BattleServer

The mission — Yankees (Sochi-Adler, north) vs Confederates (Gudauta, south)

A deliberately even fight on the Caucasus map: identical player slots on BOTH sides, so it's a fair fight rather than a hardware mismatch. (The AI war and the two radar-SAM crates are the deliberate exceptions — the Confederates field Soviet armour and a Tunguska, the Yankees a Roland, because distinct hardware reads better on the map.) The two airfields are only 63 km apart — the shortest pairing on the map — which keeps helicopter crate-ferrying fun instead of a slog.

• Flyable (3 ramp slots of each, per side): F-16C, F/A-18C, A-10C II, F-15C, AV-8B Harrier, and the free Su-25T (no module needed); UH-1H, Mi-8MT, AH-64D, SA342 Gazelle, plus a Mi-24P Hind and Ka-50 Black Shark III on the FARP pads; warbirds at the rear bases — TF-51D, P-51D, F-86F; and three C-130J per rear base (needs the C-130J module).
• The World Apron (2 slots of everything else, both sides): a reserve airfield per side — Maykop (Yankees) / Senaki (Confederates) — carrying Su-27, Su-33, Su-25, MiG-29S, J-11A, Bf-109, FW-190 A8 and D9, Mosquito, F-5E, M-2000C, AJS-37 Viggen, A-10A/C and the L-39/C-101 trainers. Only modules this server actually has installed are listed as fixed slots — a slot for a module nobody can load just looks broken on the slot screen.
• Every flyable module, everywhere: any friendly airfield's Dynamic tab on the slot screen spawns whatever module you own, hot, no limit. The fixed ramp rows are the curated convenience.
• Air defence: 15 units per airbase — a complete Hawk battery (search, track, CWAR and command post plus launchers) backed by Avengers, Vulcans and Gepards. A SAM site only works complete, so don't expect launchers alone to shoot.
• FARPs: each side has one pushed 15 km toward the enemy — spawn there directly (a Huey, a Huey, a Mi-8, an Apache, a Mi-24P Hind and a Ka-50 III — one on each of the six pads) with fuel, ammo, a command post and a garrison of 2 Abrams, 2 Bradleys, 2 Vulcans and 2 Avengers. Arriving helicopters rearm/refuel at the service clusters around the pad line.
• The in-game F10 map is fog-of-war (forced): you see your own coalition only, whatever your client settings say. Same rule as the web map.

The War — how a battle is WON

Each side owns two objectives: its main airbase and its FARP. Capture both enemy objectives and the war is over.

• Capturing — both conditions, at the same time:
  • 3 or more of your armed ground vehicles within 800 m of the objective, and
  • zero armed defending vehicles left inside that same 800 m circle — you must destroy every one of them, not just outnumber them.
  Hold both for 2 continuous minutes. One surviving defender rolling back inside resets the clock to zero. Everyone gets a warning the moment a capture clock starts, and again if the assault is repelled. Objectives can be retaken the same way.
  Only ARMED ground vehicles count on either side — trucks and other unarmed units are ignored, so a lone supply truck can neither capture an objective nor hold one for you.
• Pick any side, any time: side locking is off — take a Yankees slot one sortie and a Confederates slot the next if you like. Spectating is always allowed.
  The only slot restriction left is the airframe cap below — and even then the free airframes stay open, so a spent side is never grounded.
• When the war ends: victory is announced and the server automatically starts a fresh battle 5 minutes later. Every result is recorded in the Win History on the Overview page.
• Rebuilding defences: a Defence Repair crate (drawn at the rear base) restores every dead or damaged original defence unit of your own airbase or FARP to full strength — including that base's standing JTAC. (Crate-delivered and air-dropped JTACs are one-shot: once dead they're gone — fly another in.) The C-130J drops it over the base; a warbird lands there and deploys it. Wasted if the enemy holds that ground.
• Supply: every objective your side holds earns +1 supply/min, banking up to a ceiling of 75. A C-130 reinforcement battalion costs 10 supply — hold ground to feed the front, but you can't hoard forever, so spend it. Current supply shows on the war card above and with every load.
• Aircraft attrition: each side gets 50 airframes per war. Every crash, ejection or pilot death burns one; at zero that side takes no new combat aircraft until the next battle (ground/CA slots stay open).
• Free airframes — you are never grounded: three things cost your side nothing, and stay available even at zero.
  • The C-130J, at the rear staging base.
  • The warbirds and the F-86 — TF-51D, P-51D, Sabre, Bf-109, FW-190, Mosquito.
  • Everything at the World Apron — Maykop (Yankees) / Senaki (Confederates). Two slots of every other module, free to fly. It sits 138–156 km back, so the transit is the price.
  This is also how a side recovers: fly a C-130 from the rear base, load an Airframe Resupply crate and drop it over your own field for +5 airframes. Because the C-130 is free, an exhausted fleet can always be rebuilt.
• CSAR: a player who ejects becomes a downed pilot on their side's F10 map. Land any friendly helicopter within 100 m for 10 s to rescue them (+15 points). The pilot walks home after 30 minutes.
• Weather rotation: every new war opens at a random time of day in random weather — the server rebuilds the mission after each victory.
• AI wingman: F10 → Wingman spawns an AI aircraft of your own type on your wing, with Engage / Cover / RTB / Dismiss orders.

