Quick Guide to the Mission Editor for Exp2

[+EricJ]

Okay those of us with Exp2 have the luxury of having an inbuilt Mission Editor and here's some basics for those new to it. For this we're doing to do a strike mission in Afghanistan. Upon hitting the pencil icon on the bottom right of "Create Mission" you're brought to this screen:

 

 

I click on the airplane icon and I get a listing of flights, mine of course, and also a randomly generated AI flight.

 

 

Now for one thing I don't like long missions as you can see I'm flying across the whole country, so what do I do? Note from the above screen you can adjust the weather to your tastes (For Afghanistan, Broken and above, real pilots don't fly in the soup that the country has, neither do I, because that's realism).

 

 

I go to the drop down menu and select Kabul International Airport (KIA) and the ME adjusts my waypoints, looking all jacked up. To edit/move/delete the waypoint, simply click on the circle, and this will show up. And as you can see, I have my mouse on the trashcan, or delete button. Note that IP and Attack Waypoint (Triangle) cannot be deleted and I delete those two unnecessary waypoints and get this:

 

 

 

Now I'll go and delete the unnecessary CAP flight as there isn't any enemy flights around. It should be noted that enemy flights will appear in this list, giving you forewarning of being intercepted. Realistically if you worked with KMD, it's the same thing before the ME.

 

 

 

 

Okay since I have a lot of MANPADS that actually shoot me down, I'll create a SEAD flight for my objective.

 

 

Immediately it'll generate a basic flight, with the aircraft icon where the crosshair is. The objective waypoint for the AI flight will automatically be where YOUR objective is. And I'll select Masar i Sharif as their starting and ending airfield, and adjust the waypoints to make a decent looking flight.

 

 

 

It should be noted that the altitude and speed of the chosen aircraft (it reads the stats from the _DATA.ini file) and allows you to select minimum and maximum (I select maximum since I fly at full military power) and altitude, which for this map 22000 ft is recommended. Next I'll select the aircraft. It should be noted that you can select ANY aircraft regardless of time period. Want some Yak-23 "Flora" aircraft as your Escort? Go ahead! And of course select the amount, with a maximum of 16 aircraft:

 

 

For this I'll select the EA-18G and two aircraft for the flight as its a small defended area (managed to wipe everything out). Next I'll select that aircraft flight's loadout. NOTE: Make sure you read the "Before/After" dropdown menu. The game will automatically spawn the aircraft at the appropriate time based off your INITIAL waypoint speeds. It is assumed you'll fly at that speed using Autopilot. Note this is all depending on what aircraft you select and how close you get to the objective and how fast you fly. Sometimes it's good to let your SEAD go in and take care of business while you orbit somewhere safe. It should be noted that if you're hanging on the objective BEFORE your SEAD flight reaches the area, it'll go find some other site to go to and wipe out, so bear that in mind if you need it whittled down before you go in. Also you can have the aircraft loiter at a point in case you need them to hang around. Next is the Success menu, which is defaulted to 50% If you want the objective cleansed, slide down to 100% but it's pretty self-explanatory. Obviously as you look you can see all the other things, what skin you want for the particular aircraft, numbers if present, etc.

 

 

Now I'll select it's loadout. It should be noted that the ME reads off the Loadout.ini of your aircraft, so for this example I have only two loadouts, SEAD which is the conventional loadout, and the "AFGSEAD" which is theater-specific (fictional) since there are no radar threats on my install. Note ALL aircraft will be loaded the same, as per KMD.

 

 

Just a quick note for my flight, I can select anywhere else defined as target areas (populated ones with targets) on the map. Then you can select individual targets within that group:

 

 

 

Select my own theater specific loadout:

 

 

Click "Accept" or the disk icon on the top. Note you don't have to save the mission if you don't want to, click no and it'll take you to the Hangar screen, or save the mission as you wish for future use and play:

 

 

 

 

Adding a CAS flight

 

Here's a simple addition to one of my basic CAS flights I saved. Since most of the stuff is covered above, we'll just skip to adding the new flight:

 

 

Like before the basic flight is created centered around my objective:

 

 

Edit the loadout and waypoints:

 

 

 

Save the mission and then once you get on the objective:

 

 

It should be noted that any additional CAS flights will start handling their business once the friendly and enemy ground units populate on the map. For inctanse the Tornado flight chose to wipe out a SAM and AAA site. Once the friendly ground elements appeared along with the Taliban, they proceeded to attack the objective, fulfilling their criteria before leaving and finally allowing me to finish mine. It should be noted that this is a real "soup" of targets, and it took me a while to finally kill enough Taliban so I could get a mission success. Additionally, one run before on this same mission killing a GAZ AAA system got me a mission success.

