Johan217

I noticed that with this setup you'll see ground offensives in South Vietnam. If you link a strategic node from Hanoi directly to Saigon, the ground unit will go straight to Saigon and bypass everything in between. When this happens, the briefing map will show the ground unit's icon in Hanoi, but in the 3D world it's actually near Saigon. So this may be a way to simulate "VC uprisings" in different parts of the south. Combined with the static camps this should provide enough activity south of the frontline. The only danger of course is that these offensives succeed, because then you'll get overrun :) I haven't tried it yet, but I think that if you make the attacking units smaller, and make sure that all strategic nodes are defended by an allied unit that is sufficiently stronger, it shouldn't be a problem. I'm still looking for a way to eliminate NVietnamese flights appearing deep into South Vietnam. So far the only thing I can think of is to give them a very low number (2) of starting aircraft/pilots and make the squadrons appear gradually at different points in time. They'll still fly south, but only in small numbers... Any ideas?

That would be so great! But it doesn't even have to be as complex as Falcon's real-time campaign. The campaign system in TK's sims already has the basics of supplies infrastructure and ground offensives. What is needed (from a campaign builder's point of view) is a way to script events more accurately, and more mission types. If you could augment the current campaign system with things like working FAC/CAS (please!), an ability to see other flights' waypoints on the briefing map, and mission types like airborne assaults, air refuelling and AEW/electronic warfare... you'd get a fairly realistic environment that's complex enough, but not overwhelming to the player.

That's more or less how I feel about it, too. After Flanker 2/2.5 I expected LockOn to address the weakest area of the sim, i.e. the campaign. I was very disappointed. It's not so much the lack of a dynamic campaign, but rather a lack of depth in the missions themselves. Janes F-18 didn't have a dynamic campaign either, but there were so many things going on with FAC's marking targets, random events and alternative missions based on your succes. In LockOn, if you don't get the mission objective, you have to repeat the mission until you do. The AI in LockOn also has a nasty tendency to fight until they die, which doesn't make a realistic experience (a problem in many other sims too). Now if the LockOn mission builder had been capable of scripting event triggers and enforcing rules of engagement on the AI, this could have been remedied. But unfortunately the mission builder is not very advanced. I gave away my copy of LockOn the day I bought WOV, and haven't regretted it :) I have to say that without mods, I don't find WOV that great either: no ground war, rather repetitive missions. It's only after installing user made missions (like YAP or the VMFA-531 package) and modding the campaigns to include ground offensives that WOV starts to shine. It may be a 'light' sim where flight models and avionics are concerned, but the mission environment appears to me more realistic than anything I ever saw in LockOn. If I have to say anything good about LockOn, it was fun to take a scenic tour of the Crimea and buzz the parasols at the beach :)

After flying my Linebacker test campaign a bit more, I think I have found settings that work OK. 10 missions into the campaign and the ground war is still going around Hue. The battle could go either way. The trick that did it was: ForceWithInitiative=0 (i.e. both sides can take the initiative) StartGroundOffensive=2 for the US (they will fly 2 air offensive missions before they start a ground offensive) StartGroundOffensive=0 for NVietnam No need to reduce the US supply levels, but the NVietnam supplies have been increased. With this setup, NVietnam starts their offensive first, towards Hue and Da Nang. Depending on the player's success, once the first wave of NVietnamese offensives is stopped, the US will go on the offensive for one or two turns, then NVietnam counterattacks and so on. At least that is how it has played out for me so far. For this test campaign I used the stock Linebacker I campaign and added the groundunits and strategic nodes from Scrapper's Tet Offensive '68 campaign. I first tried the SteelTiger settings, but these didn't work (I think because some red ground units start south of the frontline). It definitely needs some fine tuning, especially for the strategic nodes. You'll also see some Migs on ground attack during your first missions, so this might need some toning down. The cool thing is that if you combine this with the SteelTiger terrain, you'll also get the occasional static targets in South Vietnam. Just drop the attached file in your LinebackerI folder. Only addon needed is the InfantryPack. WOVCAMPL1_DATA.zip

And that is probably what we need. You have to make absolutely sure that every ground unit is placed on the correct side of the frontline at the start of the campaign, otherwise the offensives won't work well. Unfortunately the game has a mind of its own when it comes to moving the frontline after a ground offensive, so it's very possible that the bulge will be closed again at the beginning of the next mission, resulting in US airbases being overrun. I suppose that's why the developers made the frontline run straight in the stock campaigns.

