Aggressor campaign from Maple Flag

Find also good you have to NAV your self, because you learn pretty fast when you unprepared.

On the FAM Mission the Navigation Points Belted Peak and Hiko pretty hard to reach because TACAN is quit about 70 nm receiving, its more fishing in the Dark sometimes when you miss the radio transceived heading in the noise as not native English speaker.

For subtitles I'll open a feature request with ED to allow message text to be user controlled.

For us flying in VR the pop up messages are an immersion killer but that's just our opinion.

For subtitles I'll open a feature request with ED to allow message text to be user controlled.

 

For us flying in VR the pop up messages are an immersion killer but that's just our opinion.

Hello Sabre,

Yes but You know, not all knows English very well. I always (for example) like to read for better understanding.

VR users (but I dont know, I suppose) its the 2-5% of total users of DCS or less also ....

Love the idea of this campaign! Even more with an F-5 :)

 

 

I tried the first mission and two times out of three, blue went under the hard deck, even though I was well above (probably 6-8k+). One of those times there was no point attributed, weird.

 

Only got a score of 75 and apparently disappointed the boss ;) Well, blame blue for that.

 

In the practice mission, it went once out of three. That's 3/6, so it seems the AI isn't aware of this hard deck, or very fond of it, is that a limitation of the current AI or something I'm doing wrong?

 

 

Some suggestions:

 

1) +1 for the subtitles, it can help sometimes, especially with the two points below.

 

2) Perhaps waiting before the first messages at the beginning, or starting with a closed canopy could do wonders, in the two first missions the player's aircraft is standing next to another one starting up and the noise makes it impossible to hear the message which starts right away. Now I'll try to close the canopy as soon as possible, but that's not a reflex we have usually developed ;)

 

3) Navigation in the first mission (FAM) is not obvious, also in some areas the TACAN cannot be received because it's too far. Wouldn't it be better if UZI2 was leading the way?

 

I suppose I'll have to check how to navigate from A to B on a parallel to the radials, that must be an interesting exercise :) But the overall impression it gave me on FAM was confusing. The mission card does not give much information, and there are diagrams scattered through other documents but without much structure or pointers as to what to look for before beginning the mission, and once it starts there is an avalanche of indications the player is simply not prepared to.

 

The briefing says "I'll lead the takeoff but once airborne you will take over as flight lead so you can concentrate on learning the area". Well, it's the opposite I think, the pilot is so busy finding the TACAN, checking the distance, rectifying the flight and so on that he doesn't have the time to focus on the interesting parts.

 

Perhaps it's just me, but it didn't seem as constructive or instructive as it could have been.

Thanks Redglyph, always appreciate your feedback. :thumbup:

Unfortunately there is no way to have the AI learn the hard deck limit so if they break it that's on them. It's a win for you if they do. If you stay at high levels they should follow you up but again it depends on the merge and what actions you take that determine how the AI behaves. It's pretty interesting to see how the different aircraft AI react depending on what you do.

If you manage a win against all targets (guns kill or hd violation) then you get the 100 score. No wins will score you a 60 (so the campaign will progress to the next mission). A single win will get you a 75.

1) We hear you and others on the subtitles. We fly mostly VR now so we didn't like the subtitles. I'd like to hear from other VR users if they appreciate that too or if we have it wrong. I think it should be a user option so I'll open a feature request with ED to see if they can add something to the game engine.

2) That's not an issue we found in testing but our audio settings might be different than yours. Are other users having problems hearing the first few messages?

3) For the Navigation issue as you are aware the F-5E is an older bird so requires a lot of manual Tacan entries and even dead reckoning. We did provide diagrams in the briefing and the mission planner does show the flight route. The F10 Radio Menu also has a listing of the TACAN data for quick reference and we also included a kneeboard reference as well.

In testing we found there was sufficient time between waypoints to get the Tacan dialed in while listening to the flight lead's dialogue. We wanted this mission to teach navigation around the NTTR as opposed to flying formation with a flight lead that already knows his way around. A couple of attempts and this will become second nature. After about the 3rd mission you will have the Tacan data memorized and be dialing them in automatically.

Surely a DCS AI issue but out of 3 times I played the first training mission (ACT against F-5) and followed Uzi 2-1 after T/O he turned right and nailed hisself into the next hill two times.

