[ME] Ability to add coalitions to a mission.

[Shmegegge 1-1 Aero]

Hello,

With the addition of the Syria map, the missions and battles that we can now simulate are going to be more complicated than the simple RedFor vs BlueFor that we have in game.  Some people are having issues with the current 2 factions.  Could we get a way to add more coalitions if we want to?

For example, putting NATO into one coalition, and assigning them to blue icons.  Then, putting insurgents into another coalition, and assigning them grey icons.  Then, assigning Iran and Russia into another coalition, and assigning their units to red icons.

This would allow for much more complicated missions, and would be extremely useful.

[Northstar98]

+999999999

 

Something long requested by many over the years but something I would love.

 

The neutral coalition was a step in the right direction, however it's only the countries that are unassigned, with no control over allegiance, or how they behave with other coalitions - they just sit there doing nothing, and won't react defensively at all, or treat whoever attacked them as hostile.

 

Arma 3 had 4 separate 'coalitions', and while you couldn't add/edit/remove them in the mission (they're always technically present, but it's up to the scenario editor to choose what's actually present as far as units go). It had BLUFOR, REDFOR, GREENFOR and Civilians. BLUFOR and REDFOR always being hostile to each other, GREENFOR having a selectable allegiance (can either be allied to BLUFOR or REDFOR or hostile to both - can change mid-mission), and civilian being obviously civilian - non combative (useful in DCS for having user definable civilian traffic). 

 

Another example is C:MANO which handles this perfectly IMO (only difference here is that it calls them 'sides' instead of 'coalitions', and you don't assign 'countries' to them as such, but you can assign country specific units to them). You could, if the mood took you, assign each country to it's own 'side'.

• You can add/delete sides at will.
• You can rename them at will.
• You can change how each 'side' behaves with each other side individually.
• You can set a default doctrine/ROE for all new units created on that side (while still retaining the ability to edit each unit's doctrine/ROE individually) - unlike DCS this also includes weapon release authorisation, giving you finer control over how the AI uses weapons.

 

In DCS, ideally I'd hope for something like what C:MANO has (which as I said, is perfect IMO - though here it would be better if the icon colours were user definable - the same as how colours for triggers and trigger zones are user definable).

 

Failing that however, I'd definitely take having BLUFOR, REDFOR, GREENFOR, Insurgents and Civilians. However, we would need to be able to select the allegiance of GREENFOR and preferably allow it to change mid-mission. Very similar to how it works in Arma 3.

[cfrag]

1 hour ago, [TF-108] Aero said:

Hello,

With the addition of the Syria map, the missions and battles that we can now simulate are going to be more complicated than the simple RedFor vs BlueFor that we have in game.  Some people are having issues with the current 2 factions.  Could we get a way to add more coalitions if we want to?

For example, putting NATO into one coalition, and assigning them to blue icons.  Then, putting insurgents into another coalition, and assigning them grey icons.  Then, assigning Iran and Russia into another coalition, and assigning their units to red icons.

This would allow for much more complicated missions, and would be extremely useful.

 

I think that's a great idea - but I think we need to come up with a good way to assign (a UI metaphor) which coalition is what to another: Hostile, Friendly or Neutral. This could probably be done with some kind of table that lists each coalition on both axes and allow us to flip each field between H / F / N - but it would be an ugly interface

 

[Northstar98]

On 3/23/2021 at 3:51 PM, cfrag said:

I think that's a great idea - but I think we need to come up with a good way to assign (a UI metaphor) which coalition is what to another: Hostile, Friendly or Neutral. This could probably be done with some kind of table that lists each coalition on both axes and allow us to flip each field between H / F / N - but it would be an ugly interface

 

Personally, I'd just do it the same way C:MANO does it:

 

 

So in the side editor, there's a button called 'postures' which brings up a small window (Postures for side: xxxx) listing each of the other coalitions, which can be selected and their posture set. Here I'm setting the posture for BLUFOR, editing what REDFOR is considered as to them.

 

Only problem with this is it doesn't tell you what a side is already set to. This could be solved by changing the font colour for the target sides in the 'Postures for side: xxxx' window (for instance red for hostile, orange for unfriendly, yellow/white for neutral and blue for friendly).

 

Note: CMANO has a 4th posture; 'unfriendly'. If a coalition considers another as unfriendly, it means they will take action to intercept to ID and shadow units and be alert to them, but won't engage (though this can be controlled further with the doctrine/ROE settings, where you can tell units to fire if fired upon or to engage non-hostile units that aren't considered friendly or neutral). 

 

Spoiler

Note how you can also set side specific briefings from here, as well as set the default doctrine and ROE (which also controls things like EMCON/sensor using etc) as well as default awareness level and skill level. Of course each individual unit/group is able to have it's own settings altered individually irrespective of the side setting.

 

Edited March 25, 2021 by Northstar98