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Will Marianas map help combined arms in DCS World?


Callsign112

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Really impressed with the Marianas map in General.

 

And while it continues to be optimized/fixed/updated, I cant help notice that it has the potential to become the perfect map for combined arms MP game play.

 

With its large size, and massive expanse of water, it should allow for good performance with air, land, and sea units on the same map at the same time. What does everyone else think? 

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For naval assets, sure, a little room for some basic close maneuvers. And yet even for the Navy, it's kind of a smaller map where if they decide to hide without enemy satellite coverage, they might be hiding 4 DCS maps away from where the enemy is looking! Consider that even simple medium range anti-ship missiles like the Harpoon have ranges about double the size of many DCS maps... it's even a little limiting there. I think the Mariannas maps have lots of ocean not so we can replicate Navy warfare, but Naval air battles, carrier based ground strikes, not so much ship vs ship or fleet vs fleet engagements.

 

The islands themselves are... tiny.

 

The island of Guam is only 50km long, and just 6km wide. There's very little room for large ground armor formations to maneuver properly IMO. Will it be fun in some games? Yea probably! But... it would also be a bit limiting too. 

 

Imagine a flight of four Hornets with CBU-105's, wiping every single OPFOR ground unit in a single pass... or a single B-52 with the same ordnance. In just 5 or 10 minutes your Combined Arms game is wiped out!  

 

 

 

 

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14 hours ago, Kang said:

I think Combined Arms does not feature a lot of naval assets and works questionably with ground vehicles on the whole, so Marianas is probably the map to have the least fun with it.

 

12 hours ago, Rick50 said:

 

For naval assets, sure, a little room for some basic close maneuvers. And yet even for the Navy, it's kind of a smaller map where if they decide to hide without enemy satellite coverage, they might be hiding 4 DCS maps away from where the enemy is looking! Consider that even simple medium range anti-ship missiles like the Harpoon have ranges about double the size of many DCS maps... it's even a little limiting there. I think the Mariannas maps have lots of ocean not so we can replicate Navy warfare, but Naval air battles, carrier based ground strikes, not so much ship vs ship or fleet vs fleet engagements.

 

The islands themselves are... tiny.

 

The island of Guam is only 50km long, and just 6km wide. There's very little room for large ground armor formations to maneuver properly IMO. Will it be fun in some games? Yea probably! But... it would also be a bit limiting too. 

 

Imagine a flight of four Hornets with CBU-105's, wiping every single OPFOR ground unit in a single pass... or a single B-52 with the same ordnance. In just 5 or 10 minutes your Combined Arms game is wiped out!  

 

 

 

 

In terms of currently available assets, the Marianas map is new and they are adding more assets all the time. Isn't that the mission of ED in terms of building out DCS World? That was at least the reason behind my question to this thread.

 

ED is constantly improving all aspects of DCS World so that larger more complicated battles/scenarios are possible. This goes for everything from core graphics, to weather, to AI behavior, to map technology. So I expect to see more assets in all areas, and especially naval.

 

In terms of the Marianas map size, it is one of the largest maps in DCS World, so it should support naval battles as this type of mission/game is already being simulated on the other maps. I get your point though, as some of the missile systems modeled have ranges well beyond the size of the map. But even in Naval air battles, the same missile systems will still be available.

 

In terms of land area comparatively speaking, agreed, it is tiny. But if we are talking about having ground units engage each other, Saipan alone has nearly 120 square kilometers of area, Guam has about 550 sq km, and ED is also adding more of the island chain. These are decent areas for ground units to engage in. And don't forget, those 4 F18's with CBU 105's could be facing other jet fighters with A-A, or separate ground based AAA units, not to mention Naval ships with surface to air.

 

I think the Marianas map, when fully optimized, is the perfect sandbox to create naval battles, carrier based sea and land attacks, marine landings, and ground conflict on the same map at the same time. Or put another way, the vast expanse of water gives the room needed for aerial dog fights, and should help create the possibility of a combined arms simulation better than any of the other DCS World maps available today. 

