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

I think it is set default to 127.5, is it not? Try that. Just check the other allied flights in the ME to see if they are all on that same freq. JTAC freqs will be 131.0 or 132.0 if there is a second one, but I don't think that is what you are asking about. Ripcord

Guys, how to open *.MIZ files? What kind of editor are you using (I don't mean obviously the ME in game). I am wanting to learn what the proper syntax looks like for goals and triggers in missions, as I think that will carry over to the mission generator in DCS Warthog. Ripcord

Sorry to resurrect this old thread but during the last week or two, I have really been spending more time try to better understand this MG tool. I still do not see that it allows the user score points in its current form, it only gives little 'messages' when points are scored. The goals sections are still empty for both the blue side and the red side. But that is OK, I can see that this tool is not completed yet. I would like to hear more about the plans for this MG tool and what form it will take when released. Ripcord

I guess there are not any mission / campaign builders out there that are all that interested in this mission generator tool. The thing has a lot of potential, IMHO, but it just isn't completed yet. It really needs to place all those mission objects onto an existing mission, a template of sorts, that already has goals and triggers and a few objects. Then it would be a really powerful tool for building really big and robust campaigns. Wouldn't be exactly DC but it would good enough that it wouldn't really feel that far off. Ripcord

Well, I continue digging through all these lua files and I see now where the mission goals should go, or at least I think it should go there. Only I don't know the syntax to enter it in there. What I would like to do is put two goal in there, both of which refer to a trigger zone. Goal one will be called Blue Advance and the conditions are PART OF COALITION IN ZONE (BLUE). Point total will be 25 points or so. Goal two will be called Kill Zone and the conditions are ALL OF COALITION OUT OF ZONE (RED). Point total will be about the same. Of course the trigger zone will be set in a place where some red units are located, and some blue units will be advancing to. Of course I could go through and quickly add these goals in by hand, in each and every mission, but that somewhat defeats the purpose of having this mission generator, right? Ripcord

I agree it is probably too late now to create a real DC like in F4. Bolting it onto DCS won't work -- in fact, as one of you noted here, it would have to go the other way around: DCS would need to be inserted into the DC somehow. That isn't going to happen. All that we need is a way to tie the missions together in such as way that the player can influence the outcome and subsequent events/tasking in the next mission. -- If I bomb the warehouse, I don't want to see it there all shiny and new on the very next mission. That goes for EW sites, and major SAM sites as well. Track damage on FIXED structures. -- Have some kind of OOB that is coherent. What units are operating from where? -- If allies advance along the front in a particular sector, I want to see some evidence of that in the next mission. -- Allow for enough different kind of missions (BAI, CAS, CSAR, limited SEAD, interdiction, etc) to keep it interesting. -- Track logistics and supplies, even if it is only as simple as basic scoring system (Hey we blew up that transport plane and a column of trucks, so that reduces some enemy units along the front, etc). Just read/write mission data to a file at the start and at the end of each mission. That's it. Mission one loads, I fly it, and then when I am done, the campaign engine writes the data to a file. You cannot tell me I need a supercomputer for that. Look at the mission debrief screen we already have now. If you can build a mission in the ME, then load all that data into a mission and fly it, and then produce an extremely detailed chronological mission debrief -- who fired at whom right down to the second -- then already have the majority the data collected right there. Just dump all that data to a database file. Or not even all the data, just determine the relevant pieces of data to track, such as location of units, red/blue kill scores. At the end the campaign engine runs a quick check of the campaign objects, to just to see if one side as achieve victory, and allow the user to save the campaign before it moves on to the next mission. That's it. Don't need to devote huge resources for tracking anything IN FLIGHT that the sim isn't already doing. If the scope of the campaign engine will be BEFORE and AFTER the actual missions, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I see this as a minimum requirement for having a viable campaign engine that approaches dynamic. So how to account for events happening out there on the battlefield when we aren't flying? Use the data from the previous mission and make a few adjustments. Create some logic that makes some basic assumptions about force levels of units within a certain proximity of each other on the front, and also based on the outcome of our previous mission. Or hell, just split the map up into a couple hundred little sectors, village by village and town by town, mountain by mountain, and assign owners to each, red or blue. If we scored a marginal victory, we picked up one sector and our forces will occupy that area on our next mission. If we scored a crushing blow, then maybe a 2-3 sectors change hands. Or vice-versa. Randomly generated missions are cool, just gotta make them link together in a logical manner, so that the player A10C flight can influence the outcome. Again, I think the DCS crew is on the right track and you are halfway there now. Ripcord EDIT: I am mostly familiar with Janes FA-18 which had what is sometimes called a semi-dynamic campaign engine -- one could argue it wasn't truly dynamic at all, but one thing it did do is track campaign variables from mission to mission, and any of those variables could/would influence or determine which mission nodes came next. Interesting to note that the common thread in both sims is the producer Matt Wagner.

