Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide
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@drtbkj said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
suicide missions
If you are getting that on your theaters, your ALR is set wrong.
In KTO that does NOT happen unless you changed the ALR?!
So? -
@tiag said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
@drtbkj said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
suicide missions
If you are getting that on your theaters, your ALR is set wrong.
In KTO that does NOT happen unless you changed the ALR?!
So?Hi, Tiag. Excuse the use of the label. I didn’t mean literal suicide missions. I meant missions like the above example.
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@drtbkj said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
@tiag said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
@drtbkj said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
suicide missions
If you are getting that on your theaters, your ALR is set wrong.
In KTO that does NOT happen unless you changed the ALR?!
So?Hi, Tiag. Excuse the use of the label. I didn’t mean literal suicide missions. I meant missions like the above example.
He’ll ask you the same question. You shouldn’t have them unless you changed the ALR.
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@LorikEolmin Thanks, Lorik. We will look to make sure we haven’t done any incorrect ALR tweaking. Meanwhile, I just started a Rolling Fire in an unmodded stck KTO and got this (BTW, the WDP page in the image was not for this mission). I’m sorry if the nickname I used was upsetting, nor was I trying to call it a bug. I’m just saying these missions , that you may not do on Day 1, can reduce the number of available aircraft when you go to create your own mission.
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@drtbkj
EDIT: Just trying to understand your point and if required improve the engine.Nothing “suicidal” with this mission. On the contrary, hitting enemy assets by flanking them and not overflying into dozens of enemy AD WEZ north of the flot.
Why do you think you should delete this mission?IMO, this a perfect reasonable mission. Threats are quite low in this area and the ATM tasks packages to hit many targets there. Meanwhile the main air defence assets around the flot are being target to peel the onion. In few hours the AD north of the flot will be beaten and the air war will move north.
What is wrong with that?
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@tiag said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
@drtbkj
Nothing “suicidal” with this mission. On the contrary, hitting enemy assets by flanking them and not overflying into dozens of enemy AD WEZ north of the flot.
Why do you think you should delete this mission?IMO, this a perfect reasonable mission. Threats are quite low in this area and the ATM tasks packages to hit many targets there. Meanwhile the main air defence assets around the flot are being target to peel the onion. In few hours the AD north of the flot will be beaten and the air war will move north.
What is wrong with that?
Joe will reply that you didn’t mention anything about red CAP potentially flanking the package with few needs of fuel and assets.
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@LorikEolmin
Well, the ATM frags based on the air picture at the moment as well as where are the main enemy airbases. It knows, as we know, where the enemy has its main squadrons. But it does NOT cheat by looking what the other side fragged or the enemy ATOs. The engine also does not remember playing this campaign before either.There is one thing you guys need to remember: The engine must be able to deal any theater/campaign: for red and blue side. You guys have been flying these missions and campaigns for decades, so you know meanwhile very well what to expect. I bet many here know very the type of MIG in each enemy base for the KTO campaigns by heart. And where the CAPs are, right? Also everyone here knows where the SA-5 and SA-10s are exactly, right?
So, a human planning knows that all beforehand. The engine deals with the present picture (a bit in the future) and has (almost) nothing hardcoded. If Joe would go red side and play a different strategy for red (all manually controlled etc), the engine for blue side would still be able to deal with most of it.On other side of the coin, I have experimenting with a deep-Q network trained to command the ATM/GTM. It is game changer so far in terms of fragging which could make the AI commander to behave much more human-like as you guys wish. But I digress.
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You have your answer Joe, it’s not your ALR settings; the mission you consider suicidal are fragged by design.
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@tiag @LorikEolmin . Once again, I’m not trying to improve the engine, as you say, Tiag. I don’t think it’s broken! I’m also not saying these missions are “bad”,misplanned, or whatever. They are legitimate missions. And, I’m regretting the “suicide mission” label more by the minute .