Well, that was written over a year ago, so I imagine some of the D/L links are dead now :(

I'm currently running a test campaign based on the standard Linebacker I, using the ground units and strategic nodes from SteelTiger. I haven't managed to get the ground offensive going yet, but at least I'm not getting any ctd's. Actually, according to the description of the Linebacker I campaign, North Vietnam launched a large offensive at that time. So using this campaign makes sense :) It's also quite short (25 missions) so easier to test and it should be easier to steer the ground offensives the way we want to. Will keep you updated...

Glad you got it to work! It's possible that the other campaigns don't use pasko's desert pack, that would explain.

According to TK 60 is where the terrain loads, and 80% is where the objects start to load. (see thread here) So it looks like there may be something wrong with the ground objects, since your aircraft appear to work OK. Could you send a screenshot of the contents your GroundObject folder? Have you installed any other mods apart from the MidEastWars pack?

No error message at all? Are you using WinXP? I think there is an error.log in the root game directory, but I have to check this (I'm not at home at this moment). But I'm afraid I am running out of ideas...

I don't know. Can you see what dll file the error message refers to? When the error message appears "This program has encountered etc", it usually mentions campaign.dll or groundobjects.dll. As far as I know, groundobjects.dll is probably an error with the installation (ground object missing or misplaced). Campaign.dll could be anything from an error with the terrain or the campaign file itself.

If you reduce their supplies too much, then yes, possibly :) However, in the Vietnam setting we are dealing with a campaign where only 1 side is flyable (blue), and I find that it only takes a few succesful missions by the player to slow down the enemy ground offensives a lot. So I don't think blue forces getting overrun will be a big problem. Something I did notice, however, is that with the red forces on the offensive you will see a lot of MiGs flying ground attack missions. So you'll probably need to reduce the starting number of aircraft for the red side, by reducing the StartAircraft for red squadrons or by making the AirUnits appear gradually later in the campaign. Defining their loadout to include only limited A2G weapons might help too. I think it's best not to add too many ground units. Ground units can only be targeted during a ground offensive phase, at other times they are just sitting on the map. They also don't disappear unless they are totally destroyed, which doesn't happen that often (I think. If a ground offensive is unsuccesful, the unit will remain stationary until it has enough supplies/strength to attack again. Unfortunately yes :( But you can use a mission editor like Missioneur to find the map coordinates you need pretty accurately.

First of all, make sure that you have enabled only 1 campaign, i.e. just the Suez campaign and not the 6 Days War or Yom Kippur. Second, could you please see if you can select the year 1956 in the single missions screen?

Not really a problem. In fact It may even help the illusion that there is a full war going on when you see a puff of smoke here and there, even if there is nothing else. From my experience, enemy ground offensives easily grind to a stop after the player has flown a number of successful missions. You'll probably need to maximise the supply level and supply rate for NVietnam, definitely give them SupplyForOffensive=60 or even lower, and at the same time decrease the supplies and morale for US. The problem is that once the offensive stops, it is impossible for the campaign builder to predict if and when it will restart. But you can give ground units different start dates, so that they appear at intervals. In your example you could set ground units to appear at different dates and on different strategic nodes, each node leading to Da Nang.

After playing this campaign a bit, I had this idea: how about placing a static smoke marker near the VC camps to simulate a FAC marking the enemy's position? For testing I copied the strategic nodes, groundunits and static camps from the SteelTiger campaign into the stock WOV campaigns. It'll take some experimenting with the supplies settings and strategic priorities, but it should be possible to have an ongoing ground war, with sporadic offensives in the Rolling Thunder campaign.

The continuous frontline is already there (also in stock WOV campaigns), it's just not displayed on the map. To display the frontline completely, change the lines to StartShow= and EndShow= in VietnamSEA_movement.ini [FrontLine] FriendlyBase=Saigon EnemyBase=Hanoi Position[001]=0.0,854000.0 Position[002]=250000.0,852000.0 Position[003]=386000.0,680000.0 Position[004]=434000.0,648000.0 Position[005]=504000.0,566000.0 Position[006]=526000.0,556000.0 Position[007]=570000.0,576000.0 Position[008]=540000.0,640000.0 Position[009]=556000.0,674000.0 Position[010]=608000.0,674000.0 Position[011]=702000.0,598000.0 Position[012]=1000000.0,598000.0 StartShow=1 EndShow=7 Actually I don't know if armed recon missions work in campaigns. Most people seem to say they don't. At least I've never seen any in the many addon campaigns I tried. CAS missions will only work as long as one force has enough supplies to move ground units on the map. Maybe playing with the supplies settings can bring some more ground activity. But there will always be the limit where the enemy runs short on supplies when the player flies a few successful missions. The static "VC camps" are probably the only way to simulate an ongoing ground war.

