Non combat mission generation

[DimSim]

The goal of this wish, is to create a single mission, or if needed, random missions, with no specific combat objective.  Instead, populate a mix of armed and civilian activity on each terrain map.

The primary goal is to allow players to perform either training or even recreational flight activities while being surrounded by activity making the world appear more alive and immersive.

For example:

• Military airfields will have military aircraft taking off and landing.
• Civilian airfields will have civilian aircraft taking off and landing.
• Both military and civilian flights will be present in the air.
• Water areas will have water craft of all types

What we have right now, are a few, very limited 'Free Flight' instant missions, and a variety of training missions. We also have civilian  vehicle traffic including trains, which is great.

A goal of this 'single' mission, or variation of mission generator, is to combine these goals (free flight & training) into a 'living world' back drop to facilitate armed and un-armed flight training.

If someone reading this is thinking 'Just use the mission editor and create a living world on each map'. Then please do go ahead and do that, share me the link when you're done, I'll be appreciative  .

[cfrag]

8 hours ago, DimSim said:

with no specific combat objective.

This would be a tough nut to crack, as - the way that you phrase it - the objective is intentionally insufficiently defined. I think what you are looking for is a mission generator that either randomly picks 3 types of missions from a set of e.g. 12, and assembles those three around you and leaves it up to you which one to go after when you discover it. This mission has a limited 'shelf life', as when the mission is created, DCS currently has very little means to randomize the mission itself.

Another approach would be to create a mission that offers all (or a good portion) of the missions that you are interested in, randomizes them for replay-ability and allows the pilot to pick whatever they like. These missions already exist - not from ED, but from mission authors who post their missions on ED's User Files. The type of mission usually is called a 'sandbox' or similar.

So, yeah, I'd love if there was a more flexible, more randomized mission 'configurator' that could randomly pull down some mission types around you. I wouldn't hold my breath though, as the kind people at ED have shown their very limited abilities in content creation tools with that QAG thing that IMHO can't do anything right. 

WRT the living, breathing world, you would again need to resort to third party tools (civil air traffic etc), and be mindful of the fact that each and every moving part will draw processor cycles. So if you populate all airfields, your CPUs may crumble from that load alone. To curtail this, you'd need to create a living bubble around your base of operation. I agree that DCS's Mission Editor should be able to place 'bubbles of activity' that automatically provide that living, breathing semblance of life, while not having it outside to calm your CPU's nerves.

Edited Saturday at 07:23 AM by cfrag

[DimSim]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

While someone could use the current mission editor to populate units, you are right in saying we need technology to make a large map simulate that 'bubble of activity' near the player.

You're also right that 'purists' would expect civilian ATC at civ airports. Baby steps though, just having some civ air traffic would be a start.  While I didn't mention it in my  post, ATC was actually a primary 'training' scenario I had in mind, just to take off, navigate and fly to same or other airfields following ATC. We do have some dedicated user made missions which add more realistic ATC. 

(Not directed at cfrag) Rather than dismiss the idea out of hand due to the many complexities, this could be a long term goal, with a series of development steps along the way.  For example, MS Flight Sim has sliders for airport traffic, vehicles, boats and aircraft.  We currently just have civ vehicle traffic.  Adding civ boats where maps define valid regions could work the same way. Air fields could define static objects representing parked aircraft and support vehicles, to be enabled or disabled enmass to liven up the world, even if they initially don't move at all.