Problems with adding packing in campaign
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Hi all
I am playing the first campaign in KTO on veteran difficulty and have lost several airframes and haven’t successfully completed any missions I have chosen. Thus, I decided to try adding my own package to attack targets I chose, namely airfields as I seem to constantly shot down!
There a some issues I seem to be having
1.) Can I add a package to an airbase that does not currently have any missions listed?
2.) I have added a package to my home airbase, but after hitting OK it is not listed. I did have one mission I made listed, but when I went to fly it, the countdown timer started okay, but then it went to all zeros and nothing happened.I have unselected “Set By HQ” option, but wonder if I am missing something else?
I don’t have any trouble selecting the F16’s I want to use, if they are available of course. If I get the “bad timing” error, I just adjust the TOT and the mission seems to be generated, but again not listed in the mission list.Thanks for any tips for this newbie mission builder.
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You can add missions to any squadron, regardless if they have missions fragged or not. The only difference may be the timing.
As to why your mission creation did not work we would need more info.
What do you mean it went to zero and nothing happened? You clicked takeoff and then taxi or runway sometime prior to the clock reaching zeros? Did you place your pilot in the correct ‘seat’ for the fragged mission?
To begin creating missions, keep the game paused, right-click anywhere on the map and choose Add Package. If you want your mission to target a specific battalion or structure, right click on it. In this case we will right click on empty ground. This will be an interdiction, which is an ‘area’ mission with no specific target.
Once you click Add Package, the timing dialog appears. By default the ToT (Time over Target) will be exactly 30 minutes from the current time. Take-off times will be backward computed to fit. Don’t worry about adjusting the take-off. You need to decide how urgent the mission is. You can reduce the ToT time to get there faster, and here I will slice 6 minutes off of default ToT to get them there a little sooner Click New.
Clicking New calls up the Add Flight dialog. Here we will choose the aircraft that will fly the missions, how many will fly and the squadron, air base and skill of the pilots. For this mission we will choose the A-10s of the 25th Attack Squadron out of Osan, which sits just south of Seoul.
As we all know there are horses for courses, or aircraft types that are better suited to fly a certain mission type than others. For interdictions against enemy troops nothing beats the A-10. Other good candidates are AH-64, AH-1, F-15 Strike Eagles. I sheepishly admit to even having used B-52s loaded with a shed-load of CBU on occasion. Again, depending on which campaign or theater you have chosen certain aircraft types may not be available or perhaps others are. Our trusty F-16s may be among the most versatile combat jets that have ever flown, but that also means they aren’t the best at anything. Still, you have plenty of them so they will do yeoman’s work in all types of missions.
For this mission we will choose the A-10s, make it a two-ship, choose AI (Air Interdiction) as the role and set the pilot skill to veteran. For missions with specific targets, like Pre-plan CAS or a facility strike, check that the target shown here is the the one you intend to hit. Once you are satisfied click OK and the mission is generated. Or not. This where most players run in to difficulty. The mission you are creating can only occur if there are available aircraft to fly it. The ATO does a fairly efficient job of ensuring all of a squadron’s aircraft have something to do, leaving few or none unassigned at any given time.
If the mission cannot be created as fragged, you will get one of two errors, either bad timing, or no aircraft. Bad timing tends to mean there are aircraft available, but cannot meet the timing requirements, often due to distance to target. When this occurs, go back to the timing screen and add time to the ToT. Try 10 minutes and do it again. Once the requirements are met the mission will be created.
No aircraft means all planes of the chosen squadron are currently assigned missions. There are two ways around this. The first is to find another mission already fragged for the squadron and delete it. Click on the mission on the left and note it’s callsign, then click ATO at the bottom. Find the mission (uncheck show all packages) and right click, choose delete. This will free up those airframes for you to assign. Be careful though. You could unwittingly leave a gap in your defenses or remove critical escort or what have you. HAVCAPs for tankers way behind the lines are a good choice for deletion. Sometimes, for reasons I do not understand, deleting missions does not result in assignable aircraft. Other times it does.
If the mission isn’t urgent though, it is better to simply change the ToT. Try setting the mission up again but add one hour to the ToT. Keep adding time until the mission requirements can be met. For large packages I like to add several hours. This essentially guarantees I’ll have any type of aircraft I want available to add to the package and eliminates the trial-and error to speed up the process.
Some campaigns have multiple squadrons flying the same aircraft type. Try to choose the one with the shortest route, but don’t forget there may be another squadron available if the first one you choose has no available planes.
This can be extended to the missions you want to fly yourself. Get in the habit of building your missions a few hours in advance and you’ll always have custom missions ready to go.
In our example however, A-10s are available and the mission is created. In this case it’s Buzzard 1. Now click loadout at the bottom of the screen. Change as you see fit. In this case the default loadout was a bunch of GBUs. I changed it so each A-10 would carry four Mav-Ds, six CBU-87 and three CBU-97. I also adjusted the waypoints to make the flight path as short as possible. I then placed the first target steerpoint (STP #5) near the northernmost friendly unit in the area and the second target steerpoint (STP #6) further north along the road. This ensures that the aircraft won’t overfly enemy units before they start their attacks and means the most threathening, closest enemy unit gets the A-10s full attention. At the start, all units are full strength so I want to take every precaution.
