Dynamic Campaign Discussion Thread

[NineLine]

Not if QA throws them out :D

 

But now the QA team has impacted the war effort :D

 

Round and round lol...

[Booger]

Semantics.

 

That's like saying Paul Tibbets ended the war in the Pacific.

[GGTharos]

Yes. And that impact has been hugely overstated many times. You'd have to have a lot of people failing.

 

Fail enough for no good reason and your own forces will reassign you, assuming you come back.

 

Fail due to mechanical/other things beyond your control, you can be pretty sure some other guy on the other side is experiencing the same thing, while on both sides there's some guy who's just never had a plane break or a single bomb miss.

 

Big deal.

 

Well I doubt that in war that failures are equal on each side, otherwise the war would probably never end right, everything being equal. That is what I am saying, if you fail more than the other side, then there is some impact to your side.

[NineLine]

Semantics.

 

That's like saying Paul Tibbets ended the war in the Pacific.

 

But as I have been saying, no one individual wins the war, but in certain cases their impact can be felt more. People want a DC that they can make an impact on.

[GGTharos]

Those are by far very rare exceptions. And people always want things that aren't realistic despite saying otherwise. :D

 

'But ... immersion! realism! The DC!' (as angels sing hallelujah and the heavens part to illuminate the holy DC! )

 

But as I have been saying, no one individual wins the war, but in certain cases their impact can be felt more. People want a DC that they can make an impact on.

[EtherealN]

Actually, if our hypothetical worker only made broken units, AND Q/A were to fail to notice any of them, it still probably wouldn't be noticed by the pilots or commanders. The effect of that individual guy is there, but it's small enough to be indistinguishable from the noise inherent to any data collection.

 

Think of it like this: Chuck Norris storms ashore on Omaha beach and kills 500 germans with his pinky toe during the ensuing campaign. He is the hero! Superman incarnate!

 

...well, so he did 0.5% of the work.

 

See that? I did a Chuck Norris, and it's STILL tiny!

 

Then take something like a Korea campaign. We're essentially talking about a line where there's at least 1 million men standing on just the north side. I think even a lot of people holding the rank of General would have a problem making a distinguishable impact on that mess. It's just so big! You need to wrap your mind around the rediculous scale of it. And individual soldier isn't any more likely to have a distinguishable impact than an individual worker is to have on the economy of the United Stated of America... Sure, that dude working aisle 3 at Wal-Mart is technically making a difference, but... Yeah... ;)

[NineLine]

Those are by far very rare exceptions. And people always want things that aren't realistic despite saying otherwise. :D

 

'But ... immersion! realism! The DC!' (as angels sing hallelujah and the heavens part to illuminate the holy DC! )

 

 

OK, if people are asking for ultra-realistic DC of a real war zone, then ok, I concede that it would not be possible. The calculations to simulate all those meaningless tank kills to see who would win would be astronomical ;)

 

Maybe they want a Dynamic Career... that sounds doable by what we have talked about :D

[NineLine]

Actually, if our hypothetical worker only made broken units, AND Q/A were to fail to notice any of them, it still probably wouldn't be noticed by the pilots or commanders. The effect of that individual guy is there, but it's small enough to be indistinguishable from the noise inherent to any data collection.

 

Think of it like this: Chuck Norris storms ashore on Omaha beach and kills 500 germans with his pinky toe during the ensuing campaign. He is the hero! Superman incarnate!

 

...well, so he did 0.5% of the work.

 

See that? I did a Chuck Norris, and it's STILL tiny!

 

Then take something like a Korea campaign. We're essentially talking about a line where there's at least 1 million men standing on just the north side. I think even a lot of people holding the rank of General would have a problem making a distinguishable impact on that mess. It's just so big! You need to wrap your mind around the rediculous scale of it. And individual soldier isn't any more likely to have a distinguishable impact than an individual worker is to have on the economy of the United Stated of America... Sure, that dude working aisle 3 at Wal-Mart is technically making a difference, but... Yeah... ;)

 

Your logic is skewed... why would Chuck Norris stop at 500 Germans? :D

[EtherealN]

Because Chuck Norris is an overrated fool.