Changing the frontline alone won't give you any armed recon missions, unless you have proper convoy routes set up in movement.ini (unfortunately I don't really know how to do this). CAS missions are only generated if there is a ground offensive going on, i.e. if a ground unit is actually moving from 1 (friendly) strategic node to another (enemy). Together with the target ini file, the frontline defines which side a strategic node is on (friendly/enemy). I think the only way to get proper CAS missions in South Vietnam is if you have an enemy offensive reach a strategic node on that part of the map. For the game it will seem as if red forces have overrun the map, but there may be ways to cover this up (e.g. by not having a front line visibly displayed on the map). Definitely worth investigating! :)

You define the frontline coordinates in the movement.ini file. This is the frontline you will see when the campaigns starts. As soon as a ground unit has successfully attacked a strategic node on the campaign map, the frontline will be updated automatically. As far as I know you can only define one continuous frontline, so no circles around individual bases. Even if they would show up on the campaign map, they would be automatically redrawn for the second mission. I only noticed this campaign just now, will try it tonight! I've been waiting for a good Vietnam campaign with working CAS missions :)

What I like about the Strikefighters series is that (even out of the box) it allows me to fly campaigns in all these aircraft that haven't been done in other flightsims. Note that I said "fly campaigns" rather than just "fly". For me the campaign is central to any pc game I play. This is why I gave up on a sim like Lomac. Sure, the campaigns in Strike Fighters aren't that complex, but they allow me enough freedom without having to refly the same scripted mission over and over again. For me the best sim in town would have the graphics of Lomac, the aircraft of Strike Fighters, the avionics of Falcon 4.0, the campaign of Mig Alley, and the weather/traffic procedures of MSFS.

1, 3, 4 and 5 are Falcon 4.0 and falcon 4.0 AF :) 1, 2 and 4 are in Jane's F/A18, and I'm sure 3 can be done in its mission editor. 2 and 5 are in Mig Alley The best CAS operations I've seen are in Mig Alley. You meet the FAC aircraft at the IP, he tells you to follow him. At the target area, he tells you the type of target and its location, then proceeds to mark it with smoke. After a succesful pass he gives you another target. Jane's F/A18 does pretty much the same.

Does anyone know if there are skin templates available for the default MiG aircraft? I tried making new skins by resizing the default skins and work from there, but the result is rather blurry. I'm working on this BTW:

A quick report on what is to come: First of all, I will update all three campaigns for Gepard's Israel v2.1 terrain. Apart from a bug fix in the 6 Days War campaign (that caused the campaign to end prematurely), this update will include no other changes to the current campaigns. The work is almost done, so expect a release soon. After this, I will be reworking all three campaigns seperately. What I have planned so far: - Suez: increase A2A activity during ground attack missions, balance victory conditions, add new squadrons (flyable + AI), add more ships to carrier groups - 6 Days War: increase A2A activity during ground attack missions, balance victory conditions - Yom Kippur: increase A2A activity during ground attack missions, balance victory conditions If you find bugs or have any suggestions for improvement, please post them here. Greetings, Johan217 / EAF274 Johan

The groundmobileobject.dll error could point to a problem with one of the ground units. Please check that you have installed the Pasko's Desertpak correctly. I have to say that I have not tested my campaigns with WOE (I only have WOV). They should work fine with SFP1 and WOV. If some of the default ground units from SFP1/WOV are not included in WOE, this could lead to the error that you are seeing. Also, I have not tested the campaigns with other mods installed. I don't think NATO Fighters I/II should cause any problems, but maybe try running the campaigns without this mod.

I haven't tested the campaigns with WOE (since I don't have it). The A-10s are probably automatically generated by the game for FAC missions. The same goes for the F-84s. In SF/WOV, the default FAC aircraft is a Cessna O-1. Maybe WOE doesn't have this aircraft? Try removing/renaming the A-10 and F-84 aircraft folders (make a backup) and see if the game assigns a more appropriate aircraft. The Mirages should show up however. I have no idea why you are not seeing them when you select a particular aircraft. Please doublecheck that you have disabled the other MiDEast campaigns in the JSGME Mod Manager before you applied the 6DaysWar campaign; that's the only thing I can think of that may be causing trouble.

Thanks a bunch! They're still a bit low res but much better than anything I could come up with. Johan217