Campaign Battle of Abu Dhabi Play Through

Setting Up a New Campaign

1. Click on the "New Game" icon on the toolbar.

   

   This will start the new game wizard.

   

   Click on "Next >" to continue.

2. The next page of the wizard will allow us to select a campaign as well as configure some context for the campaign.

   

   • Item 1

     This is a list of campaigns available in Liberation. Each campaign listing begins with the name of the map or terrain it is set in, follwed by the name of the campaign itself. We click on each campaign to select it, as well as to get some more details about setting it up or running it. (If we are interested in developing our own custom campaign, have a look here).

   • Item 2

     As we click on each campaign from the list on the left, in the top box on the right we will see a brief description of the campaign, including the default factions that the campaign designer has selected for the campaign.

     In terms of game mechanics, a "faction" essentially determines the types of hardware that each side will have access to during the campaign (i.e., what aircraft, ground vehicles, ships, air defenses, etc.). The default factions may reflect historical or pseudo-historical units for a particular conflict a campaign is replicating, if any, or otherwise something that the campaign designer selected for balance or whimsy. We will have the option to customize the factions on the next page, so don't worry if we do not like the default factions, or even if we do not really understand what hardware is associated with each faction as this will be listed later.

   • Item 3

     Take note of the performance impact rating. We have some limited ability to tweak this later on in the game, but we really should take into consideration the power of our machine or server when selecting a campaign.

   • Item 4

     Clicking on "Invert Map" under "Map Settings" will reverse the starting positions of the sides of the campaign, essentially letting us play the campaign from the other side (with appropriate faction selection later on). We will ignore this for now.

   • Item 5

     Under "Time Period" we can select the time period we want to set the campaign in. The time period that we choose has TWO effects on gameplay:

     • The season (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) determines the season textures on the campaign map.
     • The year will ONLY make a difference if we later on choose to have era-dependent weapons restrictions in our campaign setup. Selecting this option (which will be available under the game settings once we start the campaign) will result in Liberation restricting all flights to only load up on ordnance that was in service by the year we set here. So, for example, if we set the campaign to play out in the "Cold War -- Fall [1970]", then our flights will not have access to AIM-120's, JDAMs/JSOWs, etc.

   Next to the campaign itself, the time period is probably the most important option we will want to consider on this page. For now, let us select "Persian Gulf - Battle of Abu Dhabi" as the campaign, and leave all the settings at their defaults, including the default time period (Summer 1995). Click on "Next >" to proceed to the next page.

3. The next page of the wizard allows us to select both ours as well as the opposing forces: "Player faction" and "Enemy faction", respectively.

   

   As noted above, a "faction" in game terms essentially determines the types of aircraft, ground vehicles, air defenses, etc. that each side will have available. Changing the faction using the dropdown boxes next to "Player faction" and "Enemy faction" will change the listing of types available under each. Obviously, this will have massive difference in the campaign play, and we can set up anything we like, realistic or not, balanced or not. In actual play, should spend some time stepping through different factions and reviewing their hardware/equipment to see what suits our whims, interests, etc. For the same campaign, we can set up factions so that we play out everything from a peer-to-peer symmetrical conflict to a COIN conflict, or anything in between. Moreover, we can select factions with hardware from different periods to capture WW2-ish, Cold War, or post-Cold War technologies and dynamics.

   Note that this page only selects hardware availability (the types of equipment available), not capacity (the numbers of each). We will later have the ability to select this for each side as we desire.

   For the campaign we have selected, the campaign designer has set "Iran 2015" as the player faction and "United Arab Emirates (2015)" as the opposing faction. This makes perfect sense for the geography and politics of the region, as well as the game balance.

   However, just to explore the possibilities, we are going to change the factions around. We are going to select "USA 1990" as the player faction and "Iraq 1991" as the enemy or opposing faction. We can "lore up" this conflict any way we please (maybe Iraq has invaded and occupied UAE very rapidly, and now the US has stepped in to push them back?), or just accept that this makes for a nice scenario to be explored.

   After selecting "USA 1990" and "Iraq 1991" for player and enemy factions, respectively, we click on "Next >" to proceed to the next page of the wizard.

