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Updated Tutorial: Battle of Abu Dhabi Play Through (markdown)

Jeet Sukumaran 2021-06-30 22:32:02 -07:00
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Tutorial:-Battle-of-Abu-Dhabi-Play-Through.md

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<!-- Multi Image Sources -->
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## Setting Up a New Campaign
@ -163,30 +164,6 @@ The main map window is what we will use primarily to visualize and plan our camp
- If our forces advance far enough to capture this Control Point, then the this segment of the campaign axis will turn blue and the next one down (between Al Khaminah and Al Minhad) will turn salmon, and this continues to the next Control Point.
- Conversely, if the enemy proves more successful, the front line marker will retreat up the campaign axis until the enemy captures Khasab.
## The Gameplan
Before we get into the game in any more detail, let's first consider our overall strategy, as this will influence the composition of the assets we acquire.
We are going to play the game by working our way down the campaign axis, taking Control Point by Control point.
We can only take the first enemy Control Point after the front line, i.e., we cannot carry out any vertical envelopment, Operation Market Garden style of capturing any Control Points deeper down the line.
So our entire campaign will be driven by pushing the front line down the campaign axis of control as we take enemy control point after control point.
And the capture of enemy control points can *only* be done by ground troops.
*Everything* else in the game, whether its fancy F-22's or old school Hueys, is utterly and entirely in support of the troops on the ground, either directly or otherwise.
Our strategy to achieve this victory is going to be using our airpower to shape the battlespace to favor the ground troops advancing on to the next control point, while making difficult for the enemy to do the same.
We are going to:
1. First, take out the long-range SAM's that are going to intefere with the free movement of our air. We will prioritize, first, SAMs that cover the front lines and/or protect enemy forces near the frontlines, then, secondly, those that protect their airfields.
2. Second, we are going to turn our attention to:
- destruction of enemy ground assets near the front
- destruction of enemy *airfields*
Note there are a multitude of other strategies, and we may want to think about running some of this as well (maybe supplementing if not replacing the above).
For example, the enemy economy, like ours, is based on a number of strategic resources, such as oil fields, factories, depots, etc. etc.
We may decide that it makes sense to hold back on the war on the ground and bleed the enemy's economy for a bit, in which case we would prioritize strikes against these strategic resources.
The strategy we pick will drive everything from our asset acquisition to our mission planning.
Thus if we favored the "war against the economy" approach, we would invest in strategic bombers rather than CAS-specialized tactical fighters.
For this example, however, we are going to adopt the "SAMs > airfields > ground" formula, and thus our inventory will be dominated by tactical air assets and their suppporting aircraft.
## Turn 0
@ -222,8 +199,13 @@ Turn 0 is actually a "pre-game" turn, where we will do two things:
Of course, *both* sides will be affected by the same weapons restriction.
Obviously, this will have a major impact on the dynamics of the game, potentially make it a lot more interesting and challenging.
Another option to set here is whether or not the Liberation AI plans our side's missions every turn in addition to the enemy's.
We are going to disable this by selected "Disabled" from the "Automatic package planning behavior" drop down box.
By default, Liberation AI plans our side's missions every turn in addition to the enemy's.
We can fine tune how players are assigned missions by selecting one of the options from the "Automatic package planning behavior" drop down box.
![](https://i.imgur.com/1T7sC9e.jpg)
You can read about the various options available [here](https://github.com/dcs-liberation/dcs_liberation/wiki/Squadrons-and-pilots).
For now, we are going to ask Liberation to run the mission planning for us, and leave this setting at its default.
4. Select the "Mission Generator" page from the list on the left.
@ -312,7 +294,6 @@ After we have selected all the settings and options you want, close the dialog b
![](https://i.imgur.com/rz8q3uX.jpeg)
For example, if this were a (slightly) more realistic play, we may want to move at the carrier out of the Persian Gulf into at least the Gulf of Oman, as carrier strike groups love blue water and are really not comfortable moving into, let alone operating tactically, in restricted waters such as the Persian Gulf proper.
A line will appear from the current location leading to a semi-transparent icon indicating the future location.
Note that the future location will only take effect on the next turn.
@ -341,7 +322,32 @@ After we have selected all the settings and options you want, close the dialog b
And, with that, we are *done* with the initial order of battle setup!
