XSAF - MMdCM - Invite Only

[PravusJSB]

XSAF Camelot

 

Sitrep: You’re part of a Squadron caught up in the wrong region at the wrong time, I guess. Over 6 months Russia and NATO have seen a huge decline in political relations and the final straw forced Russia to make a move, the Eastern front is where it started, and that’s where you and your fellow pilots happen to be, and you’re cut off. Unfortunate.

 

Hi guys, I’ve been developing a MMDcM (I think I just coined that? Massive, Multiplayer, Dynamic, Campaign, Mission) for the last 5 months, I’ve had the good fortune of assistance from c.40 others including soon to be USAF Pilots, serving Canadian AirForce Pilots, and numerous ex. Military personel. We’ve created something quite special, and I would now like to start sharing it with the DCS community. It’s really difficult to put together what this is and what’s in it, but I’ll try. You should experience it yourselves, for sure.

 

Overview:

 

Server: Online 24/7, Runs on a decent hardware and decent networking, server performance is usually described as ‘better than single player’. I’ll explain further below.

 

Type: PVE - BLUE

 

The Campaign spans over 3 Phases:

 

 

Phase 1 – Liberation.

 

This mission is fairly simple in its objectives, liberate Georgia from Russia. Air superiority, base invasion and capture.

 

Helo Ops: Logistics, Troop Logistics, Base Defence

FWing Ops: CAP, CAS, Logistic Movement, Recon,

Mission Completion time: Usually 3-4 days.

 

 

Phase 2 – Invasion.

 

Where it steps up, after securing GEOR, you advance into Russia, they’re on the back foot and you’ve split the supply lines to the western European front and the wars not going their way. REDFOR know they need to take back control of Sochi and you must not let that happen, whilst you advance into Russia.

 

Helo Ops: Logistics, Troop Logistics, Base Defence, FOB movement, Base Attack, Prisoner Liberation

FWing Ops: CAP, CAS, Logistic Movement, Recon, Prisoner Liberation

Mission Completion time: Usually 10-14 days.

 

 

Phase 3, is currently in development and is hush, hush…

 

Specifics;

 

Design core principals:

 

- The resources are limited, weapons and airframes, and this should be a reason to stay alive, bugout if you're at risk and conserve everything until its necessary to use it. Or lose it.

- The mission must be challenging and dynamic to a point, we don't want a Kobayashi Maru but it should be possible to fail. The further you progress the easier it should be to fail.

- The environment should force teamwork to be successful, solo should be difficult to manage.

 

Features to experience and assist completion of the campaign:

 

- Custom base capture system which rewards advancement with extra resources, access to side missions, further deployment of spawn points and new staging areas/AOs. They system tracks ownership and moves around resources, enemy behaviour and access to supplies for BLUEFOR.

 

- Persistence, almost everything is saved to external DBs for use on a reload, the state of the mission, the alive state of REDFOR and BLUEFOR units, buildings. And it does not stop there, the mission could be reloaded over and over and it will be in the same place it was before, data is passed from Phase to Phase to change the dynamics of the next based on performance (or not) of before. It’s a deeply complex system ensuring that when you spend 2 hours getting that FOB to the new AO and building up a defence and the server crashes… it’s not wasted time.

 

- Custom scoring system which track client actions, not just kills, but valuable contributions to the mission objectives. This score is also converted to Credits, more below, which permeate through the life of the campaign and beyond.

- Dynamic Events, Air and Ground Spawn system, tracks the state of the ENV and adjusts what it unleashes next based on… ****tons of variables. Phase 1 feels different every time it loads, Phase 2 moves back and forth in difficulty as you make the right or wrong choices.

 

- Side Missions, as above the campaign has a deep side ‘quest’ system, some that need to be completed, some just for shits and giggles, some that are never the same twice and some that are secret to whomever is doing them. Most of them have voiceovers and they’re a lot of fun. This ensures that if there are a lot of people on there’s always something to do.

 

- Dynamic automatic, custom Escort system. This is a monster of a custom class, with over 4000 lines of code. It ensure that and aircraft (RED/BLUE) that need to be escorted, are, by the appropriate escort. And it allows for Client to request the assistance from an Escort, think of them like a pet from an RPG… They have roles, CAS/CAP/SEAD ect.. they have a cost, and they are yours to control when you get them. Keep them by your side to protect you or send them ahead to scout. Your choice. They’re persistent just like everything else, get them back to a base and despawn them for later, or send them RTB whilst you got AFK and recall them when you’re back. If you die and they didn’t, no worries… Recall them to you, if they have enough fuel of course… You would have sent him to a tanker in hindsight..

 

- And so much more… Modified CTLD Systems, Recon Camera’s on the bottom of Helos and TF-51s, EWRS, Custom Warehousing systems which require resources to be physically moved to where they’re needed before a Client can use them; munitions, airframes and fuel.

 

- Finally optimisation, I play in VR, and I have a decent machine, but I crave that stutter free butter smooth experience. I’ve spent a lot of time optimising my PC for that task but Multiplayer never ever gave me what I wanted so I’ve spent equally a silly amount of time writing some complex algorithms to ensure that the server runs at it’s best giving Client the best experience possible. PH1 has 1200 units, PH2 around 1100; the server CPU runs at 40% most of the time, and rarely peaks at 100% unless is at the start of the mission and its preparing the saved state. The memory on the server runs around 8GB and that is reflected Client side too. I kid you not, this is better than single player. Because of this, Phase 3 will be using unit numbers in the 10’s of thousands and they will be moving.

 

Right, that being said, this is not a public server, we need skilled/competent pilots who know at least 1 airframe and communicate with others at a busy uncontrolled airbase and several; operating AOs. The server is mostly played from 7pm GMT to 5am GMT (plenty of US/Canada guys). If you would like to be a part of this please drop me a message on Discord or here, Discord: PravusJSB#9484 or Shotgun Dexter#5381, I’ve probably got video’s on twitch showing off some of the stuff: twitch.tv/pravusjsb

 

I started mapping out each phase in a flow chart because they're getting too big and complex even for me to understand server side when adding in new things as most things interact with each other, happy for you view so that you get a flavour for the scale (WIP): https://www.lucidchart.com/invitations/accept/dae73389-7f56-465e-9bf6-1054ea2f0757

 

I hope to have peaked your interest and see you flying with us soon.

Edited March 15, 2020 by PravusJSB