Let me rephrase my earlier comment. Ifyou are someone that likes to frag a lot of your own missions, and if because of that you get "aircraft n/a ", then removing such missions as above is an option to free up a/c.
That’s all I was trying to say -
IMO the mission could be pulled off if the package is complete enough, ie. if there is cover from SEAD/DEAD, Escort and/or Sweep flights. AND if fuel can be had on the ingress and egress leg. Hard to tell from the single screenshot.
@tiag does the campaign engine account for tanker support when tasking missions (I suppose it does but not sure) ?
If fuel and A-A coverage is in place, I can see tiag’s point that the mission might be important/valuable enough for the war to have the engine task it.
I can’t help but wonder if the 2D vs 3D makes a mission like this more likely to appear. As a player partaking in that package, it would be a tall order to succeed with the mission. Maybe if the mission is executed in 2D only by dice-rolling entities they are a bit more likely to succeed and that might be what gets it tasked in the first place?
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Good Day, All. Last night I was thinking about our conversation here yesterday, and 2 points came to mind.
The first is that I regret that the “suicide mission” nickname was taken as a sign the campaign engine is broken. In fact I remain amazed how well this 20 yr old software is working.
The second, and main, point is that what the Engine gives you are choices and opportunities . That is a very good thing. If you’re a person that “just wants to fly missions”, then pick one , kick the tires and light the fires. In that scenario this mission we discussed earlier could be fun . It would certainly be challenging.
But, IMHO, taking that approach wastes the opportunities the Engine gives you. I revisited that mission from an unmodded stock KTO campaign…
The package was 2-ship F16-50 and you can see the AWACS and tanker support, and where the tanker is.
I started to see that what the Engine does is give us the foundation to fly a successful mission. Maybe it’s not meant to do everything for us. What it does is create an opportunity to add escort,SEAD,etc. Also, should you go with the ordinance as is? Can you move the tanker eastward? Can you fly it as is and by tactics make it work? Do you accept the weapons used in that mission or use them elsewhere. Logistics is part the plan, obviously. And, on and on
The tanker made me think of what @tiag mentioned, how can we make the engine better? Is there a way to improve your control over tankers? You can place a tanker where and when you want, but how do you get the frag to assign it to you? That is something I’ve struggled with.
OTOH, you have other choices. There are DPRK tanks in the DMZ. Maybe you want to do a PrePlan CAS rather then going at that radar?
Choices and opportunities. -
@jayb said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
does the campaign engine account for tanker support when tasking missions (I suppose it does but not sure) ?
Of course. Fuel and tankers play a central role.
Fuel required is calculated and a package can be set with a flag that requires a tanker. If tanker is not available, package fragging is destroyed before finished. There are dozens of lines of code dealing with that part alone.
Same happens for JAM/SEAD/Escort…sometimes the ATM/MR can be set that without such type of “attached” flights, a pkg should be deleted before entering the ATO.
Biker and other coders worked that part in detail in the past. It is a long, very long algorithm that cover several bases in package fragging.@drtbkj If I sounded defensive, that was not really my idea. Complex algorithms and code can be bugged and always improved. That is where I am coming from. Nothing more than that.
Cheers. -
@drtbkj said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
You can place a tanker where and when you want, but how do you get the frag to assign it to you? That is something I’ve struggled with.
In case it helps, I have noticed that to refuel off the tanker you do not necessarily need it assigned to you, ie. embedded in the flight plan. Make a note of the BE for the track and ask AWACS for “vector to nearest tanker”. It will tell you its TACAN and UHF which is what you need. You could note down the UHF in 2D beforehand too, but TACANs can change so it’s best to get a fresh value of that while in the air.
As for this campaign mission and its fuel requirements being a challenge in and of itself, for practice we get a very similar mission in the Saved TEs called “TE_BMS_05_LONG_TRAVEL”. Pretty cool mission set up with SEAD, Escort etc. I have enjoyed flying that a couple of times, although for time saving purposes I sometimes break it down in two by saving after the ingress refuel and the package having reached the push point. Then I can try out the business end of the mission several times.
