Mission editor modules

[Stonehouse]

In Arma 3 the developers and the community have "modules" which provide an abstraction layer to complex code. For example there are modules which when placed provide a working firebase or (community via the Alive team) logistics and CAS flights. Typically in the editor you sync a module to some sort of entity or location and then fill in some parameters to generate a effect or spawned units etc when the mission runs. In DCS a lot of people struggle with building lua scripts and rely heavily on a small pool of people to create and maintain them. Additionally at times the scripts have pretty complicated configs to get absolutely right to make them work and this causes a lot of grief to people building missions and the people building and supporting the scripts.

 

I feel a lot more missions would be built if this was abstracted to some degree by the DCS equivalent of Arma3 modules that could be placed and linked to some entity/entities to generate an aspect of the mission.

 

For instance - air traffic. If an air traffic module could be developed and so a mission builder could place it in their mission, graphically in the editor link it to one or more airbases and late activation template aircraft (to provide liveries etc) and then some parameters filled in for module settings like frequency, how many aircraft in a group etc. Then when the mission runs the airbases generate background air traffic to help bring life to the mission.

 

There are many other things that could be done the same way, CAPs and GCI intercepts, ground vehicle traffic and shipping, air defense sites etc.

 

I know the above is all possible with lua script, trigger zones etc etc but the ability to avoid that sort of thing would I believe increase the level of quality and quantity of community built missions which tends to also increase the interest in the DCS series.

[Buzzles]

To be honest, some of this could be implemented if the current template system could be expanded on upon.

 

Even something as simple as attaching a script to a template so it can be resued would be a good first step.