Where do I go after the tutorials.

[Siinji]

Just returned to A10 aftur a year or so. Never got past the tutorials.

 

So I´m back and went through the tutorials again. But where do I go from here? I have no idea how to suceed in any missions as I get shot down all the time, and have no situational awareness. I don't know who's talking to whom on communications, and how to deal with the threats that pop up in time. I mean, here I am trying to rescue this downed chopperpilot and there pops 10 ground contacts up, and I don't know whom to target first. While I figure out to get my TGP or Mav sensor on the target, I´ve already overflown it, and got shot down by some Mig or something.

 

So....total newbie. Where do I go from here? The tutorials deal with specific systems and how they work. I´ve watched a couple of them. But they don't give me any understanding of the battlefield and how to interpret the situations etc.

 

Should I join a squadron? Which one for a complete newbie for me? Is there a programmed approach somewhere for me?

 

Thanx! :thumbup:

[Siinji]

In short: It just feels like the waters get very deep right after the tutorials.

[Evil.Bonsai]

Mission editor. Make simple mission with a few targets, out in an open field. Place a waypoint on top of them. Use ALTHOLD and orbit 10-15miles away and use TGP to find the targets. Set up the mission using Mavs until you get them all. Then use LGBs, JDAMS, MK82s until you can at least find, and attack the targets with whatever weapon you have. Try stationary targets at first. Then put a column of trucks or armor on a road and try moving targets. Next, add a shilka or IR sam. Learn to take that out BEFORE getting closer. (use tgp, find column on road, target the SAM/AAA, kill with Mav, then go in with bombs).

 

Even the easier missions can be overwhelming if you still have trouble just finding and attacking targets. Go a step at a time, make things more complex as you learn. As an example, the pilot mission, you have to find the pilot, then find the vehicles approaching his location and take them out before they reach him.

[Crypstik]

Watch a few youtube vids on using weapons and tgp. I found youtube really helpful in getting to grips with a lot of aspects of the sim.

 

Also go through the tutorials over and over until basic operations are second nature.

 

Above all just keep practicing.

 

Good luck

[Yurgon]

I recommend the included "Georgian Hammer" campaign as soon as you feel up for the task. Possibly sooner. :)

 

I tried some of the single missions after I'd taken all the tutorials (most of them several times) and they were too complex for me at the time.

 

I also created a few simple missions with a focus on some aspects I specifically wanted to train.

 

When I started my first campaign playthrough, I don't think I was quite ready for it, but basically I knew how to fly, how to kill, and how to land. The rest is just practice. To my surprise, the campaign progressed pretty well, and it helped me to stay focused over the course of a dozen or so missions.

 

The campaign doesn't go into some of the systems, some skills are hardly ever required there, but I think it creates a very solid foundation in terms of having you perform some of the Hog Driver's most important tasks. In other words, it's a perfect opportunity to practice, practice, practice. :thumbup:

[Snoopy]

Join an MP organization or fly on one of the more structured public servers, you'll learn a lot more by flying with other people!

[Psyrixx]

http://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit

 

We run an event every Tuesday night called Tuesday Night Noob. It's geared towards teaching new pilots the ropes in a totally no-pressure-to-know *anything* environment.

 

You can also join the IRC Channel #hoggit on irc.freenode.net . We're friendly. =)

 

:pilotfly:

[ff4life4]

What I found to be extremely helpful was a full read through the manual. Pretty much everything you will ever need to know is contained there. I would sit at the ramp started, and as I read through the systems, I would then interact with them in the cockpit. It took a very long time to get through this, but for me I thought it was well worth it. Having such a deep understanding of all the systems helped me to learn how they work together. Believe it or not all of the systems make life easy when you know them in such detail.

 

This has worked for me personally. May or may not work for you.

[Skall]

It's tough and I'm in a similar spot as you. I can fly the plane and use and configure most of its systems at their base level. It's now more a matter of practice to refine technique and delving into the more obscure details. The manual does a fantastic job of detailing the systems, however...

 

The manual does a piss poor job on telling you HOW to conduct a mission.

 

I've been able to piece together a rough map in my head of how to carry out a mission based on asking questions, reading articles on both the game and real military operations (which don't necessarily include the A-10 but shed some light into modern day military planning), watching documentaries on youtube, checking out user-made missions that aim for realism, etc.

 

For example, it wasn't until I saw some real JTAC videos on youtube and asked questions here in the forums that I realized that my test/practice missions had horribly short distances from the airport, to the JTAC, to the target. That gave me a better sense of your average mission scale, distance-wise.