 

Try to take in the point being made. ;)

[GGTharos]

OK, if people are asking for ultra-realistic DC of a real war zone, then ok, I concede that it would not be possible. The calculations to simulate all those meaningless tank kills to see who would win would be astronomical ;)

 

They say they do! :D

 

Maybe they want a Dynamic Career... that sounds doable by what we have talked about :D

 

 

Indeed, so they say! :D Right before 'I want to impact the DC!'

[NineLine]

Because Chuck Norris is an overrated fool.

 

Try to take in the point being made. ;)

 

Oh I understand the point your making, but I also understand people want Dynamic, again I say Campaign may be the wrong word, maybe the right word is Career, battle, Tour, I dont know... but people want a more dynamic experience and see a DC as that...

[Booger]

But as I have been saying, no one individual wins the war, but in certain cases their impact can be felt more. People want a DC that they can make an impact on.

 

Well sure. History is rich with individuals who have marked their place in the grand time-line. All I'm saying is it's not that simple to say "one person did ____" as the norm.

 

I think we can agree that Manfred von Richthofen was quite the over-achiever.

 

But I'm starting to wonder how individual achievement in history applies to dynamic campaigns.

[Booger]

Think of it like this: Chuck Norris...

 

+1 for the dumbed-down version including a Chuck Norris reference.

[EtherealN]

Well, in my opinion, that's the fundamental issue with using DC's as the vehicle to immersion. DC's, such as those we've see in Falcon, the Razorworks titles and so on are about the war. All fine and dandy. But I think as far as immersion goes it's a lot more important to focus on improving the things that directly surround the player. Tonnes of things that can be done there, some of which can be tied to a DC, but most are completely disconnected from a DC - things like improved comms with ground forces and so on.

 

As an example of a thing that ties into the DC, we could have the squadron list in IL2 (not IL2:COD). When I played that, I worried a lot about the state of the squadron and actually made calls during missions based on it - becoming more risk-averse if the squadron was running out of experienced pilots etcetera. That's great - but you can have that function without a DC, and in the case of IL2 of course the DC was crap. In a non-DC environment, we could for example see things like have your wingman skill levels be affected by whether good wingmen died in previous missions, things like what the status of arms stockpiles are, etcetera.

 

Basically, there's a lot more important things to work on before the DC becomes important (at least IMO), but fortunately most of those things can be re-used in a DC when one is finally implemented.

[NineLine]

But I'm starting to wonder how individual achievement in history applies to dynamic campaigns.

 

Because the discussion is why have a dynamic campaign when the individual playing the DC has little impact on the over all campaign, or should I dumb it down for you, I can include a Chuck Norris reference if you wish?

[NineLine]

Well, in my opinion, that's the fundamental issue with using DC's as the vehicle to immersion. DC's, such as those we've see in Falcon, the Razorworks titles and so on are about the war. All fine and dandy. But I think as far as immersion goes it's a lot more important to focus on improving the things that directly surround the player. Tonnes of things that can be done there, some of which can be tied to a DC, but most are completely disconnected from a DC - things like improved comms with ground forces and so on.

 

As an example of a thing that ties into the DC, we could have the squadron list in IL2 (not IL2:COD). When I played that, I worried a lot about the state of the squadron and actually made calls during missions based on it - becoming more risk-averse if the squadron was running out of experienced pilots etcetera. That's great - but you can have that function without a DC, and in the case of IL2 of course the DC was crap. In a non-DC environment, we could for example see things like have your wingman skill levels be affected by whether good wingmen died in previous missions, things like what the status of arms stockpiles are, etcetera.

 

Basically, there's a lot more important things to work on before the DC becomes important (at least IMO), but fortunately most of those things can be re-used in a DC when one is finally implemented.

