would you have any interest in a Naval module DCS Fleet ops

[upyr1]

Would you be interested in DCS :Fleet ops. The idea is simple- it would include an interface to command ships, especially one with VR. Also Eagle would make changes to the damage models, add navel assets and change update the AI in DCS core as needed to make it work 

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by upyr1

[Tom Kazansky]

Great thing and as soon as DCS engine uses all of my CPU's cores you get my YES.

[Mr_sukebe]

I could see that as being a really interesting addition to DCS, very much like CA, but at sea.  Might be a good way to fund the development of anti-submarine operations.

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, Tom Kazansky said:

Great thing and as soon as DCS engine uses all of my CPU's cores you get my YES.

I hear that one. I think multiple CPU support would result in a lot more stability. 

37 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

I could see that as being a really interesting addition to DCS, very much like CA, but at sea.  Might be a good way to fund the development of anti-submarine operations.

I also think it would be a good way to fund naval assets and improved damage modeling as well. 

[Northstar98]

I would be very interested in it.

However, the current naval aspect is nowhere near mature enough for what is essentially a navalised CA, and I could write a trilogy on all of the aspects DCS falls short on.

Hell I'd even argue that the land aspect isn't mature enough for CA, especially to justify CA's price tag.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Northstar98
formatting

[Mars Exulte]

It's pretty funny seeing people asking for expanded Naval Ops, anti-subwarfare, expanded ground ops, expanded this, expanded that in a flight sim that even the flying part currently needs a lot of work. I mean, the one thing this game is focused on is still coming up very short with nearly non-existent AI (both on the ground, and also in the primary focus of air combat), no dynamic campaign yet (a staple of most 90s flight sims as I recall). The only foray into "expansion" we have currently is Combined Arms, which is very barebones and itself extremely hobbled by the entirely absent ground AI.

 

So what are we going to do, add ships and subs and what have you, and then ALSO not have AI or a dynamic environment to use them in? I say this as one of the hardest of the hardcore fanbois around here, not as a criticism of ED (as I'm quite lenient with these short comings). But at the same time... the core bits of DCS are nearly 20 years old, and even for 20 years ago these main aspects of AI and campaign were poor. So no, I'm not really a fan of "expanding" the game into even more half-baked diversions with awful AI and nowhere to use them? DCS only does two things very well, and two things only, and those two things are the modeling of the individual aircraft themselves and the graphics/environment (and that second a relatively recent addition). There are FAR more pressing concerns.

Edited July 31, 2021 by Mars Exulte

[AG-51_Razor]

17 hours ago, Mr_sukebe said:

I could see that as being a really interesting addition to DCS, very much like CA, but at sea.  Might be a good way to fund the development of anti-submarine operations.

 I couldn't agree more! I also believe that it would possibly lead to a whole host of additional areas of operations within the DCS World. Well said Mr_Sukebe

[Northstar98]

On 7/31/2021 at 3:49 PM, Mars Exulte said:

It's pretty funny seeing people asking for expanded Naval Ops, anti-subwarfare, expanded ground ops, expanded this, expanded that in a flight sim that even the flying part currently needs a lot of work. I mean, the one thing this game is focused on is still coming up very short with nearly non-existent AI (both on the ground, and also in the primary focus of air combat), no dynamic campaign yet (a staple of most 90s flight sims as I recall). The only foray into "expansion" we have currently is Combined Arms, which is very barebones and itself extremely hobbled by the entirely absent ground AI.

 

So what are we going to do, add ships and subs and what have you, and then ALSO not have AI or a dynamic environment to use them in? I say this as one of the hardest of the hardcore fanbois around here, not as a criticism of ED (as I'm quite lenient with these short comings). But at the same time... the core bits of DCS are nearly 20 years old, and even for 20 years ago these main aspects of AI and campaign were poor. So no, I'm not really a fan of "expanding" the game into even more half-baked diversions with awful AI and nowhere to use them? DCS only does two things very well, and two things only, and those two things are the modeling of the individual aircraft themselves and the graphics/environment (and that second a relatively recent addition). There are FAR more pressing concerns.

