Next Mudspike Foothold campaign (April 2026)

Theater for the next Mudspike Foothold campaign:
  • DCS Caucasus
  • DCS (ORBX) Kola
0 voters
  • Full Modern BLUE / RED (all weapons/platforms available)
  • Full Modern BLUE / Semi-Modern RED (SA-10 removed)
  • Semi-Modern BLUE (No HARM/AMRRAM) / Semi-Modern RED
  • Cold War BLUE / Cold War RED (ie: Sparrows / Rear-Aspect IR)
  • 60s BLUE / RED (dumb bombs, no pods, no LGBs)
0 voters

Taking the temperature of the group for the next Foothold campaign. I don’t own Kola but am willing to buy it because the area intrigues me (c’mon…EF2K 2.0!). At some point down the road we can reverse the Syria map because that seemed very popular. As well, there was probably the MOST interest in Germany, but quite a few of us don’t own that one yet. I promise, we’ll get to it.

Regarding technology - there was some consensus that the more limited technology of the Syria Foothold campaign versus the Persian Gulf campaign might have made things more interesting. It is certainly kind of cool to get close with AIM-7s instead of lobbing AMRAAMs from across the map. Same with Shrikes versus HARMs. Whatever we chose to do, I’ll need help sorting out the available weapons/platforms database..it is my understanding that that is now a separate and more easily modifiable file as Leka continues to refine the scenario.

As well, I will post a list of the default credit system and let’s see if we can find better balance for the A2A, SEAD, and CSAR missions. Let’s face it..we are always flush with credits by the end of these campaigns. As well, we can review the ranking/promotion levels and see what we want to agree on going forward.

SHOP_PRICE_DEFAULTS

smoke = 20, – Smoke markers
flare = 20, – Flare markers
illum = 100, – Illumination bomb
dynamiccap = 500, – Dynamic CAP
dynamicarco = 1000, – Dynamic Tanker (Drogue)
dynamictexaco = 1000, – Dynamic Tanker (Boom)
dynamiccas = 1000, – Dynamic CAS
dynamicdecoy = 300, – Dynamic Decoy
dynamicsead = 500, – Dynamic SEAD
dynamicbomb = 500, – Dynamic Bomb run
dynamicstatic = 500, – Dynamic building Strike
cruisemsl = 800, – Cruise Missile Strike
supplies2 = 200, – Resupply friendly Zone
supplies = 1000, – Fully Upgrade Friendly Zone
jtac = 500, – MQ-9 Reaper JTAC mission
[“9lineam”] = 0, – Jtac 9line AM
[“9linefm”] = 0, – Jtac 9line FM
jam = 500, – Jam radars at zone
armor = 100, – Deploy armor (for combined arms)
artillery = 100, – Deploy artillery (for combined arms)
recon = 50, – Deploy recon group (for combined arms)
airdef = 150, – Deploy air defence (for combined arms)
capture = 500, – Emergency capture zone
intel = 150, – Intel on enemy zone
zinf = 500, – Add infantry squad to zone
zsam = 2000, – Add Hawk/Nasams system to a zone
zhimars = 2500, – Add HIMARS to a zone
zlogc = 2000, – Upgrade zone to logistic center
zwh50 = 500, – Resupply warehouse with 50
zarm = 1000, – Add armor group to a zone
zpat = 5000, – Add Patriot system to zone
gslot = 3000, – Unlock extra upgrade slot
farphere = 1000, – Deploy FARP

SHOP_RANK_DEFAULTS

jtac = 2, – MQ-9 Reaper JTAC mission
dynamiccap = 2, – Dynamic CAP
dynamiccas = 5, – Dynamic CAS
dynamicbomb = 4, – Dynamic Bomb run
dynamicsead = 4, – Dynamic SEAD
dynamicdecoy = 1, – Dynamic Decoy
dynamicstatic = 4, – Dynamic building Strike
dynamicarco = 3, – Dynamic Tanker (Drogue)
dynamictexaco = 3, – Dynamic Tanker (Boom)
farphere = 4, – Deploy FARP
capture = 1, – Emergency capture zone
smoke = 1, – Smoke markers
flare = 1, – Flare markers
illum = 1, – Illumination bomb
intel = 5, – Intel on enemy zone
supplies2 = 1, – Resupply friendly Zone
supplies = 6, – Fully Upgrade Friendly Zone
zinf = 5, – Add infantry squad to zone
zarm = 7, – Add armor group to a zone
zsam = 6, – Add Hawk/Nasams system to a zone
zhimars = 8, – Add HIMARS to a zone
zlogc = 1, – Upgrade zone to logistic center
zwh50 = 2, – Resupply warehouse with 50
gslot = 9, – Unlock extra upgrade slot
zpat = 8, – Add Patriot system to zone
armor = 3, – Deploy armor (for combined arms)
artillery = 3, – Deploy artillery (for combined arms)
recon = 3, – Deploy recon group (for combined arms)
airdef = 3, – Deploy air defence (for combined arms)
[“9lineam”] = 1, – Jtac 9line AM
[“9linefm”] = 1, – Jtac 9line FM
cruisemsl = 10, – Cruise Missile Strike
jam = 4, – Jam radars at zone

