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Best Syria missions and campaigns?


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Surprised there's no sticky for this. Anyone made any realistic missions or campaigns on the Syria map yet? Interested in anything except Incirlik - runs like dog sh*t thanks ot the huge city next to it :(

 

As we know there's a huge amount of activity from Hmeimim with the RuAF. Anyone created any ops from there?

 

Cheers!

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I was thinking the same thing. Has anyone else thought about putting together a "dynamic" campaign based out of Khmeimim? I feel like we are lacking a lot of Syrian Civil War scenarios considering we have a Syria map. I suppose its time for me to get better with the mission editor! 

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18 minutes ago, unlikely_spider said:

I would love a Harrier campaign here. I wonder if any of the included areas were involved in the anti-ISIL operations. It would give me a reason to buy the map.

We get Palmyra, Raqqa and Aleppo! Most of the hotbeds right there  to my knowledge. Plus, all of the Syrian army installations around the map are fantastic.

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Just now, Hallsy said:

We get Palmyra, Raqqa and Aleppo! Most of the hotbeds right there  to my knowledge. Plus, all of the Syrian army installations around the map are fantastic.

Ooh, that would be great. Although part of me would be sad re-enacting the destruction of those ancient sites 🙁

I didn't take good enough advantage of the free trial period to look around that map.

Modules: Wright Flyer, Spruce Goose, Voyager 1

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22 hours ago, unlikely_spider said:

I would love a Harrier campaign here. I wonder if any of the included areas were involved in the anti-ISIL operations. It would give me a reason to buy the map.

Literally the entire map is full of ISIS locations/ strikes... the amount of possibilities for Allies/ Russia anti-ISIS operations is limitless. The US had strikes from a carrier group here too so it boggles my mind that we have no decent Syria missions and campaigns. 

https://ig.ft.com/sites/2015/isis-oil/

https://twitter.com/coalition/status/891309341277663233/photo/1

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On 1/20/2021 at 5:33 PM, unlikely_spider said:

I wonder if any of the included areas were involved in the anti-ISIL operations. It would give me a reason to buy the map.

Much of the northern half of the Syria map was/is a battleground between ISIL, various rebel factions, and the SAA. The map includes the locations of many major battles like Raqqa (ISIL's national HQ), Manbij, al Bab, the Tabqa Dam, pretty much the entire region of Operation Euphrates Shield, plus Aleppo. Notable exceptions right now are Kabani, which was a major battlefield and later on a US forward airbase, and Shayrat Airbase, the Syrian base that was attacked by the US in retaliation for using chemical weapons. I believe both of these locations are planned to be added, as they are inside the detailed area of the existing map. 

 

A significant amount of Operation Inherent Resolve did take place outside the bounds of the Syria map though, either in the portions of eastern Syria not detailed in the map or in western Iraq. Quite a few US fighters were based in Jordan and flew missions in both Syria and Iraq, and that's not something we can really do with the map as it is right now. But the areas we do have include most of the more populous portions of the areas conquered by ISIL and where most of the heaviest fighting took place. 

 

Not like I'm doing a bunch of research on a Syrian Civil War campaign or anything ... 


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7 hours ago, CommandT said:

Literally the entire map is full of ISIS locations/ strikes... the amount of possibilities for Allies/ Russia anti-ISIS operations is limitless. The US had strikes from a carrier group here too so it boggles my mind that we have no decent Syria missions and campaigns. 

https://ig.ft.com/sites/2015/isis-oil/

https://twitter.com/coalition/status/891309341277663233/photo/1

I agree it is crazy. I have made small missions but lack the time to dive deep enough to make a dynamic campaign. Would be awesome to replicate the conflict with numerous factions on the map and have AI traffic making the bases seem alive. I'd love to operate out of Khmeimim and patrol Syrian airspace, intercept recon aircraft, strike insurgent locations etc. Would be great if there were trigger zones that would scramble fighters if violating Turkish, Israeli etc airspace. Guess we will have to wait for the dynamic campaign engine to drop.

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The problem with making your own missions is that you always know what to expect and what will happen. So yeah, I'm waiting for someone to make some good content for Syria. Personally I think ED should be devoting much much more time and effort towards missions and campaigns. 

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On 11/15/2020 at 2:47 PM, CommandT said:

Surprised there's no sticky for this. Anyone made any realistic missions or campaigns on the Syria map yet? Interested in anything except Incirlik - runs like dog sh*t thanks ot the huge city next to it 😞

 

As we know there's a huge amount of activity from Hmeimim with the RuAF. Anyone created any ops from there?

 

Cheers!

 

Set up a server for yourself, and load this mission on it. You should probably get a few friends together, but the mission is awesome.

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It takes ages and ages for new content to come out (like years). Check out how many campaigns are available for PG. The problem is partly that everyone has Caucasus and far fewer people have the other maps. So most people still make missions just for Caucasus. It is one of DCSs major design deficiencies.

 

I agree though, Syria and Channel are really the best maps - not only in quality, but also they make the most sense realistically for the aircraft we have. 

