Toonces Mod Nevada AAR#1

[toonces]

Ok, here's the first AAR for my tweaked Nevada theater. This is a work in progress and a test bed for some ideas, not a final product.

Campaign: Nevada (Blue on Red), first scenario; nevada1/save2.cam

Edits: I added about 9 battalions (sp) of OPFOR armor, a mix of T-80 and T-90 battalions spread among the following locations:
Shoshone
Tecopa
Amargosa Valley
Morongo Valley

All added armor were tasked with capture, target 1189 (Las Vegas)

I deleted most of the Blue ground forces and air defences. Minimal air defenses (AAA and Pegasus SAMs) remain at most Blue airfields in use- Nellis, Desert Rock, etc.

Blue forces are from this website: (warning for popups) http://dreamlandresort.com/

Blue OOB:
Nellis- 2xF-15C, 1xRafale C, 1xF-18E (not on dreamland OOB)
Desert Rock- 1xRafale B, 1xF-15C, 1xF-15K
Payson- 1xEA-6B, 1xF-16CG, 1xF-16DG, 1xEF-111

Red OOB:
China Lake- 1xKfir C7, 1xF-16AGR, 1xF-14A
Barstow Daggett- 2xF-14A, 1xF-18A, 1xF-18C, 1xF-15A
Yucca Valley- 1xF-5E, 1xF-16AGR, 1xSU-30MKK

I may have missed a squadron or two- I had alot of edits.

Victory conditions- Campaign ends if Las Vegas or Nellis AFB are captured by OPFOR.

[toonces]

DAY 1

Mission 1: Barstow Daggett AB, 4xF-18C sweep over Nellis.
Load: 6xAIM-7, 2xAIM=9
T/O: 0951

The campaign starts aggressively with ground posture set to Major Offensive to Las Vegas. All of the armored I added have Capture Las Vegas as tasking and begin moving towards Las Vegas. My goal is to see if poor mission performance on OPFOR influences the outcome. In testing, the OPFOR captured Las Vegas at 1937 with no user input.

The mission started in the blue aggressor skins.



But, I had a crash during the campaign and had to restart. I made an additional brown aggressor skin on my blue template, and that was selected for the second try for mission 1.



Note the F-18A in the background. I changed the .dds for those planes, but the game isn't seeing them for some reason. Could be I didn't get all the squadrons; or I have the wrong dds numbers. I have to fix that still.

Also, in my testing earlier, one of the things I noticed is that alot of fights get within visual range. With everyone flying the same planes, being able to distinguish paint schemes is vital. So, I gave all my F-15As a brown coat of paint. Quick and dirty, but enough for now.



Before too long, my flight gets engaged by multiple F-16s and F-18s. Sorry, no pics. I had 6xAIM-120 launched at me and one of em got me.

Result: IN PROGRESS- (KIA)

[toonces]

Mission 2: 4xF-18C OCA Strike at Nellis. Escort is 4xF-14A.
Load: 4xMk-84, AIM-7s, 9s, center drop.
T/O: 1105

Enroute I hear my escort engaging multiple Rafales and F-15s.





Eventually we have some leakers and I engage with a Sparrow.



The Rafales get WVR. I order the flight to jettison stores (now a mission kill for BLUEFOR) and get a sidewinder kill on one Rafale.




But, then I get a Mica and 2xAIM-120 launched at me. I'm hit, eject.

Result: IN PROGRESS- (MIA)

[toonces]

Mission 3: China Lake AB, 4xKfir C7 OCA Strike on Desert Rock. 4xF-16AGR escort.
Load: 7xMk-82, 2xPython 3
T/O: 1326

Well, ccc had asked for 'more aggressors' so here's a nice shot of everyone home.



Enroute, we are engaged by Rafales and F-15s. I can hear my escort engaging aggressively.

The now-familiar aggressor F-16 AGR.


I ingress right on the deck. The escort flight gets most of the Rafales (in debrief they got 4xRafale B, 1xF-15K), but unfortunately, that's not going to be enough. We have to jettison and abort about 10 miles out.



The escort is destroyed by another flight of Rafales and an F-18E, so we abort and RTB. -4 is killed while aborting.

Result: FAILURE

Edit: meant to put these in. Check out ATC using the parallel runways. Cool!

