Airbase Controllers for automated AI tasking

[Exorcet]

With the popular demand for more dynamic content in DCS, and along with the upcoming dynamic campaign feature, I want to promote an idea to help bring dynamic mission making to the mission editor. That idea is the airbase controller, which can be placed at an airport to automate flights coming from the airbase.

This is more than just ATC, the idea is to have something that reacts to what is going on on the map and try to reach a desired goal. For example the airbase controller could be set to simply defend the airbase. It could do this by spawning and organizing CAP flights. Or maybe the goal would just be to populate a map with civilian air traffic. You'd place it at an airport and give it a list things to spawn. For a military controller you would provide a list aircraft groups on the airbase available for the controller to call, time between spawns, and a list of destinations, and tasks and targets to engage, for example Intercept, orbit, ground attack, etc. Targets might be trigger zones or other groups/units. This way you could automate the defense of airbases in a mission or just have a constant randomized stream of AI performing missions in the back ground without having to spend a lot of time adding flights in the ME.

Here is a potential example of what the GUI might look like in the ME:

So in this example the controller has access to F-15 and F-16 groups at its airbase. I will spawn a group every hours to fly CAP over CAP Trigger Zone and these CAP flights will engage everything in a 40 mile radius of the zone. Their target is set to Aircraft, meaning attack anything in the air, and Ariel 3, so if that specific group is detected they will prioritize it. The groups are also set to orbit their destination.

And a civilian flight example:

Here 747's and 777's will be spawned every 5 minutes and then takeoff and fly to Dubai International. Orbit is unchecked so that the aircraft behave like airliners.

I think this concept would also tie in very well with the warehouse system. For example if the controller must pull aircraft and weapons from the airbase it is placed at, then you could control the resources available to it. An airbase might only have 4 Su-27, and if these are launched and destroyed the controller would be forced to use other aircraft for missions, or might be unable to launch missions at all until the airbase is resupplied. The resupply job could even be tasked to another controller sitting at a different base further behind the front lines. That base would just send flights of aircraft to the forward base as needed for resupply.

So, in summary I'd like to place some kind of aircraft generator at airbases to automate tasking in user created missions. I've provided some examples of how it could work, but it's a pretty open ended idea so there are certainly room for other options or settings. Perhaps the idea doesn't need to be limited airports but could also be applied to ground units. I also think such a thing might be helpful to have in the dynamic campaign, although maybe ED has already thought of such a thing.

[Exorcet]

With the recent update to include more dynamic MP spawning, I wanted to revisit this request. The new spawn system appears to be MP only, but it might have some of the needed functionality to dynamically spawn AI aircraft (I can only guess).

Most of the AI that I place in missions is supposed to represent a dynamic enemy response so having an airbase controller to do this for me would make for potentially more convincing enemy action and save me from hours of playing waypoints, aircraft, and triggers.

I strongly believe that some kind of automatic AI mission planning would greatly enhance DCS mission building and between the dynamic campaign and the new dynamic spawns I hope that it also aligns with work that ED is currently doing.