6. The final step of this stage is to start the ball rolling.
6. The final step here is to let Liberation know who are human pilots are.
More specifically, we are going to tell Liberation which of the pilot "roles" are going to be filled out by humans and which will be filled out by AI.
Click on the "AIR WING" button on the tool bar to call up the Air Wing dialog:
![](https://i.imgur.com/ruPH8iX.jpg)
Here, we see a list of squadrons avaiable to us, and the type of aircraft that they fly.
We choose pilot slots to be assigned to humans, as opposed to the default AI, based on the aircraft.
So, for example, if we want to fly the F/A-18C in the missions generated by DCS, we would need to let Liberation know to assign a pilot slot from an F/A-18C squadron to a human player.
We select an F/A18C squadron from the list and double-click it to call up the pilot assignment dialog:
![](https://i.imgur.com/lfxElEI.jpg)
Selecting a pilot name from the list that shows up and clicking on "CONVERT TO PLAYER" assigns that slot to a player.
![](https://i.imgur.com/Doe3fi3.jpg)
In this example, two pilot slots have been assigned to players.
We can assign as many pilot slots as we need to provide client slots for human players in the game.
And, of course, they can be for different types of aircraft.
We can further fine tune the sortie types generated for human players by selectively checking or unchecking the mission types that the named pilot can fly.
So, for example, if we only wanted to fly A2A missions, we would uncheck all boxes except "Escort", "BARCAP", "TARCAP", and "Fighter Sweep".
Once we have set up the human pilot assignments, we close the Air Wing dialog.
7. We are now done with the Turn 0 and ready to begin the campaign!
Before doing anything else, though, let us quickly save the game in its current state, so that all our campaign setup does not get lost should something go wrong.
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## Turn 1
Now we are ready to plan our first turn.
Now we are all ready to actually fly the mission inside DCS with our fellow human and AI pilots!
Note that are budget has been increased.
This reflects "income" that we gained from various intact assets that contributed to our economy in the previous turn.
We will put off "buying" new hardware until after we have set up the missions this turn.
All activity in Liberation is organized into *packages*.
A package consists of one or more *flights* with a specific objective and, crucially a TOT (Time on Target) that determines when that objective should be completed.
A *flight* consists of one or more aircraft with a mission that either achieves the package's mission directly, or otherwise supports it.
If we had not disabled autoplanning in the settings, Liberation would have thrown up a whole bunch of packages for us, and then the only thing would *have* to do is to pick which one we wanted humans to fly and edit the package flights to replace the AI pilots with human player slots.
Here, we are going to build up the turn from scratch, though.
1. We'll start by planning our AWACS patrol.
Right-clicking on any blue Control Point (e.g., Qesh Island) will call up the Mission Package dialog.
![](https://i.imgur.com/0MwGuYE.jpeg)
Clicking on "Add Flight" on the botton left will call up the "Create Flight" dialog.
From the "Task" drop down box, we select "AEW&C".
From the "Aircraft" drop down box, we have two options available -- The E-3's out of Bandar Abbas Intl, or the E-2's out of our carrier.
We are going to assign an E-3 for this task.
We will leave all the other options at their defaults, but will set the "Start type" as "In flight".
As noted, this will make it impossible for this aircraft to be targetted by enemy missions, so should be used judiciously.
The only reasons to change this from "Cold" is because of performance (some airfields can get buggy if many aircraft are on the taxiways at once) or timing.
Here we are doing it for the latter: we want this mission up and running before any other flights are in the air.
![](https://imgur.com/a/majbtHS)
Clicking on "Create" will add the flight to the package.
We could (and probably *should*) assign some sort of escort to this package, but we are going to ignore it for now.
Note that the mission TOT defaults to "ASAP", where the specific time is calculated based on the package route and waypoints (which itself can be edited later).
We can set a later time ourselves, and often will want to (to, for example, coordinate a strike package TOT to be after a DEAD package has dealt with a theater-scale SAM covering the strike target), but for now, ASAP is fine.
We click on "Save" to save the package.
![](https://i.imgur.com/fvVlld4.jpeg)
The AEW&C package now appears in the package listing window, and in the flight listing window the single E-3A flight appears.
On the main map window, our mission is represented by a flight route extending from the Bandar Abbas Intl airbase to, in this case, an arbitrary location on the map.