 

I think that you would really want alot more player controlled vehicles before a DC would/could become interesting to me? The ability to jump into other aspects of the war would be interesting, but then, thats probably something out of the range of what ED is trying to do with their simulations, least right now.

[Booger]

...things like improved comms with ground forces ...

 

This, a thousand times.

[Frostiken]

I don't know, I think you're really underestimating the impact a well-coordinated air force can have especially on modern operations.

 

First, you mentioned 'simulator-level kill-counts'. To that I say: 492nd Fighter Squadron, Operation Odyssey Dawn: 477 munitions employed, 407 targets destroyed :)

 

I think drawing parallels to WW2 is less than fair for a few reasons - the first being the overall lack of effectiveness air combat generally had due to technology limitations and lack of intelligence. You would send two dozen bombers to hit a tank tread factory, they'd drop 100 bombs and blow up everything but the factory, then they'd go back and try it again.

 

If an F-16 pilot flies in and employs a HARM against an SA-11 radar site, he's punched a huge hole through their air defenses with the destruction of a single target.

 

Consider the employment of A-10s in Afghanistan. Given the specific mission "take this town" or "defend this base", having an F-15E or A-10 in the area will MASSIVELY swing odds in your favor. In a dynamic campaign, it could singlehandedly affect what ground you've managed to hold.

 

WW2 was a different animal and comparing it simply isn't fair - in WW2, military forces were considered extremely expendable. Planes were rolling out of factories on a daily basis, and the ease of manufacturing things due to the complete lack of technology they incorporated meant you could retool just about any metal foundry into something to make tanks since all you needed was enough steel and a diesel engine. To compare to modern-world, the Air Force never even had enough TPods in its inventory to outfit all the F-15Es - they still don't, as a matter of fact, in order to get a TPod on every aircraft we have to mix LANTIRNs and Snipers.

 

I doubt anything like that would be possible these days. It takes months for St. Louis to roll out a new F-15 and while I have no doubt that they could get a frame thrown together even at multiple factories consider the avionics that have to be put into each one, most of which were made by companies that went under decades ago. You'd then have to flight test each one, a process that would take even longer, since pilots are a lot more valuable than they were back then.

 

So yeah, bombing tanks in WW2 didn't really matter, because for every tank you bombed, three more rolled out of the factory - but that isn't true anymore. No military today has force levels even approaching what any single country had in WW2 in terms of number of tanks, planes, etc. and I don't think it would ever be economically feasible to build up to such a level. You could loose a hundred aircraft in a day and it was considered too bad. You can park your aircraft inside a hardened concrete structure. In WW2 it would take hundreds of bombs to land enough to collapse it on the aircraft. In the real world, a single F-15E carrying small diameter bombs can destroy twenty in a single sortie. In WW2 you'd see fifty thousand infantry on each side in a single battle, now we use that same number to hold an entire country.

 

 

So yeah, stop comparing WW2 to modern day operations.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Frostiken

[Cali]

Not if QA throws them out :D

 

For some strange reason QA doesn't seem to be around much in the war zone, but they are there.......somewhere :D

[Frostie]

 

So yeah, bombing tanks in WW2 didn't really matter, because for every tank you bombed, three more rolled out of the factory - but that isn't true anymore. No military today has force levels even approaching what any single country had in WW2 in terms of number of tanks, planes, etc. and I don't think it would ever be economically feasible to build up to such a level. You could loose a hundred aircraft in a day and it was considered too bad. You can park your aircraft inside a hardened concrete structure. In WW2 it would take hundreds of bombs to land enough to collapse it on the aircraft. In the real world, a single F-15E carrying small diameter bombs can destroy twenty in a single sortie. In WW2 you'd see fifty thousand infantry on each side in a single battle, now we use that same number to hold an entire country.

 

 

So yeah, stop comparing WW2 to modern day operations.

