Campaign Documentation and Tips

Thanks very much for checking out this campaign! These missions draw upon the great work done by Wags for the very popular F-15C and A-10 Red Flag campaigns but are rebuilt to take advantage of the Viggen’s unique capabilities and new features introduced to the DCS engine since their release. Each mission was designed in consultation with the renowned author Steve Davies and based on input from pilots who have flown in the real Red Flag exercises. I have participated in five of them myself as both a maintainer and as core unit staff so we believe this will be a very authentic large force exercise experience.

Current Status:

The DCS 2.5 Open Beta release included updates to clear out all reported issues:

- Mission 2 terrain avoidance issues corrected by ED

- Mission 10 illumination bomb behavior corrected

- Friendly flight radar usage adjusted on all missions to cut down on RWR returns

I am tracking absolutely zero bugs at this time! Thanks very much for the reports. This was a major update to DCS so things are bound to come up. Please report any problems specific to the campaign in the Bugs and Problems forum above.

Documentation:

The mission briefings come in pdf format and can be accessed at /Mods/campaigns/AJS37 Red Flag/Doc in your DCS: World installation folder. Just as at a real Red Flag, the briefings are broken into two phases. The Mission Commander Briefing takes place in the main auditorium, covers big picture items and presents the overall plan: who are the players, what are their roles, what opposition do we expect to face? The Flight Briefing is conducted in your own squadron briefing room. It covers items that only matter to you and your flight: what is the exact route to be flown, what does our target look like, what weapons are to be employed?

A lineup card is provided that can be used as a quick reference in flight along with two maps. One map has an overlay of the expected threat locations and the other has a bullseye overlay. The latter can be used for locating threats as they are called in over the radio in real time.

These documents can be accessed in-cockpit by a number of methods, the obvious choices being to display them on a second monitor or save them to an iPad or tablet. Another way is to open the documents before starting DCS: World and use keyboard command alt-tab to swap back and forth between the documents and the cockpit view as shown here:

Tips:

Most gameplay tips derived from testing already made it into the mission briefings but here are a few more things that may help clarify what is going on in these missions and help you get more out of them:

1. Red Flag is a training environment that is intended to prepare you for the demands of a combat mission. These missions are easily survivable if you understand the plan, know the aircraft, and look out for threats, but it will be very rare to survive all ten if you are still learning basic systems like countermeasures or the radio as you go. For this reason, you may find more enjoyment and learn more about the aircraft by enabling ‘immortal’ under your gameplay options. This will allow you to press on with the mission if you are hit or to try a different approach without re-starting. To each their own but that is what I recommend for most players.

2. There are no targets that must be destroyed to ‘succeed’ in a mission and advance in the campaign. After all, sometimes the right answer is to hit a secondary target or just turn around and bring your flight home in one piece. These missions are automatically passed after you have been airborne for 10 minutes. You are the best judge of your own performance so you can fly the mission again if desired by selecting 'close' or ‘fly again’ at the debriefing screen. 'Close' takes you back to the campaign briefing screen for another attempt later while 'fly again' takes you back to the cockpit. Otherwise, select ‘end mission’ after you land and you will progress to the next mission in the campaign.

3. Each mission has your flight hold in a marshal orbit and then push toward the target at a specific time. The only time that really matters in these missions is your time on target. If you as the flight lead want to push a little early or a little late to make the navigation work out correctly you should feel free to do so.

4. The couple minutes of hold that is built into the route at the marshal point also means the takeoff time calculated by the Viggen’s Nav system can be ignored. It will show you a few minutes early at takeoff and this is as intended. Of course, if you prefer to wait until the takeoff time reads zero and omit the marshal orbit you can feel free to do so.

5. Use of the ATC system is totally optional, but if you choose to use it, I highly recommended that you wait to request taxi from ATC until the other Viggen flight, Dodge 2, taxis and that you take off last. There are timing fail-safes built into the mission that allow the other flights to get back on track if their taxi flow is disrupted but the missions play out best when you allow them to taxi first and then taxi and takeoff at the briefed times.

