MiG-21Bis Dynamic Campaign: Guardians of the Caucasus

[MBot]

 

 

It is the year 1980 and war has broken out between East and West. You are a pilot of the 982nd Fighter Regiment at Vaziani air base, USSR. Fly the MiG-21Bis in its point defence interceptor role to guard the city of Tbilisi against a two week long NATO air offensive out of Turkey. Meet large strike packages of contemporary adversaries such as the F-4 Phantom II and the F-5 Freedom Fighter and take on the next generation of US fighters in form of the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-15 Eagle. Get through to well escorted formations of B-52, perform ground controlled intercepts of bombers in instrument flight at night and get the MiG to Mach 2 to down high and fast intruders. Defend your installations on the ground and wear down the combat strength of the enemy, while keeping a close eye on your own numbers. Your performance matters.

 

 

Features:

- Single player or cooperative dynamic campaign

- Open number of missions with variable time of day and weather

- Automatically generated missions depending on previous results

- Persistent losses of ground installations, air defences and aircraft across the campaign, including damage, repair, replacement and reinforcement

- Detailed briefings and debriefings

- Authentic scenario featuring combat units that actually operated in the theatre or could have been deployed there, including actual real-life positions of SAM sites

 

 

Download V1.1

 

 

Due to technical limitations of the DCS framework, the following instructions should be followed:

 

- In order to allowing carrying over information from one mission to the next, it is absolutely necessary to modify the file 'MissionScripting.lua' in the folder 'DCS World\Scripts'. Add two minus signs in front of line 17 'sanitizeModule('io')' and line 18 'sanitizeModule('lfs')'. Your file should then look like this:

 

--Initialization script for the Mission lua Environment (SSE)

dofile('Scripts/ScriptingSystem.lua')

--Sanitize Mission Scripting environment
--This makes unavailable some unsecure functions. 
--Mission downloaded from server to client may contain potentialy harmful lua code that may use these functions.
--You can remove the code below and make availble these functions at your own risk.

local function sanitizeModule(name)
_G[name] = nil
package.loaded[name] = nil
end

do
sanitizeModule('os')
--sanitizeModule('io')
--sanitizeModule('lfs')
require = nil
loadlib = nil
end

 

Warning: This will allow potentially harmful lua code that may be included in missions downloaded from the internet. Modification at your own risk. If you do not wish do make this modification, you can still play this campaign as a client in multiplayer games hosted by someone else. The modification probably has to be repeated after each time a DCS World update is applied.

 

- The campaign is included in one single mission file. The first time a mission is completed, a file called 'MDC_campaign_results.lua' is created in your 'DCS World' folder. On subsequent launching of the mission file, the campaign loads the 'MDC_campaign_results.lua' and progresses from there on. Upon ending of a running mission, the 'MDC_campaign_results.lua' file is updated. To start a new campaign, delete 'MDC_campaign_results.lua'. To save a campaign state, make a backup of 'MDC_campaign_results.lua'. To load a campaign state, move your backup 'MDC_campaign_results.lua' into your 'DCS World' folder (overwrite the existing file if applicable).

 

- The content of the present mission is generated after you enter the cockpit and the game is unpaused. If you are playing coop multiplayer, all human participants should be ready in their cockpits before the game is unpaused for the first time. At this point the campaign will count the participating clients and will provide a number of friendly AI aircraft that compliments the number of human players.

 

- Two seconds after unpausing the first time, the briefing for the present mission will appear. It is suggested that you pause the game again in order to read it without time pressure. In order to hide the briefing, unpause the mission, and press RADIOBUTTON>F10>F2. If you do not see the F10 entry in your radiomenu, you might be in a ATC radio-submenu. Return to the radiomenu root folder by pressing F11.

 

- Before quitting the mission, press RADIOBUTTON>F10>F1>F1 to end the mission. This will immediately remove all active units, calculate the mission results, display the mission debriefing and update the 'MDC_campaign_results.lua' file. Without performing this step, all progress of the present mission will be lost when quitting the mission. Due to the necessity to access the radiomenu to perform this step, the player must be alive and in his cockpit to end a mission. Therefore campaign progress is not possible when the player dies or ejects when the campaign is played in singleplayer mode. In multiplayer mode, any dead or ejected player can simple re-spawn in a new aircraft in order to access the radiomenu to end the mission. If you wish to still continue the campaign after death when playing alone, it is suggested to open a multiplayer game and host your own server instead (even if you are the only participant).

 

- When viewing the debriefing of the present mission, note the time and weather of the next mission at the bottom. Since this properties cannot be adjusted in missions automatically, they require manual modification by the player. Open the campaign mission file in the DCS Mission Editor and adjust the time of day and the weather as instructed by the last debriefing. It is suggested that you perform this modifications in a copy of the original mission file for your presently running campaign, though there is no technical reason that makes this mandatory.

