[Event] Spring Sting

Red forces are reinforcing once again, and our efforts to control the situation are…falling short. I would like to call upon our community to put together an aerial show of force, and get this situation under control.

@Franze and @WreckingCrew have each put together an excellent co-operative mission on the Caucasus map featuring our current DCS modern-era flagships, the F/A-18 and F-14 plus others such as the F-15C, Harrier, Warthog and Mirage. Both are excellently set up to allow for teamwork and coordination - and I would like to take that a step further.

WHEN:

Weekly, starting March 30th 2019 @ 13:00 UTC -5:00

(See date tool below for your local time.)

2019-03-30T17:00:00Z

WHERE:

Hollo Pointe featuring Erl Sis by WreckingCrew
OR
Hollo Pointe North featuring Offensive Posture by Franze

The group will decide in the pre-flight gathering, which mission to challenge.

HOW:

Pre-flight will begin on MudSpike Discord Voice chat. We will discuss our mission choice, and aircraft.

The mission will be restarted before we begin, so please wait in Discord until it’s reloaded.

Notes on the selections and flight plans will be noted in Discord text chat for any late attendees.

WHAT:

A coordinated attempt to complete either mission - beyond it’s objectives, removing as much Red Force as possible even if by bypassing the regular objective to do so.

We will try to coordinate who will fly what, and if possible keep to our selection for the mission duration. Our hope is to have strike groups, SEAD, fighter cover and CAS flights all going at the same time.

The goal is to get as much accomplished in as short a time as possible with some restrictions:

  1. We will ignore mission-ending objectives, such as to take care of as much red force as possible.
  2. We will try to avoid having anyone change slots for the duration - we want roles covered by having more people!
  3. Kills and score are not the objective - we will be judging success based on the clock and our casualty & damage rate. Running multiple sorties is preferable to any casualty.
  4. If the mission doesn’t have it, or it goes beyond what is programmable - we may ask players to abide some payload restrictions to keep with our “more sorties, please!” methodology, and allow more participation. (Example: avoid CBU-97/105s and triple Maverick luanchers on the Warthog)
  5. We could even have the potentional of some aircraft with no weapons - and just acting as FAC with targeting pods.

Combined Arms and RedForce play are open as well, so long as they don’t overthrow the main goal we’re working for, by say - making the RedForce too large. Human opposition is a welcome prospect!

———

A bit of a pre-brief on the missions to give perspective:

Erl Sis

In this mission, Blue is tasked with eliminating Red Forces south of Krasnodar Paschkovsky, while Red tries to take it. There are also Red Forces North of KP. Blue Fighters (Maykop or Stennis based) entering the AO trigger CAP flights out of Krymsk. Flying attack planes only out of KP, it can be done pretty quick. Flying Hornets in does bring SU-27s etc, into the mix. Krymsk is also reinforced with SA-11 after we started HARM’ing the SA-15s.

For this mission we will:

  1. Sweep the air up to Krymsk
  2. Remove Air Defenses from Krymsk
  3. Strike the airfield, removing the threat.
  4. Mop up Red ground Forces.

Since the ground troops are the designed objective, this is where the payload restriction idea comes in.

Offensive Posture

Blue owns Sochi & Sukhumi. Stennis is off the coast. Red owns Kutaisi and Senaki.

Ground troops are in contact in Gali, with SAMs to the south and a vehicle depot to take out behind enemy lines. Red fighters won’t let you get away unscathed.

For this mission we will:

  1. Maintain patrols over Gali’s airspace
  2. Remove air defenses up to Senaki.
  3. Hit Senaki’s runway
  4. Find and destroy the Depot
  5. Supress fighters and defenses for Kutaisi
  6. Assist in breaking the siege at Gali

Myself and Franze have done this run before, each losing one Hornet. It took us about 7 hours.

15 Likes

A nice idea, and thanks for doing it @Wes.

When can people do this? If a date/time is set then I’ll make plans to attend it. If it is during the week then would prefer not much earlier than 4pm Pacific if possible.

How about 2019-03-29T00:00:00Z as an initial suggestion, and meet up on the Mudspike Flight-Sim voip channel?

Would it be best at a weekend instead, i.e. 2019-03-30T17:00:00Z?