Points — how you're scored

One score covers everything, shown next to your name for the current battle and in the lifetime table (which is sorted by it):

• Air kill +10 · Ship kill +15 · Ground kill +5 · Death −5 (crash or ejection)
• Crate unpacked +5 · JTAC deployed +8 · Base repair +15
• Reinforcement vehicle delivered +3 (each C-130 crate that opens) · Defence Repair delivered +20 · Airframe Resupply delivered +20 (5 replacement aircraft to a spent side) · CSAR rescue +15 (land a helo on a downed pilot for 10 s)

Flying the C-130 well is worth as much as a good sortie in a fighter — that's deliberate: the war is won on the ground.

Logistics — helicopter crates

Helicopters do the crate work on this server. Every aircraft's F10 tree is now one flat menu called Logistics — helicopter, warbird or C-130, same name, so there is nothing to hunt for when you swap airframes.

Look for a big arched earth-covered shelter with a tall comms mast beside it — that pair marks the crate point at every airbase and every FARP. At the FARPs it sits 500 m off the pads in open ground.

You lift crates with the aircraft's own cargo hook

There is no menu command that loads a crate. This is hardcore sling loading: you fly a real slung load, exactly as in single-player. Bind "Cargo Hook" in DCS controls before you fly — without it you cannot pick anything up.

1. Request it: land within 235 m of the bunker and pick a crate from the menu. Measured from the logistics truck at the bunker — not the pads, not any map zone. There's a 2-minute cooldown, and the crate appears 30 m off your nose.
2. Hook it. Hover over the crate and use your Cargo Hook binding. You'll see the rope reach out to it. You can also hook it from the ground beside it.
3. Fly it out — at least 250 m from the logistics point, or it won't unpack. No spawning a tank where it stands.
4. Set it down, release the hook, then Unpack Nearest Crate.

• Every crate weighs 1000 kg under the hook, so one sling feel covers them all. Both sides get the same set: an M1A2 Abrams, the EWR (your AWACS key), a JTAC Humvee, two HMMWV options, a Base Repair Kit, and two SAMs.
• Two SAM choices, and the difference matters. One crate unpacks into a complete site — same request → sling → land →  unpack flow as everything else.
  • IR SAM (Avenger) — passive. It gives the target no warning at all, but has short reach.
  • RDR SAM (Roland for the Yankees, Tunguska for the Confederates) — reaches much further, but paints itself on every RWR in the valley the moment it looks.
  Both are single self-contained vehicles on purpose: a crate unpacks into ONE unit, and a DCS SAM only works as a complete site within one group — a lone Hawk launcher would look fine and never fire.
• Nobody carries troops. There are no infantry on this server and no troop menu on any airframe. A JTAC reaches the field as a crate that unpacks into its vehicle.
• The C-130 and the warbirds never touch a crate — they load from the menu anywhere on their own airfield instead.
• Hardcore sling loading is permanently ON. Helicopters with a real cargo hook fly a genuine sling — there is no forgiving hover pickup. The airframes with no hook (Apache, both Black Sharks, Gazelle, Kiowa) get a menu load instead — see Gunships on the Radio Menus page.

Fuel — what you spawn with

• Jets and fighters: 100% — full tanks.
• Helicopters: 30% — roughly 25 minutes in a Huey. Short legs on purpose: you are meant to work off the FARP, not commute from the main base.
• C-130J and the warbirds: 50%.

FARP pads carry unlimited fuel and ammunition, so a forward rearm/refuel is always available — land on a pad and use the ground crew as normal.

