Central Europe Cold War map 1980's-90's.

[Ed Pawczuk]

I would love to see a Central Europe map set during the cold War complete with an inter-German border. Good terrain for helicopter ops.

[Pocket Kings]

I was thinking the same thing lately.

 

A war in Germany wouldn't have been fought with only conventional weapons systems, for sure. But your suggested scenario may be the perfect DCS playground, also because of Berlin. This island would make strategies so much more interesting. Also the Baltic Sea and North Sea create great strategic opportunities.

 

Fun fact: Research why the A10 was invented in the first place and what the intended purpose of her was.

 

Would make perfect sense imo, especially since many players shout for balance. Well here you have it: A technological superiority by NATO forces and a 4:1 troop count advantage by the Warsaw Pact.

Edited May 7, 2021 by Pocket Kings
typo

[Tank50us]

That whole region would be nice to have, from the northern part of the Balkans to the North Sea, I'd be all for such a map existing in DCS, regardless of time period. Although it would be a massive chunk of work for the devs to make it look right, especially for that time period.

[Ed Pawczuk]

I was a AH-1 mechanic with the 11th ACR in the mid 80's. So, I guess I'm kinda partial to this area since I spent a good amount of time living in the Fulda Gap.

[Northstar98]

+9999999999999999999999999999999

The 2 maps I would absolutely love to see is a northern + central Germany map and a Baltic Sea map - both circa mid-to-late Cold War.

Unfortunately though the Baltic Sea proposal I have is absolutely humungous - including all the major players in the region and their airbases, and is certainly too large, but sticking with the northern + central Germany:

Plenty of our current aircraft fit perfectly on it, and even have liveries for it: the A-10s all have a Spangdahlem AB livery, as does the F-16CM, the MiG-29S has a Damgarten livery and plenty of aircraft have GDR liveries. There are plenty missing, but there are tonnes there already to make missions out of. Plenty of wished for, and future aircraft would also fit perfectly on the map (both for the Cold War and modern day).

The vast majority of our current assets would also fit on the map well (though there are plenty that are missing), the only thing that isn't present at all are period naval units - BLUFOR completely (all of BLUFOR's ships are much too modern), and the majority of REDFOR naval units are in dire need of a major update.

It is also one of the only maps that have a significant quantity of historical BLUFOR and REDFOR airbases, in close proximity to each other, in a setting that actually has some historical merit. And Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising should provide plenty of inspiration.

The main issue though is if you include the main areas (which you'd probably have to do) - namely the Fulda Gap and the North German Plains (as well as getting all of the major airbases there) the map would be absolutely gigantic, and would be densely populated with objects, and we can't really cut down the detail or the resolution The map also needs to have sufficient detail and resolution to support ground units - we cannot skimp on it here.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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[Tank50us]

22 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

we cannot skimp on it here.

 

You say that like it's a bad thing

 

Obviously, such a map would be freaking huge, even compared to the existing maps. But thanks to the way that the new Terrain editor works (according to Razbam), it seems to have the capability to greatly optimize a map for normal play. I'm not exactly sure how this works, they didn't go into great detail on that after all, but still.

[Northstar98]

On 5/8/2021 at 8:58 AM, Tank50us said:

You say that like it's a bad thing

Skimping on detail that's IMO necessary (especially for this map), would be a bad thing.

Quote

Obviously, such a map would be freaking huge, even compared to the existing maps. But thanks to the way that the new Terrain editor works (according to Razbam), it seems to have the capability to greatly optimize a map for normal play. I'm not exactly sure how this works, they didn't go into great detail on that after all, but still.

I'm pretty sure the main issue is the number and quality of objects(and maybe their LODs if they have them), with the Falklands, it's pretty barren with nowhere near the object count of even the Caucasus map (there's only a few small towns if I remember rightly - most of the terrain is essentially empty).

Though with regards to the new terrain system, we really need to start moving over to using a spherical coordinate system, with maps that fit on the surface of a sphere - especially for large maps.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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[Tank50us]

6 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

Though with regards to the new terrain system, we really need to start moving over to using a spherical coordinate system, with maps that fit on the surface of a sphere - especially for large maps.