OK, nobody knows. More questions then, again related to this mission generator: Has anybody done any experimenting or playing round with the nodes? Seems not all of them will actually generate a mission - some will some won't. And in some case, those that won't can be moved to other locations where they WILL in fact generate a mission. My initial thoughts here are that there might be limitations in terms of terrian, altitude or distance from the enemy positions, but testing isn't really bearing this out, to be honest. Anybody got some input on this? EDIT: Figured it out -- I had the 'start from ramp' selected. If select 'start from air' or 'Random' then all node will generate. Just the mission generator doesn't like having the A10C airbase too far away from the action, so that's a limitation or at least work-around for any campaign builder to keep in mind.

I am interesting in exploring this mission generator tool a little more, possibly in the hopes of making a proper campaign with ample and adequate missions. I can see that the MG pulls from a template, or rather a handful of LUA files in the MISSIONGENERATOR/GENERATORDATA folder, to generate the mission -- and I noted that one of these files names OTHERS.lua includes the mission brief and basic scoring parameters, along with little message like 'good hit' and 'got him'. So I think I will probably revise a few of the messages to fit my own concept of what real A10C pilots would and wouldn't say on the radio during combat ('hog heaven' is clearly out), and I will also modify the mission brief somewhat, to allow for different types of missions. OK here is what I would like to do. I would like to provide some more specific mission goals - eg., kill GROUP X, or Defend GROUP A, or don't allow GROUP X to reach AREA Z. And I would like to add these into the template somewhere so that I don't have to go through each and every mission to add it in. Is that possible? I would think there is a way to do that probably by modifying one of these lua files. Ripcord

Really, you think so? How then did F4 do it back in the day? In mind, you are just tracking a number of variables from one mission to the next. First you start out with a map template and location of all your units, your order of battle (OOB). No different than creating a mission in your ME right now -- except at the start of the campaign, SOMETHING has to track all these units, their locations, their goals/objectives, and their status (dead/alive, etc). See in my view (oversimplied I realize), we is lacking isn't anything that needs to be running while the missions is actually being played. What is lacking is the ability to take the status/location/other variables for all these units at the end of the first mission and WRITE that to a file somewhere, which is then fed into a separate campaign program that takes those inputs, and continues to run the war simulation for a period of time until you once again brief for your next mission. So if you had a SU-27 over X and two companies of tanks and BTRs advancing on Y at the end of your LAST MISSION, then you should be able to see those units again in your NEXT MISSION -- well OK the Su-27 flight will have gone RTB by then but the simulation part of the game between missions will manage that. I kinda think that, in providing this mission generator, they have demonstrated their ability to WRITE units to the mission, based on an existing template. I suspect they could pretty easily TRACK unit locations and status, etc, without a lot of trouble -- hell, maybe they are already able to do this so that each missions dumps the data to th existing template, or at least modifies it. But the hard part, in my view, is developing that war simulator that keeps all the units moving and fighting and operating during the period of time in between missions. Pretty interesting stuff -- wish I was a programmer, would be an interesting project to tackle. Ripcord

