By Kurt 'Froglips' Giesselman, MP Falcon 4.0 IP

  This series of articles is discussing three things: 1) Building missions the right way the first time (first article and this article). 2) Fixing busted missions (next article). 3) Mission building tricks to add excitement and uniqueness to your missions (look for the following symbol)..

The sequence of events for 404th To The Rescue is:

1. The 116th Air Mobile Battalion completes their hijacking of the DPRK decoder from the Unho-ri radar station and begins the run for their pick-up at the Puho-ri docks.

2. The DPRK mobilizes the 3745th Armored Battalion to intercept and capture the 116th AMB.

3. Joint Forces Air Command scrambles a deep strike to destroy the Unho-ri bridge thereby cutting the 3745th's access to Puho-ri. The deep strike will include a SEAD strike to disable or destroy the Unho-ri radar station in preparation for the extraction package (this is our first flight)

4. UH-60Ls depart (slowest aircraft, depart first, arrive last).

5. CAS package departs.

6. E3I package departs.

7. Air Mobile package support departs (this is our second flight!).

8. Air Mobile Package makes pickup of the 116th AMB.

9. DPRK sends an intercept to shoot down Air Mobile Package.

10. DPRK flies BARCAP's to protect the Unho-ri peninsula (30 minutes on station, tasked every thirty minutes).

Order of mission assembly is critically important. Think about how the sequence events would occur in the real world then assemble the mission in the same order.

We begin construction of our mission with a series of trial and error placements of the various air and ground forces to determine the starting time for each action. Get your pencil and paper out to record the times.

Click to continue

We will try to build the 'final' version of the mission at one sitting with only one save. I can do this about 50% of the time. I can build a mission with two saves about 95% of the time so don't get frustrated if you get to the end of the mission and find you made a mistake that requires a second save.

Do not 'save' a mission more than six or seven times. This is the only advice I will give that is contrary to Sleepdoc. My experience has been that missions built with the add a flight then save, make a change then save, do anything then save approach get porked by the mission editor more than occasionally. This requires that you plan your mission and build your plan. If you build a mission right the first time, there can be five cycles of fly the mission, tweak it, save it, and fly it again without exceeding the six saves rule.

Our mission is a night mission. We will need to 'guesstimate' the approximate pickup time for the Air Mobile Battalion (AMB) by timing their run from the radar station. By placing the AMB and running the clock forward until they arrive at the pickup point, we can estimate the start. Before we start, let me repeat, READ SLEEPDOC'S PRIMER ON MISSION BUILDING. Anything that he explained, like placing ground forces, will not be repeated in this article. His article is the best place to start. Complete it first then come back here.

Place all the ground forces first. I have yet to figure out how to edit the waypoints for ground forces. Editing waypoints for aircraft is simple and powerful.

Place the AMB at the radar station.

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