rgevers / dcs-operationburningmirage

Moose based dynamic mission framework.

Disclaimer

This script is still heavily work-in-progress. I'm sharing it publicly now primarily to make it easier to collaborate with JTF-111 who the mission was created for. If you want to know more reach out to that group via Discord.

I am not providing any .miz files at this time. The config files are not intended to imply any political or historical meaning. Many regions modeled in DCS are experiencing ongoing conflicts. The author of this script is not expressing any opinion about these conflicts through this configuration. These tools are merely intended to facilitate dynamic mission creation for others who want to operate a server for their group. It is up to those mission creators to tell their own stories.

Introduction

This mission script is designed to provide persistent, dynamic campaign capabilities in an extensible way. It is similar to other dynamic campaigns in that it models control points with capture mechanics and resupply, but differs in a few key ways.

• The mission simulates time passing even when players aren't playing.
• The economic simulation is graph traversal based.
• Enemy unit behavior is replaceable.
• Map scenery objects are useable as targets without extra scripting or manually created triggers.

The passing of time is achieved by a startup check. The current version expects to be run at least once per day, but a small change could be made to allow for the passing of multiple days on startup. All health-regen for control points is done during this "overnight" phase. If the server is paused when players are not present the red AI actions will not take place so the overall behavior is that the map will heal but no control will change. This encourages players to play frequently to keep their progress from being slowed by regeneration, but doesn't penalize them so much that progress is lost and control points flip back to red once taken.

Naming Conventions All unit names should be prefixes of their groups. E.g. if a group is called "red-Tabuk-5" the units should be "red-Tabuk-5-1", "red-Tabuk-5-2", etc. This is because of a current issue with DCS and access to a unit's group name via Lua. This is also standard naming convention and good mission hygiene so as long as this is followed the correct associations can be made using unit names.

The following prefixes are needed to identify groups for their various roles. Anything after the prefix can be included for mission-creator's own purposes. At a minimum a group number should follow the final "-".

• hvt-Coalition-TheaterName-
  • Designates high value targets associated with a given theater. Destroying these counts against the theater's health.
• sam-Coalition-TheaterName-
  • Designates airdefenses to be associated with a given theater. Destroying these counts against the theater's health. If named correctly they will also be added to skynet.
  • The health of the theater will also limit whether or not these are activated when the mission starts.
• ewr-Coalition-TheaterName-
  • Designates airdefenses to be associated with a given theater. Destroying these counts against the theater's health. If named correctly they will also be added to skynet.
  • The health of the theater will also limit whether or not these are activated when the mission starts.
• TheaterName-convoy
  • Used to mark where helicopter and truck convoys should takeoff/land embark/disembark.
• TheaterName-shipConvoy

Naming Convention Variables

Coalition

Lowercase value either "red" or "blue".

TheaterName

Theater names (referred to as zone names within some of the code) are the names used to designate points of control on the map. The name can include spaces or capital letters. Code comparisons are case insensitive so don't try to differentiate two identical theaters with capitalization alone. If spaces are included make sure to include them correctly in all references. Theater names need to be globally unique across all maps so if you use things like "alpha" don't plan to have an "alpha" on both Sinai and Syria, for example.

While spaces are fine in theater names, avoid "-". I just omit them.

Zone Names

Testing

Testing can be achieved locally by simply running the mission. Note, if you don't launch a multiplayer server and just hit the "fly" button, you will need to slot as a spectator to let the mission initialization happen or else some testing will not work. For example the slot-blocking script cannot function until after the state is loaded into memory and this happens in the first seconds of the mission start. This happens on a multiplayer server before the first player can slot in but there's a race condition when testing from the mission editor, so going spectator first is a more realistic way of testing.

Steps on a new map

Make sure to not be running the mission while editin the config file. It will get periodically overwritten. Even if the mission is paused it may have a stale version of the config in memory that it will overwrite your changes with.

• Create Template Vehicles (13 groups)

  • template-red-cas
  • template-red-heloConvoy
  • template-blue-heloConvoy
  • template-red-strike
  • template-red-sead
  • template-red-planeConvoy
  • template-blue-planeConvoy
  • template-red-truckConvoy
  • template-blue-truckConvoy
  • template-red-armor
  • template-red-artillery
  • template-red-shipConvoy
  • template-blue-shipConvoy

• Add Scripts to initialization trigger

  • Mist
  • Moose
  • Skynet
  • Splashdamage
  • BurndingMirage

• Create zones in all of the appropriate areas of the map. Add them to the theater list in the config file using

"ZoneName": {
	"Airport": "Moose Airport Name (If Relevant)",
	"Coalition": "red",
	"Health": 3000,
	"ManufacturingSource": true,
	"MaxHealth": 3000
},

- Set manufacturing source is optional.

• Adjust health as desired.
• Run mission and check spectator view to assess.
• Add connections to config file using

{
	"SourceTheater": "",
	"Health": 3000,
	"MaxHealth": 3000,
	"Reverse": false,
	"DestinationTheater": "",
	"Type": "HELO",
	"Waypoints": []
  },

• Add player cold starts
• Setup FARPs
• Add tankers
• Add air defenses
• Add high value targets
• Check scenery objects that should count as industry against the TargetValues file. See video for help.

assert(loadfile("C:\Users\robg\Documents\GitHub\DCS-OperationBurningMirage\OperationBurningMirage.lua"))()

TODO -

• Add scenery objects to target database for Marianas
• Fix plane starts
• Fix ground based missions
• Explain reversal
• Remove solar panels from marianas
• Add AAA and Infantry, marianas
• Test range restrictions
• Add FAC(A) Support
• Add CAP missions

dcs-operationburningmirage's Issues

help

A help,

Does it work in Syria?
I tried everything here but I didn't understand how it works