 

Also remember that the supporting CAS mission will also automatically target any enemy formation on the map. For the mission above it was "G002 Taliban" and therefore the Tornados already had it targeted. From what I can tell there must be PLACED targets on the map, not map areas, since that's how the game essentially does it, through creating a "Friendly/Enemy CAS Target" on the map, such as this that's in my Afghanistan_Targets.ini file:

 

[TargetArea417]

Name=ABLE16

Position=791498,709507

Radius=10000.0

ActiveYear=0

Location=1

Alignment=friendly

 

[TargetArea418]

Name=Taliban Ambush 27

Position=791196,712940

Radius=10000.0

ActiveYear=0

Location=1

Alignment=enemy

 

And setup in the Afghanistan_Movement.ini file:

 

[Route086]

RouteType=GROUND_ATTACK

StartArea=ABLE16

EndArea=Taliban Ambush 27

RoutePosition[001]=791498,709507

RoutePosition[002]=791196,712940

 

Once these criteria are met you can set it up. So if you want another area... then you have to work through your list of targets, but the one the game selects through the "Create Mission" one will be the only CAS area you can use. So while not totally functional it's an improvement.

 

Creating a Free Flight mission

 

One of the coolest tricks using the Mission Editor is the ability to create a "Free Flight" mission allowing us to:

 

- Conduct flight testing in a safe environment.

- Weapons testing

- Having some fun (i.e. just flying around having... fun)

 

How do we do this? Simple. Since I needed a land based (I have enough carrier based ones) mission to use the large list of land-based aircraft I have. So I start a random single mission:

 

 

As you can see my first objective is the High Desert Occupation Camp (If my mind is right), a simple Strike mission. Using the F-15E I select that and delete the Escort flight and the enemy Intercept flight:

 

 

 

Then I go and remove any enemy and friendly defenses (user choice of course but for this I'll remove all)

 

 

 

Now I'll go to my flight and change it to "Fighter Sweep". I'll then save the mission:

 

 

 

 

 

Now that it's properly saved I'll click Accept and go into the mission:

 

 

As you can see I need to edit the start point further (on the runway) but Red Crown just gave me a mission success without having to do anything, and once I exit the mission it's confirmed:

 

 

The key point is to always save it opposed to what the original mission is. Strike missions if the aircraft allows it should to to something where there isn't any aircraft, or the ME will automatically select it unless you're wanting it then go ahead of course. SEAD Specific aircraft you don't have to do anything special other than click the opposing enemy air defenses to none, and you'll still get the above.

 

Adding a Carrier and taking off from it for a Single Mission

 

The next bit will be as the topic says, we'll start a regular mission from a carrier and also allow us to land on that same carrier.

 

Start a regular mission as shown:

 

 

Just to show what we have there are three carrier capable flights we can edit. However there is a bug with assigning AI to takeoff from carriers so we'll naturally do the F/A-18A flight which is ours. We'll simply drag the cursor to the sea area (just a random spot for this tutorial):

 

 

Now we'll go to the "Add New Ground Object" and click on that:

 

 

Since I have it installed the first selection is Sampan (Motorized). So we'll open up the drop down menu and select the CVN-71 Theodore Roosevelt I brought in from the Desert Storm mod. Also you can see the CVN-75 which available in the Downloads section. I select the CVN-71, which the game gives the automatic designation "G001" Naturally you can edit to whatever name you want and save. Next we'll go to my flight (F/A-18A) and edit my flight.

 

 

 

 

We'll then go ot the Home Base menu and select "G001" which is of course the carrier: Then I'll select the Land base as the same, either "Same as start base" or "G001" and the waypoints will automatically adjust. A little cleanup of the waypoints to make the mission work as I see fit:

 

 

 

And viola! I'm starting the mission from the carrier...

 

 

And how do I get to where I was? The best way is to go through this thread as the answers and necessary files are here:

 

http://combatace.com/topic/60932-formats-for-carriers-and-warship-with-the-mission-editor/

Edited January 18, 2011 by EricJ