custom factions

[evanf117]

right now there are only 2+1 in dcs, Red and Blue + neutral.
i propose we get a system where you can make many and assign them a custom colour and a name and then who they are allied with and you they aren't, it would allow us to more accurately simulate full scale wars in places like Syria and complex combat environment's

[Roman_476_vFG]

This really would be fantastic! 

[Northstar98]

Something that's been wanted for ages and something I much agree with.

I sometimes say this in my sleep but we really need a system like C:MO/C:MANO, which allows you to add, edit and remove coalitions (or sides as it calls them) at will, as well define their posture/allegiance to other coalitions and even set doctrine, weapons realease authorisations and skill level for newly formed units belonging to said coalition.

We can also do away with assigning countries to coalitions, and just use the countries as a filter for placing units - allowing us to have units from the same country on 2 opposing sides, without needing to ficticiously add things like aircraft to countries that they don't use in order to have them on 2 opposing sides. This is particularly important with things like insurgents, where we might have insurgent units (which has unique units) on opposing sides.

You could also have things like a civilian 'country' for non-aligned units.

See this thread and in particular this post for more detail.

[Northstar98]

7 minutes ago, Desert Fox said:

This is quite an important point i never thought about this way: being able to assign the same country to two sides. One example would be the current Syrian war. There is pro-government troops on one side, anti-government troops on the other. But they in fact both are Syrian troops.

Personally, I'd ditch assigning countries to sides and just use them as a filter for units, with each country available for each side.

This also would render the combined joint forces and USAF aggressor 'countries' (and even the UN) as redundant.

7 minutes ago, Desert Fox said:

Non-regular forces aka generic "insurgents" like IS, YPG, Hezbollah... is another thing that is unsolvable right now. A perfect solution for both would really be the ability to set up custom factions, assign them equipment, set their relations to all other factions neutral/friendly/hostile, name them, give them a custom flag...

Yep. It's exactly what C:MO does and it's perfect IMO, and is far more flexible with countries purely used as a means of filtering units.

7 minutes ago, Desert Fox said:

I'd love to set up a MP mission set around 2015-2020 where you can choose between US, Turkey, Russian, IS... side including some CA slots to push the ground war. US for example are pro-YPG, Turkey bombs YPG. But both US and Turkey are anti-IS and not hostile to each other. No way to account for such right now where you'd have a battlefield where YPG, IS, pro-government and anti-government Syrian forces are active in the same region. The current binary "u good, u bad" system is a big deal breaker and i'd love to see it gone. It is a main blocker for realistic mission with realistic ROE.

Agreed.

[Northstar98]

1 minute ago, Desert Fox said:

Thinking about this, something that goes beyond a "neutral/friendly/hostile matrix" would be awesome. Thinking about a matrix, but you also put in values for each faction relation that prioritizes who is shot first, and who maybe is hostile but of lower priority and ignored if a higher priority hostile is on the field. This would allow for temporary cease-fire between otherwise hostile (AI) forces depending on the current situation.

Regarding this, C:MO also has another setting 'unfriendly'; this is like "hostile" but without the shooting (though units will still ready themselves for engagement, intercept and shadow units, but won't fire on them until the posture degrades to 'hostile'), this could also be used for prioritisation, with the AI prioritising hostile sides over unfriendly sides.

Conversely, ceasfires could be established by the posture changing from 'hostile' to 'unfriendly'.