This is probably because WW3 thankfully has never materialised. If it did then im pretty sure you'd see a massive ramp up of production much like WW2. After all allied forces in WW2 didn't have multitudes of tanks and planes hanging around in the 1930's just waiting for war to break out did they.

What you call modern wars are infact small scale wars which have occured for eons.

 

If a large scale war broke out between major countries every F-15E that got sent up would find a worthy opponent to shoot it down. This is when mass production occurs, not during small scale wars against inferior opponents.

[aaron886]

I don't know, I think you're really underestimating the impact a well-coordinated air force can have especially on modern operations.

 

First, you mentioned 'simulator-level kill-counts'. To that I say: 492nd Fighter Squadron, Operation Odyssey Dawn: 477 munitions employed, 407 targets destroyed :)

 

I think drawing parallels to WW2 is less than fair for a few reasons - the first being the overall lack of effectiveness air combat generally had due to technology limitations and lack of intelligence. You would send two dozen bombers to hit a tank tread factory, they'd drop 100 bombs and blow up everything but the factory, then they'd go back and try it again.

 

If an F-16 pilot flies in and employs a HARM against an SA-11 radar site, he's punched a huge hole through their air defenses with the destruction of a single target.

 

Consider the employment of A-10s in Afghanistan. Given the specific mission "take this town" or "defend this base", having an F-15E or A-10 in the area will MASSIVELY swing odds in your favor. In a dynamic campaign, it could singlehandedly affect what ground you've managed to hold.

 

WW2 was a different animal and comparing it simply isn't fair - in WW2, military forces were considered extremely expendable. Planes were rolling out of factories on a daily basis, and the ease of manufacturing things due to the complete lack of technology they incorporated meant you could retool just about any metal foundry into something to make tanks since all you needed was enough steel and a diesel engine. To compare to modern-world, the Air Force never even had enough TPods in its inventory to outfit all the F-15Es - they still don't, as a matter of fact, in order to get a TPod on every aircraft we have to mix LANTIRNs and Snipers.

 

I doubt anything like that would be possible these days. It takes months for St. Louis to roll out a new F-15 and while I have no doubt that they could get a frame thrown together even at multiple factories consider the avionics that have to be put into each one, most of which were made by companies that went under decades ago. You'd then have to flight test each one, a process that would take even longer, since pilots are a lot more valuable than they were back then.

 

So yeah, bombing tanks in WW2 didn't really matter, because for every tank you bombed, three more rolled out of the factory - but that isn't true anymore. No military today has force levels even approaching what any single country had in WW2 in terms of number of tanks, planes, etc. and I don't think it would ever be economically feasible to build up to such a level. You could loose a hundred aircraft in a day and it was considered too bad. You can park your aircraft inside a hardened concrete structure. In WW2 it would take hundreds of bombs to land enough to collapse it on the aircraft. In the real world, a single F-15E carrying small diameter bombs can destroy twenty in a single sortie. In WW2 you'd see fifty thousand infantry on each side in a single battle, now we use that same number to hold an entire country.

 

 

So yeah, stop comparing WW2 to modern day operations.

 

 

tl;dr - "smart weapons."

[Speed]

This is probably because WW3 thankfully has never materialised. If it did then im pretty sure you'd see a massive ramp up of production much like WW2. After all allied forces in WW2 didn't have multitudes of tanks and planes hanging around in the 1930's just waiting for war to break out did they.

What you call modern wars are infact small scale wars which have occured for eons.

 

If a large scale war broke out between major countries every F-15E that got sent up would find a worthy opponent to shoot it down. This is when mass production occurs, not during small scale wars against inferior opponents.

 

Hell no!!! The unit cost of a P-51 in 1945 was $51,000 [1]. Adjusted for inflation, that's $640,000 today [2]. The unit cost of an F-16C in today's dollars is like $26M [2] [3]. And that's just a crappy, el-cheapo Viper. A F-22 is like what... $200M? $300M? The F-35 is beginning to approach the same cost.

