v2.0.0 -- 20241127 -- "Convoy Hunters" Feature Update

Winter has come to Caucasus; unease lingers in the air.

At Beslan, the cold warriors of the West have assembled, while Mineralnye Vody now hosts Eastern's winged fury.

On this January morning, frost mingles with snow from the ground as Wind Walkers, heads filled with fire, don wings of iron and rise to meet their challenge between the clouds.

Are you ready to rise with them?

Are you ready to fly?


"The Snows of Sorrow" is a cold war era sandbox, designed to help you and your friends get comfortable with the great machines of that time: this mission is cold war planes only, armed to their teeth, relying on your sheer skills to drive them.

Things to do:

Fixed wings:

Air to Ground
There is an enemy forward base to attack (see your map). The base will defend itself.

And then there's "Convoy Alley": lots of trucks that re-supply the enemy forward base. Hunt along the alley and look for prey on the ground, and the occasional rotorwing escort. Both may be armed...

Air-to-Air
There is a 'CAP' area marked out for your faction. Inside this area, pilots can choose to call up and engage enemy fighters and heavies. Unlike enemy fighters. the heavies are undefended.

Formation and Intercept/escort
Note that these flights are entirely non-confrontational exercises. Call up a similar (i.e. same type as yours) or dissimilar plane to join their wing and fly in formation. Or call up a heavy to intercept and escort (but do not attack!).

Helicopters
Troop Insertion
Load up your troops. There's a building (marked on the map) where you are tasked to deliver them to the roof. For the Huey, it's not that difficult, the RED version requires you to land on a high rise, requiring substantially more skill

Air to Ground
Just like fixed wings, you can harass the enemy forward base (marked "FWD" on your map), or hunt convoys that resupply the base. Be advised that convoys may be defended by helicopters.

Sling Load
Sling loads are ready for helicopters to pick up at the green smoke. You are tasked to transport these loads to the area marked "SLING" and also marked with green smoke

Formation and Intercept/escort
Call up a similar or dissimilar helicopter and join their wing to fly in formation. Or call up a heavy friendly helicopter to intercept and escort.

PVP
When you fly your plane outside your faction's zone, players from the other faction may (are allowed to) attack you. Of course, the rules of engagement may vary between servers, and requires that players are around. Outside the CAP lanes, no AI pilot will attack a player

NEVER, EVER
try to engage the other faction's airfield. That's the way to a quick, dusty death.

Note to server owners:
"Snows" uses stopGap for much better scenery. When run in multiplayer, you should install the tiny "stopGap GUI" script on your server for better protection against some nasty DCS synchronization bugs (player planes or helicopters 'fall to the ground' on slotting in). You can download stopGap from ED's user files here https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3331434/

Note:
"Snows" is my first attempt at cold war scenarios. I welcome all feedback - and hope to have that help me craft some more action-oriented cold war missions in the vein of "Expansion".