Ripcord

face what?

Thanks for the response. So it could be done, but it just hasn't been done. I agree completely that it would not work well simply modifying the existing campaigns. It would require a totally different set of goals that aren't pilot-specific, and really a different structure in general. Would a MP campaign be of any interest if it had only two players -- one host and one client? Or would it have to be 3-4 players or more? Doing a bit of experimenting here. Ripcord

Guess there are none? Figured somebody might have made a comment on this....

You might spawn enemy units based on the condition of friendly ground forces advancing into an area (reaching an objective). Or using your mission scenario, find a way to set a user flag when the ship and/or cargo planes reach the area of their destination. You will need to create a destination area for these units. Then create a trigger that spawns your enemy units, based on the condition of that user flag being set. In the case of the cargo plane parking, the area objective might not be best, as it will set the flag when the plane flies over the airfield during its approach, or as it enters the pattern. If you don't want the flag set until it actually parks, you will need to add a second condition that the cargo planes is (1) inside the area and (2) speed is near zero. Ripcord

Thanks guys for the responses.

I've done a couple searches but I don't seem to see any kind of real campaign for MP for DCS A-10C. See plenty of single missions for MP however. Am I missing any? How would a MP campaign be played, anyway? I guess the campaign would be played on the hosts computer, and the clients just join in? Ripcord

Great, thanks Druid. Sounds like a bit of testing might be in order.

Interesting. This lists all the events and flags from the previous mission, it appears. So we could, in fact, build a template that allows for damage tracking of certain units by using this debrief data. Of course the mission/campaign builder would need to learn how to make the ME refer to this debrief log at the start of each mission. I will need to experiment a bit with that to see how that works. Do the trigger conditions allow for that? Ripcord

Bahger, I have not yet gotten to fly this baby in MP and really the only sim I have flown at all online was Janes FA-18, and I enjoyed that. I did fly a few times with some squadron guys that tried to fly the missions cooperatively and in an organized logical manner, which was a lot of fun for me. I will at some point try to do the same with his sim. But I do like to fly just plain ol single-player, given some good content. And so a couple questions to the group, if I may: For those folks that fly MP, do they generally try to work their way through a campaign together? Are there any good campaigns for MP? How many people fly SP as opposed to MP? Do more people fly MP? I get the feeling that probably a few more people fly MP more often than they fly SP, but my guess is that those that DO fly campaigns probably do so in SP. Wondering if others agree or disagree with this view. Ripcord

I have the same question and I did not really understand the answer here. I get that only one plane in any given flight can be human. Can we have a flight of 2, with one player being human and his wingman is AI? If so, can I have two more flights like this? Or do each and every flight have to be single A10C human with no AI wingmen at all? Thanks for your patience. Have not gotten into MP yet? Ripcord

Can we write these flags to a file or something outside the mission, that can then be referred to later in subsequent missions? Eg. Set flag 10 to value "5" and write to a LUA or something? In FC2 the only value that would carry over from one campaign mission to the next was the previous mission score, used only for selection of the next mission, and nothing else.

Well, let's not derail this very useful and interesting thread by comparing those two sims and reviving the DC debate. There are dozens of other threads that have done that ad naseaum. The DC is cool and we all love it and respect it, but this campaign engine is also pretty robust -- but ONLY IF THE MISSION DESIGNERS TAKE ADVANTAGE of all the cool features in here, much like Grimes kindly pointed out when he started this thread. So far I've not seen that, but I suspect there are handful of enterprising creative types (maybe even like yourself) that are more than capable. We did some very cool campaigns in Janes FA-18 that were semi-dynamic (same producer by the way) and I will say that the possibilities for this sim are way bigger with the tools we've already been given. The beauty of it is right there in the ladder concept. The campaign builder can easily let us 'move the FLOT' up and down as forces advance or fall back. We can have any number of very cool 'kinda dynamic' campaigns in this sim, but it will take a crap load of missions with a great deal of randomization built into them all. It can, however, be done. Ripcord BTW, I am also from WA state. Grew up in Kelso, went to UW, lived in Seattle for a number of years. What part you from?

Mastering the mission editor and creating good content is for many another hobby within a hobby. I was big into that in Janes F/A-18 and it was a real creative release for me. Evenutally I hope to do some good things with this one, as it offers so much. @AKA Clutter -- another way to approach this for multiplayer is to score your missions based on who wins on the ground, eg. in a defensive scenario, do we stop the bad guys from reaching point X, or overruning our forces someplace? In an offensive scenario, did our allied ground forces succeed in pushing the enemy back out of some town or village, or crossing a bridge or capturing a FARP or something? This is a bit more of a Falcon 4 approach where you are really just a particpant in a larger war, and not being graded just your own actions -- though the goals should require effective intervention on behalf of the player(s) in order for the guys to win. I would think that for goals like that, it would not matter so much how many human players flew in the mission (well, putting aside all the 'stupid AI' observations, of course). There again, all the fun is in the creating, and not arguing or defending your logic -- there is no one right way to build this content, after all! Ripcord

That is a good translation. You might also translate it as Azimuth Scan Area (zone).

