Afghan Assets

[Sunbather]

Am 3.2.2025 um 14:49 schrieb Don Rudi:

Fully agree. Civilians are needed to create immersive missions, where the player has to think twice if or how he attacks a target. 

Especially since we got the Afghanistan and Iraq maps. ROE played a huge role in the recent wars there. I really hope ED will take note of this. As I said in some post above: there are very few wargames that simulate this but imo it is an absolute must, especially when you want to simulate COIN.

Edited February 6 by Sunbather

[zerO_crash]

This question of expanded ambient life isn`t really presented properly. Mechanics-wise, there are two distinct sides of what has been asked for by many of us - ambient life:

 

One side, is the general population side, which would be a magnificent undertaking. There is little immersion to be talked about, if on the whole map, only two cities have "some" civilian vibrance (starting base and target destination). In general, the population of a map, should be strictly speaking, tied to the "civilian traffic" option that we have for civilian vehicles. It could, by all means, be split as a separate setting, but it would still have to work like vehicle traffic. That is so as to maintain any decent performance, and not have the mission designer spend 95% of his time creating pathing for civilians. ED could potentially research here whether these assets (along with current "civilian traffic" - vehicles) could have damage model to them. It has also been requested some years ago (and multiple times since then) to have a system for creating zones where civilian traffic no longer exists (contigency zones, etc...).

 

On the other side, for fine-tuning a specific area or creating AO outside of cities, individual models of civilians. This will obviously take a greater performance hit (we have to be pragmatic about this one), however the considered AO is then typically smaller than a whole city. In such an instance, there is a significant benefit to added assets. There is also much more work with pathing, ROE, and the likes. A very important point that comes forth through this discussion (also requested in general DCS wishlist subforum), is the notion of a third coalition. Currently, we only have two coalitions in DCS. For a civilian faction to have any meaningful position, there needs to be introduced a third coalition with the possibility for it to be neutral. Until we have that, no matter how many civilian models get added, you'll have to make the civilians either red or blue. In that instance, they will either be hostile towards you (and grant points for kills, regardless of preset ROE), or they'll be killed by the surrounding "enemy" forces simply for belonging to your coalition. There are ways to mitigate this limitation, but it is neither practical nor efficient. As such, this request is bigger in planning and execution, than one might think.

[Sunbather]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb zerO_crash:

This question of expanded ambient life isn`t really presented properly. Mechanics-wise, there are two distinct sides of what has been asked for by many of us - ambient life:

[...]

Great exposition of the problems involved but at the same time, I think you're overthinking it.

Having an easy way to mark one building or truck as the objective that needs to be destroyed is already in the game. Now there needs to be the opposite trigger: when another building or truck than the intended target is destroyed, you lose points or even fail the mission right away. Maybe something like this can already be done but it seems very complicated or else more people would implement it in their missions / mission generators.

Only having that would already go a long way to increase immersion.

[zerO_crash]

21 hours ago, Sunbather said:

Great exposition of the problems involved but at the same time, I think you're overthinking it.

Having an easy way to mark one building or truck as the objective that needs to be destroyed is already in the game. Now there needs to be the opposite trigger: when another building or truck than the intended target is destroyed, you lose points or even fail the mission right away. Maybe something like this can already be done but it seems very complicated or else more people would implement it in their missions / mission generators.

Only having that would already go a long way to increase immersion.

 

It seems that you don't know how the basics of the editor work. We already have the functionality request in DCS, albeit through triggers and one that doesn't properly allow for a strategic-level scenario with multiple factions involved. For what you ask for, there is the flag system, commonly known as points. Flags are added or detracted based on the conditions specified in the script/trigger.  

 

Additionally, this isn't overthinking, it's how the business works. As a simulator, the choices that the devs make are rather limited. The functionality needs to be advanced enough to go hand-in-hand with the advancement of DCS, as well as remaining a lucrative incentive. Quick additions and fixes might work in games, but hardly in a near-professional simulation. This bites particularly down the road, should a function get added, and then followed up by requests of expansion of said function. If the baseline is chosen for reasons of "quick" delivery, then the time, R&D, manpower and money invested is wasted, as any further expansions of the system will require a redesign. 

 

DCS is too complex of a product to be going back and forth between any new innovations. Taking into consideration as well the fact that it is a niche market, means that ED needs to solidify its business choices with good knowledge and predictability towards our community. That's not to say that such functionality will not make it to DCS, it most definitely will. However, it will take time. As a mission designer myself, I can tell you that the best implementations are those that have most usecases to them. A simplification, and added functionality to what we current have, is what in essence is asked for here. If that is to be obtained, and properly so, it has to be considered how the system might/will expand in the future, so as to make the proper integration today. There are still leftovers from initial iterations of DCS (Flanker) which still need overhaul in order to adjust them to an environment with TrackIR/VR/Multi-screen setups. 

 

Understnad that the reason DCS exists today, is because right executive decisions were made going back two decades ago. 

[shagrat]

Am 4.2.2025 um 09:25 schrieb Sunbather:

Now there needs to be the opposite trigger: when another building or truck than the intended target is destroyed, you lose points or even fail the mission right away. Maybe something like this can already be done but it seems very complicated or else more people would implement it in their missions / mission generators.

Only having that would already go a long way to increase immersion.

It's not that complicated, actually. The issue is we lack the visual queues (aka a model of a guy without a weapon) to allow placing (spawning) near/between/around places, where you want to enforce ROE. I can easily track map buildings getting destroyed by a faction and add/deduct points or trigger actions.

But I can't visualize the "legitimate" target versus an illegitimate drop/attack or even more challenging, force a decision making process, where you may accept damage to a "seemingly abandoned" compound, but would need to hold your horses, if there are half a dozen civilians in the street.

As I said before, even a simple insurgent model without the Ak-47 (unarmed) and a Pick-up truck with the DShk removed, would allow mission builders to do exactly this.

[rhinofilms]

Agree that the map is beautiful but can feel deserted without the civilian activity.  Why not just make civilian units immortal so they can't become targets?

[Raisuli]

On 11/19/2024 at 5:05 AM, shagrat said:

So if we replace the carrier dudes with the airshow crowd as a stand in for people at an afghan market and drop cluster bombs on those, we are obviously fine, right?!

Are you suggesting we should stop cluster bombing the airshow crowd and render everything but the -97 and -105 completely pointless?