Friar

PHASE 1 - SESSION 2 Red air resistance continue to be a constant threat, although not as intense as in the first engagement, however, they still managed to claim a number a victories. Blue air force certainly gave as good as they got, if not actually winning more duels and enabling the ground war to continue. Aleppo was again the main target and its defensive units taking multiple hits. It still remains operational however. Ground was made to the South East of Hatay with the town of Abu Talhah being captured by units of the 82nd deployed by Ch-47. Despite being taken there are still some Red resistance units in the area who will no doubt stage an attempt to recapture it at the next opportunity so some thought should be given to protecting the Blue ground units that are occupying. Alpha FOB became fully operational again for rearm and refuel following the arrival of a supply convoy. Harim has again taken significant damage and may well also be ready for an assault. Advise strongly that further recon takes place before committing boots on the ground. SCORES LOGISTICS Hatay was again supplied with ferried aircraft and the stocks are as follows During the course of the mission stocks of Hellfire type "K" missiles were nearly depleted and a re-supply mission was required. Stocks were flown in my Ch-47 from Incirlik. MISSION TECHNICAL PERFORMANCE No major issues were report and the session seemed to run smoothly. From the scores we can see that @DD_Fenrir has flown under different pilot IDs and his score has been split over the two sessions so far. It is therefore recommended pilots join the campaign with the same name to ensure your scores are maintained correctly. SUMMARY I hope you all enjoyed this session and I look forward to next week when we might finally get our hands on Aleppo. Friar

SESSION 1 REPORT Despite the Red forces putting up consistent waves of defending aircraft, the blue air force managed to stem the tide which assisted the ground offence to make some ground. Gaziantep which started out under Red control was re-captured and despite an attempt by Red forces to take it back (they managed to get a convoy very close to the airfield perimeter and were able to take out some of the NASAMS) it remains in Blue control. The ground team have worked hard and have managed to get one of the NASMA launchers operational again. The Alpha FOB is back under Blue control after being briefly taken by a Red patrol. The red held towns of Abu Talhah and Harim were targeted by helicopter and air strikes and have taken losses to their defenses but still need further attention before we can send in troops to capture them. The key Red airfield of Aleppo suffered many hits but still remains fully operational and must be considered a key target for the next attack if Blue forces are to progress into Red territory. Hatay remains the key front line airfield with flights of F4, F14, F16 and F18 being ferried there to be available for the next mission (see below) SCORES Fruitbat was the first pilot to hit 1000 points but was sadly killed on that "one last attack" so suffered a 10 point penalty....... MISSION TECHNICAL PERFORMANCE All players seemed to be reporting good frames (unlike previous attempts to run the mission ) so it looks like my changes have been a good step forward. I have loaded the mission up on my machine this morning in order to grab the screen shots and it loaded with no problems so looking good for the next session. Feedback regarding AI spawns was that it could be spaced a bit more so I will update the enemy spawn delay from between the current 5 to 8 minutes out to 5 to 15 minutes. Many thanks to all those attended and I hope you enjoyed the experience. Friar

I do keep having a look at RIAT, just need to commit to the £79.50 x 2 for the Saturday as my wife may come as well.

Below is the area I propose for "Phase 1" of the Campaign

Following some more testing (thanks to @fruitbat for the assistance) we encountered a performance issue after saving the mission a couple of times. I reported this to cfrag (creator of DML) and he kindly investigated. He unearthed a contributing issue from ED in the way the server performs when loading the mission and has made changes to one of his key scripts to accommodate this. He also commented on the fact that I may have been too keen with the number of units I had in the map. Turns out I had made arrangements for just over 1200! Not all were on the map at the start but they were in the "library" so to speak ready to be used. To correct this I have decided (and perhaps a decision I should have made at the start) to break the campaign map into phases. Probably 3, may be 2. I will delete all the units that will be required in phase 2 from the phase 1 section, in Phase 2 all the units in Phase 1 will be removed etc. This should help considerably with our performance, together with the changes to the scripts. When we move from phase 1 to phase 2, I will test copying the score files over so I am hoping you will be able to keep a running total for the whole campaign. I am hoping to have Phase 1 ready for Monday so we can make a start in doing some of the ground work ready for Thursday. Apologies for yet another fresh start but I am sure you all appreciate the learning curve this has been but I hope (again) we are there this time (yes, I know I have said this before ) Hopefully Real Life V1.0 will be treating you all a bit better this week, only myself and Fruitbat on Monday and Thursday last week (turns out this was a good thing!) Cheers Friar

I have just added two new versions of the Caucasus map to our server. I have taken the current v3 (built by Fen) and made them a winter version and also removed the WWII asset pack for those who do not have it YET.... As of Sunday morning 16th Feb I have put the no WWII asset pack version up.

Erm, bit embarrassing chaps, we are not quite out of the woods after all. When I did my test I did not make much of the convoy that attacks Alpha FOB (the one with helicopter escort) starting up, but thinking about it, this is another problem. It means the mechanic I have used (a module called "convoy") which I have discovered is not compliant with Persistence, so they are started fresh each mission, units killed in one session will re-start in the next session. This is obviously a problem. I will now go through the mission and remove the convoy module and use a different method to trigger convoys. What this does mean, unfortunately, that we will need another re-start. I propose to do this Monday evening.

Hey chaps, I have just loaded up the mission as if we were going to run week 2. I am pleased to report that the mission loaded, took a while but it loaded all ok. Alpha FOB is still showing blue as it Abu Talhur, the JTAC is showing as being located there as well (I moved him to the FOB right at the end of the mission). and... The planes that were ferried from Incirlik to Hatay are showing as in stock. I also kicked off the enemy AI and planes started spawning in So... Based on this quick test, I am prepared to say that I think we are now in business to run the Campaign as I had hoped, at last! Many thanks once again for all your trust and patience to get this working.