DEFAULT CREDIT AWARDS

infantry = 10
ground = 10
sam = 30
airplane = 50
ship = 200
helicopter=50
crate=100
rescue = 300
Zone upgrade = 100
Zone capture = 200
structure = 100

I’ll have more settings later. Just wanted to get the polls up first.

5 Likes

I voted Kola, but the most important thing is that everybody who wants to play, gets to play.. so not a big deal if we end up on the Caucasus map.

1 Like

Feel the same here. I’d be most interested to fly over Kola, especially as the vast wilderness reminds me of something way more tropical :slight_smile:

I think the rescue 300 setting needs a review. I racked up rescue points like crazy last mission, @komemiute as well from what I’ve seen. I’d be up to half those points.

2 Likes

I’m okay with halving rescued pilots points but I admit that killing some ground units needs to awards more points too!
Not just based on Tank/SAM but on the relative “danger factor”

Ideally, yes. But for that you need to contribute to help Leka to improve the granularity of the unit classification. If you know the DCS API, please do!

But I think this thread is about configuration, not development.

For ground units, we have 3 categories for now: infantry, SAM, (other) ground (vehicle).

I propose:

infantry = 2
ground = 10
sam = 30

One SAM launcher is then equivalent to 3 tanks or 3 trucks.

1 tank or truck equivalent to 5 foot soldiers.

Is that reasonable, within the current constraints?

2 Likes

I’m 50/50 with either terrain. But I think the choice of Kola is a nice one as it is available as a try-and-buy currently. For my part, if we can decide before the Spring sale ends, that would save me $10. In some parts of the world that’s a gallon of gas!

3 Likes

I’ll get Koala if needs be, Australia always interested me. Especially on sale. :koala:

For points just leave it as defaults, I don’t think it matters and simpler to update.

For era, a bunch of helicopter players don’t want missiles eh? Shocking. :slight_smile:

For changing too much stuff in the config it can cause inadvertent side effects. Like making the death penalty bigger (-500) more or less killed any motivation to do CAP for others last time. When you have to face two red AI on one all the time, and then there was a greater penalty for being shot down means why would you do it? It was far easier just to not do it and stay on the ground with everyone else and plink trucks.

Same with the SAM’s, in that really the only way to kill them was to use an Apache. Do we want to do that again in Kola?

I don’t think the intention last time was to make it just a sort of single player helo scenario but inadvertently too many config tweaks sort of drive it to making sense just to do that. The dream was dumb bombs from the F-4 but that was too much of a grind I think.

The danger is just working back from what you like to do personally (no HARMs, no CAP) and then fix the era just to make that fun. It makes it quite a narrow type of mission that goes on for weeks. There might not be an ideal answer, which is why I tend just go with whatever Leka wants and run with that (plus add that ‘restart server’ menu somehow so we don’t have to fly at night a lot of course).

3 Likes

In Kola, if we set the mission date to summer ‘69, won’t the game automagically restrict tools and give looooong days?

3 Likes

I see how hard it is to make people happy. I was miserable flying CAP in the F-4 only to have someone lob missiles from 3x my range in an F-14 or -18. It sucked. But of course it is the right of a player to use whatever tool is available to him. I got equally sanctimonious at guys who grabbed the Apache only to do so myself when the sun went down. Personally, I would only allow “Fox Twos”. Then we can all fly what we want to fly without spamming. Get rid of AGM-88s and equivalent. Otherwise keep it the way it was.