[toonces]

Mission 4: Yucca Valley AB. 2xF-5E Interdiction over Nellis. Load is 4xCBU, 2xAIM-9P, center drop.
T/O: 1553

I checked the JSTARS before takeoff, and two armored battalions are within Las Vegas, still tasked with capture. Two other battalions have aborted and are now 'Reserve China Lake Bridge'. One BLUEFOR Mech battalion is sitting on Las Vegas, still in good shape with morale and supply.

My research showed a squadron of Indian SU-30MKK as OPFOR for this particular Red Flag (Red Flag 08-4, 8/11/08-8/22/08). I added them in, but we need to tweak that skin!



Very shortly after takeoff, I get bugged by Rafales and F-16s. The F-16s could be friendly or enemy, but the Rafales are definately BLUEFOR. Also, my AWACS is down. I meant to use F4Patch to make AWACS automatic, to simulate GCI. At any rate, before long I have the Rafales visually and jettison stores.



Unfortunately, the Rafales got the jump on me and got angles. Also, the F-5 rolls really quick, and I sort of lost control a bit there. So, when I looked back, I saw what you never really want to see.



Instead of flying, I start taking pictures (always thinking of you guys!).



I'm not sure why I dropped flares here- I knew he was setting up for guns.



Guns kill on the F-5E passing through 270 at 1000.

Result: FAILURE- (KIA)

[toonces]

I checked JSTARS and I have two armored still in Las Vegas. One is still aborting. The BLUEFOR Mech battalion is in good shape. But, then at 1710 my OPFOR armored captures Las Vegas and the campaign ends.

Thoughts: I checked some of the other battalions, in particular, the infantry battalions included in the usual, untweaked install, that congregate around China Lake Bridge. They had moved from China Lake Bridge to Reserve Barstow Junction. That is definately a step in the right direction!

My first armored battalion that aborted had changed to reserve as well.

So, I'm curious if these battalions will move to capture mode after aborting, or if they sense an offensive ground posture. Right now, the set up is too favorable for the OPFOR. But that's not a surprise, I wanted to set it up so it was overwhelming for BLUEFOR.

I think the next move is to try this campaign from the BLUEFOR side, setting the tasking to mostly interdiction and ground pounding. If the armored battalions can be interdicted on the way to Las Vegas, that could be an interesting campaign. If I can get BLUEFOR to hold off OPFOR for 3 days, I'd like to call that victory conditions for BLUEFOR.

Bottom line: alot of fun and hard flying on OPFOR! I have ALOT to learn about editing Falcon 4, but we're making progress.

Thanks for the help guys, and I look forward to your comments.

[Snake Man]

Very nice pics and good AAR. Also interesting to hear from the ground unit movement, every time someone tells me that the ground units moved and achieved their objective, it makes me happy.

Also looking at the current state of Nevada tiles, makes me think that I could perhaps try to modify them quickly for next release, at least to fix the broken transition tiles if not completely rework them from google images (dunno never done that before). But at least I'm looking into it, we need to have much nicer terrain tiling for your campaign testings

[ccc]

nice!

look forward to your campaign tweak report!

[toonces]

There is/was an interesting thread on combatace.com where a fella had tiled an Iceland theater (for the Strike Fighters series) using google earth images. Two different sims, but maybe his ideas would help? I can look for the thread if you'd like...

With respect to ground movement, I'm actually looking to you guys for help on this one. I used Tacedit to open up one of the stock RV Korea campaigns. I just randomly opened up a whole bunch of armored units and all of them are tasked with 'Reserve'.

When I checked through all of the units in the stock Nevada campaign, they are also tasked with 'Reserve'. In playing with some of the settings, I noticed that you can set the tasking to any number of things; assault and capture got my attention. Also, you can set a target for the units. So, I started experimenting with setting units to 'Capture' with a target using the campid for the target number.

I tested the campaign a bunch of times, both the 1977 tweak (no ground tweak) and the current 2008 tweak campaign. What appears to happen (no ground tweak) is this: the campaign starts and the ground posture goes to either defensive or consolidating. As long as the ground posture is in consolidating or defensive, friendly ground does not move to any objectives.

I saved the campaign (no ground tweak) at day 2 one time, and changed to bluefor. Their ground posture was 'Defensive'. So, basically both ground forces were set to a defensive posture and, therefore, there was no ground movement.