6. Most missions will have your flight tasked against pre-planned targets on the ground. The radio command ‘Engage Mission and Rejoin’ should be used to ensure your flight attacks the briefed target. The command is best given near the IP. If you give it too close your flight will have to circle back to get set up properly. If you give it too far away, they may stray into air defenses you did not see. The other standard commands can be used as well if appropriate to that mission.

7. When using the ‘Engage Mission and Rejoin’ command, your flight members will attack independently and take whatever measures they see fit in order to successfully hit the target and survive. It is easy to lose patience and blame something they do on ‘bad AI’. My experience from testing these missions has been exactly the opposite. If they abort an attack or do something else you do not expect there is always a good reason. It is usually a result of them taking evasive action against a threat you did not even see so cut them some slack!

8. A lot of work has gone into effective use of the ‘allied flight reports’ option in this campaign, both in the mission design and ED development side of things. Check here for a full run-down of what that does for you: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=199332

9. Mission 1 and 2 are intended to set the scene and provide airfield and range familiarization. They were re-voiced and re-routed from the A-10 and F-15 versions so I would highly recommend giving them your full attention. However, if you are already very familiar with the area or it is your second fly-through of the campaign, the missions may be skipped by selecting this F10 radio menu option:

10. As in real life, brightness and illumination can vary greatly at different times of day and under different weather conditions. This can be adjusted to your taste straight from the cockpit by pressing Esc, selecting Options, System, and adjusting the Gamma slider:

We hope you enjoy these missions and feel free to post your own tips below!

Thanks Bunyap! Really looking forward to flying this campaign:)

Me too, although I will wait with this till 2.5 is out, like I do with all the NTTR and Normandy campaigns. I guess I have a lot to catch up on :D

Really looking to flying this one Bunyap, keep up the good work!

You could add kneeboard pages, it is pain in the ass for VR user, basiclly DIY that takes time that user has to do instead of developer, Epsom was very good in that regard, the same with prefloght briefing:/ it is hard for vr user to take off headset to find thats up. And mission number one is not a mission it feels cheap if midairstart mission with landing and couple of dialogs counts in a 10 mission campaign as a single missions. Just that it cannot count as mission:/ And first mission trigger for success trigers even if you fly over nellis and do not land. I like your work usually but this time the whole expirience after finnishing mission 1 is.... so so:( Hope things get better in the next one. Jus some suggestions and critisism! Keep it up! If one reads 10 missions he wants action packed missions whole banana not 9,5 missions as 10 is already on low side:/

Here are a few more tips after watching a couple playthroughs and reading some feedback:

- Route timing is built assuming an airspeed of about mach .6, the speed used by the nav system for timing calculations at the Nevada altitudes, and the approximate speed you get with auto-throttle (AFK) engaged. It is best if you maintain that for most of the flight and only start a high-speed dash to the target near the IP. Otherwise, there is a very good chance you and your flight will not have the fuel to make it back.

- It is also very easy to get out of position if you get too fast too early. I'll write more on time-on-target management in a bit.

- Your flight members will call 'bingo fuel' over the radio when they have enough fuel to land at Lincoln Co at an economical airspeed with a small reserve. Fuel management and directing your flight to RTB when appropriate is the player's responsibility and all part of the mission design. Be sure you account for fuel usage along the route and give the command to RTB over the radio when you are near the airfield.

- Be sure to select the strike frequency after leaving Nellis, otherwise you will not hear AWACS threat advisory calls or be able to give orders to your flight. That is button 2 on the top row as described in the briefing.

- The route from nav point B7 and onward is explained in detail in the briefing, but to clarify, fly from B7 directly to L1, Lincoln Co airfield. You have the option of ending the mission there. Nav point B8 is included for navigation on your way back to Nellis if you choose to take off again after refueling.

- These are challenging missions but there are no intentional traps set for the player. Fixed SAM sites will always be at the location shown in the briefing but a small number of mobile SAM sites can be placed anywhere. The types and general number of unlocated mobile sites are always listed in the briefing. I just want to be clear that there is nothing gimmicky going on here with air defense placement and that air defense set-up is run just like at a real Red Flag. It is intended to require thought and preparation but it is easy to succeed if you understand the plan.

