F-16C Strait of Hormuz Campaign

[Exorcet]

After much time I've finally completed my first campaign. Please leave feedback here.

 

Current status - available on user files

https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3340795/

 

PLEASE LEAVE ALL FEEDBACK IN THIS THREAD, USER FILE MESSAGES ARE UNLIKELY TO BE READ

 

An air to air campaign for the F-16CM Blk 50 where the player flies for the USAF, set in the Hormuz Strait region in the year 2010. This campaign features missions with elements of randomization for replayability and mission uncertainty. The experience is intended to resemble that of a pilot in combat in that the missions will go on with or without the player's success, with some exceptions and within the limits of the DCS Campaign system. Missions will feel similar to my previous stand alone missions. The campaign is not strictly historically accurate, but attempts to be within the realm of plausibility, though mission content was given priority over world building. The campaign may be thought of as a mission pack rather than a narrative.
Players should be familiar with the F-16 including startup, takeoff, navigation, communications, systems management, fuel management, weapon employment, and landing. Air to air refueling is present but is not strictly necessary, however some missions may push the limits of range without use of tankers.
Wingmen are an important component of the campaign. Familiarity with the wingman menu is recommended. Plan your approach based on the mission briefing and use the mission planner to give your wingmen preplanned actions before getting into combat. Understanding the commands to have your flight orbit and engage missions will be helpful in completing objectives.
Missions are not instant action style and feature ingress and egress with total mission times up to 2-3 hours, with an average length closer to 1-2 hours. Briefings and the mission planner screen should provide relevant information and should be read before flying, again similar to past individual missions. Hard coding of objectives is avoided as much as possible and triggers are designed to be lenient to avoid situations where the mission breaks due to a particular action.
The map mode is set to Fog of War. DCS AWACS performance is limited in some ways so I have set the F10 map to make up for this. Use the F10 map to supplement AWACS calls. As mentioned above the campaign is air to air focused and the player is not tasked with air to ground missions, but the jump feature can be used to jump into ground attack F-16's (and other planes) if desired. Beware that currently your original plane will immediately abandon its mission if you jump into a new plane.
This is my first attempt at making a campaign and was also a learning experience as a result. While I have learned a lot, I was not able to apply everything learned to this campaign as I built it. Any feedback is welcome.

Campaign requirements:
F-16CM Blk 50 aircraft module
Persian Gulf map module
mods - none

 

Sample mission planner images:

 

Change log

11/2/2024

Scoring overhaul, it should no longer be possible to get stuck on some stages

10/24/2024

Second correction to mission scoring

10/13/2024

Corrected Mission 3B scoring and briefing, no other bugs found but occasional testing will continue

 

Known bugs

10/5/2024

Mission 3B awards 50 points maximum, can only end in a draw > points scheme to be updated, skip button can be used as workaround for now

Edited November 3, 2024 by Exorcet

[sirrah]

Hi @Exorcet,

 

I just flew mission #1. Here's some feedback:

1. AI (as commonly known) is unfortunately extremely dumb when it comes down to fuel usage. I strongly suggest you give them as much fuel as possible (in mission 1 you can easily give them all 3 external tanks). On my try; after the first engagement, I send all three of 'em to the tanker and all three ejected before reaching the tanker . Either give them more fuel, or limit their AB usage.
2. Please add a mission kneeboard. It's not that much work making a basic kneeboard with all freq's on it, yet a huge immersion improvement (especially for us VR users).
3. Did you enforce easy comms? I noticed I didn't have to tune to the correct comm channels. For those of us who want just that little extra realism (even though DCS ATC is abominal), you might want to consider leaving easy comms optional.
4. In the briefing text, it said there were two tankers. One in the east and one in the west. Is that indeed correct? I only managed to find the one in the east (admittedly, I haven't look that well)
5. Might be nice to add a small triggered message after the player has landed back at Al Dafra (something like "you may exit the mission now).

 

Anyways.. al the above is meant as positive feedback. Thank you for your contribution!

Always good to see more Viper content  

[Exorcet]

12 hours ago, sirrah said:

Hi @Exorcet,

 

I just flew mission #1. Here's some feedback:

1. AI (as commonly known) is unfortunately extremely dumb when it comes down to fuel usage. I strongly suggest you give them as much fuel as possible (in mission 1 you can easily give them all 3 external tanks). On my try; after the first engagement, I send all three of 'em to the tanker and all three ejected before reaching the tanker . Either give them more fuel, or limit their AB usage.
2. Please add a mission kneeboard. It's not that much work making a basic kneeboard with all freq's on it, yet a huge immersion improvement (especially for us VR users).
3. Did you enforce easy comms? I noticed I didn't have to tune to the correct comm channels. For those of us who want just that little extra realism (even though DCS ATC is abominal), you might want to consider leaving easy comms optional.
4. In the briefing text, it said there were two tankers. One in the east and one in the west. Is that indeed correct? I only managed to find the one in the east (admittedly, I haven't look that well)
5. Might be nice to add a small triggered message after the player has landed back at Al Dafra (something like "you may exit the mission now).

 

Anyways.. al the above is meant as positive feedback. Thank you for your contribution!

Always good to see more Viper content  

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad the campaign is being enjoyed.

I've run into the fuel issues while testing the campaign, and had to build in some workarounds for AI units in a few cases. While I was working on missions the update to set AI fuel unlimited was released, but it wasn't included because I try to avoid updating DCS when I have a work in progress. With the initial campaign version released I can revisit it and see if I can improve things with the new fuel triggers. You can also use the mission planner to change wingman load out. I kept their loadout consistent with the player because I thought it would look odd if they always had a full set of tanks, but I guess it also looks odd if they eject all the time.

On Kneeboards I agree they are helpful but I never got around to experimenting with them. Part of my problem was also that I wanted to do full kneeboard instead of a simple one like radio channels, that's probably more approachable. I'll look into it.

I don't have easy comms enforced, it should be left open so that the player can use whatever setting they want, unless it was accidentally turned on for a given mission. I myself have the easy comms universally disabled in the game options so it's always off for me.

In mission 1 both tankers are there, one only takes off if combat starts "an additional tanker will scramble to cover the west in the event of combat, Arco 1 TACAN 42Y"

I avoided overt mission complete messages because I purposely wanted the same uncertainty a pilot might face in real life with regard to mission success. At the same time I tried to make the hidden success criteria lenient so players aren't banging their heads against the wall repeatedly failing and not knowing why. There are messages alerting you to the status of your objective though, not always, but there is one in mission 1. Was it too ambiguous or did it get missed?

[The Stick]

My tuppence - if this is purely air to air you may consider using the F-15C or even releasing an alternate version.

For briefing notes and kneeboards, this may help: https://dcs-briefingroom.azurewebsites.net/

[Exorcet]

On 10/4/2024 at 12:14 AM, The Stick said:

My tuppence - if this is purely air to air you may consider using the F-15C or even releasing an alternate version.

For briefing notes and kneeboards, this may help: https://dcs-briefingroom.azurewebsites.net/

In a different timeline where DCS Eagle existed this would have been a F-15 campaign. While we do have the FC F-15, full fidelity is just more fun for me with greater systems management and more options. Little things like TACAN or setting markpoints and new waypoints add a lot.

If someone wants to make a F-15 version of the campaign I would be fine with that, though I don't plan to do it myself.

Thanks for the kneeboard link, I will have to look into it.

[Exorcet]

10/13/2024 - Update1 > Corrected scoring for mission 3B and improved briefing.