Multiplayer Admin Battle Commander RTS Ground and Air War

[winchesterdelta1]

fI came up today with a crazy idea.

Still disapointed that there will be no Dynamic campaign in the short run in DCS i started brainstorming what maybe can be equal fun as a Dynamic Campaign. Something that could be played online. And something that "maybe" doesn't need drastic engine adjustments or even coud be made bt a modder.

 

What if the Admin of a server could bring up the map and could spawn tank collums, transport vehicelsinfantry units.... Basicly everything that can be used in the editor. And give them waypoints', scramble AI fighters Dispatching CAP missions and such. (Offcourse with a set of limits)

The Admin at that moment will play as the opposing force and try's to defend his objectives with a linited set of assets. Land, Air and Sea.

In the beginning he should be forced to place its EWR radar stations and SAM sites at the begining of the mission. At the same time the admin can dispatch ground, air or land forces to try and complete his objective.... (destroy bridge, take town enz enz)

 

The opposing force that consists only of human pilots wll offcourse try to prevend all that from happening and complete their objectives.

Or maybe 2 players 1 on either side can be Battle Commanders. I shall say..lets discuss this and see if tis is even remotly possible. Will this even be fun? I think it will.

 

 

In a game like this the battlefield will stay dynamic and should increase teamplay. Also the resources of the game and the power of the AI will be fully used in a "realistic" kind of way.

 

I'm not a programmer or a Modder so i don't know if this will be possible in any kind of way. Done by DCS or a Modder. This can be a great idea for DCS A-10C and DCS Blackshark when they become compatible. But it would be even better if Flaming Cliff also becomes compatible with the above 2. I promise that wouldmake a awsoome oonline experiance.

 

PS I bought myself acopy of DCS A-10C but played it only for 15 min. To bd i won't have any time tojunp online to play it like i did before.

Edited April 1, 2011 by winchesterdelta1

[Le0kong]

That sounds a lot like the Battlefield Commander feature that ED had to remove during the Betas. I remember that you could click on some flags on the F10 map to give attack orders for artillery and tanks, on the Betas.

 

I never looked too much on what can be modded on DCS, but i think the problem is that you can't change units or waypoints on-the-fly during a mission.

[Dimebag1]

I like the idea, it sounds easy to implement but as we all know in games, nothing is as easy to implement as it sounds. I like the idea of the commander reassigning waypoints and objectives on the fly in response to intel about the opposing force, however the problem would be that a typical admin may not be tactically experienced enough to setup appropriate tasking to air units. What would be even cooler is if ground troops could be commanded to perform a certain objective, and in response to a required CAS need the JTAC would send messages to the commander who could then pass on info to a-10 units to contact the jtac on whatever frequency for further tasking.

[winchesterdelta1]

This game mode can go verry indept exploiding al the game resources. That would be sedomr. But it alo requiresmore adjustments to the engine i think.

You can also keepit plain and simple but still keepa sense of realism.

Themain things to make this possible is to make a:

 

-Interactive map

-Possibility to spawn units/vehicels

-Possibility toadjust waypoints

-Possibility to setup certain rules/limits

 

I don't know if a special GUI would be needed or maybe just to make the ingame map as`useable as inthe editor.

[VincentLaw]

I'd say this should be made into an entirely separate module, DCS: Battlefield Commander, with a special commander interface.

 

All of the unit selection could be done prebattle, with a separate deployment phase in a bounded area (Total War as a simple example). All unit commands would be controlled by the commander client, with no preset waypoints to units under the players command, so basically a new AI waypoint system would need to be developed for commander mode. Units should attempt to move towards their waypoints, but be able to react appropriately to attacks from enemies, not just like carefree drones. The current AI probably does this already to a certain extent.

 

Players using other DCS modules could participate in the place of some AI units. The commander player should actually have a physical presence on the map and be killable, maybe just an extension of the ejection easter egg.

 

The more I think about it actually, the less I think this product would sell well, atleast not until there are a lot of other DCS modules, but it might be cool to have a highly realistic modern tactics game.

[Speed]

Battlefield commander was removed in beta 4 because it potentially violated some contract (or contracts) that ED had. In beta 1, 2, and 3, you could indeed command ground forces, call in artillery missions, and even pop smoke on targets. Don't expect it to return, but we may be lucky and see it "return in some form in a future module".

 

So guys, basically... save your breath on this one. No need to post paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of suggestions on it because we simply cannot have it. ED makes way more money on their military contracts than they make on us, so they are not going to endanger their contracts by giving us battle commander mode. Not for a while, at the very least.

 

Right now, I'd just be delighted and happy if the game would just work in multiplayer without incessant CTDs. There's a suggestion! Yet another large multiplayer flight was ruined tonight by a wide variety of CTDs. Maybe I'm being overly-negative, but after spending about eight hours building this mission, about an hour briefing, and having the mission be a total clusterf*** due to CTDs (NOT limited to just effects.dll CTDs), goddamn, my patience and self-control wears thin. I'm sorry, but "the Falcon 4 release was much worse" is NOT an excuse. Anyway, sorry to digress.