 

Yeah, that would give us accurate weapon behavior when low to the ground, and gives aircraft a chance to horizon mask for their approach to a ship

[Northstar98]

On 5/8/2021 at 9:10 AM, Tank50us said:

Yeah, that would give us accurate weapon behavior when low to the ground, and gives aircraft a chance to horizon mask for their approach to a ship

Not to mention being much more accurate for navigation, we also wouldn't have to deal with compensating for RADAR horizon, the RADARs would just use LOS (unless you're modelling over the horizon stuff, including things like refraction, surface wave etc).

But as maps get larger, IMO it really needs to happen, it's already an issue on our current maps. I just hope there's an algorithm for transforming a flat map onto the surface of a sphere. 

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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[Pocket Kings]

The good thing about northern Germany though, especially in the case of Berlin, is that you have one big city with a thin populated countryside around it. Also the terrain looks much like Caucasus from above, with little difference in tree vegetation. That's a bonus. The entire north of Berlin up to the Baltic Sea wouldn't be hard for designers: Small towns, airbases, forests and fields, a few Autobahn and railway tracks, but really nothing compared to West Germany.

 

However, if we move closer towards Hamburg and the inter-German border, things could get a little more RAM intensive, besides the dev effort.

 

The area at the Bavarian border and Saxony is also nothing that would worry me excessively. Granted, dimension wise that map would be huge, but I believe something like this has to be done. Lots of people say that DCS is a good platform for skirmish, but not for war. I don't have an opinion about it yet. However, as I said the strategic opportunities are pretty much endless. Berlin West with it's three fully functional airports alone, then around it many important supply roads. In the north the Soviets that would try to get a grip on Denmark ASAP. The US would move in over the Bavarian border and try to break Soviet supply chains coming from Poland. Before I get carried away with my imagination, you get the point .

[Northstar98]

On 5/8/2021 at 10:53 AM, Pocket Kings said:

The good thing about northern Germany though, especially in the case of Berlin, is that you have one big city with a thin populated countryside around it. Also the terrain looks much like Caucasus from above, with little difference in tree vegetation. That's a bonus. The entire north of Berlin up to the Baltic Sea wouldn't be hard for designers: Small towns, airbases, forests and fields, a few Autobahn and railway tracks, but really nothing compared to West Germany.

Oh yes, and you'd want to include the North anyway (maybe even up to the border with Denmark) - that gives you enough water for a carrier strike group/amphibious group (though missing BLUFOR naval assets completely, apart from the HB Forrestal)

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However, if we move closer towards Hamburg and the inter-German border, things could get a little more RAM intensive, besides the dev effort.

This is a problem - because much of the important BLUFOR airbases in Germany (namely the main US AFBs) are located in central Germany - you almost need to go as far south as Nuremberg (though cutting off before Stuttgart).

A few important REDFOR airbases are basically on the border with Poland, so you basically need to go as far as the Polish border too.

As for the western edge, well the western border with the Netherlands is where RAF Bruggen (Phantom, Jaguar, Tornado), RAF Laarbruch (Buccaneer, Phantom, Harrier II, Jaguar, Tornado) and RAF Wildenrath (Phantom, Harrier) are - which are 3 of the 4 major RAF airbases in Germany for the mid-to-late Cold War (the other being RAF Gütersloh, which is further to the east), so you'd probably have to go to the western border too.

This is a pretty fantastic resource for military airbases and NAVAIDs in the region.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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[Tank50us]

13 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

This is a pretty fantastic resource for military airbases and NAVAIDs in the region.

 

That...... is a lot of bases

[Northstar98]

On 5/9/2021 at 4:46 AM, Tank50us said:

That...... is a lot of bases

It certainly is, plus all of the highway strips.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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[Pocket Kings]

Well east of Berlin it's only ~ 80 KM to the Polish border anyway, and there's literally nothing, just a few small towns. Then comes Frankfurt Oder at the border to Poland. The Oder river and its' bridges being a top priority target for BLUFOR since it would stop reinforcements for a few days. It's not a small river, people drowned trying to cross the German border, thus no small bridges.

 

You are right Northstar98, there's probably no way to avoid those RAF bases. If ED gave me personally two options:

1. Do you want east and north Germany with all the bells and whistles and every railroad and every town?

or

2. Do you want the whole country, in the west and south a simplified version without even cities except the major ones, but the "hot zone" in a detailed fashion?