I don't know what parameters the campaign engine uses to determine its posture. But, then I started tweaking the ground forces alot in the 2008 campaign. At first I just started deleting a few bluefor GVs at a time, and I added the armored battalions. But this really didn't seem to make a difference. So, I opened the campaign again and eventually started deleting whole groups of bluefor ground, to the point where all I left were supply, a few AAA, and a few SAM. Even then, the force levels were almost equal in ground and bluefor had more air.

With the new armored tasked with 'reserve', they didn't move for at least the first 6 hours of the campaign. So I went in again and tasked all of them with capture Las Vegas. Immediately, upon starting the campaign, the opfor goes to major offensive against Las Vegas and the new armored moves aggressively towards LV. The roads work fine- the linking looks great and they all move.

[edit- I also edited the trigger file to allow for game end on LV capture. Additionally, I edited the pak priority in the trigger file to make LV the priority pak. When the campaign starts, LV has max Pak value automatically for OPFOR. I need to look at manipulating that in the trigger file for BLUEFOR also...]

Now, the question is, why do they only move when tasked with 'capture' vice 'reserve'? I think the reason has to do with the multiple parameters in the unit that we/I aren't tweaking. It might work to set it as reserve, but then there is some parameter to set aggression, or ultimate destination or something. We have to figure that out because right now, the campaign works/ends, but it plays out like a TE more than a campaign. Will the campaign be dynamic? If I put in a bluefor armored to defend LV and if it repulses the OPFOR ground, will the opfor ground regroup and re-attack after reverting to reserve status?

More thoughts: there is one bluefor mech battalion that is defending LV, yet this battalion repulsed at least two battalions of T-80s and T-90s. The bluefor ground forces are tough. One of the problems I've been noticing in ALL of the PMC campaigns is that the ground war is, or becomes, static. This was very noticable in the Europe campaign where the ground war starts aggressively, but then bogs down to a static war. I think part of this problem is the numerical equality between the forces. The campaign engine senses equality and goes on a consolidating or defensive posture and so doesn't order forces to go on offensive posture. It then becomes up to the player to alter the posture somehow, but by failing to hit whatever trigger the campaign needs to cause offensive operations, the ground war simply stops.

So, one thing I'm thinking now is that a good way to set up a working campaign may be to have one side set up as the offensive party and the other the defensive party. Give the offensive team an overwhelming superiority in numbers. This 'may' trick the engine into maintaining offensive tasking and keep the ground war moving. The hard part, if this works, is then producing a working campaign that can be won from both sides. The offensive side can win by doing nothing- the defensive side has to fight smart and well to stop the offense. Maybe this is the direction to take for the first campaign that we can put together that works. Maybe it's ok to make a working campaign that can only be played by the player on one side?

I don't know much about modding, so these are just out loud thoughts.

[Snake Man]

In TacEdit -> Teams page there is slot called "Initiative", this has something to do with the war posture. I have absolutely no idea what the values do, but you might want to experiment with them.

Regarding tasking of the individual ground units... you stated that once the ground unit is ordered to attack an objective, it has no problem moving into the objective and fight for it. So the problem seems to shift now more to the campaign "engine" which gives these orders. Why aren't there orders given? Is it triggers, some initiative, or campaign goals, pak priorities... something? I have no idea

[ccc]

Now, the question is, why do they only move when tasked with 'capture' vice 'reserve'? I think the reason has to do with the multiple parameters in the unit that we/I aren't tweaking. It might work to set it as reserve, but then there is some parameter to set aggression, or ultimate destination or something. We have to figure that out because right now, the campaign works/ends, but it plays out like a TE more than a campaign. Will the campaign be dynamic? If I put in a bluefor armored to defend LV and if it repulses the OPFOR ground, will the opfor ground regroup and re-attack after reverting to reserve status?

your observation is right.

i've also checked default korea campaigns, most ground units are reserve in the begining, and their new orders are given by campaign engine once war start. when you order some unit to "capture", yes it follow the order, just like a TE.. it lost the dynamic, the heart of falcon campaign engine.

last time Biker fixed one of ITO2 campaign by deleting all existing ground units, then manually adding new ones, then magic happened.. i don't know how it works, maybe you want to give it a try.
there's lot to learn and test in campaign thing.. only few devs master this black magic so far..

btw - glad you hear your edit can end the campaign.. it proves the road netwrok is ok for ground maneuvoring.