 

 

 

Special thanks to miRage for providing the splash screen graphic and my friends at the 76. IAP for helping with testing.

 

 

---------------------------------------------

Version 1.1 - 22.02.2015 Changelog:

 

-Reduced B-52 night sorties altitude below contrail altitude

-Disabled B-52 jammer as it did more harm than good

-Fixed some typos

-Fixed dangerous ground vehicles

-Reduced visibility in rain or thunderstorm by adding fog

-Added player stats for current mission in debriefing scoreboard

DC_Guardians_of_the_Caucasus_v1.1.zip

Edited February 22, 2015 by MBot

[mwd2]

This looks really interesting - thanks for sharing.

Edited December 29, 2014 by mwd2

[Silver_Dragon]

Great Work Mbot ;)

[uboats]

nice design

[Andrei]

My-my, based on the description this looks quite amazing. Looking forward to give it a try.

[chromium]

This is going to be a masterpiece! :)

 

(that damned "Must Spread Rept" message...)

[tintifaxl]

Darn, do I really need to learn how to fly the Mig-21 now? Coop, you say? Fantastic :)

[il_corleone]

Wow! can you please make this one with ww2 Birds?

 

With the Mig 21 is fantastic

[Yurgon]

OMFG, this sounds amazing! :thumbup:

 

Time to finally learn the MiG-21 now. :)

[xcom]

Very nice work!

The scripts look very organized and well done.

 

Salute!

Looks like amazing work.

 

Will you release a template for using your scripts or some kind of tutorial?

[egaRim]

I had the pleasure to help testing the mission.

 

Something completely different from previously known missions. Amazing what you can do with creative scripting. MBot is a wizard ;)

[trindade]

Looks great, thanks for sharing! :thumbup:

[Mainstay]

Very nice.

 

Well done sir :)

[MBot]

Thank you for your encouraging comments. I hope you have as much fun playing this campaign as I have myself :)

 

One word of caution for hosting this campaign in MP. Due to a DCS bug that is affecting the F10 command system reported here, I highly suggest to completely shut down and re-start the DCS MP application each time you start the mission.

[MBot]

Will you release a template for using your scripts or some kind of tutorial?

 

I do not think I will do so. While there are certainly elements in the code that are generic and can be re-used for other campaigns, large parts are customized to the specific scenario depicted.

[chev255]

To be honest you may want to make payware campaigns using ED's new system!

[Andrei]

A question here. After 1st mission was finished, debrief asked to set mission's weather in the editor. Namely wind 359@4m/s. In the actual briefing, wind was now reported 119@6 m/s. I would assume this is a small bug?

 

Otherwise I've very much enjoyed 1st mission, looking forward to continue.

[MBot]

A question here. After 1st mission was finished, debrief asked to set mission's weather in the editor. Namely wind 359@4m/s. In the actual briefing, wind was now reported 119@6 m/s. I would assume this is a small bug?

 

This is actually intentional. In the mission editor you have to set wind heading (where wind is going to), while the briefing displays wind bearing which is actually more common in the aviation world (where wind is comming from). Wind speed increases with altitude in DCS. Vaziani is at 450m ASL and actual wind speed will be about 1.5 times higher that set in the editor. The briefing will display this updated value.

 

But good catch anyway :)

 

Edit: Are you sure the briefing didn't say 179@6?

Edited December 30, 2014 by MBot

[Rivvern]

Downloaded. Looking awesome!

[Andrei]

...

But good catch anyway :)

 

Edit: Are you sure the briefing didn't say 179@6?

 

A-ha, so it's even better than I thought!

And indeed, the wind was 179@6. I jotted that down on a post-it and my handwriting is horrible.

Cheers!

[Cobra847]

We don't get much time to enjoy what we build at LNS, but this is top of the list to try!

[audax]

You could have warned us that the default loadout is IR only. The R-13M1 looks quite a bit like a R-3R…

[Teo]

Flew three missions in MP tonight with human GCI. Totally awesome!

Thank you MBot!

[Rivvern]

Master Arms ran 3 missions this evening. Awesome! Worked as intended and we had lots of fun with it.

 

I hope you guys continue to develop this and maybe create variants with other aircrafts or mission.

Quality is most important though!

 

Thanks!

 

 

I saved all briefs/debriefs if anyone want to see them.

[audax]

Flew three missions in MP tonight with human GCI. Totally awesome!

Thank you MBot!

Did your CGI use the F10 map or do you have more appropriate tools?

 

Flying alone is stupid, but my mates are not combat ready in the MiG-21 so I just explode all the time because I've got no one to watch my six ;)