Frontline; Kareli

"Frontline; Kareli" is a Team vs Team mission for 2 to 46 players (Altough I'd recommend keeping it at 6 to 20 players)

Modules & Aircraft: CA, A-10C, Su-25T, Ka-50, Su-25, F-15C, Su-27, MiG-29S

Download link: http://files.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/232509/

---------Changelog---------

1.11

Added ammo-trucks for resupplying ground forces.

1.10

Added 4 Su-25a, 2 Mig-29S, 2 Su-27, 2 F-15C slots to each side.

Replaced the fighter support option with AWACS support.

Reduced the size of the "dome of death" surrounding each teams airbase.

Su-25T has access to ELINT pod and Kh-25MP again.

1.01

Added ATIS to Kutaisi and Vaziani (check in-game briefing for frequency),

Fixed reinforcing Artillery not spawning (They still refuse to move though).

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---------Briefing---------

The first team to control the five towns of Nebodziri, Khashuri, Kareli, Gori and Kaspi is victorious.

To capture a town first eliminate any enemy forces within the town and then be the only team with ground forces in the area for three minutes.

The towns have to be captured in order, west to east for the blue team and east to west for the red team.

Nebodziri and Khashuri are initially under blue control. Gori and Kaspi is under red control.

Kareli is neutral at mission start.

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Reinforcements will keep on coming at a steady interval, but they aren't unlimited so don't waste your units carelessly.

Each side will also be awarded with Support points in the form of a UAZ or HMMWV, They will be located north of each teams airfield and can be used to select one of three extra support options.

- AWACS support, Calls in one awacs, will orbit until out of fuel or shot down.

- Ground support, Additional Tanks, IFVs, AAA and Artillery.

- AA Support, Additional anti-air units.

As a ground commander, to call in support simply order your support vehicle to drive to one of the groups of static vehicles that represent the support option you would like to choose.

You do not have to choose a support immediately, You can save your support vehicle for later and multiple support vehicles can be available at the same time.

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Supporting each teams ground commander will be the job of the four A-10Cs, Su-25Ts and Ka-50s.

Obliterate the opposite teams ground units to allow your own teams ground units to advance and capture the mission objectives.

Protecting each sides ground pounders and ground units from enemy aircraft will be the job of the two MiG-29Ss, Su-27s and F-15Cs.

Due to budget cuts, all cluster weapons, many medium and long range missiles, some pods and some precision guided bombs are not available.

Remember to bring Air-to-Air weaponry and don't load your aircraft too heavily, Dogfights are to be expected.

Take a long hard look at the images in the briefing and memorize them, Both teams fly all seven aircraft, Failing to recognize the camo could result in killing a friendly or being killed by a hostile aircraft you thought was friendly.

Don't get too close to the enemy teams airbase, Failing to comply with this simple order will result in your death.

---------end of briefing---------

The concept is simple, the mission itself is experimental.

5 mission critical towns are located between the two teams airbases, A town can only be captured if your side holds the town west or east of it (depending on which team). The side that manages to capture all five towns is victorious.

The mission relies heavily on Combined Arms and both teams will need to have a Ground commander to manage the ground forces, Victory is impossible without one.

Altough this is my first proper mission I've created, I've taken the opportunity to test some things out I've personally not yet seen in a DCS mission. The first one being the Support function, which should result in more varied games and adaptability.

And the second one and probably more controversial, the limitation of many of the ordnances, This I felt had to be done for several reasons.

Primarily its an attempt to improve the mission performance, Even one CBU can cause lag on a server full of people and I've seen people who thinks that loading their entire plane full of cluster bombs/dispensers and dropping them all at once is a fun and novel idea. This usually results in freezes and at least a couple of people being disconnected. I will not have any of that.

But there is more to it then that, One CBU-97/105 can kill a handful of tanks, lets for the sake of it just say each one kills 5 tanks. Great, that means you can kill 5 times the tanks without having to RTB. For me thats not so great because if I want the mission to last longer than 20 minutes I'd need to add 5 times the tanks that I have in the mission now and the mission editor is already starting to buckle under the weight of all the units in the mission (I don't know the exact number, Its somewhere between 500 and 900 units).

Not only would it take me years to place 5000 tanks and set them up with triggers and waypoints, It would also probably kill the poor mission editor and possibly also the server on which you tried to play this Fulda Gap 2.0.

So no, no cluster weapons for you.

What about the Mav D and H then? and the GBU-12? Why are they not available?

One word: TER.