 

I think I'd go with the 2nd option, if feasable.

 

But realistically, which timeframe are we talking about? At least two years even if they started TODAY, am I right? In two years 64 Gigs of RAM should be attainable for a reasonable cost. Also, in two years, probably all those top notch cards, the 1080Ti up to 3060 won't mine coins anymore and could flood the market with their intended purpose.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Pocket Kings
typo

[Northstar98]

On 5/9/2021 at 10:18 AM, Pocket Kings said:

Well east of Berlin it's only ~ 80 KM to the Polish border anyway, and there's literally nothing, just a few small towns. Then comes Frankfurt Oder at the border to Poland. The Oder river and its' bridges being a top priority target for BLUFOR since it would stop reinforcements for a few days. It's not a small river, people drowned trying to cross the German border, thus no small bridges.

Exactly, plus with the airbases in the area you can't really miss it off.

Quote

You are right Northstar98, there's probably no way to avoid those RAF bases. If ED gave me personally two options:

1. Do you want east and north Germany with all the bells and whistles and every railroad and every town?

or

2. Do you want the whole country, in the west and south a simplified version without even cities except the major ones, but the "hot zone" in a detailed fashion?

Personally, I think the northern area (so the Denmark border to approximately 51°30' North) is pretty vital, and includes the northern German plain (which is one of the principle axis of attack), and it includes lots of airbases.

The problem is, the main US airbases (Spangdahlem, Rammstein, Hanh, Frankfurt am Main) are in the central area (which I'll define as ~51°30' North to ~49°), this is also where the Fulda Gap is, so I'd say this is a pretty essential area too.

In both cases I think we'll have to reach as far as the western and eastern border - for the aforementioned airbases (which are pretty major), and for the strategic targets.

I'd want to go as far North to reach to the Danish border, firstly because there's a major German airbase there (suitable for Cold War and modern day scenarios - Schleswig) and that means there's enough water to support some amount of carrier operations, and (mostly REDFOR) amphibious landings.

This misses off the south but that's far away from the action, and the only major airbases there are French.

Quote

I think I'd go with the 2nd option, if feasable.

I agree, I'd say we need the northern German plains and the Fulda gap if possible.

Quote

But realistically, which timeframe are we talking about? At least two years even if they started TODAY, am I right? In two years 64 Gigs of RAM should be attainable for a reasonable cost. Also, in two years, probably all those top notch cards, the 1080Ti up to 3060 won't mine coins anymore and could flood the market with their intended purpose.

Oh yes, the problem with the map is its size, and object density, especially if you wanted to get it right. You also can't skimp on terrain resolution if you want to properly support the ground war.

The other thing is there's a few things I'd personally want to see come to DCS before basically any new map - and that's for them to transition away from flat maps, and move to maps that fit on a sphere, not just for the long term goal of the world in DCS World, but also because it's more accurate - the current flat maps already cause issues.  

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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[Tippis]

On 5/8/2021 at 9:30 AM, Northstar98 said:

+9999999999999999999999999999999

 

The 2 maps I would absolutely love to see is a northern + central Germany map and a Baltic Sea map - both circa mid-to-late Cold War.

 

Unfortunately though the Baltic Sea proposal I have is absolutely humungous - including all the major players in the region and there airbases, and is certainly too large, but sticking with the northern + central Germany:

It wouldn't be exactly that, but it covers enough and would make for a unique fit for some of the oddball ones we have… and it would fit with what other maps have already proven capable. The only ( ) issue would be having this particular company working on detailed maps of that particular oblast.

 

 

[Northstar98]

On 5/9/2021 at 6:09 PM, Tippis said:

It wouldn't be exactly that, but it covers enough and would make for a unique fit for some of the oddball ones we have… and it would fit with what other maps have already proven capable. The only ( ) issue would be having this particular company working on detailed maps of that particular oblast.

 

 

I mean, that would be pretty good, that's somewhere between a third and a half of what I drew up on Google Earth ().

My only real issue with it though, is that, from a historical perspective, there isn't much for land based BLUFOR. For the Cold War it's basically all REDFOR apart from Gotland, and for modern we're missing basically all of NATO for our aircraft, at least land based ones (Latvia and Lithuania do operate the Mi-8 though).

though there is a Swedish air base (not a main one though AFAIK) on Gotland, it also misses out Germany and Denmark completely.