[toonces]

Real quick, cause I gotta get to bed!

I re-ran the campaign from the bluefor side tonight. It is indeed possible to blunt the opfor assault on LV by dedicated ground pounding.

I repulsed two or three battalions. The last two opfor battalions met the mech battalion right in the heart of LV. It came down to the last bluefor tank, but the opfor armored both turned back.

Now, after that I ran the game a bit longer with no input from me. Bluefor went from defensive ground to major offensive. Several infantry battalions went from defend to 'secure' many places, and a few went to capture, to retake lost political cities. After that, the bluefor reverted to consolidating and stopped moving (but several bluefor units moved into LV proper and set to defend).

Now, I checked opfor a few times, and the ground war is stalled. They are stuck on either consolidating or defensive LV, and nobody's moving anymore.

I went bluefor and crashed a few flights on purpose.

I went back opfor and the opfor completely shut down all bluefor bases, and then shot down all their awacs. And still the ground forces wouldn't go offensive.

Just before I typed this, I checked the Eurowar campaign in RV in Tacedit. All of the battalions are set to reserve. But, all the brigades are set to either 'capture' or secure or defend. I don't understand how this is. It could be that when you create ground units, you have to create them by division-brigade-battalion, and assign major tasking to the division or at brigade level. The campaign engine then sets tasking within the engine at the division/brigade level, which is then passed down to battalion level. Sort of a chain of command structure.

Maybe if I get some time, I'll drop some divisions and brigades in there and see what happens.

Also, I need to figure out what the difference is between capture and secure.

I'll keep ya posted.

[Snake Man]

Divisions are virtual entities, they do not exist on tacedit. When ingame, divisions are automatically created from the brigades, however you have to give "Parent Division" number for all brigades in tacedit.

[ccc]

yes, i also notice that ground units may resume maneuvoring, then come into a stall status.. seems no further drive to make offensive, or defensive, then time flying to the end of war/ timeout.

some tirgger events in TRI files may help changing the stall status, like reinforcement/ force ratio change, etc..

[toonces]

I stayed up another hour looking at things in the default Korea campaigns last night.

@ Snakeman, ok that makes sense. That would have been my next question because the brigades have assigned divisions, but I couldn't figure out how the create a division. Your explanation makes perfect sense.

@ ccc, I think the trigger file contains some vital info that is missing from the current Nevada campaign. I need to look at 'working' ones some more. I figured out how to enter victory conditions. I'll look for 'tempo' type triggers tonight when I get home from work.

Part of my problem is that I haven't played enough Korea campaigns to completion, so I don't know how the tempo will change during the course of a campaign. Will the tempo swing from offense to defense and back to offense? Or, is it purely offensive and defensive?

The middle scenario in the stock Korea campaign probably holds some clues for this. That war (if I'm not mistaken) has multiple victory conditions- the campaign ends if Pyongyang is captured OR if Seoul is captured. So either side can be on offense.

The third scenario is defensive for ROK forces...I need to look at the trigger files and see how they are different.

A combo of tweaking the tri file and figuring out the brigade issue may be very important.

[toonces]

One last thing, and then I have to get to this pesky thing I call a job. I feel like I'm reinventing the wheel here. 8-10 years of Falcon tweaking, I'm not sure why I'm trying to learn everything from the very beginning.

I searched through the forums a bit, but I didn't find alot of info on the tri file editing (a few posts by ccc) or ground forces editing (one long thread by molnibalage).

If there are some threads/links/ideas that I'm not seeing (that you guys are familiar with), please let me know. This has to be well-tread ground, but seeing that there are no theaters out there of the calibre of the stock Korea campaign, perhaps this path hasn't been completely covered after all.

Thanks.

[Sherlock]

If there are some threads/links/ideas that I'm not seeing (that you guys are familiar with), please let me know. This has to be well-tread ground, but seeing that there are no theaters out there of the calibre of the stock Korea campaign, perhaps this path hasn't been completely covered after all.

Thanks.

