fixed Mission 3 bugs

Hi!

Loving it so far, however I my ineptitude may have found a couple of lil issues with missions 3 - the long range hit over Basra.

In mission - tasking Smoke to hit the first tgt (truck) works fine, however when i tasked him to hit the second tgt (compound) he responded affirmative, had the calls from the JTAC but he just kept on orbiting. This broke it as I'd screwed both my drops due to issues of my own so I had to quit out, guns don't work on houses apparently.

Second issue was regarding your save feature. Stated before tanking and partway through mission that should I leave, when I continued the campaign it would spawn me behind the tanker with full tanks ready to go... nope, it put me to the start of mission 4. Which is good I guess as it doesnt break the campaign, simply misses out my completion of mission 3

Cheers BD for a great campaign

Hey! Thanks for the feedback.

Smoke attacking targets normally worked during my tests but AI is being AI and it can screw up sometimes too... perhaps something didn’t work with him attacking after you did. I will check.

Also thanks for the info about branching the canpaign, I will have a look!

Did you check and see if he had weapons still? When I did this mission, I went after the truck, and had him hit the house. I noticed afterwards he had no bombs left. I bet he dropped both the GBU and the JDAM on that first target.

Any word on the save feature?

I just ran into this- got the message that the 'save' had happened, exited without tanking to restart the mission behind the tanker with full bags, and it cycled me to M4 instead.

For the time being the best way not to miss anything is to run mission 3A from the campaign folder as single mission or via mission editor - hope this helps!

For the time being the best way not to miss anything is to run mission 3A from the campaign folder as single mission or via mission editor - hope this helps!

I'll give that a whirl. Domo arigato!

Don't we need more preecise coordinates for the Jdam in the Hornet? Misses .xx seconds

SPOILER ALERT!

I had an issue with the trigger when the jeep is leaving the city. I used F10 and said I would take it out with guns. As I was lining up, Smoke tells me he's on his run in even though I said I would take it out.. Well, I took it out and that pretty much broke Smoke. He just kept orbiting and wouldn't get back in formation or head to the tanker.

Hi!

 

Loving it so far, however I my ineptitude may have found a couple of lil issues with missions 3 - the long range hit over Basra.

 

In mission - tasking Smoke to hit the first tgt (truck) works fine, however when i tasked him to hit the second tgt (compound) he responded affirmative, had the calls from the JTAC but he just kept on orbiting. This broke it as I'd screwed both my drops due to issues of my own so I had to quit out, guns don't work on houses apparently.

 

Second issue was regarding your save feature. Stated before tanking and partway through mission that should I leave, when I continued the campaign it would spawn me behind the tanker with full tanks ready to go... nope, it put me to the start of mission 4. Which is good I guess as it doesnt break the campaign, simply misses out my completion of mission 3

 

Cheers BD for a great campaign

Same happened to me... I had to finish the mission and it advanced by itself to mission 4.

Smokey got the truck.

I used the JDAM on the compound, but coordinates were outside of it. Tried to used the LGB but forgot to arm it (damn). Smokey still had his LGB. I ordered to drop it on the compound, he said ok and kept circling forever... Mission broke on me because I use dumb... :(

You missed with the JDAM for the same reason that people are missing in mission 10, the coordinates are in DMS and the JDAM/JSOW only takes coordinates in decimal degrees.

So you'd need to bomb N 30 30.0667, E 047 48.0667 or have Smoke do it for you (which is what I did since I LGB'd the truck).

Or rather than trying to do the math on the fly, you can switch the HSI to DMS, input the coordinates as a new waypoint, then designate that waypoint as your target and have the tpod relay that to your jdam.

You missed with the JDAM for the same reason that people are missing in mission 10, the coordinates are in DMS and the JDAM/JSOW only takes coordinates in decimal degrees.

 

So you'd need to bomb N 30 30.0667, E 047 48.0667 or have Smoke do it for you (which is what I did since I LGB'd the truck).

 

Or rather than trying to do the math on the fly, you can switch the HSI to DMS, input the coordinates as a new waypoint, then designate that waypoint as your target and have the tpod relay that to your jdam.

Thanks!

You missed with the JDAM for the same reason that people are missing in mission 10, the coordinates are in DMS and the JDAM/JSOW only takes coordinates in decimal degrees.

 

So you'd need to bomb N 30 30.0667, E 047 48.0667 or have Smoke do it for you (which is what I did since I LGB'd the truck).

 

Or rather than trying to do the math on the fly, you can switch the HSI to DMS, input the coordinates as a new waypoint, then designate that waypoint as your target and have the tpod relay that to your jdam.

