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2.3 Campaign Design
In DCS Liberation 2.3 campaign modding has been redesigned so that the campaign is designed in the mission editor, as a single miz file per mission.
As before, the campaign uses a JSON file to describe some metadata. To create a new campaign, add a JSON file (such as mycampaign.json) to resources\campaigns.
This json file should contain a json object, with the following parameters :
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name: The name of the campaign that will be shown in the New Game wizard. -
theater: The map for the campaign (either:Caucasus,Persian Gulf,Nevada,Normandy,SyriaorThe Channel). -
authors: The authors of the campaign that will be shown in the New Game wizard. -
description: A description of the campaign that will be shown in the New Game wizard. -
miz: The name of the miz file (in the sameresources\campaignsdirectory) that describes the campaign.
When creating a campaign it may be easiest to start with an existing campaign in the same theater and modify it to suit your needs. If starting from scratch, ensure that Combined Joint Task Forces Blue and Combined Joint Task Forces Red are assigned to the blue and red coalitions respectively, as these will be used to define many of the campaigns properties.
Control points are the spawn locations and (in most cases) the capturable positions in the campaign.
To make an airbase that starts controlled by blue, assign the airbase to the blue coalition in the mission editor. To make an airbase that starts controlled by red, assign the airbase to red.
To create a carrier, place a CVN-74 where you want it to be in the campaign. The carrier will be red if it belongs to CJTF Red and blue if it belongs to CJTF Blue.
To create an LHA, follow the same process but place an LHA-1.
Note that the presence of the carrier or LHA in the game will depend on the player's options and the faction's navy.
To create a point where aircraft from other theaters can be spawned into the mission in-air, place an F-15C. As with carriers and LHAs, use CJTF Red or Blue to assign the point to either faction.
The altitude of the unit is not currently relevant, as the spawn altitude of units in Liberation depends on the faction's doctrine and the unit type.
Control points can be assigned an "importance", which determines the proportion of their forces that the AI commander will assign to the control point. This value is set using the Periodicity property of the control point's warehouse. This applies to airbases only.
30 is the default in the editor and leaving it at 30 will cause it to have its default priority in the campaign (1.2).
Custom priorities may be set by changing the periodicity to a value between 10 and 14 (inclusive), with 14 being the most important and 10 being the least important. This value will be divided by 10 to fit the game's importance range of 1.0 to 1.4, so a value of 12 will also set the default importance of 1.2.
Inverting the campaign allows the player to play the campaign in reverse (starting from the North instead of the South, for example). This doesn't simply swap all of the control points, but swaps a number of control points as defined by the mission designer so that the player doesn't begin the campaign with most of the control points already captured.
To specify that an airbase should be owned by the player when the campaign is inverted, set the "unlimited aircraft" property of the warehouse. To specify the same for a carrier, LHA, or off-map spawn, set the "late activation" property of the group.
Front lines are defined by placing a CJTF Blue M-113 at an airfield and defining a route to the connected control point. The front line will follow the waypoints of the vehicle group (not the path, so using on-road waypoints will not cause the front line to follow roads automatically), so waypoints should be placed at each location that the front line should turn to avoid terrain. The route should end near the airfield that the front line connects to. The beginning and ending waypoints will automatically snap to the nearest airfields when the campaign is generated.
Airbases will randomly generate a set of base defenses at the beginning of the campaign. The campaign generator currently uses the following algorithm when deciding what base defenses to spawn:
- Spawn 1 EWR
- Spawn 1 garrison
Then the generator will create between 2 and 5 (evenly weighted) additional defenses with the following probabilities:
- The first has a 1/2 chance of being a SAM, 1/6 chance of being a SHORAD, and 2/6 chance of being a garrison.
- The second through fifth groups habe a 1/3 chance of being a SHORAD and a 2/3 chance of being a garrison.
This means that if the campaign designer wishes to avoid randomly positioned base defenses, they must define at least:
- 1 EWR location
- 7 air defense locations (SAMs and SHORADs differ by unit type but share placement locations)
- 6 garrison locations
More can be placed to allow more variety in each campaign. When generating base defenses, locations will be selected from the presets at random. If no more preset locations remain for the given type, the generator will fall back to random positioning. Random positioning can result in units being placed under water, on buildings, on steep mountain slopes, etc, so it should not be relied upon.
Base defense locations will automatically be associated with the closest control point to them.
To define a potential EWR location, place a CJTF Blue EWR 55G6.
One EWR will always be placed at each control point.
To define a potential air defense location, place a CJTF Blue S-300PS SR 64H6E within a 2 NM radius of the control point. Units placed outside that radius will be regular objective locations rather than base defenses.
The campaign generator will use these locations to spawn all ranges of air defenses, from an SA-10 to AAA. Precisely what is spawned depends on whether the generator uses the location for a SAM or SHROAD, the faction's available equipment, and random selection of that equipment during campaign generation.
Garrisons are ground units placed at the airbase that defend against the encroaching enemy front line. To define potential locations for garrison groups, place a CJTF Blue SA-19 Tunguska 2S6.