Iran would be awesome. Though I realize most of us are F4 vets, I have to say that I would also like Korea for this baby, since there is still plenty of potential there for RL conflict and pretty robust enemy to engage in the North.

This is very good gouge here, Speed. I did not know what those script boxes were for. Thanks for this. Ripcord

Speed, I am very interested in this project. I think it has a lot of merit and it is very similar to the concept that I tried to describe earlier in this thread - except that your are attempting to build the mission 'on the fly'. I would think that there should exist a program of some sort that analyzes the tactical / strategic situation, runs a series of calculations and returns with a certain TYPE of mission - eg, CAS, BAI, AFAC, all the things you mentioned. Mission templates would need to track the advance of friendly and enemy troops, using a series of zones inside mission, located at various places along the front line. Units would need offensive and defensive objects. The program running in the background (or running before and after the missions) could also keep track of the Order Of Battle for all combat units in theatre, and keep track of their combat condition/status in order to determine which units should be placed on the map and where -- not unlike what we see in the mission generator tool. A lot of the work would be just sitting down and deciding what data to track and store and analyze. I wish I knew more about programming -- I'd join you in your quest. Keep giving us updates Ripcord

This little idea is not meant to be really dynamic. Just trying to illustrate what CAN be done right now with what we already have. The ability to write lua script to postprocess generated missions is what I need -- and also what I lack. Ripcord

Kiruha, Thank you for preventing me from further carrying on this discussion with myself. I beginning to enjoy my own company. It is also very nice to see some ED crew here to talk with about this intereseting subject. I have actually managed to accomplish this by modifying some files and it does work OK for me, but yes, I agree they do require a little 'adjustment' in each mission. For instance I might have adjust the position of my zones, or add in the units that the triggers are referring back to. It takes just a couple minutes, which is acceptable. Let me tell first what I am trying to do. I am attempting to show how this MG tool can be used to BUILD a decent and compelling campaign by generate a large amount of different kinds of missions with different structures. The goal here is to use the MG to create many similar missions quickly, but with troops and players in different locations, with a maximum level of variation. They should have a similar structure, meaning triggers, goals etc., and they should allow me to create MANY MISSIONS with a very limited amount of editing. I am thinking on the level of 20-40 missions here, all of which having an adequate level of random content. Then once i have enough of this missions structure, then we create a different mission structure, with slightly different goals and objectives, and tweak our MG template. Then we repeat the same process by cranking another 20-40 missions. Then do it again and again, so that we have a half dozen different basic mission structures. Previous mission score determines two things in the campaign engine - which campaign level you advance to (or are pushed back to), and also the selection of the different types of missions. If you are pushed back, then maybe you are not going to draw an offensive type of mission -- perhaps it is more likely that you are trying to halt the enemies advance, or support a counterattack or some kind of flanking maneuver. What I am hoping to prove here is that, with some decent thought and planning, this campaign engine can support an interactive campaign experience that really isn't that bad. I REALLY REALLY like the way you did the nodes, that was brilliant. I have now about 150 nodes on my own map. I moved them all and changed all the templates to better support my 'campaign storyline'. What I have so far been unable to do is add some 'permanent units' to the map so that they will every time in the same place. Or rather I have managed to do this, but then the MG doesn't work and the units are not generated from the MG templates. So it is either this or that, not both. At least right now. my preference obviously is not to hack at that thing but to work within the intended framework of the MG. You comment that the user can add new unit groups and formations in generator by changing "others.lua". I am going to experiment more with this -- how to do this so that I have my AWACS in more or less the same area each time (eg, say in Turkey)? The way it is set up, the locations of all template units are set relative to the nodes. Can we have fixed locations? Interesting to hear your thoughts Ripcord.

What would you do with it if you had it? Are you a programmer?

Not much interest here in this topic, that I admit, but I will just report that I have figured out how to modify the mission generator template, at least a little bit. So far have been able to modify: -- mission brief and task description -- trigger zones -- mission goals I think have also figured out how to add ones own triggers as well, but have not actually done that yet. That's a little more tricky I suspect. Now if I can get some of my main objects to copy over then I'll be in great shape. Ripcord

ahhh, well you don't say. Interesting. Thanks for this tip. Ripcord EDIT: this helps a lot -- I can now create/modify the mission generator template. More on that later.

