Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

Got 'em, thanks!

I lost electricity, trying to fix it.

Whoops, I'll just stay on TS

And it's on!


Join up guys!

Having issues with net will join soon I hope

Sorry guys, between my net and system crashes flying just wasn't in the books

Too bad Etzu, but there will be other DCS Evenings


Quick debrief:
Generally speaking yesterday's game was plagued by technical problems. Connection losses, server crashes, a short power outage... a bunch of bad luck I guess.


We started with an A10 mission which ended up as training session on how to do the start up.


A quick thought: should we do dedicated training sessions if new players join or we start using an aircraft that players are unfamiliar with? I think this way we could shallow out the learning curve a bit and we would spend much less time in actual missions explaining systems and aircraft operation. What do you think?




Next mission was a revisit of an old UH1 mission of mine, Burning Canyon. Night, snow, MANPADs, fun all around . Seems like the old bug with ordering people to bord a helicopter resulting in an endless loop of 'roger' messages is fixed (Sithis and unnamed probably know what I'm talking about).
After overcoming some difficulties with getting en route we lost one chopper along the way and shortly after the first one arrived at the AO the server seemed to have crashed...


Last mission was a revisit of New Moon, another old UH1 mission. Unfortunately Etzu was gone even before the mission was done loading (network issues again?). Misha took the role of Evac Helicopter, I was to provide cover. Which I mainly did by catching a ton of missiles before Misha was even close to the AO. I used up at least 3 helicopters...
After clearing up some navigational problems Misha arrived at the AO, which was pretty much missile free at this point, so extraction went smoothly (except for some sporadic small arms fire). Getting back to the aircraft carrier from which Misha took off went unproblamatic. The last task was to bring some people from one of the smaller ships back to the carrier though, which didn't quite work out. Misha attempted to land on the ship but didn't feel confident enough to do it, so I took over. It was looking good until a sudden lag caused my helicopter to jump forward into the ships hull...


Let's hope for a less haunted game next time, in any case I'm looking forward to it

Great to hear that you got some flying done on Saturday.

I will be there this Saturday as well. Hopefully with a mission or two.

In the meantime I am also waiting for the F18, the F14 and the Harrier

Might be a bit late on Saturday as I am going to Münster to try and find a flat...  Again

@ Manuel just updated via git let me know if you change anything between now and tonight.


Alright I got warm up + three missions ready to go and I bet Manuel has a few up his sleeve as well, so I hope we have a lot of people in the air tonight 

I'll be there in time (most likely...)


I'll try to update 'Shadow on the Sun' so we can give it another go, I'm afraid I'm just not able to finish anything new. I just have too much work (job/uni) on the table... :/

Back to the roots.
So it seems like we are all falling more and more in love with the older aircrafts. With at least four people getting started in the F86 over the last couple of weeks, at least three people flying the P51, everybody flying (or crashing) UH1s and me still beeing madly in love with the Mig21, we are spending a lot of time with the low tech aspect of the sim. The most high tech thing we did over the last couple of weeks was grabing sticks and stones to tear the TGP of the A-10c.

I love all the low tech stuff simply, because it forces you to use the Mk1 eyeball and coordinate. Also it makes teaching so much easier. It takes several days to get someone completely mission ready in the A-10c, but I think in the UH-1 most people were able to do it before 2100h if we started at 2000h.

So if anybody is really missing the high tech armor hunting better say something now, because otherwise there are a lot of low tech missions coming 


Talking about missions.

DakTo
We started with 1 Medevac and 2 CAS choppers at our disposal and a Medevac as reserve. The first Medevac died on the way in and one of the CAS choppers got shot down during extraction. Maybe a formation with one CAS chopper in front and one above and behind would be more effective in this mission, as well as staying above a certain altitude until reaching the LZ, but maybe I am overthinking the whole thing. Otherwise coordination worked pretty well and we had some interesting engagements.
One of my turbines failed towards the end, but luckily all relevant targets were destroyed by then. Random system failure really does create interesting situations.

Cold as ice
Third time we played this mission, now with 1 Ka50 and 3 Uh1. In my eyes this mission went really smooth. Maybe some more coordination on when and in what directions the Uh-1s run in, but we had no losses and blew threw the targets pretty quickly. I would really like to hear Etzus opinion on this mission.
Gunslinger 1-1 and Shark 1-1 at the holding point before they engage the town.


Habicht
I waited so long for us to play this one. My first go as a JTAC. Luckily lasing worked fine which opens up a lot of oppertunities. Attacking the infantry with different flights and mild AA threat created a good flow from what I could tell, but I have to rethink the placement of the enemy waves and I have to figure out a way to increase the JTACs survivability since only he can spawn the new targets. So thanks for participating in this Alpha and I hope it will go a little more smooth next time.

Boar completing an attack on enemy infantry


Korean Bridge
Planned as our first F86 ground attack mission we decided to switch to the P51. We expected to burn, crash and die (not necessarily in that order) since we were up against around a dozen APCs and two truck mounted ZEUS.
However with some proper run ins and coordinated attacks on the ZEUS we managed to take out all the targets with each of us only recieving minor damage. Quite the pleasent surprise.

Mustang 1-3 joining the rest of the flight on the apron after a succesfull mission


Training
I started building a training map with targets of varying difficulty and most of the flyable planes available. It is far from beeing finished, but we did some P51 vs AAA practice until we ran out of targets and switched to formation flights.

Mustang 1-1 crashlanding on a bridge after suffering heavy AAA damage and a total loss of engine power


Formation practice with Mirage and Mustang

Great flying once again!


The Mustang stole the show yesterday, i'd be up for more WWIIish stuff. Once the Spitfire's out I'll be returning to that anyways, a childhood favourite of mine


DakTo
It was probably a bad idea for the medevac chopper to take point. Sithis suggestion sounds good, one CAS in front, one in the back could work.
Other than that, great mission, perfect for warm up.


Cold as Ice
No blue on blue, no losses, was a good run as far as I'm concerned.


Habicht
We've learned one thing for sure, 'ch' is hard if you don't speak german

Seriously though, great concept. I'm looking forward to giving it another go!


Korean Bridge
Like Sithis said, that worked much better than expected! Personally I had great fun flying the Mustang, looking forward to more of that



1-3 posing with a bunch of burning APCs and AAAs


Training
That map is a great idea, great work Sithis! Gives an oppurtunity to learn stuff in a low pressure environment.


I had great fun flying formation at the end. Next time I really want to try doing some aerobatics, I've been talking about it for ages, now we finally have a suitable aircraft that more than one or two people can fly.


Here are some pictures from my pov

Great pictures!

BTW does anybody want any special targets on the training range?

i was only able to join for Cold as Ice but it was a really good run  and the targets where quickly destroyed, in the end we lost sithis due to loss of power since one of his engines failed but else  the missiopn went perfectly.

the p51 mission after wards was great, something completly different to fly and surprisingly we not only managed to destroy the zsu and the apcs but also all of us managed to land without destroying ohr propellers xD

the trainign mission looks seems to be a good idea, somethign where you can test the different aircraft and weapons, i think a small airobatics area where you can train manuvering and a few more, maybe heavier targets, mybe some tanks with ammo and without and some infantry, so you can test different weapons with different difficulty . and maybe some airtargets that can be called in .