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As regards Navy warfare, once you go beyond carrier air operations, all bets are off in DCS. Sure, the ASM are cool, and watching the Phalanx spit sparks is fun... but it's not a simulation of ship/submarine warfare, more like a simple RTS game. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a game for gameplay's sake, or even enjoying a sim as a game! I do think in the long term, ED may upgrade the simulation side of the Navy systems into something either good or even amazing... but for now I think for pure Navy simulation, there are other products that can do this with lots of realism on very large maps or even global ones. 

 

I think where the Mariannas maps will shine is airstrikes, SAM SEAD, ships maneuvering to land ground units and defend the airspace overhead. Similarly, WW2 recreations, should also shine brightly.  But I don't expect any modern day Rommel/Patton wannabe ground commanders to love the tiny footprint, especially given that some of the hillsides may be impassable to track vehicles, further limiting your ground options for maneuver. I expect it may turn into artillery duels with smart munitions more than tanks and APC's trying to outflank anyone...  not sure how you flank someone on a 6km frontline! 

 

Ok, enough of the realism... Now rethinking this, if we dial down the realism expectations, and pump up the cool action, if we eliminated or restricted air power and artillery, so that it's basically tank vs tank... that could be a fun way to have some furious fun action in a limited amount of time, say like if someone had only 1 hour or even half an hour, you could enjoy a lot of tank action on such tiny maps! Say each side gets one attack heli, maybe one jet with dumb bombs, and say maybe 15 MBT's, play "capture the flag" over say 30minutes or an hour... that might be worth buying CA just for that alone!  Just because we love simulations doesn't mean we have to count the rivets ALL the time!

 

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31 minutes ago, Rick50 said:

 

As regards Navy warfare, once you go beyond carrier air operations, all bets are off in DCS. Sure, the ASM are cool, and watching the Phalanx spit sparks is fun... but it's not a simulation of ship/submarine warfare, more like a simple RTS game. And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a game for gameplay's sake, or even enjoying a sim as a game! I do think in the long term, ED may upgrade the simulation side of the Navy systems into something either good or even amazing... but for now I think for pure Navy simulation, there are other products that can do this with lots of realism on very large maps or even global ones. 

 

I think where the Mariannas maps will shine is airstrikes, SAM SEAD, ships maneuvering to land ground units and defend the airspace overhead. Similarly, WW2 recreations, should also shine brightly.  But I don't expect any modern day Rommel/Patton wannabe ground commanders to love the tiny footprint, especially given that some of the hillsides may be impassable to track vehicles, further limiting your ground options for maneuver. I expect it may turn into artillery duels with smart munitions more than tanks and APC's trying to outflank anyone...  not sure how you flank someone on a 6km frontline! 

 

Ok, enough of the realism... Now rethinking this, if we dial down the realism expectations, and pump up the cool action, if we eliminated or restricted air power and artillery, so that it's basically tank vs tank... that could be a fun way to have some furious fun action in a limited amount of time, say like if someone had only 1 hour or even half an hour, you could enjoy a lot of tank action on such tiny maps! Say each side gets one attack heli, maybe one jet with dumb bombs, and say maybe 15 MBT's, play "capture the flag" over say 30minutes or an hour... that might be worth buying CA just for that alone!  Just because we love simulations doesn't mean we have to count the rivets ALL the time!

 

I don't have the Persian Gulf map yet, but if you have it, how are the frame rates on that map and does it support combined arms MP game play well (air, sea, land)? The PG map is another good sized map with a large low detail area, but I'm not sure how it is performance wise.

 

I can see that my original question wasn't made clear enough, but I was sort of wondering how the different DCS maps will eventually compare with each other in terms of MP performance once they have all been optimized.

 

In other words, if we could compare the same number of players using the same units/assets on each map, which one would offer the best performance? My feeling is that even though it is a much larger map than Normandy for example, the Marianas map will give better performance for the same number of players/units/assets.

 

The Normandy map has actually seen an update recently to the OB and Stable versions that has supposedly improved performance, but I haven't heard of any report that MP servers actually saw an improvement.

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