Capturing Maykop Public Release

[Grimes]

I have decided to publicly release the latest iteration of "Capturing Maykop" for usage on any and all public servers.

 

What is Capturing Maykop?

Capturing Maykop is a dynamic team vs team objective based mission. The goal of the mission is to secure and hold Maykop Airbase. The mission has nearly 1000 triggers that govern all aspects of the mission.

 

How do you capture the airbase?

To capture the airbase is a relatively simple task, it is by no means easy. A team must enter a 35 km radius around the base and prevent all enemies from entering this area. Once you control the airspace a convoy will move in an make Maykop available as a FARP for your team. Transports with additional reinforcements will airdrop air defenses to the base. These defenses start off small and gradually become more advanced.

 

Exactly, how does it work?

It functions like a King of the Hill scenario commonly found in other games. The first team to enter the airspace starts to capture it. The more friendlies in the airspace the faster it captures. It takes anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes to capture the airspace. If you leave the airspace after you start capturing it, the capture percentage will decrease until it reaches 0%. You may re-enter it at any point as long as your team is capturing it and its above 0%. It moves up or down in 5% increments.

 

The enemy team can block the progress by entering the airspace. If the enemy enter a empty airspace that is decreasing, the rate of decrease will double. Once it is drained to 0% it will take about 30 seconds before either team can start capturing again.

 

Once a team captures the airspace the focus is on protecting ground assets near Maykop. If all ground forces are destroyed in the vicinity of the base, the mission "resets" to a previous state where both teams are trying to re-secure the airspace.

 

To be considered "In the airspace" you must be.

Within 35km of Maykop

At an altitude of 1000m Above Sea Level

Flying a fighter aircraft. (Ka-50, Su-25A/T, A-10 have to effect on airbase capture)

 

Terms of Use

 

1. DO NOT make any modifications to the trigger system unless otherwise approved by the mission creator. With the sheer amount and complexity of the trigger system it is very very easy to break.

 

2. The mission briefing must stay intact except for exemptions listed below.

 

3. AI and client unit composition, location, skill level, callsign, tailnumber, and waypoints are not to be modified. Client payloads, skin, and Ka-50 ABRIS data can be modified.

What edits can be made?

 

1. Time, Date, Season, and weather can all be adjusted to your choosing

 

2. Forced Server Settings

 

3. Minor briefing edits to the "general" briefing page. You may add specific server info where stated in the mission editor. Do NOT delete or change the format of mission creation details, Special Thanks, and Version number information.

 

4. Any Triggers specific to server. (The last trigger in the list where it chooses which mission to load)

 

What about custom versions or bugs?

 

Please feel free to contact me with any ideas you may have to improve the mission. I will be more than willing to listen to all ideas. Also keep in mind any change will be available for all, I will not make "server exclusive" versions of the mission.

 

The mission should be quite bug free, but like all things created by non-sentient beings there could be a bugs or typos. Please do not try to fix them yourself. Contact me, tell me what the problem is, and I will attempt to fix it.

 

==================

Download

Version Number 3.0.0.7

Edited June 27, 2010 by Grimes

[Grimes]

Mission Change Log Post

 

"Unfixable" bug that would require WAY to much work to accurately fix

-If 2 or more players from the same team enter the airspace at roughly the exact same time, it might not always "count" each player. Simply exit and re-enter the airspace to be counted properly. You may do this by either flying below the airspace or by exiting the 35km radius around the base.

 

To fix I'd need to add a ton of logic.

 

Planned Additions/Changes

VNAO Compatible Version

Version 3.0.0.7

Added Triggers to rotate mission if team holds base for 7 hours.

 

Known bugs

Currently None

Edited September 2, 2010 by Grimes

[Speed]

The mission should be quite bug free, but like all things created by non-sentient beings there could be a bugs or typos. Please do not try to fix them yourself. Contact me, tell me what the problem is, and I will attempt to fix it.

 

You're a non-sentient being?! (ya might want to look that word up in the dictionary, buddy :). I think the word you were looking for was omniscient)

 

On a more constructive note, this mission does look interesting, we might have to try it on our server. As far as your "unfixable" bug, you might be able to fix it by running a binary counter to count and double check the number of people in zone constantly. That way, you could catch the error. If you want, I can send you a PM on how to set up and use a binary counter. That assumes you have enough flags left over to make one, however.