This did not help. PLEASE in IDIOT form, cuz I am an idiot tell me NUMBER by NUMBER what should be entered. I put this info in and I am even more off target. At this point I am calling this a mission glitch and I hope the development team either puts in the proper coordinates, or notes the correct input because no mission should take 20+ hours of your life and make you late for work out of sheer frustration of wanting this to work.

Again.

Please.

Number by Number.

Example. Hit TGT UFC and press 3 0 3 0 ent 0 4 or whatever needs to be entered.

This mission has really destroyed the campaign experience for me personally.

no offense fang, but its required to know how to operate a plane to play campaigns

to answer your question:

1) enter HSI page

2) unselect SEQ# if you have it selected

3) press DATA on HSI page

4) switch to, for example, waypoint 20

5) press UFC on HSI page

6) press POSN on UFC

7) enter the coordinates given by the ground observer

8) press HSI on HSI page

9) press WPDSG on HSI page

your targeting pod is now looking at the target building

10) destroy the building - if you use JDAM, you need to switch it to TOO mode

i wholeheartedly recommend chucks guide if you have trouble, it teaches everything step by step with pictures. great source for learning the avionics.

At this point I am calling this a mission glitch and I hope the development team either puts in the proper coordinates, or notes the correct input

the coordinates are correct, its just that people enter it into the wrong field.

no offense fang, but its required to know how to operate a plane to play campaigns

 

to answer your question:

1) enter HSI page

2) unselect SEQ# if you have it selected

3) press DATA on HSI page

4) switch to, for example, waypoint 20

5) press UFC on HSI page

6) press POSN on UFC

7) enter the coordinates given by the ground observer

8) press HSI on HSI page

9) press WPDSG on HSI page

your targeting pod is now looking at the target building

10) destroy the building - if you use JDAM, you need to switch it to TOO mode

 

i wholeheartedly recommend chucks guide if you have trouble, it teaches everything step by step with pictures. great source for learning the avionics.

 

 

 

the coordinates are correct, its just that people enter it into the wrong field.

This is solid advice and exactly what I did, but it still failed. JDAM dropped on the correct location but it didnt trigger. I then asked #2 to drop, but he just maintained orbit.

I'm on it, going to check what is going on there.

On 9/27/2020 at 4:12 PM, Fang333333 said:

 

This did not help. PLEASE in IDIOT form, cuz I am an idiot tell me NUMBER by NUMBER what should be entered. I put this info in and I am even more off target. At this point I am calling this a mission glitch and I hope the development team either puts in the proper coordinates, or notes the correct input because no mission should take 20+ hours of your life and make you late for work out of sheer frustration of wanting this to work.

 

Again.

Please.

Number by Number.

 

Example. Hit TGT UFC and press 3 0 3 0 ent 0 4 or whatever needs to be entered.

This mission has really destroyed the campaign experience for me personally.

I literally just slewed the TGP around using the coords that are displayed in the upper left of the TGP screen until I got the numbers he gave me. Voila, the house I needed to bomb was right there. No technical know-how needed.

Hello,

I just did this mission (AAR, first bombing) but used the wrong bomb and wingman was unable to bomb. I wanted to use the save feature but when I launched again, it was M04 not M03.

Is there a way to go back to M03 after AAR ?

Ok I've done it via the mission; going to M04

G'day @baltic_dragon I started the campaign in 2.5. Just tried M03 after update to 2.7. Loving the campaign so far. Listening to audiobook between missions. All very immersive and very well done!

Couple of issues though:

I elect to take out all three targets (instead of Smoke). I bomb the first two, but run out of ammo trying to shoot the moving truck, so I get Smoke to (the option is still there in F10). Meanwhile I head to the tanker as I'm bingo. Smoke just orbits and continues to do so forever. There's no F10 options anymore.

Then I can't call the tanker on radio menu. Only the S3 tanker (Texaco) over the carrier appears here now (see attached pic). There were two tankers in the menu on the first refuelling and I took a full tank of gas ("transfer complete"). And so that's the end of the mission for me. No gas to make it anywhere else.

Also (and I'm guessing a limitation of DCS) the radio menu for the 'Exxon' tanker is 'Arco'. But in the kneepad and waypoints it's referred to as Exxon. Was a bit confusing at first.

I think the mission is built in such a way that the tanker will be available only after you check out from the area, otherwise it would be nightmare to code with Smoke as separate flight. The problem seems to be with Smoke not engaging the truck - which is an AI quirk I can't really put my finger on (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...). I'll try to play with it and see if I can make him attack every time. 

