Campaign for DCS OH-58D: "Through the desert dust"

[YoYo]

46 minutes ago, Vital061270 said:

Today I'll figure out the editor and fly a mission of my choice. Probably mission number 11. I liked it

It's better to be in career mode, though, because some elements are introduced gradually, although of course, it's your choice :).

[Vital061270]

I'll do the career separately. I'll show the mission as an example. A short instruction.  

And thank you for your hard work.

[Vital061270]

https://rutube.ru/video/e2f0421f7ec8a9aadff12f9518dd0df4/?r=a

Mission 11 Test flight

I don't see the 1-Courier mission in the editor. Is it on a different map?

[Vital061270]

To make the infantry patrol the area, but not run, I set the movement speed to 5 km/h. Then the infantry walks normally, as a patrol should.

[Vital061270]

https://rutube.ru/video/867c6c08e19b441f11ca9bf870576a9f/?r=a

[YoYo]

2 hours ago, Vital061270 said:

https://rutube.ru/video/867c6c08e19b441f11ca9bf870576a9f/?r=a

Nice work!

[TokenJester]

On 7/13/2025 at 7:47 AM, YoYo said:

Wow! Cool stuff, thanks!(Will there be a little more?)

This is your wingman, characters essential to the plot cannot die. Unfortunately, the AI can pull off surprises, although I've never experienced one or another AI crashing during this campaign. Bad luck.

Yeah, I know we had to keep him alive, one rocket run to disturb the DShK and Kord was all I asked of him.. having used our Hellfires (I would have hit the AA and one of the technicals first but the comms said hit the HMMW , so I did in case it failed the mission). And yeah we watched back on Tacview, we drew all the fire from both so he could run in and he wasn't hit .. he just stuffed it in to the ground...... and the less said about the end of Mission 5 on the return flight.. the better

[YoYo]

25 minutes ago, TokenJester said:

Yeah, I know we had to keep him alive, one rocket run to disturb the DShK and Kord was all I asked of him.. having used our Hellfires (I would have hit the AA and one of the technicals first but the comms said hit the HMMW , so I did in case it failed the mission). And yeah we watched back on Tacview, we drew all the fire from both so he could run in and he wasn't hit .. he just stuffed it in to the ground...... and the less said about the end of Mission 5 on the return flight.. the better

In other situations, the AI acts as a separate group, then the behavior is much better than the direct wingman (btw. it would be useful if ED improved the behavior of flight/wingman someday, because it is still the Achilles heel of DCS).

[wowbagger]

Thanks for making this! I loved your Mi-24 campaign and I'm excited to see what you've done with the Kiowa. 

I've only done the 2nd mission (the 1st mission in Afghanistan), but a suggestion I have is that some of the trigger zones might benefit from being a bit bigger.

Spoiler

I did the mission twice and both times I got no more audio after WP2 and Ted ends up just ferrying between wps 9 & 10 I think. After I enlarged some of the trigger zones, things proceeded as they should. 

The problem is that the AI can bank and accelerate in ways that the player cannot. And in this mission the player has no waypoints so it's impossible to see if we have over flown the correct spot - since the f10  and kneeboard maps are completely blank (all the other units are hidden as well). So the bigger trigger zones would prevent the mission from getting hung up and not progressing.

Thanks again for making these missions and offering them to the community. 

[Vital061270]

https://rutube.ru/video/60287d9e65491b16450ddd70c43bcbe8/?r=wd

[urraca]

Hey YOYO, as I said in the campaign´s thread, YOU are selling OH58 modules and AFG Terrains with this free campaign.

I really hope that POLYCHOP & ED are taking notes on this, and seeking to reward you in any way.

From my side, just to ask you how can I donate you, for one of the best user made / payware campaign I ever played.

Best and thx again

[YoYo]

1 hour ago, urraca said:

Hey YOYO, as I said in the campaign´s thread, YOU are selling OH58 modules and AFG Terrains with this free campaign.

I really hope that POLYCHOP & ED are taking notes on this, and seeking to reward you in any way.

From my side, just to ask you how can I donate you, for one of the best user made / payware campaign I ever played.

Best and thx again

Wow, thank you for the very kind words   . Check the manual please (1th page), you can find it at DCS World\Mods\campaigns\OH-58D - Through the desert dust\Doc folder.

Edited July 21 by YoYo

[Vital061270]

Targeting artillery using a coordinate mark on the F10 map 

 

https://rutube.ru/video/ac7f6583ddd0ad6b247172e9b6f56e2c/?r=a

 

 

[Yurgon]

Wow, this campaign is fantastic! I'm on mission 3 now and I love the atmosphere it delivers. Absolutely top notch, well told, super well laid out, great job YoYo!

I do agree with some of the earlier commentators on a few things:

On 7/5/2025 at 4:19 PM, swartbyron said:

I also feel it’s not realistic to have to kill every soldier and destroy every vehicle in a group for the mission to process when the primary goal is only for a convoy to survive or make it to its destination for example.

In mission 3, I had the same:

Spoiler

By the end, I was Winchester, Bingo fuel, badly shot up, but the friendlies were egressing nicely with all 3 groups of attacking bad guys down, and the final (?) group of attacking vehicles was down one vehicle, had another damaged and all of them had stopped and were no longer pursuing the good guys. By all accounts, that should be mission accomplished.