4. In this page of the wizard, we set the availability of some specialized hardware.

   

   So, for example, in the top box we can decide whether or not we want to allow aircraft carriers (and, if so, the supercarrier), helicopter carriers, or even any form of navy at all. We can also set the desired mission duration. Note that the only thing this effects is the AI mission planning -- the AI (our, side if we do not opt out later on for the AI to plan our missions, as well as the opposing side either way) will not plan any missions past this time. We will still be able to play the mission for longer than this, but we will find things strange as the enemy may not have any CAPs on station or indeed much activity at all. (Also note that we can always end the mission anytime, with the caveat that some of the AI may not have completed their assigned tasks).

   The second box lets Liberation know what game modification we want to use in the mission generation. Two very important things to note here!

   • First, we need to have independently downloaded and installed the mods for the missions to work! Liberation does not bundle these mods, nor will it download them for us.
   • Second, even if we have the mods installed, if the factions that we have selected do not explicitly include the various types offered, Liberation will not generate missions that include them!

   For now, the only option on this page that we are going to select will be "Use Supercarrier module" (assuming we have it). After that, we click on "Next >" to proceed to the final set of options in the wizard.

5. This page allows us to configure the parameters of the notional "economy" of the game.

   

   The "economy" is a game mechanic to manage the balance and difficulty of the campaign. It essentially determines how much of each side will able to buy out of the various types each faction makes available. There are two things to consider here:

   • Next to equipment types (SA-10's vs SA-2's? Su-35s vs MiG-19's?), this is probably the single most important way to dial in the game balance. If we find ourselves going up against an anemic opposition that can barely put together a noticable CAP to provide a nice challenge to our strikes, or find ourselves rolling into victory without much satisfaction, increase the opposing faction budget. Alternatively, if we find ourselves facing hordes of aircraft and SAMs and tanks and are overwhelmed, do the opposite: decrease the opposing faction budget. We can also, of course, decrease our budgets to make our life more challenging, or increase our budget to allow us to generate extra sorties to deal with the hordes. The approach we take should probably be driven by the second consideration below: performance.

   • The single biggest crunch to our game performance is the number of units in play in a particular mission: more units, less performance. The single biggest way we can influence the number of units in play in a particular mission is by changing the budget. If we find our games are a stutter fest or unplayable on our computers, then we can dial down the budgets for both sides here (e.g., dropping both sides down to 1000 or less).

   This page also allows us to decide whether or not the Liberation AI will automatically use some of our funding to repair damage, or purchase ground troops and aircraft.

   

   For this example, we are going to ask Liberation to manage all our resources for us by checking all the following boxes:

   • Automate runway repairs
   • Automate front-line purchases
   • Automate aircraft purchases

6. Clicking on "next" will take us to last page of the wizard.

   

   Here all we have to do is click on "finish", and Liberation will do its thing to generate the campaign based on our options. Then, the next screen we will be presented with will be the main Liberation interface, ready for us to dive into Turn 0 of our brand new campaign!

The Interface and Its Elements

Looking at the main interface of Liberation, we see a number of elements and panels.

1. This is the toolbar. From here we can create new campaigns, load saved ones, change the campaign and mission generation settings, etc.
2. This is our package window. Once we have planned some missions, we will see each package listed here.
3. This is our package flights window. Each package consists of one or more flights. For each package currently selected in the previous panel, the flights that make it up will be listed here.
4. This is our information window, where a log of various activities carried out by Liberation gets reported.
5. This is our main map view window, and is discussed in dtail below.
6. This is our "budget" in the abstract notional economy that Liberation uses to manage the game balance in terms of units and equipment fielded.
7. This is where we will go to generate a mission.

The Map Window in Detail

The main map window is what we will use primarily to visualize and plan our campaign.

