the campaign so far.

The other thing is that at the start of a couple of earlier missions (I didn't note exactly which) the voice over comms were directing me to the wrong catapult, e.g. CAT3. I go to CAT3 and there is no response from the crew, then I move to CAT2 and they respond.

Hope these few things can be fixed.

[Badger633]

Hi @SHazmak

Will look at the Mission 9 comms to the ABE on return. Could you tell me which option you were using is it normal or the EZ refuel or increased difficulty . Are you open beta or stable and finally are you running any mods.

Regarding which CAT you go to and problems with the crew its not a thing controlled by the mission editor. In fact although I give a direction which one to use it does not matter from a DCS point of view you can use any and they should work. What I think has happened especially with cats 4 or 3 is that you have not gone sufficiently down the carrier before turning to face the cats. It has happened to me may times. If you do not approach the cat form a sufficient distance  away the crew does not know your there and will not respond. So your to short for CAT three but when you taxi up to cat 2 you have plenty of distance and it works. It's not a bug but just how DCS is. 

Hope this helps, will let you know outcome of my check on the carrier comms.

Thanks.

[SHazmak]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I'm doing the standard campaign, not the easy refuel or increased difficulty version. I'm using the current open beta without any mods. All the other comms were working fine, e.g. no issue with comms with the tanker.

And thanks for the explanation on the CAT's, that makes sense! I'll be more mindful when using CATS 3 and 4.

 

[Badger633]

Hey @SHazmak

Checked out the Comms issue in Mission 9 of ROPL on return to the ABE. Found the problem  and fixed it. It will be out in the next DCS update. It only effects the normal version the EZ refuel and increased difficulty options are ok.

Thanks for the heads up 

[SHazmak]

Hi @Badger633 thanks for checking and fixing it. I noticed though that there wasn't anything in the patch notes for the last update?

I've come across another issue, this time with Mission 12. After I took out the SA6 at WP8 and headed to WP9 to RTB, the Abe again would not respond to Inbound. Worse still, though I had TCN set to 72X and could get its bearing, I could not get any closer to it than 53.1 NM no matter how far I flew?? So this time I couldn't even complete the mission.

This was on the current open beta version, no mods.

Edited November 30, 2023 by SHazmak

[Badger633]

Hi @SHazmak

Just checked this out, placed Ford where you were and could pick up Comms with the ABE ok and also had reducing distance on the Tacan. Remember the ABE is on 127.5 which has been set to channel two on your primary radio. Can you check out again as seems to works this end. All scripting is correct as well.  

[SHazmak]

Ok thanks, will try it again. It could be that I was using PRI channel 1, which I think has usually been the preset for the ABE in this campaign?

But either way, do you know why I could never close in on the ABE below 53.1? Tacan is independent of the radio setting so navigation should have worked as normal regardless, right?

[Badger633]

No that is a mystery, try it again an see if it works, it all worked fine this end and the ABE is set up correctly for 72X. Make sure you didn't have AA mode selected by mistake. It's certainly not a campaign mission thing as it is more a DCS thing as not controlled by editor once the ABE is set for correct Tacan which it is.

Hope this helps.

[Badger633]

@SHazmak just so you know the update missed last issue but will be in the next one. 

[SHazmak]

@Badger633 I did the mission again, indeed the ABE wasn't responding to radio because I was using PRI channel 1 instead of 2. ABE was on channel 1 for all the previous missions so having it on 2 for this one caused the confusion.

But for the TCN issue, it happened again and I think I know why. When I did the cold start I had entered the ABE at 72X and 180 BRC for take off and when returning for recovery, I had just left it assuming that would work. There is no A/A refuel in this mission so I had no reason to change the TCN settings after take off. It appeared to work because I got the HSI symbol, bearing and range but the range would not move. It was like a phantom ABE.

I had to power cycle TCN and re input 72X in order for it to pick up the ABE again in its real location. It was like it had despawned and respawned during the mission and I needed to re do the TCN entry for it to pick up the current position.

Edited December 2, 2023 by SHazmak

[Badger633]

Glad you got to the bottom of it. Yeah you have to check the brief and kneepad notes on the tacan. As you go through my campaigns in order you will be much more hands on with the radios.

Obviously the Tacan issue is a DCS sim issue and not a campaign issue. (We do not have that sort of control in the editor, it is either set or not). The ABE is present throughout so no despawn etc. Never come across it as I never set Tacan on launch as usually have to set it to a refuel or something else in the mission and am following way points initially anyway. It may be worth you raising it as a possible general bug in the forum. 

 

[rob10]

10 hours ago, SHazmak said:

I had to power cycle TCN and re input 72X in order for it to pick up the ABE again in its real location. It was like it had despawned and respawned during the mission and I needed to re do the TCN entry for it to pick up the current position.

The TCN freeze issue in the Hornet is a known and long reported DCS issue.  Unfortunately it's hard to consistently reproduce and the work around is pretty easy (even if annoying) so I don't think it's high priority for fixing.  Definitely not an issue with the mission or even a Supercarrier issue (it can happen with tankers or ground TCN's too).

[SHazmak]

Understood, thanks guys.

@Badger633 just finished the final mission and completed the campaign, was a lot of fun, thanks for the efforts! One last question though - in the first part of the mission your wingman has the task of destroying the ship at the docks. I circled above watching and it seems he completely missed with both of his LGB's. I saw 2 splashes in the water nearby a couple of mins apart. I had to take it out myself with one of the JDAM's to move the mission forward but there were no comms relating to his failure.

Was this the expected outcome or did something go wrong?

 

[Badger633]

Yeah, @SHazmak it did go wrong. He is supposed to take it out. Did you play it more than once to see if it happened twice? Not sure what the recent  DCS updates have done but they have definitely impacted the AI. They cant be trusted to be on target any more. Will check it out. Thanks for the heads up. 

 

EDIT: Checked it out, on his own as an extract he hit the ship. However have updated mission so even if he misses and is in the right location the ship will explode. How far was his bombs out?

Update will be  in the next DCS update

Edited December 3, 2023 by Badger633

[SHazmak]

@Badger633, thanks for checking it out. I only played it once - since I still managed to finish it and complete the campaign, I thought I'd move onto the next one.

The splashes I saw were maybe a ship's length or so away from the ship.

[Badger633]

That’s fine, if that was to happen again it would work as intended now. Thanks.

[Badger633]

@SHazmak Checking through this mission couldn't understand how you could complete it. Because of the issue of the ship not exploding you have missed a good part of the mission and I assume you did not get the success message etc when you landed back at the ABE?  As the ship did not explode and you did not proceed there is a way you could have missed all the fail checks and that is why you made it back but only flying part of he mission. Hopefully all is fixed now so when the update is released would suggest you fly the mission again as you missed quite a bit out. Did you refuel as I think that part would have been missed also?

[SHazmak]

@Badger633 oh the ship exploded but because I sent a JDAM at it after I saw the 2 splashes and waited for like 5 more mins of accelerated time with no progress. I did refuel and finished the mission successfully with the below at the end

 

Edited December 4, 2023 by SHazmak

[Badger633]