Devil 505 Posted Sunday at 01:46 PM Posted Sunday at 01:46 PM After making our Kiowa Coop campaign (need to finish the last mission. OH-58D MP/SP Campaign: Silent Thunder -- Mission 01: Prey [v1.01 - August 18, 2024]), we decided it was time to jump back into the Hornet and take the fight to Afghanistan. We have a tentative path to the campaign and the direction we are going with the content. As a group of guys whose primary hobby is DCS, we have always felt there is a lack of coop campaigns to play as a team. We decided to change that and make our own. Our talented developer has done everything from custom knee boards and a PDF briefing with images, to custom voice overs and triggers. We are trying to get the campaign as close to historically accurate for the 2010 time period in Afghanistan and what mission might have been. Each mission accommodates up to 3-4 players and is scaled based on how many players are actually playing. We wanted this to be a solo campaign if you have no friends to fly with, but it is intended for Coop. This first mission below was a night op. Reacclimating to using the ground radar and finding targets was a little challenging at first. It has been a while. We had to fly it twice to get it right. Kandy will have to correct me on this one, but I believe a second group was added to provide a target for the other players to locate. This really challenges you out the gate if you have not used the ground radar or GMT in a while. Night vision is equipped if you prefer to use it, but it is not so handy in this operation. SPOILER ALERT: If you have flown our Kiowa campaign and want the missions to be a surprise, do not watch the videos.
Mistermann Posted Sunday at 03:35 PM Posted Sunday at 03:35 PM 1 hour ago, Devil 505 said: Kandy will have to correct me on this one, but I believe a second group was added to provide a target for the other players to locate. Correct. Some initial testing indicated finding targets at night with the Ground Radar was extremely difficult. I reduced the scaling effect because of that feedback. That was a mistake on my part and is corrected in the latest mission. A few additional thoughts... Having flown this as the flight lead and wingman, I can say the difficulty of flying 2, 3, or 4 is/was exponentially more difficult than flying lead. If your flight lead doesn't communicate airspeed and course changes or is a little sloppy on the throttle management, it makes the wing workload intense given the already very high pilot workload of this mission (Ground Radar, TGP, Night flying, weapon management, etc.). If you're not accustomed to night flight or way out of practice, this mission can get difficult quickly. If you don't have a decent working knowledge of the Hornet's sensors and weapons deployment (JDAM, LGB, ATFLIR, Ground Radar), I'd highly recommend brushing up on those skills before tackling them all at once at night. Also, AAR at night was a PIO nightmare for me (thank you, Mongo for not including my high level of ineptitude in the video). I was lucky to get enough fuel to make it back with 2K lbs in the tank. Overall, I think this can be a fun little project. Already working on mission2. At this point, I won't commit to a number of missions. Unlike the Kiowa campaign this doesn't really have an "ending" per se, so we are much less constrained in how we "finish" this. Regarding the Kiowa campaign, I haven't flown the OH58 since ED released untested and unintended code that broke the Kiowa control mapping last year. That, coupled with Polychop's staff exodus simply turned me off on that airframe completely. Since then, I've had no desire to re-invest my limited hobby time to that aircraft and subsequent campaign. Just being completely honest with where I sit regarding that topic since Mongo brought it up above. BTW, Mongo believes he can convince me to wrap it up with one last mission. Lastly ... for anyone wondering. I am just one guy. These missions give me a lot of satisfaction when they come together with the type of polish I enjoy putting into them. I'll release this mission in the files section after a final MP playthrough, so I expect that to be next weekend. 1 System Specs: Spoiler Callsign:Kandy Processor:13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-13900K - RAM: 64GB - Video Card: NVIDIA RTX 4090 - Display: Pimax 8kx VR Headset - Accessories: VKB Gunfighter III MCG Ultimate, VKB STECS Standard, Thrustmaster TPR Pedals, Simshaker JetPad, Predator HOTAS Mounts, 3D Printed Flight Button Box Video Capture Software: Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), Video Editing Software: PowerDirector 365 Into The Jungle Apache Campaign - Griffins Kiowa Campaign - Assassins Thrustmaster TWCS Mod
Devil 505 Posted Sunday at 07:35 PM Author Posted Sunday at 07:35 PM 3 hours ago, Mistermann said: (thank you, Mongo for not including my high level of ineptitude in the video LMFAO!!!! I did get a sunrise shot of you looking like you were hooked up. I left the NODs off on purpose. LOL. 4 hours ago, Mistermann said: BTW, Mongo believes he can convince me to wrap it up with one last mission. Don't worry everyone, once I convince Kandy ride the old girl again, he will be hooked. Hopefully Polychop does not disappoint us again before then.
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