In addition I created a second A-10 interdiction to the west of the first. Having both in the target area at the same time has many advanatges, making it more survivable by giving the enemy more targets and simplifying any cover you can provide. In this case we will not assign any escort. There will be plenty of BARCAPS flown in the area. However, if you want to assign escort, TARCAP is a good choice. You can keep on going and expand any package by adding escort, SEAD escort and so on. Leave the Add Package dialog open and click New again to add another flight to the package. Timing complications easily arise, so large packages are best done a few hours in advance.
Here is the second A-10 mission to the west.
After this I repeated the procedure to get attack helos, A-10s and Strike Eagles interdicting all avenues of approach along the front that the enemy was using to cross the border. Within hours, if all goes well, the enemy attack will be blunted and Blue will get ready to consolidate and go on the offensive.
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Thanks for the great info.
As for the timer going right to zero, I created the mission I wanted to fly, in this case an airfield attack. I setup a two ship as an OCA Strike. The take off time was okay. I clicked OK. When I went to fly the mission, I hit Takeoff, selected Taxi and the timer started. Shortly after, the timer went to all zeros. I could click on Ramp or Runway, but nothing happened and I had to Cancel back to the map screen.
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I can think of nothing about a mission that is successfully fragged and appears in the ATO that would prevent BMS loading in to the 3D. What type of aircraft are you attempting to fly?
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I can think of nothing about a mission that is successfully fragged and appears in the ATO that would prevent BMS loading in to the 3D. What type of aircraft are you attempting to fly?
Yes, never happened to me after several hundreds take-off.
Great post DBond, by the way. And still by the way, if you delete flights, the loadout is lost, unless you unload it manually. You can sigh…… -
I can think of nothing about a mission that is successfully fragged and appears in the ATO that would prevent BMS loading in to the 3D. What type of aircraft are you attempting to fly?
If the runways get destroyed prior to takeoff I believe this happens.
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Haha, I didn’t even think of that. Fair one It would also explain why he asked about creating missions for a squadron that had none already. I though it meant just that he had turned off HQ, but this also makes sense.
Captain, is your base destroyed?
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I was tasking two F16 Block 40 to carry out an OCA Strike against an airfield that was at 100%. I right clicked on the airfield. I selected Add Package. Then I chose 2 F16’s Block 40. I selected OCA Strike as the role and hit okay.
The timing was okay, as there was no error messages and the flight path was on the map. The mission itself wasn’t in the Frag Order, which I thought was strange. It should appear right away? Anyways, I was able to choose lead, hit Fly and choose Taxi. The timer started it’s countdown normally, then after a minute or so, it all went to zeros. I had to hit Cancel to get back to the mission planning screen.
Not sure what I may have done wrong.
I have tried adding a BARCAP mission, but I get the same result. The mission seems to be created okay, but doesn’t show in the up in the Frag Order list.
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Haha, I didn’t even think of that. Fair one It would also explain why he asked about creating missions for a squadron that had none already. I though it meant just that he had turned off HQ, but this also makes sense.
Captain, is your base destroyed?
No, my airbase is not destroyed. I’ve tried this from the only three airfields that I can fly out of. Two have no missions available, shows “planning” in the mission list. Not sure if I can add a mission to this situation? The other airfield I used had missions listed, but after creating the package, it never showed up in the mission list.
I must be doing something wrong or missing a step somewhere? I have tried adding a package for an A-10 two ship, thinking it might be something to do with the F16’s I am choosing, but again, the Strike mission I chose for the A-10s never showed up in the mission list.
Thanks! P.S. I’ll try and send you the .cam file later this evening.
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the Strike mission I chose for the A-10s never showed up in the mission list.
Which mission list do you mean? It should appear in the Frag Order for the A-10 squadron (you would need to transfer in to it) and the ATO with show all packages checked. If you are in a F-16 squadron for example, you will not see the A-10 mission if you see what I mean.
When you create these missions do you see the flight path appear for the mission you are trying to make?
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And still by the way, if you delete flights, the loadout is lost, unless you unload it manually. You can sigh……
{sigh}
From Update 2 changelog:
- Weapons will now be moved back to squadron stores if a flight is deleted from ATO
Are you saying they still don’t move back to squadron stores, or were you not aware that this bug was fixed in Update 2?
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{sigh}
From Update 2 changelog:
Are you saying they still don’t move back to squadron stores, or were you not aware that this bug was fixed in Update 2?
I never checked. I’ve always noticed how patient you are. A sigh is somewhat violent from you, I’m sorry you came to feel so.
I read it again, not so long ago, but I can’t say how recent the thread was.EDIT: I had forgotten I wrote that thing about sighing.
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Read the post again.
You said: “You can sigh”, so I wrote: “{sigh} ;)”
:mrgreen:
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Read the post again.
You said: “You can sigh”, so I wrote: “{sigh} ;)”
:mrgreen:
Oh damn! Darkman got editNinja’d!