100% hit the nail on hit.

As much as I would love to see expanded this, that and the other, what you've said is an unfortunate truth.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Northstar98
formatting

[Xilon_x]

It would be interesting, but there are other priorities in DCS.

the use of SEAPLANE and quad motors of large range and long range.

the improvement of the missile and anti-aircraft system controlled via the SAMS interface.

the underwater world and submersible no news about it.

[sirrah]

5 hours ago, Mars Exulte said:

It's pretty funny seeing people asking for expanded Naval Ops, anti-subwarfare, expanded ground ops, expanded this, expanded that in a flight sim that even the flying part currently needs a lot of work. I mean, the one thing this game is focused on is still coming up very short with nearly non-existent AI (both on the ground, and also in the primary focus of air combat), no dynamic campaign yet (a staple of most 90s flight sims as I recall). The only foray into "expansion" we have currently is Combined Arms, which is very barebones and itself extremely hobbled by the entirely absent ground AI.

 

So what are we going to do, add ships and subs and what have you, and then ALSO not have AI or a dynamic environment to use them in? I say this as one of the hardest of the hardcore fanbois around here, not as a criticism of ED (as I'm quite lenient with these short comings). But at the same time... the core bits of DCS are nearly 20 years old, and even for 20 years ago these main aspects of AI and campaign were poor. So no, I'm not really a fan of "expanding" the game into even more half-baked diversions with awful AI and nowhere to use them? DCS only does two things very well, and two things only, and those two things are the modeling of the individual aircraft themselves and the graphics/environment (and that second a relatively recent addition). There are FAR more pressing concerns.

 

I couldn't agree more.

Voted "no"

[upyr1]

13 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

I would be very interested in it.

 

However, the current naval aspect is nowhere near mature enough for what is essentially a navalised CA, and I could write a trilogy on all of the aspects DCS falls short on.

 

Hell I'd even argue that the land aspect isn't mature enough for CA, especially to justify CA's price tag.

 

I would argue that is actually an argument for Eagle to work on Fleet ops. The Naval aspect isn't well developed however as Eagle's business model is based on module sales Fleet Ops could fund the development of the Naval assets.

[Northstar98]

On 8/1/2021 at 12:06 AM, upyr1 said:

I would argue that is actually an argument for Eagle to work on Fleet ops. The Naval aspect isn't well developed however as Eagle's business model is based on module sales Fleet Ops could fund the development of the Naval assets.

I don't disagree (I voted yes), I just think that maybe it isn't feasible at the moment, in light of all the of the other issues.

It's a shame and I definitely would like the idea, but I can't disagree with what Mars said above.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Northstar98
formatting

[Tippis]

8 hours ago, Mars Exulte said:

So what are we going to do, add ships and subs and what have you, and then ALSO not have AI or a dynamic environment to use them in? I say this as one of the hardest of the hardcore fanbois around here, not as a criticism of ED (as I'm quite lenient with these short comings). But at the same time... the core bits of DCS are nearly 20 years old, and even for 20 years ago these main aspects of AI and campaign were poor. So no, I'm not really a fan of "expanding" the game into even more half-baked diversions with awful AI and nowhere to use them? DCS only does two things very well, and two things only, and those two things are the modeling of the individual aircraft themselves and the graphics/environment (and that second a relatively recent addition). There are FAR more pressing concerns.

12 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

I don't disagree (I voted yes), I just think that maybe it isn't feasible at the moment, in light of all the of the other issues.

 

It's a shame and I definitely would like the idea, but I can't disagree with what Mars said above.