Edited April 2, 2011 by Speed

[winchesterdelta1]

Lets listen to speed and not discus this.....!!!!! Why are you tellig us what to discus or not. Its not only about what DCS canmake....Maybe its possible as a community made addon. Keep the things what you can do "simple".

 

I think its petty rude to jump in this forum and tell us not to discuss this further because in your personal opinion its useless. But i must say that the info you gave me about the Beta battlefield commander are things i didn't know.... MY idea is totally not based o the DCS battlefield commander.

Edited April 2, 2011 by winchesterdelta1

[Speed]

Lets listen to speed and not discus this.....!!!!! Why are you tellig us what to discus or not. Its not only about what DCS canmake....Maybe its possible as a community made addon. Keep the things what you can do "simple".

 

I think its petty rude to jump in this forum and tell us not to discuss this further because in your personal opinion its useless. But i must say that the info you gave me about the Beta battlefield commander are things i didn't know.... MY idea is totally not based o the DCS battlefield commander.

 

 

Whatever. I can't help it if it's true. There really and truely is no point in discussing it, because this particular feature, ED cannot give us. This isn't my "personal opinion", it's from ED themselves. The like, 15 page topic, that originally discusssed why we can't have battle commander mode, may still be buried in the General Questions A-10C tech support forum. Last post on it, before it was locked, was probably like Jan. 9th or so.

 

It's also not possible to add as a community add on, because I've looked into the possibilities. I do alot of scripting and modding of the game. It appears that it's not possible to assign custom waypoints in the middle of a mission, not anymore at least. Additionally, and more importantly, anything that WOULD bring back any functionality of the old battlefield commander would possibily endanger ED contracts, and thus, the game would likley be changed so that the community created battle commander mode would no longer work.

 

So even if it were possible, no one in the community would spend the many, many, hours of scripting and programming it would take to bring back battle commander with the significant possibility that ED would just disable all their work in the next A-10 patch.

 

But by all means, if you want to discuss battle commander mode, keep at it, but all your discussions will, by the necessity of ED getting future military contracts, remain fantasy and wishful thinking. It's obvious that ED wants to give us a battle commander mode, and I'm sure we will get it if it ever becomes contractually possible. I know that Battle Commander Mode is on ED's DCS wish list already.

 

Believe me though, I sympathize with your desire for battle commander, I was the strongest proponent of it in my squad and I geared all my early beta missions to make use of it. I doubt that many people were more dissappointed by its removal than me.

Edited April 2, 2011 by Speed

[Scooternutz]

I have Allied Force going back into standby if this next patch doesn't work.

[VincentLaw]

Unfortunately Battlefield Commander functions had to be removed due to an arising conflict with military products. We do hope to be able to evolve the feature further and include it at a later point.

 

So there is a good chance of something similar for DCS in the future, it will just be different from the one in beta. They will probably come up with some completely independent development that is only 95% like real life JTAC.

 

Also, I do think the original idea for discussion of this thread is sufficiently different from the feature removed from beta to be added to DCS in the future.

Edited April 3, 2011 by VincentLaw

[winchesterdelta1]

I wasn't talking about the DCS beta battlefield commander with all its indept features. I'm talking about a more simple feature. The abbility to make the MP more interesing to play. Only the feature of spawning enemyn units during the game by the admin would highly increase the MP fun. Add some triggers for objectives, let the opposite site defend or attack the objectives and voila.... Suddenly it makes sense to defend your A-10 CAS aircraft or kamovs when flying a fighter. The admin on the enemy side can react properly by spawning units or make other units divert to help defending or attacking the objective area.

 

I'm not talking about some super realistic GUI command center where you can monitor everything, dispatch units by military doctrine. Just something more simple to make MP more dynamic and team orientated.

 

To make it clear. I'm not talking about ED's Battlefield commander feature or anything similar. ED's BF commanding system is way more complicated and try's to get really close to how the militairy uses his BF commanding software that they probably are developing also.

 

So try to read my post again so you see i'm not talking about ED's high tech BF Commander with a shitload of functionality.

[Speed]

Ok well, keep in mind that a battlefield commander mode very similar to what you describe was removed in beta because it violated some contract that ED had. Any community mod that would allow custom assignment of waypoints to AI ground units would directly bring back a functionality of the removed features. It is not known what ED's stance is on this, I've yet to see an official post on what is OK and what is not OK to do with lua scripting and modding. Just because they give us tools that allow us to create or bring back some feature doesn't mean it's perfectly OK to do so. It's ED's product, and THEY get to decide. It's perfectly within their legal rights to restrict their software from being used to do certain things.

 

But... it's a logical conclusion that since they restricted battlefield commander in beta, they would, quite likely, have to restrict anyone from using a mod or script that would restore any of its functionality here in release.

 

If you remove the ability to add custom waypoints from what you suggest, then you're left with simply a mission that has a bunch of prescripted, preset units, with preset objectives and waypoints that the host (or whoever is running the mission) just has to select from. This would be a mission, not a mod or new feature of the game. But it would be a very tough and hard to use mission, since the commander would have a huge list of things to choose from to do. More simplified versions of this concept are indeed realizable, however. Say someone writes a mod where aircraft that are "detected" show up on some map view, while "undetected" aircraft do not. Then the enemy "commander" could just spawn pre-made flights of fighters in the direction of the "detected" aircraft.

