Where to next?

[Ice]

I tried to find the "Merzifon mod" but no luck. as anyone got a link to the download ?

[Ice]

Thanks Cougar. Here it is JaBoG Site

[MBot]

I just stumbeled across this map at scramble.nl:

 

 

A map extension into Turkey doesn't look very good in that light. No turkish airbases in the north-east of the country. The map would have to extend hundrets of kilometers to reach Merzifon and Erzincan bases in central Turkey. Combat would take place over the black sea for the most part. And the map would be "bent" even more, making it even more difficult to include all parts of the map into a plausible campaign. How would you use the Crimea, Kuban, the caucasian mountains and Turkey together in one scenario ? An 'extension' of the map sounds rather pointless if this leads to the abandonment of older areas. Then you better go to a all new theater right away.

[BearF_CO_159th]

None of the above, what i would like is to see an Scandinavian compain, the area of Norway/Sweeden/Finland/Russia

( north )

 

Gets my vote. The North Cape theatre would provide some excellent scenarios, and give the Adm Kuz her 'proper' operational area (not that Im biased...lol). Also, the North Cape would give a more plausible theatre for a NATO carrier battle group to operate...and no, thats not a cue for the 'Hornet Liberation Front' to start up! lol.

 

Several countries in close proximity, good airbases for both NATO & Rus AF, strategic targets (ABs, submarine/naval facilities...) and a plausible (word of the day it seems) conflict setting.

[MBot]

'Hornet Liberation Front'

 

:D

[Alfa]

Hehe - what Swingkid said :) .

 

Many of the map expansion suggestions in this thread are sweet music to our ears :D

 

Here are some "WIP" screenies of the Bulgarian airbase "Ravnetz":

 

The base...

It is under constant transformation, and the above screenie is already a little outdated despite being taken only two days ago.

 

Bulgarian MiG-29 at take-off...

 

One of the airfield entrance gates..

 

Bulgarian MiG-29 taxiing to parking lot..

 

Parked MiG-29s..

 

Bulgarian pilotlog..

 

Cheers,

- JJ.

[Alfa]

I just stumbeled across this map at scramble.nl:

 

 

A map extension into Turkey doesn't look very good in that light. No turkish airbases in the north-east of the country. The map would have to extend hundrets of kilometers to reach Merzifon and Erzincan bases in central Turkey. Combat would take place over the black sea for the most part. And the map would be "bent" even more, making it even more difficult to include all parts of the map into a plausible campaign. How would you use the Crimea, Kuban, the caucasian mountains and Turkey together in one scenario ? An 'extension' of the map sounds rather pointless if this leads to the abandonment of older areas. Then you better go to a all new theater right away.

 

MBot, why would an extended map area make mission building more difficult and lead to "abandonment of older areas"?. I have no problem in setting up a mission where units are operating from all corners of the map..

 

See the modified map screenie Swingkid posted:

 

...on the contrary, it extends the possibilities greatly and you can set up several seperate pieces of action without having the whole thing cramped up on a relatively small corner of the map. Furthermore, the longer distances and flight time provide a more realistic air battle environment, where proper fuel management is more of an issue....and the air-refuelling feature comes to its right. There is certainly no problem in using the Merzifon base for missions which involves Caucasian or Crimean locations :) .

 

Anyway, I dont see how moving the theatre to an entirely new location would change anything(?) - the screen dimensions are as they are and you are not going to get around the map zooming in the Mission Editor when building missions regardless of where the action takes place - the bigger the modelled area, the more zooming required :)

 

Cheers,

- JJ.

[DarkStar]

I vote for Scandinavia map too :)

[Pilotasso]

The problem with scandinavia is that its too big for F-16/mig-29 proposed for the next SIM, and it will most certainly be a major naval battle area wich ED would forced to model ships behaviour and weapons accuratly, and then everybody would whine about the absence of naval fighters.

[MBot]

What I meant with "abandonment of older areas" is the following. I think it is very hard to link the caucasian area and the crimea together in a plausible scenario. At least I haven't seen too many mission/campaigns yet that combine these two parts of the map. You mostly have your scenario either on the crimea/kuban or in the caucasus area. This basicaly splits the map in two differen, kind of independent ( and very small ) theaters. This is very unfortunate, as the gameplay value of one singel theater with the same amount of km*2 would be higher. Of course this "two theater view" is debatable, but that is how I see it.

So what I mean is that the extension of the map with Lock On 1.0 into the Caucasus sort of led to the abandonment of the Crimea. Ok, abandonemt is perhaps the wrong word, but if you want to have a realistic NATO-Russia scenario you are stuck with the southern caucasus region. So the map is far from optimal from my point of view and I would rather see a shift into a new theater than more flickwork on the existing one.

 

I agree that the inclusion of Merzifon AB greatly increases the gameplay potential of the map ( as do the bases in Bulgaria and Romania ). But the part of Turkey that would have to be modeled to reach Merzifon would almost mean a 100% increase of map size, wich is highly unlikely to happen. So a extension into Turkey would be a death end without airbases, thats why I think it is a bad idea. A small extension into Georgias south and east sounds like a much better idea, providing more airbases. That would be a option I could be happy with, even if it would mean that the crimea would be even more isolated.

[mig29smt_fulcrum]

Hmm suprising nobody ever thought of India/Pakistan.India has the MiG29SMT and soon the MiG29K.Pakistan has the F16A and soon the Blk52.I think this theatre would be by far the best.Both countries are also "near east" ;)

I would think either Mid east (Syria/Israel) or South Asia (India/Pakistan) would be better.