 

Fighter aircraft today, in fact, all forms of combat vehicles, are ridiculously expensive as compared to 1945, even after adjusting for inflation. Furthermore, the federal budget and economy may be bigger today, but it is no where near 40 to 400 times bigger it would have to be to make mass WWII-numbers production of modern military hardware possible. There is no way you could ever produce nearly the sheer numbers they did in WWII.

 

UCAVs may change the equation though. Cheap and overwhelmingly plentiful. Your F-22/T-50 becomes useless after it runs out of all its missiles. 30 UCAVs at $10M a piece vs 1 F-22 at $300M.... hmmm......

 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_P-51_Mustang

[2] http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-16

Edited August 17, 2011 by Speed

[Moa]

Frostie I don't believe you are correct in thinking industrial production would be a factor in a 'WWIII' type situation. Basically the forces you have are only those on hand when the balloon goes up. Either the Soviets would reach their objective very quickly (Rhine and Channel Ports) since Western Europe is actually relatively small, or NATO would hold them and within a month the Soviets would start to run out of supplies (their units did not appeared geared for a prolonged war as NATOs were) which would get worse as time went on. By a second month of such a war the Soviet Cat II divisions may have made their way across Poland but this would be outweighed by the effect of US moving divisions across the Atlantic to the POMCUS sites and slower-moving divisions coming by sea (assuming the GIUK gap held and the Battle of the Atlantic was won by NATO [very likely]).

 

As far as the air war goes, it takes far too long to train a modern pilot for anyone except the existing pilots to affect the outcome.

 

In the case of a stalemate it would be too temping to use tactical nukes to break the deadlock and things would be resolved quickly one way of the other.

 

Historical Notes: NATO publicly declared it would only use nukes if it had to, but wanted to avoid using them to prevent Germany from being devastated. The Warsaw Pact publicly declared it would not use nukes first but actually planned to use tac nukes in massive numbers, calculating that using them against NATO up to the Rhine would result in NATO using them along the Vistula against the second echelon forces crossing Poland. Needless to say, when the archives were discovered a few years back the Poles were not happy at all at what their 'ally' had planned. Very fortunately none of this came to pass.

 

Also, in the 1960s it is likely the Warsaw Pact would have won a conventional war (primarily using sheer numbers). By the 1980s the balance had swung in NATOs favor with the UK and US units increasing in relative quality and the proliferation of large numbers of good ATGMs, which would have made armoured assaults against prepared defences pretty hard. Even without ATGMs do some research on Lt Zvika Greengold and what he was able to do against 5 Syrian Armoured divisions (the actual number was around 188 IDF tanks vs around 2000 Syrian tanks, 10:1 odds but guess who held out long enough to win - which is all NATO needed to do in Europe).

Edited August 17, 2011 by Moa

[Booger]

I don't know, I think you're really underestimating the impact a well-coordinated air force can have especially on modern operations.

 

Against what? Current conflicts? You assume quite a bit I think. Military might is grossly tipped to the western side due to the lack of it on the opposing sides. Your blanket statement resembles playing chess while your opponent only uses less than 1/4 of the pieces you do.

 

The threat alone isn't even the same. Did bombers during the Gulf War have an air threat while bombing Kuwait? Not really. Did bombers during WWII have an air threat when bombing pretty much everywhere? Absolutely.

 

Strictly speaking air warfare - A/A engagements since the Vietnam war have been few & far between. In modern operations, US airpower hasn't been challenged on a large playing field (tactically or strategically).

 

I think drawing parallels to WW2 is less than fair for a few reasons - the first being the overall lack of effectiveness air combat generally had due to technology limitations and lack of intelligence. You would send two dozen bombers to hit a tank tread factory, they'd drop 100 bombs and blow up everything but the factory, then they'd go back and try it again.

 

You're playing a numbers game based on force-multiplication. Let's shoot from the hip and say a two-ship flight today would be the equivalent to a 10 ship in WWII (both in capability & cost). While the numbers may change, the scope of the battlefield remains the same, and will always remain to be the constant.

