Encyclopedia Revamped and Enhanced

[tugais]

Fellow simmers, dear Eagle Dynamics members,

This request has been on my mind for a long time now but I actually never took time to write/ask about it until today - sweet, sweet hollidays (or sad to spend a tiny fraction of them in writing this post - your choice).

We all love and appreciate the study sim level background around which DCS World is built upon, this is certainly one of the main appeal of the game while we all wait for gaming core features being implemented - looking at you dynamic campaign. Instead of complaining for a lack of dynamic campaign each passing week, I spend *a lot* of time in the mission editor and read a ton of books about defense and geopolitics to write compelling scenarios, mini campaigns.

Here's an example :

 

To write these dystopians missions I use several sources as I said : history books, doctrine manuals, studies from thinktanks, universities research teams, intelligence agencies that declassified their documents. One of the most important step to transition between the research and the actual editing is the use of several books from Jane's such as the Land-Based Air Defence volumes to actually know what kind of hardware the protagonists had in their warehouses at the time (I'm mainly interested in Cold War era and 90's). Then I just have to go through my OOBs to get a sense of the organizational structure their formations used.

Once I gather the required material I can launch DCS World and its mission editor. And this is where my problems begin. While I understand perfectly that we can't replicate in its entirety the equipment used by the countries depicted on the DCS theaters, I try to find the closest match possible to fill in the blanks, to this effect I rely on the Encyclopedia - yeah I finally get to it.

The current implementation of the Encyclopedia does not serve the Study Sim Level on which DCS World relies. The different systems, armored vehicules, MBTs, aircrafts, boats are for most of them not fully described - some does not even have a description. Some equipment has a very thorough description of its conception, operational life and its characterics (autonomy, engagement ranges, altitude ranges, detection ranges, etc.).

I wish the Encylcopedia would offer this kind of information for every single item listed in it. Using some of my sources, I see discrepancies in technical data, for which I don't care as they are minimal, but I'd love at least to know exactly how the different hardware performs in game. These informations would help tremendously when writing the INTEL documents to brief the different teams engaged in the scenario/mini-campaign.

Of course, there's always a possibility to simply try every single asset and test it to get some sort of basic informations about them. But I think it's not enough and that the Encyclopedia should really live by its name and be the primary source of information for the players and the data geeks some of us are.

Oh ! And to close this request/plea I have one last idea. If there is, someday, a comprehensive Encyclopedia in DCS World, why not add an "Export" button to create a kneeboard containing the specifications of the hardware displayed ? Just my two cents.

Thank you for those of you who took the time to read this (long) post. Have a nice day.