• We can zoom in and out of the map by hovering over it and using our mouse scroll wheel. We can actually get some really nice terrain detail at the maximum zoom, allowing for some pretty fine-scale mission planning that exploits terrain.
• Our forces are represented by blue icons, while the enemy is represented by red icons.
  • The darker shaded icons represent Control Points --- important strategic objectives that structure the battlespace, as well as places in which we will base our aircraft, vehicles, and troops. Most of these Control Points lie along the campaign axis (discussed below), but note that our carrier and helicopter carrier are also Control Points, given their capacity to base aircraft.
  • Hovering our mouse over each icon shows we some information about the forces represented by each icon.
  • Right-clicking on a non-Control Point icon brings up some details about the group's composition.
  • Right-clicking on a friendly (blue) Control Point icon brings up a dialog which allows we to manage assets and resources related to this group, including "purchase" (under Liberation's notional econonmy) of aircraft, ground units, etc.
  • For special naval Control Points, such as aircraft and helicopter carriers, right-clicking and dragging on its icon allows we to relocate the ships. The (future) new station will be indicated by a semi-transparent icon connected to the current location by a line, and it will only take effect the next turn. During the mission, carriers will always steam into the wind and relocate to the designated position between missions.
  • Left-clicking on any icon brings up a package scheduling dialog which allows we to frag missions relating to this group. For friendly groups, we can, for e.g., plan BARCAPs. For enemy groups we can plan various strikes, CAS, BAI, DEAD, SEAD, etc. missions.
• A thick line, running shows the principle axis of the compaign, which connects all the Control Points of the campaign, both ours and the enemy. This is discussed in detail below.
  • This is the primary axis along which the campaign will be fought, and on which we will advance or retreat as we capture or lose Control Points arranged upon it.
  • The dark red section of the axis, which runs from FOB Ras Al Khaminah to Liwa in the southeast, represents the part of the axis under enemy control.
  • The salmon-colored section of the axis, running between FOB Ras Al Khaminah and Khasab, represent the current segment of the campaign axis that is being fought over.
  • The orange line across the axis represents the front line, the current FEBA.
  • As our missions prove successful, this front line will advance down the axis, toward the next enemy Control Point on the axis (FOB Ras Al Khaminah).
  • 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.

Turn 0

Turn 0 is actually a "pre-game" turn, where we will do two things:

• We will use this turn to set some options and other settings to adjust how the campaign and the missions it generates plays out.
• We (and the enemy) will make initial purchases, populating our bases and filling out our orders of battle table (i.e., determine our force dispositions).

Settings

1. Let's begin by selecting our mission generation options/settings as well as some other options for the campaign. Click on the "Settings" icon in the toolbar.

   

2. The first page that shows up is the "Difficulty" page.

   

   • We can set the skill levels of various elements in the missions with the first three options.
   • The income multipliers are another way of setting a game balance. Whereas the budgets we set in the campaign generation dialog affect the initial capacity of each side, here we can influence how subsequent turns go.
   • At the bottom, we can also set whether or not we will allow external views or how much players can see in the F10 map.

   We can leave all of these at their defaults, though we may want to select the "No night missions" options if our preferred aircraft does not do well in those conditions.

3. We then move on to the "Campaign Management" page from the list on the left.

   

   In the top box (1) we can decide whether or not we want to allow full unrestricted access to all weapons available in DCS for each platform, or restrict them in some to enhance (or at least modify) gameplay. For example, if we chose 1990 as the period of interest, checking the "Restrict weapons by date" box will only allow AIM-7's but not AIM-120's for all our Hornets and Vipers. Similarly for air-to-ground weapons: no GPS weapons will be available. 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.

   In the bottom box (2), we can decide how much of our strategic and tactical planning is done for us by Liberation. We have already asked Liberation to manage our assets and resources in the campaign setup, and this is indicated by the checked boxes: "Automate runway repairs", "Automate front-line purchases", and "Automate aircraft purchases".

   But here we can also fine tune Liberation's mission planning with respect to how players are assigned missions by selecting one of the options from the "Automatic package planning behavior" drop down box.

   

   You can read about the various options available here. For now, we are going to ask Liberation to run the mission planning for us, and set this to "Prefer player pilots", to make sure that sorties get assigned to human pilots first, and flights will only be assigned to AI after all human pilot slots are filled.