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@drtbkj
But is it not a little bit selfish to draw the tanker away from the other packages who need it? - joke.Just out of interest because I couldn’t see it in the screenshots or overread it due my too old age:
What did the package in the ATO look like? Because it’s a SEAD mission I guess you were an escort for a Strike or something. For this, there should have been a A2A escort, too.
At least with Strike packages, HQ often does a pretty good job.
I also alterate given flights very often or plan the entire package from the start manually.
But for all the other squadrons over the map, the new Acceptable Level of Risk is a tremendous improvement.
And yes, when in need for free aircraft for creating your own mission at that time, this mission is a good candidate for deleting (in an early stage of the campaign). BUT: Don’t forget to delete the other flights in the package too or it really becomes suicidal for them without SEAD. -
Good Day., All
@jayb , I have placed a tanker along my flight path. In Nevada, for example, I’ve even at times literally made it part of the package (useful with the MQ-25 with datalinking) but it wouldn’t tank me. The AI wanted me to go to the assigned tanker, apparently. Are you saying that doing the vector to tanker call when close to the other tanker is how the AI will let you tank off it? If so, then you have just made mission planning a LOT easier. BTW, is there a certain distance you have to be from the desired tanker to get it to work?
Thanks for the tip on the Long Travel mission
@Atze-0 No Tanker Thievery for me What I would like to do is create my own tanker flight as part of the package. , which btw was in this mission just the 2 F-16’s.
A “workaround” I 've had some success with is to create the tanker flight where and when I want it, then create my flight. Sometimes, I have to delete the assigned tanker to get it to work, which is obviously not something I want to do. -
@drtbkj
You need the other tanker vector command (q-q-5) : “Vector to NEAREST tanker”“Vector to tanker” means the one in your flight plan, usually on preset 13. AWACS might give you two different responses if there are more than one tanker airborne.
Besides using the right command for an unknown but friendly tanker, the usual 10nm distance applies for talking to him and getting in the queue. The Comms and Nav book p.50 has more information
Cheers,
JayB -
@jayb said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
@drtbkj
You need the other tanker vector command (q-q-5) : “Vector to NEAREST tanker”“Vector to tanker” means the one in your flight plan, usually on preset 13. AWACS might give you two different responses if there are more than one tanker airborne.
Besides using the right command for an unknown but friendly tanker, the usual 10nm distance applies for talking to him and getting in the queue. The Comms and Nav book p.50 has more information
Cheers,
JayBYou Da Man. I just tested vector to tanker, will now try this
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@jayb Update, the vector to nearest tanker worked . I had fragged a package, then added the tanker. Enroute I called AWACS and it gave me “my” tanker. There was one slight glitch. The freq AWACs gave me was incorrect, and I couldn’t contact the tanker and thus couldn’t tank. I discarded the mission, got the freq from Mission Commander, and then everything worked.
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@drtbkj hm, that’s unfortunate. I knew that there is a TACAN bug where TACAN changes (which might be fixed for U4) but the UHF is usually spot on. Were there more than one tanker in theater ? I am just curious if he might have given you another tanker frequency
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@jayb said in Creating and Running a Campaign: One User's Guide:
@drtbkj hm, that’s unfortunate. I knew that there is a TACAN bug where TACAN changes (which might be fixed for U4) but the UHF is usually spot on. Were there more than one tanker in theater ? I am just curious if he might have given you another tanker frequency
Hi,jayb.Sorry for the delay in responding, I was afk. It was a campaign mission, so yes there were other tankers in theater. The weird thing was AWACS gave the correct callsign for “my” tanker. I’m going to test again and see if I had gotten my pre-mission assigned tanker’s freq, or another tanker’s.
It’s a minor bug, if it’s even a bug. I don’t mind a bit getting the correct freq pre-launch