 

Management of many is the same as management of few. It is a matter of organization. ~Sun Tzu

 

The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers. ~Sun Tzu

 

Mind you, with force-multiplication comes the other side of the coin--losing a two-ship flight would be the equivalent to losing 10 in WWII (assuming, of course, the ratio is 1:1...which may or not be the case. I've never done the math).

 

So with that out of the way, let's put our focus on technology. While improved western technology looks good in the press, the "other side" has certainly been doing improvements as well. Let's talk "modern warfare"...

 

As I understand it, the F/A-18 was made (in part) to counter the Mig-29's capability. Let's compare them. Actually, neither of us are experts in either type of aircraft (well, I assume you're not), so let's see what the actual pilots of each have to say: Operation Red October. That in itself reinforces the point that since there hasn't been a full scale war between armies such as Vietnam, Korea & the World Wars, relying on paper vs practical comparisons doesn't reflect a mirror image.

 

That is THE whole point of that training.

 

As if it couldn't happen in modern times further? Are you aware that the Soviets had invented a supercavitating torpedo system that, had it been employed during the cold war, would no doubt have swept the seas of almost everything they didn't want there? While people would be scratching their heads wondering what happened, they could have strategically, on the naval layer, cleaned house.

 

Intelligence? Are you sure you want to open that can of worms? I mean really, I could give endless examples in counter-intelligence (misinformation) as well as successful intelligence that both worked & didn't.

 

When all the cards are put down, not you picking and choosing which ones to play, I would say WWII is an excellent comparison. We're talking about a full-scale DC, not just limited elements that have you favored for victory.

 

If an F-16 pilot flies in and employs a HARM against an SA-11 radar site, he's punched a huge hole through their air defenses with the destruction of a single target.

 

Again, you assume too much & don't take the lessons that history gives you...and couldn't be more wrong, I'm sorry to say.

 

SAMs overlap for a number of strategic purposes. This employment tactic is hardly new. The "huge hole" you're talking about takes a bit more than simply taking out a few SAM sites.

 

During Iraqi Freedom, SAM locations were strategically targeted to allow (open up) a series of "alleys" for bombers to fly through to reduce detection. The Iraqis simply failed miserably to do anything about it (tactically or strategically)...not that they would/could really do much.

 

Since we're on the subject of SAMs, let's talk big money - stealth. Technically, stealth isn't as "safe" as it's perceived to be. Tactically, all it takes is a matter of time to exploit it.

 

Consider the employment of A-10s in Afghanistan. Given the specific mission "take this town" or "defend this base", having an F-15E or A-10 in the area will MASSIVELY swing odds in your favor. In a dynamic campaign, it could singlehandedly affect what ground you've managed to hold

.

 

A quick read for you...

 

Notice that, according to General Herzog, the Israeli Air Force needed ground action before it became truly effective, effective in a manner congruent with doctrinal desires for proper use. The logical inference is that prior to the elimination of certain segments of SAM and AAA defenses by ground action, the IAF was not free to attack at will. If it was not free to attack, then it did not enjoy air superiority and could be used, at best, in a defensive role over the battleground where it continued to take high losses.

 

Source Link

 

I like how you worded your sentence. You used "singlehandedly". When a layer of the battlefield is pretty much unopposed, it's a given that you will reign superior within it.

 

Once again, you're using the lack of resistance on the opposing side to support your conclusions, then say "it's a fair comparison" when it's hardly not. If I show up at your house, point to your computer & say "That's mine now" and you don't object to it...

 

Military might is not only reflected in it's proven capability, but how much of a deterrence it provides. On a strategic level, this is where the US stands now. At the same time, it's also where a lot of other powerful countries stand as well.