There is always the option for BLUFOR aircraft carriers though, and there is an airbase on Gotland (not a major one, but one nonetheless). Maybe if it was shifted more to the west, it would include more Swedish airbases.

REDFOR on the other hand is nailed with this map

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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[Tippis]

True enough,. I mainly just drew it that way because I like Vilnius and the Gulf of Riga

 

You could probably do it a few degrees to the west and capture more relevant Swedish bases, but it's quite tricky to get a good coverage without just ending up with all Poland all the time. If it's WP vs NATO, that's perhaps less of an issue, though. For a more modern setting, the above would kind of work more because suddenly it's almost all NATO, and Gotland becomes a sort of 21th century Fulda (air) gap: it's the piece of land that you need to own to control the airspace to and from the Baltic. But yeah, that would be a radically different scenario.

[Pocket Kings]

The reason I'm a proponent for Germany, not because I'm German, but because I have a problem with the particular Black Sea region on the Caucasus map. It's kinda generic, flat in a sense. I mean, what can you do? Yes you could place half a dozen American aircraft carriers into the Black Sea and artificially create a massive conflict. But how in hell did they get there?

 

Secondly, the Caucasus mountains defy any decent ground offensive on their own, even without any hostile engagements. To be blunt, I don't see either the spice in the Caucasus region nor room for interesting exploits.

 

Something like Operation Joint Thunder is possible in Syria, of course. But same thing, the coast line , the terrain for ground operations and so on.

 

I belive the Korean peninsula was a splendid choice for the other game! 22 years and still rocking, because it has an interesting topology, lots of front line mileage, water everywhere, all the ingredients neccessary.

 

The list of areas that tick all the boxes is short. You can't use Mexico and middle America, although interesting topology, because Soviets would've had a hard time getting there in quantities. Africa is one block, rain check. South America the same. Maybe South East Asia, like Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia could be interesting. Soviets and China take control over the whole region like President Reagan believed to be a real possibility and NATO has to stand up. Maybe, but this region would even be bigger than Germany, little Denmark, some Poland and done.

 

The customers demand balance, I get it. Nick said they will not overpower the Soviet side artificially and they stick to their commitment to remain a realistic simulation. Well then the only solution for a map that's fun for the next decade is to give the Soviets a quantative advantage and the BLUFOR troops their technological superiority, as I already indicated above.

 

6 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

 

I'd want to go as far North to reach to the Danish border, firstly because there's a major German airbase there (suitable for Cold War and modern day scenarios - Schleswig) and that means there's enough water to support some amount of carrier operations, and (mostly REDFOR amphibious landings).

 

I agree, I'd say we need the northern German plains and the Fulda gap if possible.

 

And a very important German naval base, home of the U-Boot fleet and our equivalent of the SEALs (Kiel area), which would be a major target for REDFOR.

Edited May 9, 2021 by Pocket Kings
typo

[Pocket Kings]

Something like this comes to mind. The bright rectangle is the "hot" zone or high fidelity zone, the less saturated the low fidelity zone.

 

[Northstar98]

Personally, I'm for Germany, because of the following:

• It is probably the most interesting and comprehensive places for the Cold War gone hot.
• It covers the entirety of the Cold War.
• It's one of the only places in the world that has such a significant number of BLUFOR and REDFOR airbases - from 5 main Cold War players (US, UK, West Germany, East Germany and the USSR - though it's also pretty close to other important players too - France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Czech SR
• It fits the vast majority of our current and future playable aircraft, and plenty of them have appropriate liveries (it should be said that the aircraft and assets aren't coherent with each other, we're missing a fair number of Cold War BLUFOR aircraft).
• Plenty of inspiration from things like Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising as well as Seven Days to the River Rhine.

 

On 5/10/2021 at 12:12 AM, Pocket Kings said:

Something like this comes to mind. The bright rectangle is the "hot" zone or high fidelity zone, the less saturated the low fidelity zone.

 

I like the proposal, but I think you definitely need to extend it west (basically to the border with the Netherlands and Belgium), as the majority of RAF airbases (RAF Laarbuch, RAF Bruggen and RAF Wildenrath) are missed out (I think only Gutersloh is included in this area). The only US Air Force base included is Rhein-Main AFB (Frankfurt am Main), which AFAIK, was basically an airlift base only, with no fighters based there during the Cold War.