We left-click and drag the waypoint marker to something closer to the action, and in particular, making sure that the orbit location represented by the waypoint marker has a clear view of the north coast of the peninsula where all the action is.
![](https://i.imgur.com/lSDtiCu.jpeg)
2. Now let's implement our game plan and frag some SAM strike packages.
In this example, there are two SA-6 sites on the coast and a SA-3 site a little further in.
![](https://i.imgur.com/JKa7nvP.jpeg)
While the front line itself does not seem to be in the threat circle of any of these, the larger battlefield around the front line is, and these SAMs will interefe with our interdictions and CAS missions.
So we are going to plan three packages: one for each of the two SA-6 sites, and a third against the SA-3 site.
We are going to coordinate the packages such that the SA-3 site strike will not be exposed to the SA-2 on their ingrees, so it will have a TOT adjusted accordingly.
3. We begin by right-clicking on the first SA-6 site (the one indicated by "1" above) to call up the package editor that will help us put together a package targeting this site.
We click on "Add Flight" to setup a DEAD flight consisting of 4 F/A-18C Hornets out of the Stennis.
![](https://i.imgur.com/HXImmB0.jpeg)
We decide that this is one mission a human player will want to fly by clicking on the "Player" boxes next to the pilot assignments (though we could, with varying levels of success, decide that this mission would be flown by AI only by leaving all the "Player" boxes blank).
We click on "Create" to add this flight to the package.
Now, we can edit or fine tune the flight configuration by double-clicking on its listing in the package editor.
Double-clicking on the flight calls up the flight edit dialog.
![](https://i.imgur.com/Zfa6aFW.jpeg)
- The first page of this dialog allows us to change the number of aircraft in this flight, change (or add/remove) the slots that are assigned to human players, or change the start type (cold, warm, runway, in flight, etc.)
- The second page ("Payload") allows us to change the default loadout of the aircraft.
The default loadout will vary depending on, of course, the aircraft type, but also whether or not we have era-specific weapons restrictions or have [customized loadouts](https://github.com/dcs-liberation/dcs_liberation/wiki/Custom-Loadouts).
![](https://i.imgur.com/mh3zpiu.jpeg)
We can select a pre-configured loadout from the drop-down box, or create a flight-specific custom loadout by clicking the "Use custom loadout" and then select ordnance on each station using the appropriate drop-down boxes.
![](https://i.imgur.com/ThRUoFJ.jpeg)
- Closing the dialog box saves the loadout for this mission.
While in the example above, we have configured our DEAD strike for self-escorting with 4x AIM-120's apiece, let's add a dedicated escort to this package anyway by clicking on "Add Flight" again, and selecting "Escort" from the "Task" drop-down.
![](https://i.imgur.com/zg2kUaw.jpeg)
Closing the package editor saves the package, and now we have two packages listed in our package listing: our earlier AEW&C package and the DEAD strike package.
![](https://i.imgur.com/6NbrmQY.jpeg)
Again, we can always edit the package composition by double-clicking them in the package list to call up the package editor, or the flights by double clicking them in the package editor.
Before proceeding, let's adjust the strike package route.
On the map, we see highlighted in yellow the route for the selected flight for the selected package.
![](https://i.imgur.com/6QGH9zg.jpeg)
The package is selected from the Packages window on the left, and the flight from the Flights window underneath it.
The currently selected flights will have pins for each waypoint, with details on the altitude and timing for that way point.
We can adjust any of these waypoints by dragging them.
This is something we typically want to do exploit terrain, avoid threats, come in from different axes/angles etc. etc.
Here we see the default route created for the DEAD package in Liberation puts the egress path right through the threat circle of some picket destroyers with nasty SAMs.
We almost certainly want to take out those ships eventually to give us access to that airspace, but for now we will adjust the route of the package to avoid them.
We click and drag the "5 Egress" waypoint pin and move it such that the route goes further north.
![](https://i.imgur.com/OHJoydH.jpeg)
Note that currently, we have to adjust the route of each flight in each package independently.
Here, we have just edited the route of the the first flight in the package.
![](https://i.imgur.com/OHJoydH.jpeg)
We have to select the second flight in the Flight window on the left, and see then that *its* route gets highlighted in yellow (while the previous flight's route goes back to blue), and we get the waypoint pins show again, which, again, we can use to adjust the route to follow the first flight.
