New player guide

VRS New Pilot Info and Suggestions

Besides the FAQ/Wiki, this document is more of a ‘what do I do’ thing if you’re new to VRS and want to know how to help BlueFor defeat RedFor in the Syrian theater.

VRS is more of a sandbox style mission. You aren’t going to be tasked by the AI, nor is there a ‘mission system’ like some of the other servers have. So how do you know what to do?

Well, that is all up to YOU! 😉 You can decide what kind of mission you want to do, be it CAP, A2G, Logistics, SEAD or CSAR. Load up your airframe of choice, and go pick a fight! But yes, opening the F10 map and being a bit overwhelmed by it is a normal and common experience! What to do?

My suggestion is to utilize some of the tools and resources you have available. We have a live map at https://map.victorromeosierra.com/ You can take a look and see where various REDFOR Air and Ground forces are at. Then hop on the server and take care of business.

If that is a bit too meta for you, or you want a bit more mystery to your sortie, check out a couple channels in the discord, specifically the VRS-Airboss and Situation Room channels. Airboss is ‘reports’ by our admins and Game Masters and will often have suggestions of what to hit or problem areas to check out.  Situation Room is an automated system that reports when bases are captured and will give some information about Red forces in general. Often there is a callout to a particularly productive BlueFor pilot, so that can be a goal of it’s own: Become a recognized threat to RedFor!

If you don’t want to do any of that, you still have some options in the sim itself:

Slot in to your airframe and load out of choice, take off and ask FOCUS, our AI Driven AWACS, for a Picture. They’ll also provide bogey dopes, merge calls, etc. It’s pretty proactive, so if you get distracted taking screencaps doing recon, she’ll let you know when you’re about to get bounced. Except for Manpads. You’re on your own there. Speaking of ground forces, there’s always something to do on the ground: finding convoys of RedFor, SEAD/DEAD operations, Logistics, CSAR, and even Salvage operations!

Finally, if you see other pilots online, feel free to call them up on your radio, or join a discord voice channel if you see players there, and ask what they’re up to, if they need help, or if they can task you something. Even if no one is on the server, you can ask in the discord and you’ll get somebody to respond with ‘well, there is some Redfor at SuchNSuch base that need to be cleared out’.

Most of the airframes in DCS are Multi-Role for just this kind of mission environment! There’s no reason in say a Viper to only take amraams!  Use those other pylons for extra ordnance! Even if you’re going up for a CAP, can’t really hurt to take a couple Mavericks or a pair of cluster munitions along for the ride home.

Speaking of, we do have a warehouse mechanic.  So you do want to RTB, land safely AND release the slot to ‘return’ the plane and weapons back to storage.  Don’t just disco or lawn dart yourself to respawn just to save some time, please! (Landing is also required to get your points and kills recorded!)