3 Likes

This is where I am looking for feedback - do we need to look at a date in April, so everyone can plan ahead accordingly?

I gather weekend would be the preference - it allows more freedom to work with time zones.

I believe MudSpike Discord will be the Go-To.

2 Likes

Both of those would be hard for me to make. Next weekend has more options for me personally.

1 Like

29th is my birthday! I could even join up- at that time everyone is sleeping anyways!

2 Likes

That first slot comes in at 01:00 for me, I dont think I’ll be contributing much at that time of the day. The second you proposed is more manageable, especially if I can convince the wife to put the kids to bed that night.

I weould freakin love to be in on this. Flying hogs for maximum target destruction and perhaps using the pod to lase stuff and/or tomcats for some of that pilot sh!t :sunglasses: Of course I could always drive a hornet if need be.
I’m not quite tactical in the Harrier (yet) and quite useless in the viggen.

I know not ideal, but if it’s a long persistent mission then we could have a ‘Euro’ crew and a ‘North America’ crew, just to make the times work better. Of course, assuming the people over the pond leave any targets for the people getting up later… :slight_smile:

Would that work @Wes?

1 Like

An alternate proposal on a similar venue: one time zone for the Erl Sis mission and then one time zone for the Offensive Posture mission. Not to prevent those who can make both (I know I probably can’t), just make it a bit easier to coordinate. Both servers are in North America, so keep that in mind.

That could work. One thing I did forget is that the day/night cycle on the missions makes it harder for some than others. I’ve arrived in Hollo Point in the pitch black before and it was sub-optimal. :slight_smile:

Chuckles in AV-8B II NA FLIR and NVG

But yes, fair point and one to keep in mind. Both missions start at twilight and end at dusk, so if you have trouble with night/low light conditions, remember to grab the NVGs!

2 Likes

Weekend is out for me but I’d love to join if possible.

I am home from work, so let’s dive into this some more:

A hemispherical East vs. West? Why not!

Both missions are can be restarted via the F10 menu, if I recall correctly. So both groups can have a clean working slate. A restart of the mission before users get underway would be good to ensure you are working into daylight, and not out of it.

I figured if the group completed one, and people had time to spare, they could try the other. Both servers run continuously, so both any group can make their own choice of which scenario to tackle.


I am glad to see the idea is popular, but alas life gets scheduling priority. Would anyone be opposed to considering this a recurring event - say weekly? Or is a fixed-date event preferred?

We could try @fearlessfrog’s idea and say North America we’ll kick things off Saturday afternoon’s at:
2019-03-30T17:00:00Z

Then, if you are available - you’ll know where to find your fellow Mudspiker’s.

2 Likes

I also think we should run this weekend regardless - we can consider it practice for group coordination!

2 Likes

Also … there is no reason that we can’t run it again in a couple weeks :slight_smile:

2 Likes

LOL, Just today I moved the Erl Sis start time up 40 minutes from 0900 to 0820. Easy enough to change. The moon is pretty bright and the ground is winter white.

Erl Sis has a 12 hour timeout, and it has a Radio Menu option to restart the mission.

2 Likes

I’m in. Harrier would be my preferred aircraft but I have a bunch of other modules if those roles are needed.

1 Like

You’re in luck! Both scenarios have several Harrier slots.

The missions both offer F-14Bs, F/A-18Cs, M2000s, F-15Cs, AJS37s, AV-8Bs, A-10As, and A-10Cs for the blue side.

2 Likes

This weekend I’ll be home for a grand total of maybe 6 hours. Next weekend, however, Dr. Girlfriend is out of town, the dog is with my aunt and uncle, and I don’t plan on leaving the house between Friday and Sunday anyway (except maybe to buy more bourbon/ beer), ostensibly to catch up on lost sleep.

4 Likes

Great idea @Wes.

I will do my best to show up this Saturday ( np every Saturday if we satle for this day ).
Its been a long time since my last serious DCS stick time so I am looking forward to this.

From that lineup I have A10A and F15 and no other.
And I see it not realistic to learn anything new before saturday mision start :slight_smile:

I’m definitely in! I’ll fly harrier as I haven’t had time to get any combat time in the tomcat. I’m flying early Sunday morning depending on the weather so might not be in for the whole night though