Here's an example I did for Iran:
viewtopic.php?t=21074

Here's some more doing a "TRI" search here at PMC:

viewtopic.php?t=19006&highlight=tri

viewtopic.php?t=20888&highlight=tri

viewtopic.php?t=20291&highlight=tri

Those should give you a pretty good understanding along with the document written by Chris Carter that talks about the different commands that can go into the Trigger file (its here : http://www.pmctactical.org/f4/downloads ... n_rev2.rar )

[toonces]

As Mr. Burns would say, "Exxxcellent!"

And, by all means, if you see me proceeding along a dead end or off a cliff, please shoot me a line.

I'm trying to document as much as I can so more folks can see what does and doesn't work.

[Snake Man]

Now you're talking, just post all the info here (in the forums) of what you learn, I'll then put it to the wiki.

[derStef]

just do it!

[toonces]

Sherlock,
Did your tri file for Iran result in a 'working' ground war? By which, I mean, did the ground forces go offensive and defensive, and did defensive units become offensive if the initiative switched?

[toonces]

Well, I'm getting nowhere fast.

I decided to experiment with dropping some brigades into my modded campaign. For some reason, probably fatigue, I had the simultaneous idea to delete a bunch more of the blue forces. Then I hit 'save' before I backed up my previous mod.

When it didn't work, I had no 'working' base product to revert to.

Stupid. I can't believe I did that.

Adding ground forces isn't hard, but doggone it's time-consuming. I had an idea to delete all of the ground forces altogether, and then start adding them in myself one by one. But, man alive, it takes forever to add a brigade. There are alot of variables you have to hit for each unit...

Anyway, after my aborted attempt to get brigades to go offensive, I opened up Korea again. There are even more parameters I'm not hitting.

There are a few things I've noticed. The Korea brigades have several different settings. Some are set to capture and under 'uflags' they are moving. Others are set to secure. The uflags hold some clues here to how the ground forces are 'probably' accessed by the campaign engine. Some have the 'inactive' flag checked. Others don't. Same with reserve tasked brigades.

I think I read that the 'inactive' check might make the unit available to the campaign engine for tasking.

More thoughts: I looked at Sherlock's Iran .tri file and the Korea .tri files. The .tri file is vital and is probably the biggest reason why nothing's moving right now. There are initiative, priority, and offensive triggers available that must be mandatory to get the campaign engine running. The engine is looking at the .tri for direction, and lacking it, reverts to static movement.

Perhaps it looks at the .tri file for what to do, then looks at the uflags to find units without tasking that it can use to generate offensive or defensive movement.

If nothing else, I'm getting an idea of why campaign modding wears folks out. I don't think any of this is all that hard; it is just very, very time-consuming.

It would be great if we could get a small campaign like Nevada working. Constructing a small campaign will take far less time than a large campaign like Europe and once we figure out the nuances of getting the ground war working, we can apply those lessons to the monster campaigns.

[toonces]

[posting as much for myself as others here...record of my thoughts, etc...]

Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

Last night I added (several edits in) 2 brigades of bluefor armor at Nellis. One brigade set to reserve, one set to capture China Lake.

Opfor armor meets Mech in Las Vegas, is repulsed.

Ground posture for bluefor changes from defensive to major offensive.

Bluefor armor does not move.

But, maybe I'm missing this in the .tri file...

#if_offensive opfor
#else
#shift_initiative (from opfor) (to bluefor) 50

Maybe bluefor goes to major offensive, but the campaign engine is looking for an initiative variable to decide what to do. It doesn't have one, so it doesn't change the initiative of the ground forces. So, the ground forces stay in a defensive posture despite tasking of major offensive.

[toonces]

Here is a practice .tri file I generated using Sherlock's Iran .tri as a template. I think there are some redundancies with the shift initiatives and the victory conditions I'll need to re-visit (if everything works).

692=China Lake City
1189=Las Vegas City

Forces 1=U.S., 2=BLUEFOR, 6=OPFOR

Some parts are placeholders until I get home and can get the campid numbers for the appropriate cities/objectives.

I'm going to re-open an unedited Nevada save.cam file, tweak the existing in-game brigades to have various taskings and uflags, add a few test brigades with tasks and uflags, add in the new .tri file, and see if the ground war starts working. I welcome any comments regarding the .tri file, or thoughts.