   We also go ahead and ask Liberation to start human-piloted flights as soon as possible, to allow for the fact that humans are, after all, humans, and lack the infinite patience of AI:

   

4. Now we select the "Mission Generator" page from the list on the left.

   

   • The top box has the following options:

     • "Use Supercarrier Module": check this box if we have this module.
     • "Put Objective Markers on the Map": selecting this option will create a separate waypoint for each strike target.
     • "Player flights ignore TOT and spawn immediately": checking this box will allow we to spawn in anytime, as opposed to waiting for our flight's fragged start time. Our published route and waypoint timing will still reflect the mission plan, though, of course, it will be up to we to fly it accordingly.
     • "Default start type for AI aircraft": We can adjust the start type for each flight individually when we frag them, but this sets the defaults for our side as well as the enemy.
     • "Desired mission duration": As noted above, we are free to spawn in anything and quit the mission anytime. What this option determines is mission planning time frame that Liberation does for the enemy faction as well as our side (if we allow Liberation to plan our missions).

   • The bottom box has some important ways for we to manage performance. In particular, we probably want to UNCHECK "Smoke visual effect on frontline" and "Generate infantry squades along vehicles". As noted in the optimization tips, culling of distant units will help by preventing aircraft spawning more than a certain distance from the frontlines.

5. After this, we select the "Lua Plugins" page, and select some extra mods, plugins, or scripting goodies we want Liberation to implement in our missions.

   

   • "JTAC Autolase": we want this checked if we want integrated lasing of targets by an AI pseudo-JTAC (visualized as a invulnerable and invisible-to-the-enemy Predator drone currently).
   • "SkynetIADS": we want this checked! The default SAM behavior in DCS is very dumb -- their radars are active all the time, and they instantly launch as soon as the tip of our aircraft pokes into their wildest maximum range. This makes them easy to detect and defeat by "cheesing" (just poke in and out of their maximum range until they run out of ammo). Skynet greatly improves their behavior in a range of ways, including: simulating an IADS (Integrated Air Defense System, by linking together information from multiple sensor platforms including EW radars); the radars being dark until something is in range; the missiles not firing until something has a decent probability of not escaping; radars going dark when they detect anti-radiation missiles heading their way, etc. etc. It changes the gameplayer entirely and for the better. SAM sites can actually be suppressed for example, by HARMs. Furthermore, it also improves performance as radars are a major resource hog.
   • "EWRS": if we select this, we will be provided a sort of "super-AWACS-on-steroids" feed during the DCS mission.
   • "Splash Damage": we almost certainly want this option. By default DCS does not model fragmentation or "near-impact" damage from explosives. This mod fixes is this.

After we have selected all the settings and options we want, close the dialog box.

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:

   

   Here, we see a list of squadrons available 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:

   

   Selecting a pilot name from the list that shows up and clicking on "CONVERT TO PLAYER" assigns that slot to a player.

   

   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". (If we only wanted to flying exciting A2A missions, we would probably stick to just "Escort" or "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 almost ready to begin the campaign! First, though, let us save the game in its current state, so that all our campaign setup does not get lost should something go wrong.

   

8. Now we click on "Begin Campaign" on the upper right hand corner of the Liberation window to proceed to Turn 1.

   

Turn 1: Mission Planning

Liberation works in the background for a while, crunches the numbers, and then shows us all the sorties, flights, and packages planned for the next turn.

As noted above, the packages are listed in the Package window, with each package consisting of one or more flights with a particular objective. All the routes for all the flights are shown with blue lines in the map window. For each selected package, the flights that compose it show up in the Flights window below, and as we select the flight, its route gets highlighted in yellow.

We can scroll down the package list till we find the packages that have human players assigned.

We see the number of Player Slots per package in the Packages window (1): "DEAD PELICAN" and "DEAD PENGUIN". So, in this case, two DEAD packages (Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses -- strike against SAM targets) have been planned, each with one player slot assigned.

Selecting a particular package shows the flights that make up the package listed in the Flights window, as well as the number of player slots in that flight (2). Here we see that the strike against PENGUIN has 2 Harriers fragged for the strike itself, 2 more Harriers to carry out SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, i.e. sending anti-radiation missiles toward the SAM controllers), while 2 Hornets have been fragged as fighter escort to protect the strike, with one player has assigned to the escort flight.

The main map viewer now highlights the route of the selected flight in yellow (3). Note the map pins that show for each waypoint on the route of the selected flight (indicated by red arrows), along with the altitude and timings the flight is expected to hit each waypoint. This route with its waypoints will be available inside the DCS cockpit on the kneeboard.