[Grimes]

That sorta proves my point that nobody is perfect :D

 

As far as I can tell the problem is more along the lines of how its executed. Basically whenever any aircraft enters the airspace it acts as a "add 1" command. The problem is all aircraft on a side end up using the same code to add or subtract an aircraft from the zone. For the sake of explanation lets say when Flag 1 is true it adds 1 to the counter. The triggers look something like this....

 

BlueAircraft 1 is in the airspace > Set Flag 1

BlueAircraft 2 is in the airspace > Set Flag 1

 

Flag 1 is true > Set Flag 2, Clear Flag 1

 

My only guess is that it doesn't work perfectly is because it can't execute the same code twice at the same time. I've had ideas on how to improve it/change it. Case brought up an idea a while back that basically creates a task queue so that new messages don't step over a current message on screen. Such a system could possibly be adapted to this.

 

But yeah, there are plenty of flags left. I've only used maybe 500 or so of the 1,000,000 available. The binary counter could be useful for future projects, but in terms of counting up and down the system I have now works just fine.

[Case]

Grimes' Capturing Maykop mission was put in rotation on the 51st server earlier today. A nice crowd joined and within 25 minutes or so blue forces captured the airspace.

 

Events in this server are recorded on the 51st stats page. You can see the results of the battle here.

 

 

Great work Grimes! Thanks for sharing this mission!

[HiJack]

WTF! A-10's and Ka-50's in this mission also??? Isn't this a fighter mission? Must check this out then ;)

 

(HJ)

[Boberro]

Case what color do you use as blue on picture above?

[Case]

Here's my UI section. It was in hexadecimal when I created it, but it got changed into decimal.

ui = {
local_player_color = 0xE8C500,
other_player_color = 0xFFFFFF,
log_msg_color = 0xFF9000,
side_none_color = 0xFFFFFF,
side_red_color = 0xFF0000,
side_blue_color = 0x00FFFF,
}

So basically change side_blue_color from 0x0000FF (blue) to 0x00FFFF (blue+green=turquoise).

 

For changing the colors, see here.

For getting color codes, see here.

[Grimes]

WTF! A-10's and Ka-50's in this mission also??? Isn't this a fighter mission? Must check this out then ;)

 

(HJ)

 

 

While the mission is geared more toward giving fighters an objective to complete there are plenty of air to ground targets. It actually has a pretty different system than that found in other missions. For either team if the airbase gets captured they send in reinforcements. It starts off light at first but eventually grows to a pretty formidable defense. Within the mission itself there are 4 targets for each side. Blue has to destroy 4 target locations. a Camp, a ammunition depot, a forward base, and an oil field. For Red there are 3 blue convoys to destroy and a blue farp.

 

The status of the airbase and all air2ground objectives are repeated via messages every 5 minutes. For blue it states how much of the target area is remaining. Usually a message formatted like: "Target area x is at "fully/mostly intact, half, or mostly destroyed" will be displayed. Its based on group deaths, so if you kill all but 1 unit from each group it will still display as "completely intact."

 

For red things are abit more fun :D The 3 convoys all have a preset route, what makes it fun is the messages keep tabs on where they are. So as they move along their route the information pointing you to their location will change. The messages are in the format, "Convoy 1 is traveling NorthWest up the coast. They are approximately bearing 034 from waypoint 5 for 13-34 km"

 

 

Glad to see the 51st running the mission with stats.

Edited September 1, 2010 by Grimes

[Sov13t]

Great mission, had a blast!

 

Capturing Maykop was a rush, since both sides tried to get there as fast as possible. Definitely like the objective updates, about the only negative I can think of is the loud Radio Sound effect that lasts 5-8 seconds when one of the updates comes on, interrupts voice comms.

[Grimes]

feel free to change it. I was looking through a bunch of old game sound effect libraries hoping for an "incoming transmission" sort of message. I could have swore Starfox had one but I couldn't find it.

[Frostie]

Fantastic job Grimes, I had a brief flight on this mission earlier and im really looking forward to exploring this mission a lot more in the very near future. The amount of work you've poured into this must be phenomenal.

Thanks for letting us host this masterpiece.:thumbup:

[HiJack]

I'we tried to take out ground targets at WP8 but don't get a "completly destroyed" message. There are no units left on the field where the farp is but still no "destroyed" message. Whats the success factor at WP8? Is the "static buildings" part of the destroyed check?

 

(HJ)

[Grimes]

I'we tried to take out ground targets at WP8 but don't get a "completly destroyed" message. There are no units left on the field where the farp is but still no "destroyed" message. Whats the success factor at WP8? Is the "static buildings" part of the destroyed check?