The triple ejector rack means you can carry too many guided weapons at once for this mission (The above performance rant applies here too).

But it also means that players stay too high for my taste, I want people to knife fight each other closer to the ground and not to circle at 30 000 feet playing orbital bombardment platform.

If you want to carry lots and lots of weapons you are going to have to carry dumb weapons. You can still load your plane with 20 mark 82 bombs if you'd like, but you are going to have to stay closer to the ground if you want to hit anything, so I'm fine with that.

The other Mav variants, G and K, are still available as you can't carry more than two of them at a time, the same with the GBU-10, 31 and 38. If I could have limited the TER and not the weapons I would have, its not the GBU-12 or Mav D/H themselves I have a problem with, its the amount of them you can carry.

The Su-25T has also seen some cuts to its arsenal, but I'm not so sure about this one, I removed all the longest ranged weapons in order to get the Su-25s nice and close to the enemy, I also removed the anti-radiation missiles in an attempt to keep the anti-air units alive longer. We'll see if they might find their way back if the gameplay allows it.

The Su-25T still has its Kh-25ML and S-25L, but not its vikhrs, again the whole TER problem applies here too (not so the range, but the amount of them).

Finally, the Ka-50, which still has vikhrs and pretty much everything else apart from the cluster dispensers, Not that I'd expect anyone to be able to use them over this battlefield but you never know.

I don't mind that the Sharks can kill 12 tanks in a few minutes as I don't expect them to live long anyway with all the anti-air and fixed wings overhead.

Also, Since I don't like being killed whilst I'm defenseless on the ground I took the liberty of adding a "Dome of Death" around each teams airbase, Trespassing into the enemy teams airspace around their airfield will result in instant death. Don't worry you'll get a warning well in advance if you get too close.

I appreciate any feedback I can get as long as its constructive.

If anyone is interested in playing this one through entirely I'd love to know if everything worked as one would expect it to work and what the performance was like during the different stages of the mission.

I also need to figure out how to balance this and if there are any bugs and issues with the triggers as I'm already planning an even larger one of these in the future.

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I'd like to conclude this unnecessarily long post by asking politely that you do not edit this mission in any way. You are ofc free to look at it in the ME and see if the triggers make any sense, they barely do for me anymore :D

Dude, why the hell did noboy post here yet?

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I played for 2 hrs yesterday with a very competent ground controller and wow, we had a blast. Talking on TS, requesting close air support or ground strikes on enemy AA, just epic. This mission has a lot of potential.

Unfortunately it's PvP which will bring out the assholes and cheaters. Yesterday a guy from BLUFOR joined OPFOR for a second, took a screenshot (of the map?) and then went back into his BLUFOR A-10. Asshat.

YUP!!! AWESOME MISSION!!!

Flew the Red side in SU-25T, had a blast hunting those moving Abrams tanks...

I enjoyed evading another SU-25T's 2 R-73s and some gunfire, eh Greg?

I lived thanks to my air defences and some lag, kicking the Toadie away from me...

But did the Rolands cost me lives, omg I hate those...

Later tried some time as ground commander... why can't the Rolands be controlled?

Here's my Tacview record, so tense...

FRIKKING GREAT MISSION!!!

Updated the mission.

Added 2 of each fighter and 4 Su-25 slots to each side.

The fighters will have to go old school, no active radar or extended range missiles in this mission. :D

Theres an AWACS support option which should prove to be very useful to for both fighters and ground attack-craft, If you can keep it alive that is.

The Su-25T has been given its ELINT pod and Kh-25MP back.

The artillery got fixed in 1.2.2, so now they'll move and be useful!

If we are enough people we will fly this mission on our squadnight this Thursday.

As a ground commander you can't see the enemy units on the F10 map even if you are standing next to them. Fog of war is enabled on the map, but it does not work.

This is a major issue as a GC, you need to have fog of war enabled.

thats strange, fog of war is not only enabled, but forced on. I've checked it in both the mission editor and the mission code manually with a text editor and it is set to force fog of war on, but its not working.

I've also made a test mission and it seems that fog of war is broken.

Thanks for looking into this. We really like your mission and with the upcoming CA patch this is really looking interesting.

Keep up the good work!

Bump.

Just a small update for 1.2.3, I added ammo-trucks for both sides now that ground units need them to resupply.

Fog of war seems to be working again in 1.2.3 and hopefully the mission should more stable now.

EDs recommendations are 16 players for a mission with 500 units in it. This mission has 1221 units in it... Luckily only a portion are active at the same time, but I don't know how inactive units count into EDs recommendations.