 

Checking out missions in the editor revealed waypoint terms such as INGRESS POINT, EGRESS POINT, FENCE IN, FENCE OUT, STATION, and other such jargon. The manual makes little to no mention of what these points mean and what you are supposed to do before reaching them, when you get there, and after you move on. After some digging around, I learned why those points exist and what they mean.

 

There's also very little explanation of CAS as a concept. I was practicing with missions that had a bit of everything and failing miserably. It wasn't until I did some legwork that I learned that a CAS platform like the A-10 will never get sent in unless your side has air superiority. That means a mission where an A-10 is to operate under a blanket of enemy fighters will never happen in reality. An A-10 will also never get sent into a mission if there are known long range SAMs. That's what SEAD/DEAD planes like the F-15E and F-16 are for. They take out the SAMs and heavy duty AAA defenses and then the A-10 comes in and takes out the tanks and supports the ground forces, etc. At best you are only fit to fight the smaller, less capable and less threatening SAMs with mavericks or high-altitude guided munitions. So don't go filling your missions with them because they are not supposed to be in there in the first place. If a real A-10 pilot gets sent into a SAM/AAA field, whoever is doing mission planning and/or intelligence is not doing their job.

 

In the same vein but related to locating targets, I used to struggle with finding targets without labels and I hated turning labels on as it A) made the game ugly, B) got in the way of HUD symbols when zoomed in and C) made locating targets a no-brainer. So the all important "how" question bothered me to no end until I learned that an A-10 will never, ever, EVER be sent to the front lines with some generic loadout and told to "blow stuff up". When an A-10 is sent out on a mission, before stepping into the cockpit the pilot already knows what he will be attacking, where his target is located, what he is going to attack it with, from want direction he will attack it, from what altitude his attack will begin, what determines whether the mission is a success or not, what conditions will cause him to abort the mission, from what direction he will leave the area and how long the whole thing is going to take to name a few of the details. Often times if any of these parameters turn out inaccurate or drastically change between the planning and execution phases, the pilot won't linger in the target area and "wing it". At the first sign of inconsistency the pilot will turn around and head home because who knows what else could have changed.

 

That's why you will see that 99% of all missions whether built in or user-made have a small element of surprise. It's because when you are on a sortie, you are supposed to know exactly what you are going to do and there's very little room for creativity or ad-hoc decision making. The only time the plan becomes a bit more fluid is when an unknown element makes its way into the picture. You can vary this up by changing weather conditions, adding elements of urgency so that speed, precision and accuracy are critical, etc. but at the end of the day you will NOT be flying around picking off targets as you see fit. And if you don't know the full details of the mission upon departure, someone at the front lines, like a FAC, AFAC, or JTAC, will give them to you.

 

My point is that you know the systems well enough and now its time to learn to plan an execute but this is information you will not find in the game. Much like the game, you will not learn this overnight. You will have to uncover this information one morsel at a time just like you did when learning to operate the plane. The only difference is that the source material is not provided to you. You will have to figure out where to find it.

[Siinji]

Thanx for some excellent advice everyone. Especially Skall for giving me a broad overview of air combat, that was just what I needed.

[ptako]

To get a picture of what A-10 were doing you should read two books:

- Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War

- A-10 over Kosovo

You'll find there a lot of information about how A-10 were used and how it all looks from pilot perspective. Definitely a good reading and a lot of information about mission types for A-10 and about tactics. It wasn't always as well defined and planned as Skall has described, but anyway he has a good point.

[Yurgon]

To get a picture of what A-10 were doing you should read two books:

- Warthog: Flying the A-10 in the Gulf War

- A-10 over Kosovo

 

Excellent advice! I just finished reading "A-10s over Kosovo" a short while ago and my only regret is that I didn't read it sooner. :)

 

Smallwood's Warthog book is just as excellent, can't go wrong with these. :thumbup:

 

I'll add "Fire Strike 7/9" for the JTAC perspective.

[roadrabbit]

Thank you Skall! A brilliant over-view for all of us new to missions and campaigns. This should be a 'sticky' for all noobies.

[Skall]

Glad some of you guys found my post to be of some help. Ptako is correct in that things are not always THAT well defined but even then, the pilot, especially if a beginner, is expected to follow very specific orders and parameters in execution.