- Before play testing began, the player's flight routes were tested extensively with the player's flight controlled by the AI. They managed to succeed at all missions on a regular basis when flying the briefed route and timing but missions can play out differently depending on the effectiveness of your CAP and SEAD support. You will always have a good chance of surviving if you follow the flight plan to the letter in terms of path and timing. However, that does not mean the planned route is always the best way to do it. Be sure to listen and look for threats and adjust your plan accordingly. See this post on 'allied flight reports' for more details: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=199332

There are also some very good demonstrations of SAM avoidance techniques provided here by the 476 vFG:

See the link in the video description for Tacview replays of each.

Thank you, very useful, even to those of us that still dont own this Campaign :)

Best regards

Thanks Rudel_chw. :)

Here is one more tip, especially recommended for those who are new to single player missions and have not developed an ear for the AI voices.

Enable subtitles by selecting this checkbox under your audio options. This will display the text at the top left of your screen.

Here are two more tips. These are mainly for streamers and video makers but I'm sure everybody will find them useful.

- The RWR tone volume can be adjusted in the cockpit using this knob:

- You can adjust the volume of radio calls by using the audio option sliders. From the cockpit, hit Esc, select Options, and adjust the Helmet slider to your taste. It is usually best to adjust radio volumes using cockpit controls but this serves as a good last resort for some aircraft.

Speaking of RWR tones, you really, really, need to pay attention to these. This is especially important if you choose not to track the threat locations called in by the other flights. All primary threats give you a warning as you approach. Even SA-19s launching with optical guidance give a warning as they acquire you with their search radar.

- This RWR Tone generator by 2-niner is extremely useful! The expected threats are always listed in the briefing so use this to familiarize yourselves with the tones before, or even during the mission:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=184283

- This ELINT database by grunf is also very handy:

https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=182490

The DCS 2.5 Open Beta included an update to the Viggen that, among other things, allows for accurate route timing using the CK37 computer. Thanks very much to RagnarDa at Heatblur for squaring this away for us!

I hope others will share their own tips and techniques as well but here are the four functions I find most useful:

Prior to takeoff, the CK37 displays a countdown to the optimal takeoff time. This assumes a fuel efficient speed is followed along the route all the way to the target and takes any ingress points you create into account. In practice, this serves as a good cross check for the latest time you can take off and still comfortably make the planned time on target.

Another very useful feature you can use at any time is the Current Time display. Taxi, takeoff and package push times are listed on the lineup card so this mode can be used to keep track of those during the mission.

There is no right or wrong way to do this but I fly with the selector in TID until I'm close to the IP. This gives me a read-out of how far ahead or behind of schedule I am. I know I am in a good position in relation to the other flights if the time is close to 0:00.

We also have a timing reference displayed in the HUD. The line tells us if our airspeed is too fast or too slow to hit the next nav point on time. If the vertical fin is above the Flight Path Vector, I either slow down or change course to delay my arrival. If the fin is below, I either speed up or take a more direct route to the nav point.

Nav timing really is as simple as that.

Really enjoying this campaign! One quick question: the target QFE listed on the flight data card (in the DOCS folder for this campaign) never seems to match with the QFE listed for the target on the Viggen kneeboard. I've been using the QFE from the kneeboard and that seems to work, but I'm wondering what's going on with the difference between the two.

Hi San Patricio, thanks very much.

It sounds like you ended up with some old versions of the lineup cards. There was a big problem recently with old campaign files being pushed with updates but that should have been cleared up with DCS 2.5.

If you copy/pasted the cards to a different location last month, new versions should be in the Docs folder for you now. If you are accessing them directly from the folder and QFEs still do not match, you might try deleting the Docs folder and running a 'repair' of DCS. That should pull the latest versions of the files from their servers.

Thanks again.

Hi Bunyap, I've just noticed a small error in the briefing PDF for mission 6:

Designating nav point B5 as an ingress point with a speed of Mach .84 is recommended in orderto include a high speed run on the target in the timingcalculations. That will be an input of 084 and a press of the B4 button with the CK37 data selector switch in theTID position

Also, p.14:

We will turn continue west

"turn and continue"?