I would not read too much in to that comment there, Fred -- you can see that this mission generator feature is a stepping stone to get to the next stage of development. The guys at DCS are well aware of what all the other sims were that came before, I think they will get it right. Just they can't do it all at once, they have to prioritize and good for them. Hey, they didn't have to even release a mission generator at all, but they did. I am glad for that, as it lets us see their progress. Ripcord

Don't agree with this 100%, but I think that is the route DCS is taking and that is fine, as it has advantages. I think F4 is a jet sim placed inside a war simulator, and clearly the DCS series is not going to be that -- and maybe that is a good thing, so that we will have more third party content and more theatres to fly in. As long as the eventual 'glorification' of the mission generator includes the ability to track enough relevant aspects of the ground war, we will have a damn good dynamic campaign. Relevant aspects should include damage tracking (at least for fixed objects like buildings and strutures and fixed air defenses and radars) and movement of units, and resupply. Just randomly generating a ton of missions isn't dynamic -- they need to tie together based on outcome and specific variables being tracked inside those missions. DCS is on the right track there, I think. Ripcord

There is considerable power in the campaign builder/system that comes with DCS: A10C, just nobody has used it yet to it full potential -- not even close in fact. You can, as a campaign builder, create a VERY compelling moving FLOT, peppered with random events and units. OK, you don't have damage tracking, or the ability to carry any data from one mission to the next (except just the previous mission score), so there are a some real limitations for building a true war-of-attrition campaign like in F4. However that could come in time, through use of lua and other methods of tracking mission variables and outcomes. I think the mission generator (which A10C has added, and FC2 did not have) is probably of a technical step in that direction. F4 is first and foremost a war simulator with a jet sim built into it, and it is pretty unique in that regard. You as the player get a little window of time to get in the jet and go participate in the simulated hostilies, but those events keep going before, during and after your flight, and the sim tracks them all, right down to individual force manning levels, supplies, movements, etc. No other sim does that, at least that I am aware of. EDIT -- one additional comment, something I just thought of -- how many add-on theaters in F4 actually have a viable campaign that works? 3 or 4, if that? Basically you got Korea and the Adriatic, and the rest are pretty lacking. The structure of that sim was not built to allow for expansion. So the beauty of what DCS will have, when it does finally offer something approaching a dynamic campaign, will be the ability to add theatres without porking your campaign engine. Personally I am just not super terribly excited about flying my warthog over Georgia, but Nevada is in the works (again, a training environment mostly) and I believe it won't be long before we have Afghanistan and possibly other places (imagine Korea), so for now Georgia is a good working existing theater in which to learn to fly this baby. And when those new theatres do come out, we will have a campaign system that functions properly. Ripcord

Tried installing the Beta 4 patch -- didn't help. Tried installing the full Beta 4 installation file and checked the 'setup 32bit files' box, and that did not help either. So I will go back to Beta 3 while I wait for Beta 5 and just pray for the best. Hopefully I am not alone here and ED will sort it out.

Ok this is probably relevant to my situation as well -- can you tell me more how you did this? Did I understand correctly that you had two different installations of the sim? Did you click the 'setup 32bit files' option when you ran the Beta4 installation setup.exe? I know that I did not. I run win7 64bit OS, so I assumed I was installing the 64bit beta. Appreciating any insights on this. Maybe I need to go research some other threads relating to this topic. Ripcord

Oh great, I can't be the only one. Ripcord

Beta 4 just simply would not work for me, and cannot figure out why. Tried to create a new lua file from scratch, then tried reinstalling with the newest DX file (whatever that little box is that can be checked upon installation). No joy. So had to just go back to Beta 3 and it worked just fine straight away. So something in Beta 4 was changed and I am very concerned now -- has anybody else been unable to export MFD in the new Beta 4? Ripcord

Well, that was the case yesterday when I first installed Beta 4. The DXGUI Binding thing took a little while before the game screen came on. But it is not the case after changing the resolution in options. It locks up and stays locked up. Let it sit for over an hour, nothing. Kinda lost on this -- guess I will have to go back to Beta 3. Hate to do that though. Ripcord