Battlefield Productions

Absolutely, we are in the process of a design document and model submission for further appraisel.

Thanks for the continued comments, still here reading. I think it should be said our vision is based upon what we think we can currently deliver, currently things like a proper Infantry "ala Arma3" thing is simply beyond our remit AT THE MOMENT We want to get our foot in the door, start out with realistic goals, deliver content to the community that people like and want to purchase, and basically build a reputation and working relationship with the community and ED as our partners. Ultimately the sky is the limit, and the limit will only be defined by sales, and then subsequent investment into the core team ( IE how much we can pay our staff and quality of staff). We are looking for a long term involvement here, so we are actively looking to start at a realistic level and then ramp things up as we become able. Marcus.

I just wanted to drop and and mention the reason no further comment has been made is simply because we are not here to start making promises and building hype for something we can't deliver yet. That needs final agreements and contracts etc signed. Everything we have said so far is our intent, and wishes and vision. We hope we have made it clear from the start our vision is community centric. We are now in the process of sorting out a sample and a design document - we will deliver that and then have a contract meeting, from that point on we would feel like we can engage in a more meaningful way with the community in terms of details and firm plans, we will not engage in talk discussing features and content and other fanciful ideas until we have the foundations in place - that is not productive to anyone. Re: Community "fracturing" - there has already been some super good suggestions mentioned, these have been taken on board, how that will shake out in the end IDK yet, some of that equation we still need to discuss with ED. Thanks again for the comments and suggestions, there is so much we can do if we can get all this sorted out, keeping those dreams realistic is what will count.

We have not ruled out Naval Assets to be clear

As a player I am liking the sound of these suggestions very much indeed. All I can do is repeat what we said at the start, as a Group we want to make our work as inclusive to as many people as possible at a fair price, and we want our work to be good enough that everyone will WANT to buy it as well, combined with the suggestions put forward in the last couple of posts we have the real potential to reach out to everyone as a DCS family, rather than just segments of the community, those that have, and those that do not, a true win for all IMO. All further suggestions and any fleshing out will of course be welcomed, if anyone else has amazing ideas Re: Detailed Ground Forces (aka More realistic and detailed Combined Arms Content) As stated in the beginning, we see a future for a more detailed and compelling CA module, and something that will bolster the whole community that use CA, we believe it is possible to grow the interest in CA as a result. Thanks M

Thanks once again for the continued feedback and ideas etc. Today we had discussions with representatives from ED. From here we will submit some work and a project design document, this in turn will go up the pipeline and hopefully lead to Battlefield Productions being acknowledged as an official content supplier. Once we have completed that process I will return with the final decision. @Pikey - I like this idea a lot, the best suggestion I have seen so far, I like it so much I will speak to the guys and see if we can agree internally that this is a good direction to go, I think that probably ticks the box perfectly.

The passion in this last post (And many others) echoes the dedication people give to their hobby which is DCS, a passion I can also share, as mentioned before I am long standing customer with good investment into the platform. We are not in a position to promise a single thing at this moment apart from one thing, if we get the chance to build things for the platform it will be done with care and attention, and passion, We don't do anything with half effort, we come from a background of making top level AAA title games. Currently our team is small in number, but can easily expand as needed, we have access to more than enough talent if we need to grow in size, as you can appreciate it is pointless growing a big team with no agreements in place first. Once again, we have read all the replies and appreciate the comments, if we have not mentioned your post it is not because we haven't read it, it is because there is nothing substantial we can add to your comment at this time with no agreements in place. In the first instance we would like to supply some renders to ED, to show the quality of our work, and a project design document - so if someone from ED would like to contact us we are ready to take that next step. Thanks, M.

Thanks once again for the feedback. Our aim is to work closely with ED in the first instance to formulate a delivery plan that is acceptable to all concerned, that includes discussing how to address some of the points raised in the discussion here so far regarding how the Asset packs would work at a core level, as ED themselves have already released their own Asset pack we will of course been keen to talk to them on the best way forward for all. Very conscious of some of the points raised here, most of my free time is dedicated to flying and building within the DCS environment, and has been for many many years, so whilst i am a games developer I am also very much a current heavily invested DCS customer who understands and shares some of the points raised here, these can only be tackled with meaningful discussions moving forward, and many of the ideas we present as suggestions to you for production are things I would like to see myself. Sorry if I didn't reply to someone directly, you can be assured we have read every one of the comments in this topic however, and appreciate the feedback, good and bad. @Wraith Will check that out thanks, I have combined arms myself but have not invested much time with it personally as the content was a little thin on the gameplay side for my tastes when I looked last. @Quiou87 "all you needed to purchase was one aircraft module and maybe one map." - These are exactly the kinds of talks we wish to have, to understand how best to make the ideas we have possible, whilst making sense at a community level. We are open for more consultation with the community, and then we would like to approach ED with some concept renders and a development plan, we will NOT be providing the community any concept renders of our work until we have had meaningful discussions with ED, as we feel it will just be wasting everyone's time if ED do not want to talk to us in the first place, we are not here to build up people's hopes until we have the security of an agreement in place. In the first instance we would like to work on the Airfield Pack if we can make that possible.