 

For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. ~Sun Tzu

 

WW2 was a different animal and comparing it simply isn't fair - in WW2, military forces were considered extremely expendable. Planes were rolling out of factories on a daily basis, and the ease of manufacturing things due to the complete lack of technology they incorporated meant you could retool just about any metal foundry into something to make tanks since all you needed was enough steel and a diesel engine. To compare to modern-world, the Air Force never even had enough TPods in its inventory to outfit all the F-15Es - they still don't, as a matter of fact, in order to get a TPod on every aircraft we have to mix LANTIRNs and Snipers.

 

To expand your own point - during Iraqi Freedom, it took visiting Senators to raise holy hell about the lack of armor on...everything & everybody. Now?

.

 

I doubt anything like that would be possible these days. It takes months for St. Louis to roll out a new F-15 and while I have no doubt that they could get a frame thrown together even at multiple factories consider the avionics that have to be put into each one, most of which were made by companies that went under decades ago. You'd then have to flight test each one, a process that would take even longer, since pilots are a lot more valuable than they were back then.

 

That's the cost of having complex force multipliers. If you don't have strong industrial might to obtain & maintain military might, you may succeed in the short-term, but in the long-term you will probably be defeated. Your opposing side wouldn't have the burden of strategic risk--it makes no sense to gamble on the battlefield when they know they can simply chip away at your assets. The burden of risk will ultimately rest with you.

 

Now, for a DC, these points could be transparent, depending on what level of detail you really want to make it at. There was one mention of improved experience in a wingman, but throwing a dynamic economy & industry into a campaign would be a bit much I think.

 

So yeah, bombing tanks in WW2 didn't really matter, because for every tank you bombed, three more rolled out of the factory - but that isn't true anymore. No military today has force levels even approaching what any single country had in WW2 in terms of number of tanks, planes, etc. and I don't think it would ever be economically feasible to build up to such a level. You could loose a hundred aircraft in a day and it was considered too bad. You can park your aircraft inside a hardened concrete structure. In WW2 it would take hundreds of bombs to land enough to collapse it on the aircraft. In the real world, a single F-15E carrying small diameter bombs can destroy twenty in a single sortie. In WW2 you'd see fifty thousand infantry on each side in a single battle, now we use that same number to hold an entire country.

 

Now you're thinking strategically.

 

Here, you're honing down on industry specifically. While, no, you can't spit out a F-15 as fast as you could spit out a Corsair, you're not looking at it AS a force multiplier in the context of production.

 

Not only that, but the advances of technology is also it's greatest weakness logistically. Production time, costs, etc.

 

So, DC specifically, how do you reflect that accurately? Do what the Commanders do - risk assessment. Do you really want to employ a F117 at _____ to go for the big win with high threat, or do you want to use ____ first.

 

Ah, thy 'ol burden of command.

 

So yeah, stop comparing WW2 to modern day operations.

 

It's the lessons learned from WWII (and every other conflict for that matter) that provide us the base strategies & tactics we employ this very day.

 

Comparing a DC to WWII examples is more accurate than modern day conficts - at least during WWII there's a legitimate army fighting back.

 

Then again, if you want a DC that has you fighting insurgencies, then yes, I would completely agree with you.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Booger

[EtherealN]

Then again, if you want a DC that has you fighting insurgencies, then yes, I would completely agree with you.

 

This would incidentally be a very interesting thing to have, but due to the irregular nature of it I suspect that it would be even harder to make a good one than would be the case with what I guess we can call a "Fulda Gap" DC. We'd essentually need a DC that can spit out things like the Deployment campaign in DCS:BS, which strikes me as difficult.

 

What I think would be the good thing to make happen as a middle-ground, would be a campaign similar to GOW, but that has a range of "hooks" for campaign data - munition stocks for both sides, squadron rosters, specific forces to allow successful missions to properly decrease the amount of enemies in the missions afterwards etcetera.

 

A very interesting example of how to "do it right" is, imo, Longbow 2. People thought it was a DC, but it wasn't - just a very cleverly made scripting system. This would allow intelligent mission design without requiring technology no-one has yet.