![](https://i.imgur.com/HjGzf47.jpeg)
4. Let's repeat the above to set up a DEAD strike against the second SA-6 site, again adjusting the route as needed.
![](https://i.imgur.com/Xbv1MTO.jpeg)
For this one, as can be seen by lack of player slots, we leave it to all AI.
5. Now let's set up the DEAD strike on the SA-3 site.
This proceeds along the lines of the previous (with a player slot thrown in), with one crucial difference.
Instead of choosing an ASAP TOT, we are going delay the time such that we are sure that the previous two DEAD strikes have completed the mission and destroyed the coastal SA-6's that are protecting the SA-3 site.
So we uncheck the "ASAP" box and set at TOT for T+00:25:00.
![](https://i.imgur.com/bQaNt1P.jpeg)
6. Next, let's get same CAS set up on the front lines.
We right-click on the orange front line marker to call up the package editor and frag a CAS flight of Harriers from our helicopter carrier (with a player slot thrown in).
![](https://i.imgur.com/f09nFyi.jpeg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/1Au13b6.jpeg)
Again, we double-click on the flight after we create it to modify the default payload, this time throwing in some GBU's into the mix for a little more impact.
![](https://i.imgur.com/ccroNKu.jpeg)
We frag a TARCAP flight to join the package to provide some protection against possible enemy air as well.
![](https://i.imgur.com/gXkZAA7.jpeg)
Crucially, we adjust the package TOT such that we are sure that our SA-3 strike mission would have done its job before any of the CAS elements get on station.
![](https://i.imgur.com/CJUAgMg.jpeg)
7. Ok, now all our primary targets and missions are setup, we can set up some secondary and defensive missions.
Clicking "AIR WING" pulls up a dialog showing all our assets, and the "Inventory" tab allows us to see at a glance all our unsed assets.
![](https://i.imgur.com/cZJcJp2.jpeg)
8. Let's set up a BARCAP over the carrier.
Right-click on carrier and use the package editor to frag a Tomcat BARCAP mission.
![](https://i.imgur.com/Ek6zPvu.jpeg)
Once the mission has been created, we can use adjust the "RACETRACK START" and "RACETRACK END" waypoints to adjust the geometry of the coverage.
![](https://i.imgur.com/TTpCCjG.jpeg)
We would probably want to frag a two more BARCAP missions, staring at T+00:20:00 and T+00:40:00, respectively, to ensure continuous coverage throughout the mission.
9. Following the above, we set up a BARCAP over Khasab, which will cover the helicopter carrier and the front line as well.
If enemy air is strong, we may want frag additional BARCAPs in addition.
10. Now let us set up some refueling missions.
As with the BARCAP missions, we can adjust the refueling race track waypoints to put the tankers where we want them.
We will typically want at least a recovery tanker (for flights to top up before landing on the carrier), and some mission support tankers (for flights to top up before they ingress, or for CAPs to refuel to extend their station time).
Be aware that the AI will not behave for refueling, so all refueling is only to cater for human players.
We can right click on the carrier to frag refueling packages, and then adjust the tanker racetracks as needed.
![](https://i.imgur.com/NyKhBhA.jpeg)
![](https://i.imgur.com/hxKtK8P.jpeg)
11. Finally, let us arrange for "purchases" for the next turn.
Here we would typically invest in replacing anticipated losses in addition to aircraft and vehicles that we want to carry out future operations.
12. Now we are all ready to actually fly the mission inside DCS with our fellow human and AI pilots!
- Before anything else, let us save the game in its current state so that we can always return to it if needed.
- We click on the "Take Off" button in the upper right, and Liberation will generate a mission for us.
Liberation will create a file called "``liberation_nextturn.miz``" in our DCS saved missions directory (typically "``C:/Users/<Name>/Saved Games/DCS/Missions``").
Liberation then shows us window, indicating that it is now waiting for use to run and complete the mission in DCS.
- Before anything else, let us save the game in its current state so that we can always return to it if needed.
- We click on the "Take Off" button in the upper right, and Liberation will generate a mission for us.
Liberation will create a file called "``liberation_nextturn.miz``" in our DCS saved missions directory (typically "``C:/Users/<Name>/Saved Games/DCS/Missions``").
Liberation then shows us window, indicating that it is now waiting for use to run and complete the mission in DCS.
## Flying the Mission in DCS