DCS liberation - Part 2
Start here for reference https://github.com/dcs-liberation/dcs_liberation/wiki/Custom-Campaigns
Control Points
These are spawns and capture points. For this mission we'll have bluefor CVN, LHA and onshore airbase at Antonio won. Anderson will remain red.
For naval assets ownership must be Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) Blue and the unit names must match what we have in the campaign YAML. In this case "Blue CV" and "Blue LHA". I'll go over the airbase 'name' later.
Off-map Spawns
This is something I think would fit in this scenario. An off-map aircraft spawn. In the scenario, the revolutionaries are loosely backed by china who could be sending aircraft from the mainland, a carrier off-map etc . To do this we "place an F-15C" and make sure it is owned by CJTF Red.
FOB creation
<TBD>
Supply Routes
These are the routes between control points that the "CAS" frontline will follow during a campaign. We place a M-113 , the name doesn't seem to matter, at a control point, in my case Antonio Won , and route with waypoints to another control point.
Base Defenses
These are static armor and iads units. Once placed they should be automatically associated with the nearest control point by liberation for us. At this point take special care to note which units your red and blue forces have available per the campaign yaml. In my guam_revolution.jason i only have SA2, SA3 for sams and EWRS I only have Flatface or Tinshield. I set up an SA3 garrison and one squad of armor to the south. The armor should be a single MBT M1A2 Abrams. So the group below had to be modified. The acceptable types to set up a garrison for SAMs are
SAM Hawk LN M192, SAM SA-2 LN SM-90, SAM SA-3 S-125 LN 5P73
Objective locations
These are generally striking objectives, some of which generate income for the faction that owns them. I'm keeping this simple for now, creating 2 communications towers. The documentation says I need a tech combine, unsure why.
I am not adding more strike points as there is enough to spin off an entire post just on ground units.
Pause to talk about errors
for debugging purposes I tried to start a new mission.
I saw no "Guam Revolutionaries" faction, this was fixed by finding and adding a missing "," in the faction file.
There was no "Red CV", this is true I deleted the units from the .miz file but they were still present in the campaign YAML. Similarly, the YAML called out two fobs that I had deleted in the .miz file. I had to cut these out of the YAML and reload DCS Liberation. Once I did this I was able to create a campaign.
Starting my custom campaign
The first issue I came across is that I could not find my campaign! I'm currently unsure why, but i had to check the "Show incompatible campaigns" box to make mine show.
Then i choose my factions, one of which is the guam revolutionaries i created in Part 1
Generator settings, set these as you wish. I have the supercarrier module and A4 so I added those.
Next, again set the income and multipliers as you wish. I like to cheat so my income multiplier goes way up. Next, Finish!
Squadron Configuration
This is where all the hard work of Part 1 pays off.
here you can see a few things, 1 we have the FA18 squadrons available to choose and modify if we like. Those were not present prior to editing the campaign YAML and adding them. 2 my custom harrier squadron "Old Gravy Legs" is present with their fearless leader "Ted Sheckler". Note that my harrier squadron had the OCA mission types added in Part 1, they are present here. I recommend adding these mission types to your preferred strike aircraft. These are attacks directly on the airbases themselves. The airbases may have their own SAMs or AA to take out and without an OCA mission, they would be unassignable until a JTAC was targeting them.
Redfor consideration
In my scenario I wanted china to help but not be based on the islands. Remember during the mission editor section we added an "F-15c" air spawn point, I named it "ChinaSpawn-1" in the .miz file. Note now that I can set this as the "Base" for units I want to spawn there. This simulates an external 'china' force sending units to help the island coup.
you can see the 'chinaspawn-1' point far to the north. Each side has 1 airbase on the island and only the Bluefor factions have a carrier and LHA.
The battlespace
The enemy garrison did not come out as I had expected but all items are present in some form. I have my 'iads', some armor units I placed, and one strike location. The strike location does not contain my comms towers but instead 2 or 3 hangers. These must be generated by DCS liberation based on where I placed the tech combine in the .miz file.
After some initial setup, i can let commander Ted Sheckler and his boys in the "Old Gravy Legs" squadron loose upon the guamese rabble!