 

Funnily enough, I don't think the main purpose of putting any kind of effort into naval ops would be to produce naval ops. If it was done, its main benefit would rather be a number of those other far more critical areas where core improvements are needed: more complex AI behaviour; extensive component-based damage models for ground (and sea) units, and for AI units in general; a pretty massive sensor revamp to allow for a wider variety of sensors, some kind of redundancy behaviour (that ties into the component damage), a solid round-earth/over-the-horizon (or more specifically, not over the horizon) modelling, etc etc etc. Any ships and naval assets that would come out of it would be almost incidental compared to the absolutely massive — and very welcome, if they could be done, just to be clear on that part — changes that would have to go into the creation of those assets and the connected gameplay.

 

It would be spectacularly neat, but it would also quite literally mean all hands on deck: every single expertise in the company would have to be dedicated to this one thing, which certainly fits in the whole “Digital Combat Simulator” label, but is very far removed from the flight aspect that just about everyone associates with that label. As beneficial as the results would be to… oh… everything, it would be a pretty hard sell to tell everyone “sorry, no planes for X years because boats”.

 

Would I have any interest in it and love to see it? Absolutely.

Can it be done without a pretty hefty outside contract to pay for it? Highly doubtful.

Could it be done without six seasons of pitchforks and torches? Yeah… no.

[Northstar98]

On 8/1/2021 at 12:42 AM, Tippis said:

Funnily enough, I don't think the main purpose of putting any kind of effort into naval ops would be to produce naval ops. If it was done, its main benefit would rather be a number of those other far more critical areas where core improvements are needed: more complex AI behaviour; extensive component-based damage models for ground (and sea) units, and for AI units in general; a pretty massive sensor revamp to allow for a wider variety of sensors, some kind of redundancy behaviour (that ties into the component damage), a solid round-earth/over-the-horizon (or more specifically, not over the horizon) modelling, etc etc etc. Any ships and naval assets that would come out of it would be almost incidental compared to the absolutely massive — and very welcome, if they could be done, just to be clear on that part — changes that would have to go into the creation of those assets and the connected gameplay.

 

It would be spectacularly neat, but it would also quite literally mean all hands on deck: every single expertise in the company would have to be dedicated to this one thing, which certainly fits in the whole “Digital Combat Simulator” label, but is very far removed from the flight aspect that just about everyone associates with that label. As beneficial as the results would be to… oh… everything, it would be a pretty hard sell to tell everyone “sorry, no planes for X years because boats”.

 

Would I have any interest in it and love to see it? Absolutely.

Can it be done without a pretty hefty outside contract to pay for it? Highly doubtful.

Could it be done without six seasons of pitchforks and torches? Yeah… no.

I physically could not agree more, on every single point.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Northstar98
formatting

[upyr1]

2 hours ago, Tippis said:

Funnily enough, I don't think the main purpose of putting any kind of effort into naval ops would be to produce naval ops. If it was done, its main benefit would rather be a number of those other far more critical areas where core improvements are needed: more complex AI behaviour; extensive component-based damage models for ground (and sea) units, and for AI units in general; a pretty massive sensor revamp to allow for a wider variety of sensors, some kind of redundancy behaviour (that ties into the component damage), a solid round-earth/over-the-horizon (or more specifically, not over the horizon) modelling, etc etc etc. Any ships and naval assets that would come out of it would be almost incidental compared to the absolutely massive — and very welcome, if they could be done, just to be clear on that part — changes that would have to go into the creation of those assets and the connected gameplay.

I would love to see Fleet ops and Combined Arms II- if they actually went though and did an overhaul of all these elements. The basic problem with Eagle's model is that it is very module dependent.  So saying they shouldn't do X because of all they need to work on, is in my view simply a good way to not see anything get done.

 

 

[Tippis]

1 hour ago, upyr1 said:

So saying they shouldn't do X because of all they need to work on, is in my view simply a good way to not see anything get done.