This is a core reason why we aim to provide a pricing structure which is not greedy - but inclusive, content all would hopefully "want" to purchase, but more importantly can afford to purchase without feeling resentful. We would ultimately like to see this content being viewed as "Must Have" content, maybe one day it could even be bundled with other content like maps or something - we don't know all the details or the answers yet tho.

Yes, exactly the same kind of lists we have in mind.

Good to know, I am ex - British Army myself, I think we have a couple of other members who are ex Forces as well. We will of course reach out to people if the opportunity presents itself.

I share your enthusiasm but first we learn how to walk in the DCS eco system

Thanks for the comments so far. Just to clarify a couple of small bits More Detailed Ground Vehicles "The Pipe Dream": Not sure what the take up of Combined Arms has been, but having played it, it seems like it was a great idea that was probably not fully realised for various production reasons, the frame work is there, it just needs expanding as a concept and making into something which holds enough interest to generate its own player base. Re: the co-existence of these vehicles vs the "Airforce" - yes valid points, but I think if the ground forces became good enough it could start to generate its own player base with people running servers possibly exclusively for land war "one day", with the options of AI controlled Air Assets. I am not sure we could provide the balance between air power and ground power and solve all those issues raised above - because that balance of "fairness" doesn't exist in the real world either, if your out cruising around in the battlefield in real life and an A10C turns up, you better hope you are on the same side, or he didn't spot you So the vision for the ground vehicles would be to include more detailed and more accurate physics, to firstly make them more interesting to drive, some interior modelling and options to change positions into those more detailed positions, more detailed damage system which is configured more consistently, switches and controls to control many more aspects of the vehicle - again to make it feel more interactive and more enjoyable to spend time in etc, as well as adding the obvious functionality improvements for certain vehicle types. Multicrew would be nice but completely unknown to us atm as we have not seen any of the tools and structure to make this function. Model Quality: The latest vehicles supplied by ED represent a very good balance of detail and framerate, the new BTR-80 model is very nice indeed without going crazy on the poly count, we are not looking to increase the poly count, we are looking to match what ED are doing as a reference point, what we are wanting to do is bring all the vehicles up to the same standards, and then add lots of missing vehicles. AI Logic: Something we are most certainly interested in looking into, how much access to potential changes we might have is an unknown quantity at this moment, within our team we have some very experienced games developers, one of those people with nearly 20yrs worth of experience working with AI assets/logic. Content: Buildings and other worldly objects, including usable terrain features are very much on the list for our plans, not only do these things add variation to the environment, they reduce repetition, but that can also provide more varied and interesting things to destroy :D, very important ! Ships was mentioned above as well, yes, that could certainly be done. Who are Battlefield Productions ?: First and foremost we are not a "Modding Group" , we are comprised of experienced games developers, and that isn't to undermine anything the modding community do, they often provide some of the very best content under less than ideal conditions, those people often end up in the industry at a professional level like I did many years ago. As mentioned in the first post, we are still finding out feet here to understand how to blend our ideas with DCS eco system, and the customer base, so things are most certainly not set in stone, first and foremost we really would like to do the asset packs - the detailed vehicles thing is "thoughts for the future" and nothing more than that, so should only be considered as thinking out loud and throwing it out there for discussion Thanks again for the thoughts shared so far.

Hi Everyone, My name is Marcus from Battlefield Productions. I would like to share some ideas with the community for content we would like to bring to the DCS platform, content which we hope we can bring in an official capacity. Before we take the next step of talking with Eagle Dynamics we would first like to conduct a small assessment to be assured our our ideas are compatible with this community, and that those visions meet the community wishes & expectations. In the first instance Battlefield Productions are interested in producing the following content, the ideas below are visions only, and the ideas have come around from much reading here on these forums, these ideas are adaptable to some degree depending on how the community receive this, ultimately we only want to make content people actually want ! Red and Blue Forces Ground Forces Set "Cold War" Red and Blue Forces Ground Forces Set "Post Cold War" Airfield Assets Pack - Including Animated and Moving Ground Handlers etc - think along the lines of MS2020 or better - we need to firstly understand how flexible this engine is to achieve all that we would like tho, the goal is to bring a living and breathing ground environment on the Airfields Ground Forces Sets would include vehicles, infantry, AAA, SAM's, everything on the ground in the battlefield, plus major revamp of Infantry & animation as well as increasing the quality of the models to at least quality of the latest DCS content (keep in mind we need to consider Framerate - so we accept ED's latest ground assets as a benchmark for poly count etc), we also be keen to expand the database for some civilian vehicle assets as well. These are some of the things we would like to bring to the DCS environment at first, but in the longer future we would like to entertain the idea of doing some focus simulated ""Ground Vehicles", think along the lines of Combined Arms but with more depth and more realism, so for example a fully featured with multiple positions Tank with a full 3d internal model etc, and clickable interactive features & switches etc, and most importantly a more in depth and more realistic damage model, these would be proper "modules" in much the same way you currently purchase the other modules here within the DCS eco system. The is NO pricing thoughts at this moment - this is something we would like to discuss with ED, but I can say this, here at Battlefield Productions we would rather sell our products to "everyone" at a good price than charge a premium to a "select few". We look forward to community feedback at this point, and hopefully if the response is positive we can enter meaningful discussions with Eagle Dynamics.