Forum structure update

[EvilBivol-1]

In case you were looking for it, we've moved the DCS Wishlist and Sim Research forums inside the DCS World section.

[Grimes]

Perhaps move "mission builders corner" there too as it is more closely related to the World than it is a specific aircraft?

[EvilBivol-1]

Yeah, we never settled on a "reform" of Missions and Campaigns... Moving Mission Builders' corner to World sounds fine to me, unless we proceed to make a single, unified Missions and Campaigns section, in which case I would think the Corner would have its best place there.

[MTFDarkEagle]

If I can give my thoughts: because of the importance of missions it should have a section of its own, rather than "hidden" inside a different section.

[Grimes]

Yeah, we never settled on a "reform" of Missions and Campaigns... Moving Mission Builders' corner to World sounds fine to me, unless we proceed to make a single, unified Missions and Campaigns section, in which case I would think the Corner would have its best place there.

 

Having a missions and campaigns section would make some sense. Especially now that even SP missions can have multiple types of aircraft available to fly in em.

[EvilBivol-1]

We agree and we asked for opinions on how to best organize a unified Missions and Campaigns section earlier this year right here on the forum. The difficulty is that we now have a wide number of products and a variety of flyable aircraft, not to mention previous generation products (BS1, FC1 and sooner or later FC2). Furthermore we need to account for multiplayer missions, missions that are based on a specific flyable or that may include multiple flyables. Finally, we need to make sure we can move any existing thread from all of the current Mission and Campaigns sections into the new area.

 

Ideas welcome.

[EvilBivol-1]

Essentially the question is in how much subdivision a unified Missions and Campaigns section needs. Do we need a sub-forum for each flyable? For each product series? For each product generation? Preferably we can find a solution that is well organized for the needs of mission makers and users looking for missions, while at the same time avoiding a bunch of sub-forums for users to sift through.

[Grimes]

At the very least "missions and campaigns" can have its own forum section with the subsections of DCS aircraft type listed within.

 

-DCS

--Missions and Campaigns

---Mission builder corner

---A-10c

---P-51

---etc

 

However, I think having a singular mission thread would make a decent amount of sense for the actual mission threads. The overall total number of mission threads is somewhat low as is. Looking at the raw number of threads in each of the missions section you have 300 for WH, 586 for BS, not to mention how many of them are just "how to questions" from before the builders corner was a section. Additionally the move to the core concept should be followed by the missions being given a centralized location to find all relevant missions that can be used with the core.

 

The major issue is easily identifying which missions are for which aircraft. Would it be possible to force users to select an option for each new mission thread that would automatically put a tag onto the mission title? Perhaps similar to the "post icons" but it identifies the mission with tags like...

[P-51]

[A-10C]

[Ka-50]

[Mixed]

A specific aircraft listed would mean this mission has ONLY this a/c flyable, while Mixed requires players to check the thread itself as multiple aircraft are flyable. Listing if its SP or MP or having sections for it isn't really needed as much. Most threads say either in the title of the thread, the mission file name, or the somewhere in the thread body if the mission is a single player, co-op, or whatever. Besides, the ability to play a MP mission in SP without having to change any settings also minimizes the issue.

 

 

A Suggestion for the User Files...

Filter aircraft based on a checkbox requirement so that missions can state which aircraft are relevant to a mission posting.