MP Mission Design

[QuiGon]

Hi guys,

there is something that really bothers me when playing DCS online and I want to talk with you about that: The unrealistic distribution of playable aircrafts in MP-Missions. In many MP-missions there are all types of playable aircrafts on both sides (red/blue) which absolutly makes no sense in terms of realism. When I join a server and see that there are american KA-50s or russian F-15s flying around I almost instantly loose the will to play this game, because it ruins immersion. I guess mission makers do that for balancing purposes but i really don't like that. There are now equal aircraft on both sides for almost every role since the release of FC3: There are fighters on both sides, there are ground attack planes on both sides and there are transport helos on both sides. The only kind of aircraft currently available to only one side are attack helicopters. But i would rather have missions with KA-50s only available to redfor instead of seeing american KA-50s flying around which totally destroys my immersion. That leads me to a question: WHY does every side need to have ALL kinds of aircrafts? Is that really necassary?

An example mission would be the "Battle for Inguri", which I really like, because it comes close to a dynamic campaign which i love in Falcon 4.

 

Another thing about MP-mission design that often bothers me is the actual mission design on many missions. There is this type of mission design where both sides are almost totally seperated from each other. The strikers bomb waypoints 1 to x with enemy units just blobbed around the waypoints. The target areas for both sides are totally seperated and make no sense. There is no frontline or something like that. You can find these kind of missions on the 104th Server for example.

 

 

Now, I always wondered why is that? I play and love this sim because of its realistic and in-depth simulation of modern military aircrafts which i can find nowhere else, but the mission design is often pretty arcade-ish and that is what i don't understand because that kind of mission design dosn't relly fit this kind of game. I would rather expect that in arcade-games like HAWX i guess.

 

I would like to hear what you guys think about that?

 

 

PS: Another thing i don't really understand is why are free flight / aerobatics missions so popular in a MILITARY flight sim? Isn't free flight something you would expect more in a civil flight sim while a military flight sim is more about combat missions?

[Isegrim]

Its Balancing on 24/7 PvP servers

and you have to think about beginners which like to fly on MP Combat servers also.

If you like to design a MP mission like you would in PvP they will be unbalanced and that means unfair the end of this mission will be that the Clients always only enters one side which turns the mission into a Coop vs AI mission.

 

And cause of that, its recommended that DCS Modules are available for every country. Its hard enough to get the SU-25T on both sides sometimes.

Edited May 28, 2014 by Isegrim

[QuiGon]

Hmm, i think there are some totally different mindsets. For me it's not about balancing, that's far off my way of thinking. What I expect from a military simulation is to simulate war and warfare as realistic as possible and war often isn't balanced. One side has abilities which the other side doesn't have and vice versa.

Now what you said Isegrim is a way of thinking that is more about competition in a sporty and playful way. It would totally fit to "normal" or even casual games but as a hardcore milsim fan I'm a bit suprised to find that mindset in the community of a pretty hardcore sim like DCS.

 

I would like to collect some more opinions on this subject and see what others think about it.

 

 

Some thing about coop missions which just have one playable side: I've seen some missions were Russia and the USA were on the same side so it was possible to assign the different aircraft types to their specific country (I've seen a coop mission though where Russia and USA were allies but the KA-50s were assigned to georgia which i really don't understand). I would like to see that more often. Of course that's not always possible because of the background/story of the mission and especially not in MP missions.

[Exorcet]

This is an old old debate. The big servers are big because they appeal to everyone, and part of that comes from balancing and accessibility.

 

There are many who would prefer less balancing in favor of realism as well though. Some of the servers geared toward that might be locked to invitation only.

 

In the end it's all up to the mission designer/mission host.

[sorcer3r]

QuiGon. I guess you just should start creating missions yourself.

DCS needs missions builders and missions! If you need help just send me PNs (we can do this in german).