 

But personally, I just don't see this working too well or being very popular. Without the ability to add custom waypoints or fire at point missions, or custom air flights, it's just all too inflexible and ackward. Sure, some host could select where he wants to place his defences, but the misison maker would have to place all those units himself, and the host would only get to select from pre-made units.

 

But if we CAN add custom flights, ground unit custom waypoints, custom fire-at-point missions, either through modding or through a future DCS module, then what you describe is pretty much exactly what I was planning to do, and was so excited about, back in beta before they removed battle commander. We were doing some insanely cool missions where I was battle commander, riding in Strykers, spotting targets for the human-controlled A-10s, then retreating behind the defensive line of M1 abrams I had set up myself, all while calling in artillery, myself.

 

It was in my plans to have missions where there was an enemy commander, and the enemy commander was going to try to out-smart the A-10s, or, at least, put up a good fight and greatly increase the realism the A-10 pilots by having an enemy they fought against that responded intelligently to their attacks and to the battlefield situation.

 

Finally, of course, there was the possibility of having missions where there was going to be a battle commander on BOTH sides of the ball.

 

All those hopes and dreams came to an end with Beta 4 though. Can you understand how I am still bitter about it? All the incredibly awesome opportunities and concepts, all down the drain, with the only word from ED that they hope to eventually work some kind of BC back into DCS in some future module? That means we won't see battle commander in DCS for another two to infinity years :(

 

At the same time, I completely understand ED's position, and that they had to remove it is not something I am angry with them about. I do wish they hadn't mistakenly gotten a lot of folk's hopes up though. I am not, and was not, angry with their decision to remove battle commander, but a lot of folks were. Realize that ED is running a business, and they did what they had to do. If you want to see more future DCS releases, then ED has to stay in business.

[winchesterdelta1]

Hmm now i understand alot better what you mean. It's really sad that they took out the Battle commander from DCS. Such things would greatly increase the replayability of the game and would make the game way more interesting once you get to know all the A-10C avionics and tactics.

 

I think its really great that ED concentrates on aircraft systems and such. But 'm verry disapointed that alot of gameplay features that would make this game even better are not possible because of contracts with the military.

 

100 cupcakes for the one that can explain me how adding waypoints to some virtual units and spawning them mid game can brake a military contract. ;) It's not like it is a high tech feature that has never been done in previous games. Man i just can't stand that all the potential this game has is binded to rules that in my eye's seem silly.

[winchesterdelta1]

My dream came true.... RTS style commanding for the Ground troops in DCS. Only not for spawning yet :)

[WildFire]

100 cupcakes for the one that can explain me how adding waypoints to some virtual units and spawning them mid game can brake a military contract. ;) It's not like it is a high tech feature that has never been done in previous games. Man i just can't stand that all the potential this game has is binded to rules that in my eye's seem silly.

 

I dont know the answer but I can guess... Maybe because in order to model the vehicles perhaps ED gave away some of the handling/speed/movement characteristics that the military wanted kept secret.

 

A lot like the jamming systems on the EA-6B I worked on. Most of the radar system were not classified. However the one thing that was, which was funny to me is a very small part of it, I cant say of course.. It seems to me that the whole system would have been highly classified but it was not. Military's are funny about such things. But for good reason, if the enemy knew what I know about the radar system of the EA-6B they could easily render the entire platform useless, and that is one of the most important platforms the entire US navy has. Still at the fore front today.

 

As for spawning, perhaps since it wasnt an intended feature to add it later would give the consumer market more capability than the military market and this was not allowed? Or perhaps there are some security issues with spawning vehicles concerning the code, like the possible intrusion they found with the print(?) function that put a halt on speed' work there for a minute?

 

We've already seen people jump into server with a hack to add vehicles at will so perhaps just keeping this function completely out is safer? I dont know.

[winchesterdelta1]

I dont know the answer but I can guess... Maybe because in order to model the vehicles perhaps ED gave away some of the handling/speed/movement characteristics that the military wanted kept secret.

 

A lot like the jamming systems on the EA-6B I worked on. Most of the radar system were not classified. However the one thing that was, which was funny to me is a very small part of it, I cant say of course.. It seems to me that the whole system would have been highly classified but it was not. Military's are funny about such things. But for good reason, if the enemy knew what I know about the radar system of the EA-6B they could easily render the entire platform useless, and that is one of the most important platforms the entire US navy has. Still at the fore front today.

 

As for spawning, perhaps since it wasnt an intended feature to add it later would give the consumer market more capability than the military market and this was not allowed? Or perhaps there are some security issues with spawning vehicles concerning the code, like the possible intrusion they found with the print(?) function that put a halt on speed' work there for a minute?

 

We've already seen people jump into server with a hack to add vehicles at will so perhaps just keeping this function completely out is safer? I dont know.

 

Thanks for your answer man. Made me udnerstand it alot better.