Surely a DCS AI issue but out of 3 times I played the first training mission (ACT against F-5) and followed Uzi 2-1 after T/O he turned right and nailed hisself into the next hill two times.

We will investigate that as we didn't see that in our testing. Someone reported a problem with the UZI 2-1 orbit earlier so if we can correct that it might fix this issue too.

2) That's not an issue we found in testing but our audio settings might be different than yours. Are other users having problems hearing the first few messages?

Can confirm, first message is hard to hear because of the other plane starting up. A delay of 5-10 secs should probably solve this.

Thanks Redglyph, always appreciate your feedback. :thumbup:

 

Unfortunately there is no way to have the AI learn the hard deck limit so if they break it that's on them. It's a win for you if they do. If you stay at high levels they should follow you up but again it depends on the merge and what actions you take that determine how the AI behaves. It's pretty interesting to see how the different aircraft AI react depending on what you do.

 

If you manage a win against all targets (guns kill or hd violation) then you get the 100 score. No wins will score you a 60 (so the campaign will progress to the next mission). A single win will get you a 75.

That's what I thought about AI. I didn't get that with the F-4 or the Tomcat, though the F-4 tended to quickly go up like a rocket and not come back down, if I don't kill this guy on the merge there's a good chance it'll be a draw, with him very high in the sky. Perhaps the F-5 bleeds energy faster with its engine, and the AI tends to get to the floor more quickly to keep the speed up.

Still, here it should have been 2 wins per HD, and one per kill, but something didn't register. I should have kept a track of it to understand what happened.

1) We hear you and others on the subtitles. We fly mostly VR now so we didn't like the subtitles. I'd like to hear from other VR users if they appreciate that too or if we have it wrong. I think it should be a user option so I'll open a feature request with ED to see if they can add something to the game engine.

 

2) That's not an issue we found in testing but our audio settings might be different than yours. Are other users having problems hearing the first few messages?

 

3) For the Navigation issue as you are aware the F-5E is an older bird so requires a lot of manual Tacan entries and even dead reckoning. We did provide diagrams in the briefing and the mission planner does show the flight route. The F10 Radio Menu also has a listing of the TACAN data for quick reference and we also included a kneeboard reference as well.

In testing we found there was sufficient time between waypoints to get the Tacan dialed in while listening to the flight lead's dialogue. We wanted this mission to teach navigation around the NTTR as opposed to flying formation with a flight lead that already knows his way around. A couple of attempts and this will become second nature. After about the 3rd mission you will have the Tacan data memorized and be dialing them in automatically.

1) I can understand about VR, I haven't got that kind of gear so I didn't realize. For my part it's probably a bit of laziness, being able to listen and grabbing the information is a skill that can be trained, so it should be a good opportunity. For people who are not fluent, ... yes, I suppose you'll need an option. Perhaps using a switch of the cockpit to turn subtitles on or off? ;) Or F10 in the mean time, hoping they add a way to set mission options (that'd be awesome).

2) I suppose it depends on the sound settings, but the ambiant sounds don't seem exaggerated to me, the other jet is right next to the player's after all. If I close the canopy it's fine.

3) Yeah, it's just the way it comes, it's a bit unexpected. The FAM would have been a possibility for the pilot to get a few landmarks before having to navigate by himself. But I do enjoy the opportunity to learn another way to find my bearings :)

Surely a DCS AI issue but out of 3 times I played the first training mission (ACT against F-5) and followed Uzi 2-1 after T/O he turned right and nailed hisself into the next hill two times.

I had that quite a few times when flying with an AI wingmen, they easily crash into moutains :/ I remember winning against the F-86 in Mig-15's part of the Museum Relic campaign, with no ammo left, just by turning around and grazing the hills ;) Hopefully they'll get better at this.

Can confirm, first message is hard to hear because of the other plane starting up. A delay of 5-10 secs should probably solve this.

Ok thanks. Will put that in the next update.

Anyone getting stuck on the first ACT mission?. I'm getting two kills which are registering in the debrief but it will not let me pass go and go to the next mission. I've nailed the Departure and Arrival Back into Nellis and parked in the same parking spot in the line. 1st attempt no kills RTB'ed no issue. 60 percent, hit okay and wont cycle to next mission. 2nd and 3rd attempts two kills apeice, RTB by the numbers and still stick. Any ideas?