 

I'm making my way through A-10s over Kosovo and one of the sortie stories has the flight lead, who is an AFAC, mark targets for the rest of his flight using White Phosphorus rockets and special Mk-82 air burst bombs designed for marking. The rest of the flight can only attack the marked target when he says so, with the weapons he specifies and only after he is reasonably sure that they are looking at the same thing. Later on when they encountered some light AAA (since any heavy AAA is not know to exist or has already been cleared by SEAD/DEAD flights), they call in a SEAD flight to take it out before continuing their attacks. And that's with both the AFAC and his wingman carrying two mavericks each.

 

You will note that many DCS A-10 missions provide a callable SEAD flight and a callable CAP flight in the event the A-10s encounter any unexpected AAA (usually in the form of a concealed vehicle or a hastily put together site) or enemy fighters (usually in the form of interceptors scrambling in response to the A-10's appearance). You are not expected to engage fighters or AAA. The AIM-9s are there strictly for self-defense or attacks of opportunity against a vulnerable or unaware helicopter or fighter.

 

That's not to say that A-10s might not be sent to fly low under enemy radar past several SAM/AAA sites for a precision strike deep into enemy territory. But at that point, the plan is to avoid AAA and SAMs, not to engage them. And quite frankly, from my understanding, a mission like this is what strike helicopters like the Black Shark and the Apache are for. Attack planes and attack helicopters both excel at taking out armor and doing precision strikes while flying below radar detection if necessary. The plane has the advantage in response time, durability and total payload so its more prominent in the front lines were it can take and dish out punishment. Helicopters can fly even lower to avoid detection better than their fixed-wing brethren and are usually the ones doing the sneaky flanking attacks or surprise attacks. Their primary defense against anything is that the enemy is not expecting them in the first place.

 

Going back to the story, the only person with some elbow room to dictate plans was the AFAC. And while he actually had some freedom to operate at his discretion, his objective was still very clear: the enemy is hiding armor in civilian buildings as well as in trenches at the edges of town and the nearby mountains. Find and destroy the hidden vehicles. The AFAC found his targets by following the roads that the armor might use to travel to and from their hiding locations and then attacked. He wasn't flying 3000 feet above the ground trying to spot them with his eyes while putting himself at risk of being shot at by a MANPAD. Nor did he fly 20,000 feet high and spent the next 5 hours slewing his TGP through every inch of hundreds of square miles. His targets' locations were unknown but he had the means and a method to locate them.

 

Sorry if I'm getting long-winded but these are the kinds of things I wish someone would have spelled out for me after my first few months of learning the systems. Nowadays, even when I use the random mission generator, I bring the generated mission into the editor and add the things that would most likely be there if it were a "real" mission: SEAD and CAP support flights, tankers and AWACS, one or more FAC/AFAC, IPs, maybe a small flight of interceptors or helicopters simulating the opponent's response to my attacks, etc. I don't always add everything and will mix and match based on the flavor I want to give the mission but they always need some touching up to make them more fit for the realistic portrayal of the aircraft we fly.

 

I remember one mission I generated with mostly ground units on both sides ended up with a lot of tanks for my side and a lot of rocket artillery for the enemy side. So what did I do? I added Perform Task - FAC Group for the JTAC on all the artillery so that my mission was basically to take out all of the artillery threatening our ground vehicles. That was only a slight touch up and the mission now had direction and a purpose. For another generated mission, the armor on both sides was scattered across some really steep hills and valleys with a few SAMs on the enemy side. I made some slight adjustments to the enemy placing so that I could fly the mission by using the hills for cover from the SAMs. I set up a waypoint behind the hills were I would station myself and plan my next attack. I also realized that if I followed one of the rivers running through that area of the map, I could locate a good chunk of the enemy armor. This became my guide for locating targets. I probably spent more time doing pre-mission planning than actually flying and that was after I had done all the touching up in the mission editor. Though I must admit I really enjoy the planning aspect of a mission almost as much as flying it. I hate going in willy-nilly and not really having a game plan. And the fact of the matter is, for every hour an A-10 pilot is in the air, there have probably been a group of people discussing his/her objective for several hours more.

 

Bah! Rambled on for much longer than I expected. I need to hop into my Mustang and hopefully reach some level of basic proficiency prior to DCS WWII :joystick:

[JayPee]

Join an MP organization or fly on one of the more structured public servers

Do you have any examples? No offense meant, but most of 'em including yours did not accept new members at the time I was looking for a community.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/hoggit

 

We run an event every Tuesday night called Tuesday Night Noob. It's geared towards teaching new pilots the ropes in a totally no-pressure-to-know *anything* environment.

 

You can also join the IRC Channel #hoggit on irc.freenode.net . We're friendly. =)

 

:pilotfly:

Thanks!