Reinforcements — the C-130J battalion airlift

Each side has a rear staging base (~200 km behind the front — Novorossiysk for the Yankees, Kutaisi for the Confederates) with three C-130J slots. The Herc's F10 tree is the same flat Logistics menu everything else uses:

• Load Reinforcements at your rear base puts a full battalion straight in the hold — 4 Abrams, 4 Bradleys, 2 Avengers, 2 Vulcans, 2 supply trucks. No crates on the ramp, no packing — one press, same as the warbirds' JTAC.
• Fly to the front and a single Drop Cargo puts the whole battalion down, from any altitude — it is one crate carrying all 14 vehicles, and it opens itself out into them a few seconds after it lands. One pass, no unpack command, no menu diving.
• Load Airframe Resupply Crate and drop it over your own airbase or FARP to add 5 replacement aircraft back to your side's air fleet. That is how a long war outlives its starting airframe pool — fly the replacements in.
• Reinforcements are only issued at the rear base, and the C-130 can also ferry a JTAC crate, loaded the same way.
• The C-130 is the only aircraft that can AIR-DROP a JTAC. Load the JTAC crate at your rear base, fly over the ground you want watched and Drop Cargo from any altitude — it opens into a JTAC Humvee where it lands and starts lasing for your side automatically, announcing its laser code. Warbirds still have to land and deploy theirs in place, and helicopters carry a JTAC only as a slung crate.

Base repair — knock the airfield out

Each airbase has a major bunker and a radio tower. Destroy both and that airfield goes neutral: no rearming and no refuelling for the side that owns it.

To restore it, fly a Base Repair Kit crate in and unpack it within 2 km of the field. The bunker and tower are rebuilt and the field returns to its owner. Kill one structure and nothing happens — it takes both.

JTAC

A JTAC lases the nearest visible enemy and marks it with red smoke. Set your targeting pod to the JTAC's laser code or you won't see the spot (dashboard-spawned JTACs default to 1688; crate/warbird JTACs get a code from the CTLD pool, announced when they deploy — JTAC Status lists every active code).

Flying a warbird or the Sabre? Your whole F10 tree is one Logistics menu. Sit on the ramp anywhere at your own airfield and pick Logistics → Load JTAC Humvee (no taxiing, no crates — anywhere within 4 km of the field counts), fly out, land, and Deploy / Recover JTAC. The Humvee drives off and starts lasing on its own; JTAC Status in the same menu reports codes.

Helicopters deliver JTACs as a crate from the Logistics menu instead — unpack it and the vehicle starts lasing the same way. The dashboard can also drop one anywhere.

Combined Arms — driving the tanks

You can take direct control of the ground units your side has earned — an Abrams you just unpacked from a crate, or a C-130 reinforcement battalion.

• You must own and have Combined Arms installed on your own DCS — it is a per-person module. Nothing needs installing on the server.
• Slots: Tactical Commander ×2 and Game Master ×1 per side.
• Pilots may also command ground units, so you can hop out of an aircraft and into a vehicle without taking a dedicated slot.
• Fixed base defences can't be driven. Garrisons, SAM/AAA sites, logistics trucks, EWRs and the standing JTACs are locked to the AI — only vehicles your side delivered (crate-unpacked, reinforcement battalions, deployed JTACs) accept a driver, so a capture-critical defence can never be wandered off its post.

Datalink & AWACS — you have to earn it

There is no AWACS at mission start. Each side's E-3 — Overlord (Yankees), Focus (Confederates) — only launches once that side has an Early Warning Radar standing on the ground. Fly out the CTLD "Early Warning Radar" crate, unpack it anywhere you like, and your AWACS is airborne within ~15 seconds.

It orbits 100 km behind your airfield at 30,000 ft — far outside enemy SAM reach, and close enough to feed the F-16/F-18 Link 16 picture over the front (in DCS only an AWACS feeds the datalink; ground radars don't). One AWACS per side.

Kill the enemy's EWR and their datalink goes dark. Shooting the AWACS itself down only buys a few seconds — it comes straight back while the radar lives. The radar is the real target, so hide yours well and hunt theirs.

It never runs out of fuel either. Long before the tanks get low, a fresh E-3 rotates onto the same orbit — you'll see a short "rotating for fuel" note and the picture stays up. Same if it somehow wanders off station or puts down. The EWR dying is the only thing that takes your AWACS away.