 

ED doesn't do content. They leave that for others to fill in - which drives me crazy. 

 

However, Liberation is really great for all maps and is the best option to make the most of Syria right now.

CPU:5600X | GPU:RTX2080 | RAM:32GB | Disk:860EVOm.2

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37 minutes ago, wowbagger said:

It takes ages and ages for new content to come out (like years). Check out how many campaigns are available for PG. The problem is partly that everyone has Caucasus and far fewer people have the other maps. So most people still make missions just for Caucasus. It is one of DCSs major design deficiencies.

 

I agree though, Syria and Channel are really the best maps - not only in quality, but also they make the most sense realistically for the aircraft we have. 

 

ED doesn't do content. They leave that for others to fill in - which drives me crazy. 

 

However, Liberation is really great for all maps and is the best option to make the most of Syria right now.

I was extremely excited about Liberation. On paper it sounded absolutely brilliant. In practice I thought it was unplayable for a number of reasons: 1. even with culling/ no smoke etc, it ran absolutely terrible - since we have no multi-core support all those units just kill the CPU. 2. Integration of AI units in missions was terrible. I mean in the sense that without tweaking and testing to make sure the AI don't end up doing really dumb stuff from the get go, it was basically one AI f up after another f up. That killed more immersion than it created. 

I know Liberation is getting improvements all the time but as it stands I believe it is unplayable. I think those that swear by it make enormous compromises in either performance or AI tracks/ behavior. Even if the AI was not an issue, I don't see how you can run Liberation on any system without multi-core support. It's just too heavy on the CPU. Either that or accept crappy fps 😞 

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I don't find Liberation performance to be noticeably bad. I don't play VR though. I turned off infantry troops and arty, and I was running an i5 6600k. It died last week and I upgraded to a 5600x, but I haven't had time to run Liberation since then to test it.

 

As for AI, unfortunately DCS AI is pretty bad in everything. Liberation can't use triggers to help fix some of their shortcomings, but apart from that, it's the same as any DCS mission as far as I can tell. I think it's one of the best options for DCS at the moment.

CPU:5600X | GPU:RTX2080 | RAM:32GB | Disk:860EVOm.2

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On 1/23/2021 at 1:46 PM, CommandT said:

I don't see how you can run Liberation on any system without multi-core support. It's just too heavy on the CPU. Either that or accept crappy fps 😞 

 

I've found I can get good performance with culling set to 200 and infantry turned off. With those settings it's not much worse than any other large DCS mission. 

 

On 1/23/2021 at 3:43 PM, wowbagger said:

As for AI, unfortunately DCS AI is pretty bad in everything. 

The DCS AI isn't as bad many people make it out to be. At least an equal share of the blame is on Liberation. The DCS AI does not handle dynamic situations well, it's not designed for it, it's designed to be scripted and told what to do in pretty specific detail. When you do that it performs ... acceptably. It still makes plenty of stupid decisions, and scripting can be a mess of trying to determine exactly why the AI is doing something stupid. But Liberation, by it's nature, can't do the significant amount of AI tweaking that's needed for it to perform well in missions. Liberation has gotten quite a bit better at this in the last few versions, and with a bit of manual tweaking to the mission file before playing it can be made quite a bit better. 

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Yes, I agree with you on all points, except that what you're describing I would characterize as bad AI. If you have to use scripting and extremely precise waypoints just to prevent helos from running into trees and buildings, or use scripting to pretend the tanks can't instantly see 360 degrees,  through foliage, then the AI isn't that great - especially for a flight simulator.

 

  And especially for a flight simulator which ships with very little content (less and less with each new module) and relies on others to provide it .. or not. It's a weird design decision for  DCS which I have never understood. I would think  ED could hire 3 or 4 people to do nothing but crank out campaigns for their modules. That would be a lot of DLC and provide a lot more incentive to buy many of the actual modules. I very often read "which modules have the best content?". It's also how I make my buying decisions.

 

  I guess if they are serious about their own dynamic campaign, many of these AI issues will get sorted out and improved (otherwise the whole thing is pretty pointless). I'm looking forwards to that. But right now I still think Liberation is a really good way to employ your modules, understanding the limitations of DCS, and given the paucity of other options. This is particularly true for the Syria map (which, again, is fantastic in my opinion).

 

 

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What surprises me is that there seems to be a lack of interest in Syria-related missions and campaigns. This, despite the fact Operation Inherent Resolve is a contemporary air war that's still ongoing and is indisputably the most high-tech air campaign in history. Possibly the most high-tech war in history. It involves the air arms of over a dozen countries and warplanes of every origin. You'd think there would be more interest in this topic, but there isn't.

 

Except for the people in this thread, of course. I'd soon like to see campaigns and single missions that cover the early days of OIR and perhaps we can re-live this contemporary historical event that still has chapters being written all over again.

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13 hours ago, CheckGear said:

What surprises me is that there seems to be a lack of interest in Syria-related missions and campaigns.