// Nevada1/save2.com Trigger file version 2
//
//
#TOTAL_EVENTS 22
#SET_EVENT 2
#SET_TEMPO 255
#ENDINIT

//Set up PAK priorities- BLUEFOR China Lake City(692), OPFOR Las Vegas City(1189)
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 9
#ELSE
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 692 100
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 NELLIS 50
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 1189 80
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 1189 100
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 BISHOP 80
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 BOULDER CITY 80
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 NELLIS 80
#DO_EVENT 9
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//Get US and OPFOR allied in case I make mistakes
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 1
#ELSE
#CHANGE_RELATIONS 1 2 1
#SHIFT_INITIATIVE 2 6 59
#DO_EVENT 1
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//BLUEFOR on offensive
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 2
#IF_ON_OFFENSIVE 2
#SHIFT_INITIATIVE 6 2 50
#DO_EVENT 3
#RESET_EVENT 2
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//BLUEFOR on defensive
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 3
#IF_ON_OFFENSIVE 6
#SHIFT_INITIATIVE 2 6 50
#DO_EVENT 2
#RESET_EVENT 3
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//Las Vegas being attacked by OPFOR
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 4
#ELSE
#IF_CONTROLLED 6 O Boulder, east Las Vegas, surrounding cities
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 1189 100
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 1189 100
#SET_TEMPO 255
#DO_EVENT 4
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//Las Vegas falls/regained
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 5
#IF_CONTROLLED 2 A Boulder, east LV, cities
#SHIFT_INITIATIVE 6 2 50
#RESET_EVENT 5
#ENDIF
#ELSE
#IF_CONTROLLED 6 A Boulder, east LV, cities
#DO_EVENT 5
#SHIFT_INITIATIVE 2 6 50
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//China Lake being attacked by BLUEFOR
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 6
#ELSE
#IF_CONTROLLED 2 O nearby China Lake cities
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 692 100
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 692 100
#SET_TEMPO 255
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//China Lake falls/regained
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 7
#IF_CONTROLLED 6 A 692 and nearby cities
#SHIFT_INITIATIVE 2 6 50
#RESET_EVENT 7
#ENDIF
#ELSE
#IF_CONTROLLED 2 A 692 and nearby cities
#DO_EVENT 7
#SHIFT_INTIATIVE 6 2 50
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

//OPFOR owns Las Vegas
#IF_CONTROLLED 6 A 1189
#DO_EVENT 8
#END_GAME 8
#ENDIF

//#IF_BORDOM_HOURS 420 boredom hours commented out
//#DO_EVENT 9
//#END_GAME 9
//#ENDIF

//End game after day 30, will change this eventually
#IF_CAMPAIGN_DAY G 30
#DO_EVENT 10
#END_GAME 10
#ENDIF

//BLUEFOR owns China Lake
#IF_CONTROLLED 2 A 692
#DO_EVENT 11
#END_GAME 11
#ENDIF
#ENDSCRIPT

[Snake Man]

I decided to experiment with dropping some brigades into my modded campaign. For some reason, probably fatigue, I had the simultaneous idea to delete a bunch more of the blue forces. Then I hit 'save' before I backed up my previous mod.

When it didn't work, I had no 'working' base product to revert to.

Stupid. I can't believe I did that.

Adding ground forces isn't hard, but doggone it's time-consuming. I had an idea to delete all of the ground forces altogether, and then start adding them in myself one by one. But, man alive, it takes forever to add a brigade. There are alot of variables you have to hit for each unit...

This is a text book example of why people should be using TCL scripts for creating campaigns.

If you would have edited the create.Nevada.0.Ground.tcl, then you would have absolutely no problems of accidentally deleting because you could always create the campaign with touch of a button. In fact its much easier to experiment by fiddling with the ground units in the tcl, easy to comment them out, move their x,y and types etc.

[toonces]

Copy that Snake Man. Once I crack the code on this campaign engine thing, I'll start coding everything up with your help.

I made some more edits tonight, just messing around. That .tri file I posted above locked up my campaign. After alot of troubleshooting, the first part with all the PAK priorities is the problem. I edited them out and everything works fine. I don't know why.

Editing the trigger file and changing several brigades uflag to 'inactive' has created all sorts of movement. Unfortunately, the units aren't moving right to Las Vegas, but in about 12 hours of campaign run, the OPFOR captured Baker, Bishop, and moved all over the map.

I'll keep at it and keep you informed on what happens.