Ok chaps, I am hoping I have resolved the AI spawn, so,....... I am going to have one last go tomorrow (Thursday) with the mission. (starting from fresh). The score module has been updated so I am afraid you will loose any score that is not banked if you are killed. I will save at the end of the night and then re-load it before the next session to see if it works, rather than save during the first session and then perhaps waster your time if it does not load. Fingers crossed. Hope to see you all in the next session. Friar

@FoolTrottel I did think of something sort of similar, I thought about a menu option for selection the current mission number, that would then be perhaps used against a flag so that number sequence AI would be used, early days on the thought process that one. @Everyone 1. Would it matter if AI flights were air started? Might be easier for me replicate the flights? 2. Do you want constant enemy AI in the air or should we be able to eliminate the air threat each mission?

So, this is where I am at with the Campaign. It really is funny how the mind works. I have been asking questions of Cfrag (coder of DML) just recently about generated units being killed and then not re-spawned when the next mission is loaded using the rolling persistence saved data. My sole focus was making sure that any ground units we take out that are protecting towns and airfields would not come back when the next mission is loaded. Mind Blown this morning, out of no where came the realisation that I believe that this will apply to AI flights as well so if we take out the flights that are put up against us in one mission they will not reappear in the next nor for the rest of the campaign. At the moment I have a pulse that is set for every 5-10 minutes which goes to a randomizer that picks an airfield from one of six available. That airfield then picks a flight from maybe 5 or 6 flights. I am now faced with having to come up with a solution that will provide enough air interest to keep the air to air jockeys happy over what could be a 6-10 session campaign. I get there is the argument that a side needs to gain air superiority before a ground war can commence but for game-play I need stuff in the air each mission. Gulp! I now need to think up a way of being to provide continuous air activity so will have to pause the Campaign until I get a spark of inspiration. Happy to listen to any ideas / suggestions BTW.

I have more replies to a post that does not exist than I get for my real ones!

@FoolTrottel, I am really sorry about hat FT. As I said, I think I am clutching at straws a bit but I am trying to make the mission as vanilla as possible to see what the problem is. I have added some tanks if you want to take one of them in to battle. I would come with you if you wanted. I have also worked out now how to ride and drive as the Commander like in IL2. Once near the enemy you could then also act as a JTAC and laze targets.

Bad news I am afraid chaps. Following tests over the weekend I have encountered more issues with running the next chapter in the campaign. The mission is failing to load and causes the game to hang. After making some changes, I have removed the Hercules and placed NASAMS at Hatay so they do not have to be brought in, clutching at straws really, but these are the only two things which are non standard. I would like to try on Monday and run a session like we did last week, save it and then restore it to see what happens. The issue of player scores being retained when killed should also now be fixed (sorry!). I have added the logic to the Persian Gulf map which is live on the server and just needs to be confirmed it is ok. I am really sorry for these issues guys, I know how much we were looking forward to this concept, but if it fails again I am not sure what to do with it as I do not want to waste any more of your time.

Removed

I have made the decision to make some environment changes. I have now added some wind at 4m/s blowing to heading 259 in order to give the sea a little bit of definition. This happens to match the airfields of Incirlik and Hatay. I have also removed the new carrier crew direction feature. With the possibility of more people using carrier based planes I thought it make it easier to get off the deck quicker.

I have this morning resolved the issue of AI spawning after another quiet night on the air to air front (still at least it gave Blubear time to play with his new toy )

@Jag i have changed your status and sent a pm. you should now have full access to the site

Welcome Jag - I will update your status to full member so that you can access the discord invite link from the banner and also see all the forum (we keep the best bits for our "special people") Salute and thank you for reaching out to the Dogz.

Salute Chaps I am afraid I have had to do a bit of a "re-set" on the Campaign. Due to some issues I was having with the saved data being reloaded after I had made some changes to the mission file (adding planes and clearing the carrier decks). Last night (Monday) we started the mission again and re-saved after about a 2 hours of play. We can pick this up on Thursday. It does mean that the scores started again. Sorry about that. We still have captured Gazintep so that airfield could be used for rearm and refuel (no spawn). Some of the towns will need to be attacked again. On the plus side, it did give the opportunity to change the way the enemy AI is generated. Hopefully now the air to air element should be constant through out the duration of the mission.

only the herc is actually specified but due to dynamic spawns if you only had the a4 you could use it i believe

@Squee7e Although we sometimes fly WWII stuff, I would actually say that the majority of our DCS time is in jets and helicopters, on either the Persian Gulf Map, Caucuses or Syria. We are actually about to do week 2 on a Syria Campaign on Thursday evening. I have built the mission using dynamic spawns so I think you could join with one of your jets.

I will update as soon I can get on my other computer and give full permissions. UPDATE: I have updated you to full DangerDog. You may now add DD_ to your username, please wear it with pride!

@Squee7e Welcome Sir, Thank you for coming to find the DangerDogz. We play both IL2 and DCS. We fly IL2 on Sundays and Tuesdays from around 20:00 UK time. We play a mix of dogfight maps, co-op maps and are currently running a special event with another group taking part. For Comms the group still use Teamspeak. We fly DCS on Monday and Thursdays from around 20:00 UK time as well. For comms we use Discord. If you would like to fly DCS with us, please let me know which modules and maps you have. We are a friendly bunch and make no demands on how much you fly with us, we all have Real Life V1.0 to contend with! We also do not expect you to attend training sessions before you can fly. We do have another member from Germany that flies with us, his name is @Mosquito or "Mossie"

135 euros or hit Q 3 times? I think I will pass on this one....