So playing with this fancy campaign builder thing here:
Thought I’d do a mission and then watch in 2D just to see how it works out. Some mission context:
Here we can see I did an ‘attack’ action on the base on Minakh. I have 4 Falcons, so I selected a Strike mission for 2 of them and a TARCAP for the other two. The E3 can support. My Strike package is called ‘Whale’ (it’s been a rough pandemic I guess).
Off in DCS the team gets ready:
The front-line action (I added some MBT’s on our side) are throwing rocks at each other. As any sensible air force pilot would do, we ignore them and fly off to our target:
As this is an AI four-ship, it’s nice to see the lead actually turn back and wait for form up with the others. Also, what’s with that red smoke, I guess JTAC is going on as well - who knows, I just work here…
Hmm, you know a smart thing would have been to set the TARCAP off before the STRIKE. Next time…
As Tactical Commander I spend huge amounts of energy pretending I know what all these symbols mean. Hmm, hang on - why isn’t there a waypoint over Minakh? Oh uh.
At least the ‘Raccoon Flight’ TARCAP seems to know what it’s doing (I think)
Carry on troops. (eek). The Strike Team to Nowhere form up.
Racoon’s on their way. Ahh the Whale’s are at a hold point until the TARCAP gets there. Neat! Good planning everyone!
Big bombs
Ok, looks like Whale is going for the target, they just need to get ready at the Ingress point. (thank goodness).
In a tragic bit of bad planning, I seem to have left our base undefended. The tanks get here tomorrow. I shall start wording letters with ‘Logistical Delays’ as my excuses. Oops. Revenge us Whale and Raccoon, as you might not have anywhere to land.
Running in
Go trail. Bomb away.
Shack!
The AI just seem to do a single bomb per pass maybe? That seems inefficent.
Yeah, they look done for the day. I wonder if I need to tweak that, as a better default would be to dump it all down. Still, 2 less tanks in the world is good.
Oh hang on, they’re going in again…
Nice
“Hey Eric, you ever noticed that huge hole before where Bill was a minute ago? Strange, I’ll sit here and wait it out I think”
“Eric? You there?”
“Probably nothing. So like I was saying, the Amazon Prime Video app is really hard to use, you’d expect them…”
Meanwhile, at home base, the Insurgents move in…"
Whale 1 (I bet they hate those names, so cruel) has a bomb left and remarkably tanks up for gas.
…but at the last minute seems to just Eject and then crash over the home base. DCS AI, don’t ever change… 
So without a home base the remaining three aircraft head south for a new home, to the safety of Syria (!). They land at Abu al Duhur, which is marked as neutral Russian base.
I think we can chalk this one up as a loss? Anyone speak Russian?
Here’s the results in full back in Liberation for those keeping score:
Not exactly big wins here
We do have better Intel on the Minakh base though, so an upside!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this AAR. I’ve obviously got some work to do - next time, prepare the base defense.
) and the player was the leader of a mercenary air-force that had to buy aircrafts, fuel, and weapons.