3 Likes

I think there are at least 3 game loops going on with the last mission, and I say that more to explore what worked rather than say what we should do next:

  1. Single player grinding. Jumping on by yourself and getting something simple done, e.g. move some supplies, rescue some pilots, hellfire some trucks. Points and stuff, but mainly just a place to go and make slow progress on something.

  2. Multi-player as singles. Playing with different people but just doing your own thing, as in like (1) but can pick how you feel and fly whatever. Nice to chat to people and see them whizzing around etc. Very enjoyable and probably most of my time on the server.

  3. Multi-player as group. Doing something that needs someone else to help with, e.g. buddy lasing, CAP for people down low, decoys for SAMs while someone CBUs etc. The most fun for me personally but difficult to make happen all the time.

I think we all like to do (3) as much as possible but it doesn’t happen that much as the Earth is a big globe and we’re all distributed over it.

So then it comes down to what least irritates the (1) and (2) crowd, in that if we have HARMS then that means SAM sites are too easy? Like we want to have to use Apache’s up close for (1) or have to do something team like for (3)? I think mainly for SAMs the issue is people don’t want to fly for 30 mins and then get blatted out the sky but a SA-x that they never even detected or is 200 nm away - it’s just plain annoying.

For 120’s it’s more that people that don’t want to do CAP then don’t want to get shot by down by powerful Red AI air, so they can be left in peace for (1) on the ground down low when no-one is around. I get that, as R-77’s can also be plain annoying. AIM-7F’s are a bit weak, and having to fight multiple with just STT is a bit tiresome, but I get that people hate being shot down too.

So I’m waffling on now but something without top level SAMs seems consensus. All my homies hate the SA-10/11/15 etc. The choice of pure Cold War or not for me is a coin toss, but I would say either pick the ‘Leka Master Flag Cold War = on’ or don’t, and that individual tweaking of stuff is just too hard to keep everyone happy. E.g. the poll could just be ‘Cold War or Modern’.

2 Likes

I’m more optimistic than the Frog.

(And no, I’m not just a helo player, I love doing manual bombing in the F1, A-4 or MiG-15 too!)

I think there were 2 pain points in the last scenario that stopped the manual bombing dream.

  1. As said:
  1. Red air was too numerous. Phantom pilots who just wanted to do bombing got ambushed, amd going 1v2 against Flankers and MiGs is not fun with only Sparrows.

The new config options should help us tame the red air problem, I think?

So:

2 Likes

I jumped into the Interim server two days ago (as an observer) to see how I would go with a ping of 800ms!

It seemed OK, but it might not (probably won’t?) be the case as a player? I’m keen to try though and voted anyway but probably shouldn’t have? If Kola is chosen I will have to do some SSD tetris to re-install it, but that is no problem.

1 Like

If you try to join @Harry_Bumcrack don’t be put off by the bad performance. At Nellis I struggle. There is a lot happening and low pings or hi, you feel it right away. Creech is better but there is nothing to shoot at.

1 Like

If the Interim server is still up later today (out time) I will jump on and give it a proper ‘stress test’ before I commit to the next foothold campaign. I’d would hate to lose points for the rest of you for the sake of an ‘experiment’ for me.

2 Likes

Oh don’t mind the points mate, we ended up with like 30k in the bank on both runs.

That said, I would be delighted to form up on your wing :salute:

3 Likes

As for the ping time Harry, don’t forget that there are roles where that would be less of an issue.. CSAR, hauling supplies, sneaking around in a Kiowa etc. Hope to see you on the server sometime soon.:+1:

1 Like

This is to me the where the biggest issue with how Redfor is setup occurs. Can you kill a multilayered series of SAMs, AAA, CAP, etc on an objective solo? Yes, there are limited methods to do so, and it is frankly impossible in certain platforms. This leaves either chasing convoys, logistics, or SAR if you’re not going to utilize the “meta” options to accomplish the goal of solo’ing sites. Flip side is adjusting the overall setup off the mission to create a reasonable challenge for a solo player makes multiplayer flying usually too easy.

My personal suggestion is either both sides get all their toys, or iron bombs versus AAA Korean war style (maybe throw in few SA-2’s for the heck of it).

70K ish in the PG, and slightly over 80K this time around.

1 Like

Could we drastically limit the quantity of certain weapons. For example, we can utilize HARMS, but there are only a handful of them available for the whole campaign. They would have to be flown in from maybe the first airbase (for example, Akrotiri during the last round). This maybe beyond the scope of the mission script though.

1 Like