On 4/17/2021 at 4:34 AM, baltic_dragon said:

I think the mission is built in such a way that the tanker will be available only after you check out from the area, otherwise it would be nightmare to code with Smoke as separate flight. The problem seems to be with Smoke not engaging the truck - which is an AI quirk I can't really put my finger on (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...). I'll try to play with it and see if I can make him attack every time. 

Not sure what you meant about the tanker, but I can confirm it can't be contacted after the ground attack, even when exiting the zone. I flew 3 nm from Exxon and he was still not showing up in the list. 

Update: I decided to write a separate bug report this radio thing.

On 9/6/2020 at 12:36 PM, FoxTwo said:

You missed with the JDAM for the same reason that people are missing in mission 10, the coordinates are in DMS and the JDAM/JSOW only takes coordinates in decimal degrees.

 

So you'd need to bomb N 30 30.0667, E 047 48.0667 or have Smoke do it for you (which is what I did since I LGB'd the truck).

 

Or rather than trying to do the math on the fly, you can switch the HSI to DMS, input the coordinates as a new waypoint, then designate that waypoint as your target and have the tpod relay that to your jdam.

 

Are you sure about that? Everywhere I looked it said the F18 JDAMs are expecting Degrees + Minutes + Seconds + Decimal Seconds (so in short, DMS). Tutorials on Youtube and/or Chuck's Guide all say it requires DMS + Decimal seconds. Yet you are the first one I see saying it requires decimal degrees.

That being said, I also missed, but I assumed it was because JTAC gave me coordinates without decimal seconds (he gave me, for example, N30 30 04), or so I thought. So I entered in the UFC N30-30-04-00 and it barely missed.

After some research, I'm quite confident your comment about decimal degrees is wrong, the F18 JDAMs don't work with decimal degrees

Hey @Sylosis! I checked yesterday and I had no problem with JDAMS. In A/C tag on HSI you can swap between the lat long seconds or degrees. I had no trouble with creating a new waypoint, slewing the ATFLIR to it and then dropping on it in TOO mode.

Also, I spoke to John "Rain" Waters (a former F-16 demo pilot) who said that in deployment they very often got coordinates in format which their systems didn't normally use and it was up to them as pilots to find a way around it - and I have to admit, I've put it in the mission in this way on purpose. 

The tanker issue should also be solved. 

On 4/21/2021 at 2:24 AM, Sylosis said:

Are you sure about that? Everywhere I looked it said the F18 JDAMs are expecting Degrees + Minutes + Seconds + Decimal Seconds (so in short, DMS). Tutorials on Youtube and/or Chuck's Guide all say it requires DMS + Decimal seconds. Yet you are the first one I see saying it requires decimal degrees.

That being said, I also missed, but I assumed it was because JTAC gave me coordinates without decimal seconds (he gave me, for example, N30 30 04), or so I thought. So I entered in the UFC N30-30-04-00 and it barely missed.

After some research, I'm quite confident your comment about decimal degrees is wrong, the F18 JDAMs don't work with decimal degrees

 

@Sylosis you are absolutely correct the JDAMs don't use degrees and decimal minutes. Target data entry has to be done in D-M-S and decimal seconds.

Having said that I also had trouble hitting the house and when slewing the TGP, I found that the coordinates that are given by Bowser are actually degrees and decimal minutes and not as the formatting in the text and voice message suggests D-M-S, so therefore the target coordinates are N30°30.04' E47°48.04' this format works for creating a waypoint, but for correct target entry in the JDAM that has to be converted into DMS and therefore the correct entry would be N30°30'02.40" E47°48'02.40" the elevation is 3 meters but is not required. This has at least for me sorted out the problem.

For anyone that still has problems you can as already has been suggested create a target waypoint with the coordinates as given and WPDSG, then you have the targeting pod looking at the correct target and drop in TOO mode, however if you want to drop in PP (pre-planned) mode you have to convert as given above. In fact if you create a target waypoint N30°30.04' and E47°48.04' and load it across into the JDAM TOO target coordinates will be automatically converted.

@baltic_dragon that's why it worked for you when you dropped in TOO mode. Thanks for a really awesome campaign and so far despite all the updates and changes I have had no problems with the missions. Keep up the good work, really appreciate this.

For anyone that is interested,  the book Raven One is very good IMHO and the sequels "Declared Hostile" and "Fight, Fight" are also excellent and maybe even better, this could be made into a sequel campaign......

Thanks @RogerRoadie! I am updating Raven One right now and for the most part missions work OK, but there is always something that can be improved or made to work better. I've made some changes to M3 as well, but nothing ground-breaking so far. Enjoy the rest!