 

 

Yes. For blue, static objects make up a fair amount of targets found at each area.To few missions actually have static objects part of the objective, and I feel its an important aspect of the game that is seldom used. Besides, I really really like bombing the crap out of static objects.

 

For WP6 the two ammunition depots must be taken out. WP7 some warehouses. WP8 is the FARP/Oil Field, you must destroy the oil tanks and oil rigs. Naturally you gotta take out the units guarding em also.

[HiJack]

Thats nice to use static objects but it is not the standard so that information is maby nessesary to give in object information. But I like that it's used :). I tried to bomb the FARP but it did not "die", anyone who knows where to hit it?

 

(HJ)

[Grimes]

Not sure its actually possible to destroy a farp. I've yet to see it be accomplished.

 

Intel for each teams target area is in the briefing. Although its kinda buried.

 

For Blue

==============
Ground Targets INTEL
==============
Use Status Messages to plan where to attack.

Target Group 1: Enemy Camp. Expect AAA and IR threats.

Target Group 2: Enemy FARP
Destroy the Ammunition Depots and Artillery
Threats: AAA

Target Group 3: Enemy Supply Base
Destroy the Warehouses and Ground Forces 
Threats: AAA, IR, and Short Range Radar

Target Group 4: Enemy Oil Field
Destroy the Storage Tanks and Oil Derricks 
Threats: AAA, IR, and Short Range Radar

For Red

==============
Ground Targets INTEL
==============
Use Status Messages to find and destroy the convoys.

Target Group 1: Small Attack Convoy. Expect AAA and IR Threats

Target Group 2: Main Battle Tanks and Artillary.  Expect AAA and IR Threats

Target Group 3: Main Battle Tanks and Supply Convoy.  Expect AAA and IR Threats

Target Group 4: Enemy FARP. Expect AAA and IR Threats.

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

This morning I installed Capturing Maykop on our dedicated server. Thanks to Grime and everybody else involved in building and testing such a complex mission.

[HiJack]

OK I have not done the "Oil Derricks" at WP8 so that’s my problem. But who will keep on dropping weapons on targets that don't give any score when playing on a server that is all about stats :D

 

But the Capturing Maykop mission don't give much for A2G pounders anyway as they don't count on the capturing part winning the game :( So I started to "study" the documentation on F-15's weapons :D I was going to do that anyway so I guess this will be as good time as any but then my primary computer screen passed away today - RIP :( Will be flying in 1280x1024 this weekend on a spare 19” and it’s a long time since I’ve done that.

 

(HJ)

[RIPTIDE]

OK I have not done the "Oil Derricks" at WP8 so that’s my problem. But who will keep on dropping weapons on targets that don't give any score when playing on a server that is all about stats :D

 

But the Capturing Maykop mission don't give much for A2G pounders anyway as they don't count on the capturing part winning the game :( So I started to "study" the documentation on F-15's weapons :D I was going to do that anyway so I guess this will be as good time as any but then my primary computer screen passed away today - RIP :( Will be flying in 1280x1024 this weekend on a spare 19” and it’s a long time since I’ve done that.

 

(HJ)

What happened your screen? I just repaired my 24" by replacing 8 defective caps on the voltage inverter. I suggest you look into doing the same.

Edited September 10, 2010 by RIPTIDE

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

Somehow, Capturing Maykop is consistently crashing our server. It only happens during reloading the mission. In other words, the mission works perfectly fine until the time to restart it or replace it with other missions. And restart happens very often, e.g. every time the last player leaves the server.

 

We spent a lots of hours troubleshooting this problem, but could not come up with a good solution.

 

Unfortunately I had to remove the mission from our server so as to have our server operational.

[Grimes]

Server stability is quite lacking within FC2. Loading and reloading a new mission several times is practically a guarantee the server will crash. This seems to be true for most missions. One night I tested the server by loading a new mission every few minutes, the most mission loads I got to without a crash was 5. I'm sure the mission itself has some effect on things, likely additional AI and server uptime are to be contributing factors.

 

Within the 3Sqn server we rotate a mission purely by time or self triggered rotation. A mission does not reset itself once everyone leaves. I don't think pausing/unpausing would have a negative effect on mission load. I would recommend turning off the "if server empty reset" in servman. Anything to minimize server loading screens is highly recommended.

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

I know. We all really enjoyed the mission. But could not make it work. Sorry.