Set up practice missions

[MitchPS]

Can you give me instructions on how to set up some simple missions where I can practice air to air scenarios on easy targets? I need to gain confidence in the A/A procedures. 

[aaronwhite]

Spudknocker has some general videos on using the Mission Editor which are a good starting point for learning it (The ME has received some updates, so some things in the video may have changed). Honestly, you can get pretty far with just playing around in the mission editor. As far as the basic stuff like placing units and configuring them, that's all pretty self explanatory once you find the things in the menu. If you want an easy route, SEDLO who creates a lot of great missions for DCS has a Basic Fighter Maneuver mission that I haven't personally tried before, but if it's anything like his other missions, will be a great resource that he's created where you can spawn in and choose some options to practice your A2A. 

One thing I'll do that's pretty easy is just create some basic targets for air and ground targets, and then give yourself waypoints that are pretty much right on top of those locations. To make it really easy, you can configure your plane as an air start, create the first waypoint as your air-to-ground targets and then your second waypoint as your air-to-air targets. The easiest method is just to place a bunch of unarmed vehicles that you don't have to worry about shooting you down and then if you want to make it easier to spot from a distance, you can put a smoke marker on the location. For the air-to-air I will usually start with a bigger target, like a C-130 or some other big aircraft and I will just give it a bunch of waypoints to have it fly around a designated area. Alternatively, you can also play with using the "loiter" waypoint setting to give the plane a set amount of time to fly over the designated waypoint. 

From there, you can start to get more advanced if you want. Here's what I do to create myself some fun little missions when I'm wanting to learn new modules. 

To start, I'll create a variety of mission types. What I mean is, I'll create something like "CAS-F4-Hot Start" which is where I'll take the F-4, plop it on the map at a parking space and then set it to "Client" which essentially means the unit won't spawn unless it's selected by the player. This way, you can essentially create a variety of pre-configured loadouts and hot or cold starts. That way if you want to just load up the mission and take off without fussing around with the startup, you can select Hot Start. But if you want to get the startup process down, you can select Cold Start and then make sure you learn the proper startup procedure, as it can be really useful for multiplayer where a lot of servers need you to start your plane up.

But then, as the CAS prefix indicates, I'll create the loadouts with a bunch of different mission types. I'll create some SEAD missions, where I put waypoints in the area of known SAM threats, CAS missions with waypoints that are near enemy troop concentrations or points of interest. I like to challenge myself and make it challenging and semi-realistic, so I might put a waypoint for my AH-64 waypoints on a bridge in a town. This would get me a waypoint that I can select and then I'll at least have a rough area to look for enemies at. For my missions I'll usually do hot/cold starts each for the planes I want to fly or learn, so I can just load up my mission and say "I think I feel like doing some SEAD in the F-16 today" and just select the hot start SEAD mission and take off to try and knock out some SAM threats. Then I'll have a clear path for selecting the CAS or Strike missions to come in after and try to light up some ground targets without worrying about the SAM threat. 

As far as enemy targets go, you can play around with the different waypoint types to make a lot of things happen, and Youtube is really your friend in figuring some things out. Once you get comfortable with the basic mission editor, you can start playing with things like triggers and even diving into things like MOOSE DCS scripting tools that can let you make your missions even more complex and alive. But at a basic level, what I do is configure things to make a semi-realistic battlefield where I have lots of potential targets for any of my flights. I might start on the Caucasus map and have a group of tanks and APCs drive from the north down south to a town like Gori. Then in support of those tanks I'll have some artillery setup to fire at certain areas around the city hitting the friendly units I have setup at the edge of the city to help create a little action as the ground units start to engage each other. Naturally, all of these units need air cover, so I'll add some smaller air defense units like MANPADS, Shilkas and Tunguskas that can provide some better protection to the ground targets. I like to scatter smaller anti-air units in and around my ground units so that I can't just easily sit and fly around at 300ft picking targets off. I've either got to fly above their reach with the jets, hide behind hills and pop up from behind cover in the AH-64, or come in with the SEAD flights in the F/A-18 or F-16 to engage and pick them off to clear a path. 

All of this to say, start simple. Place some units and get used to the mission editor. It's pretty intuitive, but then also has some pretty incredible depth for making missions. Things don't always work as intended, and patches can sometimes break things, but for the most part, it's a ton of fun and can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. I've been playing since the Flanker 2.5 days, and I've only done a handful of multiplayer missions, and never really done much of any campaign outside of some of the really great SEDLO campaigns and missions (Another thing you can do if you want to learn more about how the mission editor works is to open other people's missions and see how they configured stuff). Usually, I was only able to sit down for an hour or so to play, so doing full missions or multiplayer sorties was kind of tough to swing. My own created missions have been a source of fun for over a decade now. 

Edited February 7 by aaronwhite