 

I play and love this sim because of its realistic and in-depth simulation of modern military aircrafts which i can find nowhere else, but the mission design is often pretty arcade-ish and that is what i don't understand because that kind of mission design dosn't relly fit this kind of game.

 

Lower your expectations for public servers. It is not easy to design "realistic" missions if clients join/leave the mission all the time. (only with complex triggers compensating it).

[Frostie]

It is hard to please every person online with PvP missions, some like balanced sides, others prefer Red vs Blue, some like short range missions, others like longer range etc.

 

Personally I like Red v Blue it adds a character to each side where flying for either side poses different problems.

 

But the reality is that a lot of people have only one side in mind, they either fly Red aircraft or Blue not both, so at certain times of the day you may get much more Red aircraft than Blue, and other times there may be much more Blue than Red. To balance this up requires extra choices on the other side. In our missions we get a lot of Red pilots so we tend to add a small number of Russian aircraft on Blue to address balance issues, whilst keeping a Red v Blue flavour with A-10 and F-15 only on Blue.

 

I also prefer long range missions which require you to be cautious of your virtual life. Unfortunately these missions don't encourage new guys. You need to be able to survive in a hostile environment or face another long flight time to the front. These missions also require numbers to make them work and a lot of those numbers are new guys who don't like flying great distances to be killed instantly. So this limits the options on what you can do with PvP missions.

 

One thing I do agree with though is that PvP missions should be tailored for all participating with/or against each other and not flying separate missions in different areas of the map. The notion of having A2G separated from A2A for me is server resource wasting. Why have guys doing A2G on the same server totally seperated from guys doing A2A, if these A2G guys don't want to get shot down, which seems to be the general complaint, then why do they join a server so full of fighters.

It seems bizarre to me that joining a server with high player count is important for these A2G guys but then complain when they get shot down.

 

In an ideal world PvP missions should be a joint venture, all working together and relying on each other to achieve a single goal, with this in mind more people should be joining TS and co-operating like combat pilots do.

 

But there is always the other side of the coin where people don't have a great deal of time, they just want to fly for an hour and have some fun with their modules or maybe a couple of friends. PvP missions have to accommodate for this also.

[OGREMAN]

Multiplayer Mission Quality & DCS

 

Hello,

The mission quality that you are talking about is a very subjective thing, a mission design that caters for a squads aircraft preferences may not fit "Real world" parameters but allows the squad to fly together co-operatively in their individually preferred aircraft. In that case the biase of the mission is catering for team building rather than real world nationalist politics.

(P.S many members of my squad could not give 2 hoots about real world politics and nationalistic rivalries, regarding their love of flight as transcending all that base bigot extremist nationalism stuff, for them it is the teamwork immersion and tactics that count).

 

Then there is of course the inevitable conflict between ambition and capability, of both the writer and the program, limiting what can reasonably be achieved.

 

Another issue that presents problems is that in order to create a truly great mission that has immersion longevity/re-playability & appeal, it takes many, many, many hours in deeply inspired creative work just to get the basic ideas to function ..... then there is the constant re visiting the triggers to re design and refine the thing so that everything from timing to balance of reactions to events all get the delicate re touching, tweaks that makes the difference between "a trigger" and "a mind jerking wow event" that gets your adventure juices flowing.

 

Mission writing in DCS offers levels of complexity in mission design that are staggering. But there is a price to pay for that sophistication, many mission writers can be discouraged from letting the creative juices flow because of the frequency of program patches that alter the carefully refined elements of AI activity ... breaking the mission so badly that it may no longer be possible to get that "wow" moment without a total re-write of the mission structure. (remember the endless hours of painful attention to detail?).

These comments are written from the perspective of a squad that prefers Co-Op Person vs AI types of missions as the basic day to day flight activity enjoyment of the team dynamic having preference over some other idea of "Reality".

Edited May 28, 2014 by OGREMAN
Clarity and qualifying additional remarks.