<S>
Toonces

[Sherlock]

Sherlock,
Did your tri file for Iran result in a 'working' ground war? By which, I mean, did the ground forces go offensive and defensive, and did defensive units become offensive if the initiative switched?

It seemed to work to a degree, especially as far as bringing the other powers into the fight when the supply levels hit the appropriate point. The links in Iran, however, are problematic and I believe caused issues with ground troop movement.

[Sherlock]

Here is a practice .tri file I generated using Sherlock's Iran .tri as a template. I think there are some redundancies with the shift initiatives and the victory conditions I'll need to re-visit (if everything works).

692=China Lake City
1189=Las Vegas City

...

//Set up PAK priorities- BLUEFOR China Lake City(692), OPFOR Las Vegas City(1189)
#IF_EVENT_PLAYED 9
#ELSE
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 692 100
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 NELLIS 50
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 2 1189 80
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 1189 100
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 BISHOP 80
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 BOULDER CITY 80
#SET_PAK_PRIORITY 6 NELLIS 80
#DO_EVENT 9
#ENDIF
#ENDIF

...

toonces,
you know you can't leave those names of the cities in the TRI file right? They must be replaced with the corresponding objective ID numbers. You probably already know that but I am just making sure.

[toonces]

Yes, I knew that- I didn't have the campid numbers while I was at..ehem...work, working of course, and not writing .tri files

I'm getting all sorts of movement in my new campaign. Nothing towards LV yet, but I remain ever hopeful that with luck and hard campaigning, I'll start to see something.

[Porkchop]

Hi,

It seems like you've been doing great work with this Nevada theater.
I've been doing one of it's campaigns and realized - from reading these threads - that it would not finish because of the empty trigger files. So I modified the tri file and it should soon finnish.

Anyway, let me know if I can help with anything - testing changes or something like that.

I fly AF and also RV (not as often).

[toonces]

Hi Porkchop.

Well, I've done a bit of testing and hacking up my Nevada theater, and I don't have any solutions yet. My trigger file works in the sense that it definately shifts initiative between the two sides and it changes their pak priorities. And, the ground units move defensively very well. I've tried adding brigades, changing the status of the existing brigades, etc. I can't seem to get a sustained offensive by either side though.

This will seem stupid, but I was "hoping" that it would be a simple matter of tweaking the .tri file, changing a parameter here and there in my brigrades, and suddenly the ground war would work. This route is not working! I think that, in order to crack the ground war code, I will need to examine the working Korea ground war very carefully and try to figure out why some brigades and batts are set one way and not another.

However, I have a very interesting air war working.

So, I've been giving some thought to tweaking the air forces and SAM sites such that the air war is working, challenging, and fun; whether the ground war works or not. I mean, really, Red Flag is about training for the air war, not the ground war.

Looking at Sherlock's .tri files, it is possible to create victory conditions based upon supply levels or force levels. Perhaps a functioning campaign could focus upon the blue forces achieving air superiority against the opfor; or, opfor denying air superiority to bluefor for 3 days. So the victory conditions would be something like (in words):

if bluefor airpower is 80% greater than opfor, then end campaign with victory to bluefor

if bluefor supply is 50% greater than opfor, then end campaign with victory to bluefor

if opfor airpower is 20% greater than bluefor and day>2 then victory to opfor

if day>3 then victory to opfor

And then we could provide 'honor system' victory conditions to the player. For example, on opfor the player gets 3 lives- if shot down 3 times then he loses. The bluefor player gets 2 lives and then he loses. Also, the bluefor player must complete 10 missions in the 3 days.

What I would like to do is post my edits in this forum. I'm trying to use tcl to create the edits so that others can recreate them easily. But, I need Snakeman's permission to post tcl edits.

Snakeman, can I post the edits that I'm doing to the forums? For example, I could compile the .tri file, the tcl script, and the links for all of the skins and required .dds edits for the skins, into one thread so others can experiment with the edits.

[Snake Man]

The supply level don't drop I believe, there was some talking about it on frugals and some of it ended up here too (I can't remember the topic, have to use search), but indeed I think there is something wrong with the supply and bombing your OPFOR to a stone age won't work.

You are free to post the TRI and TCL edits in our forums, in fact you are encouraged to do so. Also the links and install instructions for the skins would be great. Only thing is that when you post tri/tcl files, please use the code tags so it will be formatted bit more better.

Can't wait to see what you accomplish.