Part of that is that it just takes quite a lot of time to make a fully featured campaign, and not everyone was sitting around waiting for the Syria map to drop so they could jump right into mission making. I was working to finish my Oil In The Water campaign before I started real work on an Inherent Resolve campaign, and I'm only just getting to the end of that project. I started doing the research well over a month ago, and just started making missions. Trying to make a campaign that's even passably realistic requires a pretty in depth understanding of what is a very complex conflict, and then you need to start digging into particulars to pull inspirations for specific missions. I'm spending as much time writing briefings and dialog, drawing maps, and creating recon images as I am actually scripting missions. I'm hopeful to have something out in a few months, but we'll see. I try to set aside time to fly for fun too 🙂

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5 hours ago, Bunny Clark said:

Part of that is that it just takes quite a lot of time to make a fully featured campaign, and not everyone was sitting around waiting for the Syria map to drop so they could jump right into mission making. I was working to finish my Oil In The Water campaign before I started real work on an Inherent Resolve campaign, and I'm only just getting to the end of that project. I started doing the research well over a month ago, and just started making missions. Trying to make a campaign that's even passably realistic requires a pretty in depth understanding of what is a very complex conflict, and then you need to start digging into particulars to pull inspirations for specific missions. I'm spending as much time writing briefings and dialog, drawing maps, and creating recon images as I am actually scripting missions. I'm hopeful to have something out in a few months, but we'll see. I try to set aside time to fly for fun too 🙂

Well I cannot wait to see what you produce. If your "Oil in the Water" campaign is anything to go off of, I can only imagine it's going to be good!

I hope you continue to improve OitW, BTW, because it's outstanding and deserves to get better! Maybe, for total authenticity, we can have timeframe-accurate air wings and squadron liveries!

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3 minutes ago, CheckGear said:

Well I cannot wait to see what you produce. If your "Oil in the Water" campaign is anything to go off of, I can only imagine it's going to be good!

I hope you continue to improve OitW, BTW, because it's outstanding and deserves to get better! Maybe, for total authenticity, we can have timeframe-accurate air wings and squadron liveries!

I certainly plan to keep working on it. The cold start version is done, I just need to do some play testing to make sure I didn't bork timings in some of the missions. I've used Oil In The Water as a test best for a lot of things, some mission exist only because I wanted an excuse to figure out how a mission editor mechanic worked. My Inherent Resolve campaign (which I still need a title for) will include proper scripted radio transmissions, interactive mission elements, and real human voice actors. I hope to be able to make it a paid DLC. 

 

I struggled to come up with a proper carrier air wing for the Gulf and time period. It's hard, as we don't have enough Hornet liveries to make up a single proper carrier air wing, much less one that was deployed the Gulf at any time. Add to that having almost no choices for the other carrier aircraft and the only choice is to hope for more options from ED someday or make your own. I embraced the fictional setting a bit for sure, especially having Vikings on the carrier after they were completely retired. 

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28 minutes ago, Bunny Clark said:

I certainly plan to keep working on it. The cold start version is done, I just need to do some play testing to make sure I didn't bork timings in some of the missions. I've used Oil In The Water as a test best for a lot of things, some mission exist only because I wanted an excuse to figure out how a mission editor mechanic worked. My Inherent Resolve campaign (which I still need a title for) will include proper scripted radio transmissions, interactive mission elements, and real human voice actors. I hope to be able to make it a paid DLC. 

 

I struggled to come up with a proper carrier air wing for the Gulf and time period. It's hard, as we don't have enough Hornet liveries to make up a single proper carrier air wing, much less one that was deployed the Gulf at any time. Add to that having almost no choices for the other carrier aircraft and the only choice is to hope for more options from ED someday or make your own. I embraced the fictional setting a bit for sure, especially having Vikings on the carrier after they were completely retired. 

Here's a website you might find interesting, a fairly accurate directory of carrier deployments and the embarked air wings. Good reference if you want to be historically accurate.

 

http://www.gonavy.jp/CVf.html

 

The limitations of DCS definitely make things tough. The S-3 was out of service for over four years by the timeline of OitW, but, without the S-3, you've got no organic air wing tanker, since there's no Super Hornet in DCS.

 

So, I just imagine the S-3 is a Super Hornet.😆

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3 hours ago, CheckGear said:

The limitations of DCS definitely make things tough. The S-3 was out of service for over four years by the timeline of OitW, but, without the S-3, you've got no organic air wing tanker, since there's no Super Hornet in DCS.

Yah, exactly, that was the decision. Not that most missions should need AAR, but I wanted to give the player the option, especially on the longer strikes. 

 

That and I rather wish the Viking hadn't been retired so early.

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2 minutes ago, Bunny Clark said:

Yah, exactly, that was the decision. Not that most missions should need AAR, but I wanted to give the player the option, especially on the longer strikes. 

 

That and I rather wish the Viking hadn't been retired so early.

It really shouldn't have. When it retired, the increased submarine threat from China, Russia, and even Iran was clearly on the horizon. That said, the real critical decision was made 10 years before the S-3 was retired, when they effectively neutered the platform by removing its ASW capability. That sort of set the stage for the Viking's ultimate retirement.

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