[piXel496]

Converge your unhappiness into MP mission making, then we could all benefit from your non-arcadish mission concept and understand what you do like.

 

Now to unrude myself. What you should try is fly online with a small group and do mission planning before takeoff, otherwise it is always arcadish. Maybe find a squad of like-minded.

 

PS: DCS has by far the best immersion especially when flying ASM planes. So I understand online open free flight perfectly fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Edited May 28, 2014 by piXel496
Clarity and qualifying additional remarks. (i like that one)

[ENO]

OP: Feel free to host your own server and build your own ultra realistic missions.

 

/thread

[mwd2]

A frontline in DCS World is a little bit complicated:

- you have a limit number of units, to many will give the mission/host a headache!

- you have a limit number of clients, to many will warping around!

 

To simulated a staggered Anti-Aircraft umbrella over your fantasy country is still not possible without remove all fun to fly a helicopter or striker!

We have only the Su-25T as SEAD aircraft under human contol

Also such an umbrella would use the full unit capacity for your mission - which ground unit should attack then?

 

2012 some guys try simulate a frontline from Poti up to Dzhvari with around 700 units (631 ground units, 43 AI aircrafts and 14 human clients) - http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=96613&highlight=FCS+Warfare - a lot of warping! - Not sure if it would be work under 1.2.8 without warping!

[karambiatos]

When i make a mission i try to have asymmetric balance, but its hard to achieve, and takes a bunch of testing and reworking to get it to a goodish level, i hate when a mission feigns asymmetrical balance, but then gives both sides TORs, because poor ol' NATO doesnt have tors, then it just meh.

 

But anyway, the game should let you do what ever you like, and its down to the end user to do it the way he likes, it shouldn't put arbitrary limits on, i still think we should have the flyable FC3 aircraft available for all nations (perhaps it would be too much texture work).

[QuiGon]

Thank you all for your input and sharing your thoughts with me on this subject. It was interesting to see what people think about this game although it wasn't always what I hoped to hear. Let's see how this great game develops in the future. Looking forward to it.

[xcom]

I can say that the missions I make try to be as balanced as possible, it's not just the matter of competitiveness, it's for it to be challenging as possible.

 

For example, Russian SU-25T can do SEAD which is a huge advantage, on the other hand, A-10C has IR targeting and a great weapons system and TGP which makes it a very good attack plane. Also, as noted already, there's the Ka-50 which has no equivalent on the western side yet.

 

There's another thing to take under consideration, when you run weekly events as we do, you want to accommodate everyone in your community/squad, and to do that you would have to put in all the modules or at least all the modules of the same era, this creates a big difficulty, especially in TvT missions.

 

All these aspects need to be taken under consideration when you build the mission, whatever the mission type is, if it is designed as a TvT/PvP, you would always have to think about balancing, otherwise one side would have it too easy while the other too hard and believe me the discourage from such type of missions are a bigger hit than changing the mission to be less realistic.

 

At the moment we run weekly on going campaign with around 40 participants using the online mission planner. As you said, very similar to the Falcon campaigns.

My main objective when creating these kind of campaigns is first and foremost the balancing, especially in on going events such as these, I need it to be balanced and stick to realism as much as possible.

Once we have more modules, sticking to realism will be put further and further up the ladder in matter of priority.

[LFCChameleon_Silk]

ok have to chime in though and say about the helo thing, its still possible to add helos just tell the AI not to attack the helos and problem solved, is it the best solution probably not but from playtesting my mission I can honestly say it makes it a lot nicer overall.

 

the problem with balancing for realism is this: its not always fun or fair... the designer should be using the tools in his toolbox as a designer not as some military know it all, use SAMs to deny space from opponents or no fly zones, setting AI all on excellent is another stupid move... who the hell likes not gunning tanks cause they are the terminator tanks from the future where they are lethal beyond belief.. intelligent design goes a long way toward making something feel much more believable even if it isn't always "realistic"