[Alfa]

What I meant with "abandonment of older areas" is the following. I think it is very hard to link the caucasian area and the crimea together in a plausible scenario. At least I haven't seen too many mission/campaigns yet that combine these two parts of the map. You mostly have your scenario either on the crimea/kuban or in the caucasus area. This basicaly splits the map in two differen, kind of independent ( and very small ) theaters. This is very unfortunate, as the gameplay value of one singel theater with the same amount of km*2 would be higher. Of course this "two theater view" is debatable, but that is how I see it.

 

Hmm - ok I see what you mean :)

 

But IMHO you are focusing very narrowly on ground warfare with your reasoning ;) . There are many kinds of missions for which a coherent land mass isnt a necessity - e.g. there is nothing to stop you from conducting strike missions across the sea to another part of the map.

 

Anyway, another matter is that with some extension to the current features of Lock-on, the sea seperated areas could actually become a feature rather than a limitation ;) . I am of course talking about the naval stuff - including landing operations.

 

Imagine if we had functional landing ships - i.e. that could deliver armour across the sea :) . This would not only "bridge" the Crimea with the Caucasus area(as well as any other parts of the map), but also provide for an entirely new type of missions - and help to integrate the naval aspect as such with both the land- and air warfare.

 

So what I mean is that the extension of the map with Lock On 1.0 into the Caucasus sort of led to the abandonment of the Crimea. Ok, abandonemt is perhaps the wrong word, but if you want to have a realistic NATO-Russia scenario you are stuck with the southern caucasus region.

 

In my opinion, it is difficult to have a realistic NATO-Russia scenario in the southern Caucasus region without the presence of at least one dedicated NATO airbase in Turkey, from which the bulk of NATO airpower would originate - and I think this is even more the case if we look isolated at the Crimean peninsula.

 

So the map is far from optimal from my point of view and I would rather see a shift into a new theater than more flickwork on the existing one.

 

I tend to disagree - you seem to forget that any new land surface would actually have to be modelled. How long did it take to model the existing areas? ;) . If moving to a new theater, the amount of modelled landmass you could realistically hope to see, would be only a fraction of what we could have if spending the same amount of time and resourses on the existing map - it may even be considerably less than we already have.

 

Of course I would expect a new theater to come with a regional switch function, so that the current map wouldnt go totally to waste. But it would nevertheless be a case of dividing whatever limited resources available on two seperate regions, which both would seem insufficient in terms of modelled landmass.

 

I agree that the inclusion of Merzifon AB greatly increases the gameplay potential of the map ( as do the bases in Bulgaria and Romania ). But the part of Turkey that would have to be modeled to reach Merzifon would almost mean a 100% increase of map size, wich is highly unlikely to happen.

 

Well thats the question - it depends on which part of land modelling is the most labour intensive. I personally believe that it is the positioning of objects - i.e. populated areas, whereas I could imagine that the generation of actual landmass(mountains, rivers - perhaps even road networks), to some extent, could be automated by use of satellite imagery. The Northern part of Turkey stretching from the Georgian border to the area around the Merzifon airbase seems to be a thinly populated and very mountainous region, so it might not be nearly as resource demanding to model as e.g. the Crimea was....but I dont know for sure :) .

 

A small extension into Georgias south and east sounds like a much better idea, providing more airbases. That would be a option I could be happy with, even if it would mean that the crimea would be even more isolated.

 

Well I agree with the bit about extending the modelled Georgian area to the south towards Turkey, but not to the east - I would much rather have a snip of NATO territory in Turkey for mission building, than more Georgian(or Armenian) territory eastwards.

 

Cheers,

- JJ.

 

 

 

What I meant with "abandonment of older areas" is the following. I think it is very hard to link the caucasian area and the crimea together in a plausible scenario. At least I haven't seen too many mission/campaigns yet that combine these two parts of the map. You mostly have your scenario either on the crimea/kuban or in the caucasus area. This basicaly splits the map in two differen, kind of independent ( and very small ) theaters. This is very unfortunate, as the gameplay value of one singel theater with the same amount of km*2 would be higher. Of course this "two theater view" is debatable, but that is how I see it.

So what I mean is that the extension of the map with Lock On 1.0 into the Caucasus sort of led to the abandonment of the Crimea. Ok, abandonemt is perhaps the wrong word, but if you want to have a realistic NATO-Russia scenario you are stuck with the southern caucasus region. So the map is far from optimal from my point of view and I would rather see a shift into a new theater than more flickwork on the existing one.

 

I agree that the inclusion of Merzifon AB greatly increases the gameplay potential of the map ( as do the bases in Bulgaria and Romania ). But the part of Turkey that would have to be modeled to reach Merzifon would almost mean a 100% increase of map size, wich is highly unlikely to happen. So a extension into Turkey would be a death end without airbases, thats why I think it is a bad idea. A small extension into Georgias south and east sounds like a much better idea, providing more airbases. That would be a option I could be happy with, even if it would mean that the crimea would be even more isolated.

[KILSEK]

Hi all.

 

If I was the head guy at ED I would do Europe, Asia, Aussieland, Africa, South America, and of course the U.S.A./North America, pretty much the whole world.

 

Is that going to happen? Eh probably not too soon.

 

So I'll take the next best thing. -Turkey.

 

Is that going to happen? Eh probably not too soon.

 

I am happy with what we have. It looks great and from all the comparisons folks have done with satellite photos, it is pretty damn accurate. It has plenty of room for A2A, and there is many different types of terrain from A2G battles.

 

Using the Merzifon mod, you can also make it a good long range bomber theater. -KILSEK