F-14B Dynamic Campaign: EastMed Fleet Defense

Thank you for your work on this. Looks great! I have a request in the interests of playability though.

(1) Would it be possible to have the option (or version) for a hot start?

(2) Failing that, at least set up a Stored Heading Alignment in the mission?

Reason is that due to the DCS bug where the aircraft "slips" over the ship by the time start up is done with the regular 8-10 mins of alignment (or even before it is done), all sorts of chaos ensues, including wreckage of the aircraft and hence trashing of the mission.

For example, this happened last night before I even finished the INS. And long before that, my aircraft had been bumping up against the Hawkeye parked behind it with loud bangs dozens of time, though with no apparent/visible damage to me.

Also note that this suggest that the deck sliding bug may break the INS alignment altogether, so the only work around would be a hot start in that case, but I do not know for sure.

Ok, in an attempt to get hot starts, I edited the following:

• 'F-14B EastMed Fleet Defense/Init/camp_init.lua'
   
  (Line 38 )

  hotstart = true,

  
   
   
  

• 'F-14B EastMed Fleet Defense_first.miz' > 'l10n/DEFAULT/camp_status.lua'
   
  (Line 36 )

  ['hotstart'] = true,

  
   
  

• 'F-14B EastMed Fleet Defense_ongoing.miz' > 'l10n/DEFAULT/camp_status.lua'
   
  (Line 36 )

  ['hotstart'] = true,

  
   
   
  

This does work for to get the generated missions hot started, but not the first mission which remains a cold start. :( :( :(

OK, even with the deck sliding / INS woes, I really, really, really, really, do like this mission!

THANKS @mbot!

Really gives a sense of fleet defense + "cloud of war", in how you need to sort targets and make tactical decisions.

First mission -- two Bears down.

Now, second mission --- launched to take up CAP station at 30deg/170nm out from carrier. During this time, one Bear detected at 114deg/400nm, and then another one out at 350deg/400nm. Which is weird because I think that puts them outside the map? Anyway, after a while they disappeared without me doing anything. Apart from that nothing. No Backfire swarms. No attacks. Nothing.

Have I broken something?

I agree that the deck sliding is an extremely annoying bug. I hope that this will be fixed in DCS once and for all.

Stored heading align is enabled for the Tomcat in the campaign, I am not sure why this isn't working for you.

If you want to change the hotstart for the first mission, you have to actually edit the first waypoint of your flight in the mission editor. The line in the LUA file will only affect how the next mission will be generated.

On your second mission, how long have you stayed on station? You are tasked to cover your CAP station for 60 minutes, and the Backfires are set up to attack with a time on target that falls randomly in your CAP time (with even a little fuzziness before and after). So it might be possible that you have to wait and monitor for a while, all while planing your visits to the tanker.

Thanks to the magic of writing missions with a custom program instead of in the mission editor, the area "outside" the map is available too. Because the map is so small, the enemy will actually spend a lot of time outside the nominal map edges. The Backfire home bases are some 2500 km away for example.

I agree that the deck sliding is an extremely annoying bug. I hope that this will be fixed in DCS once and for all.

 

Stored heading align is enabled for the Tomcat in the campaign, I am not sure why this isn't working for you.

 

If you want to change the hotstart for the first mission, you have to actually edit the first waypoint of your flight in the mission editor. The line in the LUA file will only affect how the next mission will be generated.

 

On your second mission, how long have you stayed on station? You are tasked to cover your CAP station for 60 minutes, and the Backfires are set up to attack with a time on target that falls randomly in your CAP time (with even a little fuzziness before and after). So it might be possible that you have to wait and monitor for a while, all while planing your visits to the tanker.

 

Thanks to the magic of writing missions with a custom program instead of in the mission editor, the area "outside" the map is available too. Because the map is so small, the enemy will actually spend a lot of time outside the nominal map edges. The Backfire home bases are some 2500 km away for example.

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

You are absolutely right regarding not staying on station long enough. In the mission I described, the hot start hack in combination with me flying > M1.0 at 30K got me there early and I left at bingo (which came even earlier due to AB use during ingress). More measured pacing put me smack in the middle of a Backfire swarm halfway through the CAP. Unfortunately, I ran out of gas just after I released the second Phoenix. (Another) lesson learned.

All goes to show the difference between knowing how to fly vs. knowing how to fly a mission. REALLY appreciate you providing this opportunity to learn and get a sense of fleet defense operationas!

Has anyone who has used this with DCS installed on Steam ever got the error message "This DLC is not authorized" when launching, or something to that effect?

I'm pretty sure I've installed everything in the right place (even though the files aren't in the Saved Games location for Steam installs), and correctly edited the MissionScripting file.. although oddly enough it didn't reset or needed to be changed after the latest update?