 

As a general rule, I would agree with you. It's just that in this particular instance, it would require such a massive shift in development effort to be done right that it would block out everything. That's not usually the case, and they seemingly have enough redundancies and extra developer capacity to run 1½–2 projects at the same time, which allows them to work on a big thing and a lot of small things in parallel.

 

With this kind of an addition, though, it would be all boats, all the time, for a long time, and for everyone — whether you enjoy salt water or not. At least if it's taken seriously and added in a meaningful way. There would be no-one left to do all the little stuff that usually also gets done along the way. At most, there would be some left-over flight dynamics guys, but they could probably be roped into making float dynamics instead so as to at least have something to do to earn their pay checks.

 

If it was just a few new (and updates to old) ship models, then sure — put the artists to work on that, but art assets do not make gameplay, and definitely not any kind of “ops” worthy of the name. But we're talking about something far bigger than that, bigger than even the most complex aircraft module: building the framework to allow an entirely new set of vehicles to work and be operated in more detail than pushing Duplo® blocks around on a play mat. And then they'd have to (re)build all the ships themselves on top of this framework.

 

Even if we're not talking about making a full ship simulator, so much would be needed to be done or redone, from scratch, to allow proper fleet ops to become a part of DCS, that it would pretty much be a matter of building a entire new game and then hook it into what we already have. ED would have to be a lot bigger to be able to make that happen while at the same time maintaining the whole flying side of things at a level where people felt it was still in active development and worth spending time (and money) on.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Tippis

[Sonoda Umi]

RTS-like fleet operations are very nice and necessary for DCS. As I said that multiple times.

[Mars Exulte]

3 hours ago, Tippis said:

As a general rule, I would agree with you. It's just that in this particular instance, it would require such a massive shift in development effort to be done right that it would block out everything.

  Exactly, expansion is fine. But it needs to be done properly. And why in the world would we expect it to be done ''properly'', when flight, the core focus of the game, is still not done ''properly''? If it's going to be half baked and useless, there's no point in doing it. And for the notion, ''Oh, well, of course it would be done PROPERLY!''... based on what evidence? The only evidence we have right now is that which I already highlighted : we're not even doing the ''flying'' part properly right now.

 

-edit

To add another ''properly'' and thereby make it an even number of properlys, but I have sullied it AGAIN so I must say it once more and properly close this comment.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Mars Exulte

[Mr_sukebe]

Whilst I’ve already said that I think that enhancing naval operations would be a great thing, I’m in agreement with the point that I wouldn’t want to see resources within ED deprioritised from what I consider to be more crucial, ie finishing existing modules, sorting multi-core and introducing Vulkan.

 

if however these were in addition and in parallel, then sure

Edited August 1, 2021 by Mr_sukebe

[upyr1]

6 hours ago, Tippis said:

 

As a general rule, I would agree with you. It's just that in this particular instance, it would require such a massive shift in development effort to be done right that it would block out everything. That's not usually the case, and they seemingly have enough redundancies and extra developer capacity to run 1½–2 projects at the same time, which allows them to work on a big thing and a lot of small things in parallel.

 

With this kind of an addition, though, it would be all boats, all the time, for a long time, and for everyone — whether you enjoy salt water or not. At least if it's taken seriously and added in a meaningful way. There would be no-one left to do all the little stuff that usually also gets done along the way. At most, there would be some left-over flight dynamics guys, but they could probably be roped into making float dynamics instead so as to at least have something to do to earn their pay checks.

 

If it was just a few new (and updates to old) ship models, then sure — put the artists to work on that, but art assets do not make gameplay, and definitely not any kind of “ops” worthy of the name. But we're talking about something far bigger than that, bigger than even the most complex aircraft module: building the framework to allow an entirely new set of vehicles to work and be operated in more detail than pushing Duplo® blocks around on a play mat. And then they'd have to (re)build all the ships themselves on top of this framework.