All missions will have at least the following waypoints:

• HOLD: this will be the waypoint at which the flight will orbit or loiter with all the other flights of the package until the entire package is assembled. In the DCS game itself, The kneeboard flight plan publishes the departure time, i.e. the time we leave the HOLD waypoint and start heading toward the JOIN waypoint.
• JOIN: this is the waypoint where the entire package coalesces into a formation and pushes toward the INGRESS point.
• INGRESS: this is the final point from which we push off into chute toward the target.
• TARGET: this is the package objective
• EGRESS
• SPLIT

We can adjust the route to our liking by clicking and dragging the pins. We can adjust the route of any flight, not just the player-assigned ones. Liberation will automatically calculate the timings of each waypoint to meet the fragged TOT (Time on Target) for each flight.

Note that we are able to zoom into the Liberation map quite a bit, giving us a nice idea of the terrain features. We can edit the routes of the flights, ours or AI, to exploit terrain features to provide concealment from SAMs, enemy radars, AAA, etc.

Setting the Front Line Stance

Ultimately, success or failure in Liberation, as in the real world, comes from success or failure of the ground war. We can use our airpower to shape the battlespace in favor of the ground way in many ways, to a greater or lesser extent. But we can also change the style of ground war fought by setting the front line stance.

We left-click on the Blue Control Point (base) next to the front line to call up the asset manager, click on the Ground Forces HQ tab, and the use the drop box to select a front line stance.

Generating the Mission to Fly in DCS

Before anything else, let us save the game in its current state so that we can always return to it if needed.

Then w click on the "Take Off" button in the toolbar on the upper right, and Liberation will generate a mission for us.

Liberation will now 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 a window, indicating that it is now waiting for use to run and complete the mission in DCS.

Flying the Mission in DCS

Now, let us launch DCS so that we can actually fly the mission! Upon starting DCS, we will find the mission file located in the default Mission folder. When we load up the mission we will be offered all the client slots that we allocated during the Liberation planning phase. If we made sure to select "Player flights ignore TOT and spawn immediately" or our fragged start time is T+00:00:00, we will spawn in to our cockpit right away.

In the cockpit, calling up the kneeboard and jumping back a few pages will give us:

• Our flight plan, including our waypoint times, as well as ATC comms, TACANs, etc.
• Our support plan -- tanker and AWACS comms and TACANs

Regardless of our spawn time, it will be up to use to keep (or not keep!) the mission plan. If we spawn early, we can take the extra time to set up, look around, etc., before rolling up to take off. If we take off early, we may need to spend a longer time orbiting the HOLD point to meet the correct departure time and keep the mission timing. If we take off too late or are otherwise delayed, we may need to speed up, skip the hold, etc. to keep our mission timings. Timings are everything.

We can quit and exit the mission at any time. So it's up to us whether we want to fly the whole 9 yards from start to finish. But note this: the state of the "world" at the time we exit the mission (that is, actually quit the game, not just slot into another client) is, as far as Liberation is concerned, the absolute final outcome of the turn. Any missions, AI or player, that have not completed will not have their tasks magically completed. So if we exit the mission before other flights have started or completed their missions, whether or not we have completed ours (or if we have crashed), then we will not have progressed as far as we have planned and probably have to frag those missions again in the next turn.

If we are unsatisfied with the outcome of the mission, ours or any other flights, we can also simply restart the mission and play it again.

Completing the Mission and the Next Turn

Once we have exited the mission, Liberation will automatically detect its completion, and it's dialog box will change to offer us chance to accept the results. (Note that we will have to Alt-Tab to switch focus to the Liberation window to see this dialog, especially if DCS is still running.) Here we can click on "Accept" if we are happy and want to proceed to the next turn, or just "Abort" if we want to try the same mission again (remembering that we need to click "TAKE OFF" to generate the mission and get Liberation prepared to read the results).

If we accept the results of the mission by clicking on the appropriate button in the , then Liberation will present a summary of all the losses during the missions, including base capture events. Then these changes will be applied to the Liberation's version of the "world", new income generated is added to the budgets, and we are ready for the next turn!