Unfortunately though, my proposal (which I'll post, I'm just marking the airbases) is incredibly massive - it's currently sitting at ~410,000km². The vertices are currently set as such:

• NW: N 54°50'00", E 006°00'00"
• NE: N 54°50'00", E 015°00'00"
• SW: N 49°00'00", E 006°00'00"
• SE: N 49°00'00", E 015°00'00"

I haven't defined which areas should be highly detailed though, the north German plain and Fulda Gap area should be high detail, as well as the immediate area (say within a 5nm radius) of major airbases.

Personally though, before any new maps get added, I'd like DCS to transition to maps that fit on a sphere instead of being flat. Deformable terrain also might be appropriate to this map in particular (maybe not for things like 3D craters (which would be very cool) - more for making dug-in positions for tanks).

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98

[Pocket Kings]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

I haven't defined which areas should be highly detailed though, the north German plain and Fulda Gap area should be high detail, as well as the immediate area (say within a 5nm radius) of major airbases.

 

Personally though, before any new maps get added, I'd like DCS to transition to maps that fit on a sphere instead of being flat. Deformable terrain also might be appropriate to this map in particular (maybe not for things like 3D craters (which would be very cool) - more for making dug-in positions for tanks).

 

 

You're right, of course you wouldn't want a static area like in the picture to be high fidelity. The degree of detail needs to go with the importance of the objects, whether it's a small town, a bridge, roads, besides the obvious AFB.

 

Deformable terrain for important spots could be a magnificent improvement and allows for tactic considerations not possible right now. Also I didn't realize that the maps are flat and computed as such. I always had the impression that above 45000 feet I could see the curvature of the atmosphere. Learning every day...

[kseremak]

1980s divided Germany is the map i'm waiting for the most.

[Tippis]

2 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

Unfortunately though, my proposal (which I'll post, I'm just marking the airbases) is incredibly massive - it's currently sitting at ~410,000km². The vertices are currently set as such:

• NW: N 54°50'00", E 006°00'00"
• NE: N 54°50'00", E 015°00'00"
• SW: N 49°00'00", E 006°00'00"
• SE: N 49°00'00", E 015°00'00"

 

I haven't defined which areas should be highly detailed though, the north German plain and Fulda Gap area should be high detail, as well as the immediate area (say within a 5nm radius) of major airbases.

While 400k km² isn't excessively beyond what some existing terrains already cover, the problem is that we're talking Germany here — it's not exactly empty flat plains and lots of sea. With the kind of detail needed for such a densely packed area, it would probably have to be only 250k at the most. Maybe one way around it would be make it even narrower on the north-south axis. Or even, sort of how it is done with Caucasus, make the “detail” area a diagonal rather than a straight line.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Tippis

[Northstar98]

On 5/10/2021 at 10:59 AM, Pocket Kings said:

You're right, of course you wouldn't want a static area like in the picture to be high fidelity. The degree of detail needs to go with the importance of the objects, whether it's a small town, a bridge, roads, besides the obvious AFB.

Agreed, I think the major issue with my proposal (when I finish it) is going to be the super populated areas - its essentially going to be the Channel map but 40x bigger.

Quote

Deformable terrain for important spots could be a magnificent improvement and allows for tactic considerations not possible right now.

I mean, it's more of a hope to, ED would need to develop the terrain technology for it. It's not super important and you can work around it using static objects (well, that's if we had the static objects for it - I could probably write a dissertation on it).

Quote

Also I didn't realize that the maps are flat and computed as such. I always had the impression that above 45000 feet I could see the curvature of the atmosphere. Learning every day...

Yes, DCS' maps are flat, and since they're projections they inevitably have some inaccuracies - which already causes issues for navigation. But you can tell they're not spherical just by looking at the lines of longitude - they should all run true north to south, but they don't.

There's also things like LOS, right now DCS has stuff implemented to facilitate RADAR LOS on a spherical Earth, but you wouldn't need to do that if you had maps that fit on a sphere in the first place. Plenty of other simulators (including flight sims and even submarine sims) use something better than flat maps.

At high altitudes you will see a curve, but this is a shader - it's essentially an illusion.

Edited February 14, 2022 by Northstar98
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