 

Even if we're not talking about making a full ship simulator, so much would be needed to be done or redone, from scratch, to allow proper fleet ops to become a part of DCS, that it would pretty much be a matter of building a entire new game and then hook it into what we already have. ED would have to be a lot bigger to be able to make that happen while at the same time maintaining the whole flying side of things at a level where people felt it was still in active development and worth spending time (and money) on.

 

Fleet Ops, would require some improvements that are needed already. Mainly new and improved Naval assets, damage modeling, and AI. These things would be needed even if we didn't get Fleet Ops. So I was hoping that if the community showed interest in Fleet Ops, it would at least result in ED spending more time on on developing the naval AI and assets. I don't know if Combined Arms could be used as a base, or if you really do need to start from scratch on the module. 

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, Mr_sukebe said:

Whilst I’ve already said that I think that enhancing naval operations would be a great thing, I’m in agreement with the point that I wouldn’t want to see resources within ED deprioritised from what I consider to be more crucial, ie finishing existing modules, sorting multi-core and introducing Vulkan.

 

if however these were in addition and in parallel, then sure

 

I would expect it to be done in parallel with existing projects. As I am constantly stating, some of the things that we need for Fleet Ops would be needed even if we never get fleet ops. Mainly improvements to the existing Naval assets, improved AI as well as new assets for all era. I don't know how long it will take for Eagle to introduce Vulkan or multi-core support but once that is done then Fleet OPs might be the next project for that team. 

[upyr1]

4 hours ago, Mars Exulte said:

  Exactly, expansion is fine. But it needs to be done properly. And why in the world would we expect it to be done ''properly'', when flight, the core focus of the game, is still not done ''properly''? If it's going to be half baked and useless, there's no point in doing it. And for the notion, ''Oh, well, of course it would be done PROPERLY!''... based on what evidence? The only evidence we have right now is that which I already highlighted : we're not even doing the ''flying'' part properly right now.

 

-edit

To add another ''properly'' and thereby make it an even number of properlys, but I have sullied it AGAIN so I must say it once more and properly close this comment.

 

I strongly agree it has to be done properly and I think that would start with improving the Naval assets in DCS core and the AI. 

6 hours ago, Sonoda Umi said:

RTS-like fleet operations are very nice and necessary for DCS. As I said that multiple times.

We defiantly need some RTS elements added to the AI.

[Silver_Dragon]

I think ED need build "exclusive" teams to improve all branches (Air / Land / Sea) all centred on improve and add features to your sides with dedicated personal, outside of "core", modules, engine and map teams.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Silver_Dragon

[72Stu]

Vulkan first, above all else please ED!

[norbot]

23 hours ago, Mars Exulte said:

It's pretty funny seeing people asking for expanded Naval Ops, anti-subwarfare, expanded ground ops, expanded this, expanded that in a flight sim that even the flying part currently needs a lot of work. I mean, the one thing this game is focused on is still coming up very short with nearly non-existent AI (both on the ground, and also in the primary focus of air combat), no dynamic campaign yet (a staple of most 90s flight sims as I recall). The only foray into "expansion" we have currently is Combined Arms, which is very barebones and itself extremely hobbled by the entirely absent ground AI.

 

So what are we going to do, add ships and subs and what have you, and then ALSO not have AI or a dynamic environment to use them in? I say this as one of the hardest of the hardcore fanbois around here, not as a criticism of ED (as I'm quite lenient with these short comings). But at the same time... the core bits of DCS are nearly 20 years old, and even for 20 years ago these main aspects of AI and campaign were poor. So no, I'm not really a fan of "expanding" the game into even more half-baked diversions with awful AI and nowhere to use them? DCS only does two things very well, and two things only, and those two things are the modeling of the individual aircraft themselves and the graphics/environment (and that second a relatively recent addition). There are FAR more pressing concerns.

 

+ 1

Who do you expect to simulate in naval ops? The captain, the radar officers, the gunners and what else is creeping around on and under the deck? We‘ve got lots of other problems in DCS that need attention.

Edited August 1, 2021 by norbot