There are 3 engagements in the first mission. Scoring a 60 or greater should advance to the next mission (as per the standard campaign movement rules).

Once you are cleared the range and get the debrief message you can quit at that point.

We will try and reproduce the issue.

Very nice campaign. IFG, ACO and Spins Documents are awesome but it would be better if there would be less margins in PDFs.

I used some PDF editing for better printing results.

The pdf docs are sized to fit an actual knee board like Flyboys (8x5).

Many people now use IPADS or other tablets so can easily zoom the images to the size they prefer.

We created a download folder for the mission dialogue until we can add the subtitles back in:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4GJ-2wKWbw_S1QtUllvV0d5YkE

FAM Flight Dialogue is available now and we will populate the others as time permits.

We also created a poll to see what people think about subtitles as they play. Please vote!

Red Flag flight procedures here:

http://www.vusaf.us/RFN/resources/RFNIFG.pdf

Useful info for this great campaign

Red Flag flight procedures here:

 

http://www.vusaf.us/RFN/resources/RFNIFG.pdf

 

Useful info for this great campaign

Mando,

Pretty nice material. It was my sunday morning reading instead of the newspaper. LOL

Very complete, although I prefer this campaign channelization. Much simpler! :D

Already flew first and second engamentes. Got all 3 F-5s and one F-4 (got both during practice). On the first practice with F-14s, got chewed up... Gotta practice more anc conserve Energy.

You guys take care!

Thank you!

Red Flag flight procedures here:

 

http://www.vusaf.us/RFN/resources/RFNIFG.pdf

 

Useful info for this great campaign

Great material, thanks for sharing it! :)

Surely a DCS AI issue but out of 3 times I played the first training mission (ACT against F-5) and followed Uzi 2-1 after T/O he turned right and nailed hisself into the next hill two times.

I noticed this on my first flight :(

Like others mentioned before, if you can not get the kill during first merge, and you are in an offensive position, the AI either hits the deck (denying your kill) or flies full AB high in the sky which results in a draw after the 5min timeout...

I nailed all three F-5 with Pilot kill on the first try, with good dogfight so far with no issue.

Problematic is either my Warthog again not really have feeling about my Plane for a good gun fight.

I don't know if anyone else has had this on this campaign but on the familiarisation flight, went the instructor is taxiing out and says about the thunderbirds, I look over and see a line of normal F-16's. Not in the thunderbirds skin?

I don't know if anyone else has had this on this campaign but on the familiarisation flight, went the instructor is taxiing out and says about the thunderbirds, I look over and see a line of normal F-16's. Not in the thunderbirds skin?

I noticed that too. But remember the mission take place on august 16. So obviously they are back to Nellis only on November each year :)

I noticed that too. But remember the mission take place on august 16. So obviously they are back to Nellis only on November each year :)

Cool, I just wanted to know that it wasn't because I was missing textures or a bug or something lol

Maybe the skin for the Thunderbirds does not exist in DCS? So they decided to use a standard skin instead?

We wanted this mission to teach navigation around the NTTR as opposed to flying formation with a flight lead that already knows his way around. A couple of attempts and this will become second nature. After about the 3rd mission you will have the Tacan data memorized and be dialing them in automatically.

This is was has me excited about this campaign a lot more than I thought.

It's one thing to fly DCS for fun, but this campaign adds purpose, and the navigation is just that much more added realism. Everything in this campaign makes me feel that I am actually there, being part of something realistic. So thanks for that! Also, thanks for making me learn this TACAN navigation on the fly... wasn't aware!

As a side note - and my only complaint, is the fact that DCS should really allow for "laser tagging" when it comes to such training campaigns. Nothing rips me out of the "I am being there, at Red Flag" quicker than my blue air buddy tumbling out of the sky as if this was a real war with people dying. I mean, if this was a campaign depicting war in some theater that is made for that - yeah, let's have "real kills", but over NTTR? We have training pods, why can't we have "simulated kills" that are called by Showtime? Everybody flies home afterwards and have beers at the CO Club. :)