It might make sense to assign 50 points right from the get-go, so that a failure to meet all mission objectives never sets the player back one mission. As in, failing to save some soldiers in mission 3 shouldn't set the campaign back to mission 2.

So far, these are just some very minor points though. Really enjoying the campaign and can't wait to get back to it tomorrow.

[YoYo]

6 hours ago, Yurgon said:

Wow, this campaign is fantastic! I'm on mission 3 now and I love the atmosphere it delivers. Absolutely top notch, well told, super well laid out, great job YoYo!

I do agree with some of the earlier commentators on a few things....

I'm so glad you like it!  It'll be even more interesting and engaging later, you'll see :). As for mission 3, it's quite specific and quite difficult, I agree. I've already answered that question, including some advice:

The current solution, and each one here, has its pros and cons. Maybe in the future I'll plan something along the lines of BD and Reflected, the only downside being that you can skip certain dialogues and situations, and the player won't learn everything.

[shagrat]

Am 22.7.2025 um 10:08 schrieb YoYo:

I'm so glad you like it!  It'll be even more interesting and engaging later, you'll see :). As for mission 3, it's quite specific and quite difficult, I agree. I've already answered that question, including some advice:

The current solution, and each one here, has its pros and cons. Maybe in the future I'll plan something along the lines of BD and Reflected, the only downside being that you can skip certain dialogues and situations, and the player won't learn everything.

Didn't read all ideas, yet, but easiest solution, would be to monitor the convoy actually reaching a zone ( with a number of X vehicles / health percentage) and thus indicating, it has successfully made it through the ambush.

Thus the goal is still achievable and you need to ensure the convoy is really "safe"!

[Yurgon]

A bit of a problem with Mission 7 - Steel Rain:

Enroute to a midflight tasking, it says "Mission failed. Your wingman died. Retry the mission"

Looks like my wingman didn't die. He just never took off, shut down his engine right after I had taken off, and pretty exactly 30 minutes later was despawned, which seems to count as "killed". Until that point, I didn't even realize that he wasn't somewhere on my tail, because his voice overs played without a hitch.

As a general rule, failing a mission for a wingman getting killed can be pretty annoying, DCS wingmen being what they are, unless their aircraft are crucial for triggers (didn't seem to be the case here, at least not yet).

Also, please for the love of whatever is holy to you, do NOT end missions for players. I can find the "Quit" button just fine on my own. 

At this stage, I don't want to fly the exact same mission again, so I'm going to skip it, but maybe I could have seen what was in store at the next tasking if the rug hadn't been pulled from under my feet.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the campaign, which just makes it more annoying to fail a mission for no fault of my own, and not getting to see where it would have led. 

[YoYo]

5 hours ago, Yurgon said:

A bit of a problem with Mission 7 - Steel Rain:

Enroute to a midflight tasking, it says "Mission failed. Your wingman died. Retry the mission"

Looks like my wingman didn't die. He just never took off, shut down his engine right after I had taken off, and pretty exactly 30 minutes later was despawned, which seems to count as "killed". Until that point, I didn't even realize that he wasn't somewhere on my tail, because his voice overs played without a hitch.

As a general rule, failing a mission for a wingman getting killed can be pretty annoying, DCS wingmen being what they are, unless their aircraft are crucial for triggers (didn't seem to be the case here, at least not yet).

Also, please for the love of whatever is holy to you, do NOT end missions for players. I can find the "Quit" button just fine on my own. 

At this stage, I don't want to fly the exact same mission again, so I'm going to skip it, but maybe I could have seen what was in store at the next tasking if the rug hadn't been pulled from under my feet.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the campaign, which just makes it more annoying to fail a mission for no fault of my own, and not getting to see where it would have led. 

AI behavior is a different story. 99% of the time, everything is fine, but you can hit that 1% where something goes wrong. In this case, it's hard to pinpoint the AI's problem. From what I understand, the AI is implemented so that if you don't move or you're on the ground too long, it automatically shuts down the engines after a while, but some time must pass. A typical start (checklist) with dialogues lasts about 5 minutes, and during that time, the AI doesn't shut down the engine (unless there's a collision in the DCS itself, which sometimes happens). As for the automatic end, it's fine, I'll keep that in mind for the future. However, as you noted, the SKIP option is active, so you can immediately replay the mission (especially since it's the very beginning, I think, so it probably took no more than 10 minutes) or move on to the next one. 

[Yurgon]

Yeah, DCS AI certainly has its issues, and understanding what it does, and why, is certainly not self-explanatory. I feel for all mission designers who put so much time and effort in their missions only to find that the AI does something it shouldn't (and never did in testing) and then breaks the mission.

6 hours ago, YoYo said:

especially since it's the very beginning, I think, so it probably took no more than 10 minutes

I think I had spent some 30 to 40 minutes in the mission already. The briefed task was complete and I was rerouted to another one, which I was looking forward to because it sounded interesting. When the mission failed, I had passed roughly half the distance to the next tasking. So roughly 5 minutes startup, 20+ minutes in total in transit and around 10 minutes for directing the first tasking. Maybe I'll replay it and check that my wingman takes off, then hit AI Cruise and fast forward.