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I think it’s time to start digging a little deeper. Is this early or late in the campaign? When you create your package, you are making sure to change the Type of aircraft in the New Sortie window and the location right? It’s been a while but I believe there are Bk40s at more than one location/squadron. I don’t mean for this to be offensively simple, but lets start at the beginning to make sure we don’t miss anything in our troubleshooting:
Start a new campaign - This is just for testing, you don’t need to save it or lose your other campaign
Select one of the F16-BK40 squadrons and Commit/Start the campaign
First things first–Stop the clock
Open the ATO and make sure the “Show all packages” or “Show all Flights” box is checked (I forget the precise wording)
At this point you should see a bunch of packages in the ATO
Open the status for your squadron and uncheck the Set by HQ
Delete any flights in the frag order the AI may have already created for your squadron that are not already airborne–this should be done through the ATO with Delete Package
Right click ANYWHERE on the map and ADD Package
Set the time for 2 hours in the future and select Add Flight
Change the Type to F16 Blk40, the Location to your airbase and make sure the correct squadron is selected from the dropdown - I think this is where the problem might be occuring so make sure it is the right squadron and not just the right base
Change the mission type to a Sweep and click OK-no other changes
At this point you should see the Mission in your Squadron Frag Order as well as the Flight path on the map. Click the flight and Select the Lead, your call sign should now fill the first spot.
Open the ATO and verify under OCA you see the Sweep package
Click the Commit button and select Taxi - Timer should start counting down and change to 3DAgain, I don’t mean to sound overly simple in that, but I know for a fact that should work. If we verify first that the game is doing what it should then we can dig deeper and see if maybe your CAM file got corrupted or something else is causing the issue. If you experience something different than what I listed after performing an action in the list, such as packages not in the ATO or not showing up in the frag order, let us know and we will have a starting point to figure out what is going wrong.
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yeah, check up by the clock to see if there’s any news reports available,
you might have won the war -
Which mission list do you mean? It should appear in the Frag Order for the A-10 squadron (you would need to transfer in to it) and the ATO with show all packages checked. If you are in a F-16 squadron for example, you will not see the A-10 mission if you see what I mean.
When you create these missions do you see the flight path appear for the mission you are trying to make?
I wasn’t in the A-10 squadron when I created the package, so I can see why it didn’t show up in the mission list.
The flightpath did appear when I created the airfield strike mission.
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I think it’s time to start digging a little deeper. Is this early or late in the campaign? When you create your package, you are making sure to change the Type of aircraft in the New Sortie window and the location right? It’s been a while but I believe there are Bk40s at more than one location/squadron. I don’t mean for this to be offensively simple, but lets start at the beginning to make sure we don’t miss anything in our troubleshooting:
Start a new campaign - This is just for testing, you don’t need to save it or lose your other campaign
Select one of the F16-BK40 squadrons and Commit/Start the campaign
First things first–Stop the clock
Open the ATO and make sure the “Show all packages” or “Show all Flights” box is checked (I forget the precise wording)
At this point you should see a bunch of packages in the ATO
Open the status for your squadron and uncheck the Set by HQ
Delete any flights in the frag order the AI may have already created for your squadron that are not already airborne–this should be done through the ATO with Delete Package
Right click ANYWHERE on the map and ADD Package
Set the time for 2 hours in the future and select Add Flight
Change the Type to F16 Blk40, the Location to your airbase and make sure the correct squadron is selected from the dropdown - I think this is where the problem might be occuring so make sure it is the right squadron and not just the right base
Change the mission type to a Sweep and click OK-no other changes
At this point you should see the Mission in your Squadron Frag Order as well as the Flight path on the map. Click the flight and Select the Lead, your call sign should now fill the first spot.
Open the ATO and verify under OCA you see the Sweep package
Click the Commit button and select Taxi - Timer should start counting down and change to 3DAgain, I don’t mean to sound overly simple in that, but I know for a fact that should work. If we verify first that the game is doing what it should then we can dig deeper and see if maybe your CAM file got corrupted or something else is causing the issue. If you experience something different than what I listed after performing an action in the list, such as packages not in the ATO or not showing up in the frag order, let us know and we will have a starting point to figure out what is going wrong.
Thanks,
I am in Day 1 of the Tiger campaign on Veteran Challenge setting, if that helps any!
No offence taken. It maybe that I am not selecting the right squadron, as I just select the F16 model I want to use, change the role to say Strike, and then hit OK.
I will follow your steps when I get the chance, but it sounds like it is because of not choosing the right squadron. I was unaware that it had to be chosen.
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On day one of Tiger Spirit you have a Block 50 squadron at Kimpo, a Block 32 squadron at Kangnung and a Block 40 squadron at Haeju. That’s it for Vipers on day one I think. Reinforcements will arrive, but unless this campaign has been edited I don’t think he could frag the wrong squadron, if he is fragging the right Block. Which Block/airbase are you deployed to?
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Well, it varies. I normally stick with one base, but when there are no missions I want to fly, I simply reload the campaign and choose a new airbase. I currently am stationed at Kimpo.