It is, actually, an interesting discussion and there are lot of good opinions and good arguments. In fact, the more I think about this, the better the business opportunity for a third party developer to step in here and write a DC program that interfaces with the existing game. DCS could probably do it better but the priority for them has to be getting the sim done and out the door. Maybe in subsequent releases they will be able to tackle the DC. I am sure they are also intrigued by the challenge and I do believe that mission generator is a step in that direction. Call me an optimist or call me naive but I kinda think they will get there eventually. But it won't be soon. And this really opens the door, IMHO, for a couple of enterprising programmers to step in and get something out on the market. I wish I had the skills, I'd tackle it myself. If you pay DCS $60 for this sim, I would be willing to bet that you'd pay me (or somebody way smarter) a nice little price of $20-$30 for my DC add-on software package. My comment here is not totally without basis - we had a guy in the Team Superhornet group that created a very rudimentary mission creater for Janes FA-18. It referred back to a template, and did some calculations before placing various units on the map. Now, that sim allowed for some basic things like damage tracking of static objects and ships, which DCS still does not, but it was still a big accomplishment. A lot of mission parameters were tracked from mission to mission, most important order of battle and unit status and location. And he did it without no source code. Sadly that programmer got sick (we think) and we kinda lost contact with him, and nothing went forward. However, I would bet that something similar could be done here. The add-on software would have to run in the background and it would call up your DCS exe and your mission editor and probably your mission generator. It would be start off with an initial map and probably even an initial miz file, and keep track of war scenario participants as well as red/blue campaign goal conditions. I'd create about a dozen mission templates to plug into and modify and the software would modify those, based on a whole set of parameters tracked outside the DCS.exe -- all the things we've talked about in this thread. Oh you had your AWACS shot down last time, alright well we've accounted for that. Maybe on the next mission there isn't an AWACS available or it is farther away, or it comes on station late. Fixed SAM sites that were destroyed on previous strikes are still destroyed on subsequent missions. Location and status of units are tracked, this is the key. And resupply and logistics are taken into account. Going after enemy truck convoys coming south opens up a whole new interdiction aspect to this sim that really should be a major consideration in a campaign like this. Now will you allow the user to redirect the movement of ground units or modify air tasking? Well, I suppose so. Maybe there will be some limited ability to do that. One problem here is that our theater of operations is very limited in Georgia -- NATO units would be operating primarily from bases in Turkey, most of the just off the map (Incirlik AB in particular), and those would have to be modelled somehow. I think a DC addon package like this would be better if it provided a whole new theatre of operations -- say Afghanistan or Korea -- at least added in a major functional NATO airbase or two in Turkey. Anyway, enough of my ramblings -- I am sadly not a programmer, so my vision of what this might look like really doesn't matter. My only point here is that, in my view, there is a viable business case here for a third party dev. Ripcord

Matt, good gouge there. As for the topic of the thread, I'd like to ask your input. Are there any situations or circumstances in which a JTAC or Air FAC would place smoke? Ripcord

I guess the guys at DCS decided or were told that the JTACs are trained to use WP instead of smoke? I wonder if that is by design. However I agree the smoke marker feature is too cool to not have in the game -- makes me try to think of some ways to integrate that into a battlefield scenario using triggers, except that would really take away from the existing comms structure with the JTAC. I can think of maybe three that I could perhaps model: 1. CSAR -- the downed pilot wants to mark his position for the sandy helo. Maybe there are some friend ground forces or special forces trying to link up with him to get him out, and they could also mark enemy forces moving in to get them. 2. CAS -- maybe in addition to a JTAC there could be an additional ground unit in distress, engaged with enemy a little bit out of range of the JTAC, that needs immediate CAS and is able to mark enemy positions, or even their own as they try to fight their way out to safety. This could be an engagement that is already underway when the player reaches the ingress point, and maybe even it is intended for other flights working on the battlefield, a kind of dynamic situation unfolding there in front of them as they were getting ready to check in with other controllers, either AFAC or JTAC. The player would almost certainly notice that and have the option to 'check-in' with that unit or just check in with the JTAC. Maybe the 'activate additional menu selection' feature would work well here. 3. Static pre-briefed targets -- maybe some special forces are tasked with putting smoke on a bunker or a building or something where bad guys are under surveillance. No direct comms with them, just a few messages from a controller somewhere that they are ready to place smoke and then smoke placed. This might be an alternative to IR or laser-spot for certain kinds of targets. Not sure however how tactically accurate this might be, maybe some more research is needed here about the different types of tacticaly situations in which smoke might be employed this way. Of course you are back to scripted comms messages using triggers and timers, just like in FC2, but there might be creative ways to do that -- after all it can be mixed in with JTAC and Air FAC and other elements of the mission, so the mission is still interactive. What about predators? I haven't experimented with them yet... would they ever place any smoke? Ripcord