could an alternative to DC be this..

[Kaktus29]

we know the problems in having dynamic campaign.. processor power is weak, memory problems, many many many units necessary to simulate anything close to a real war..and have that in such a way computer doesn't die in the first minute of simulation..

 

so, i thought, would you like the idea of "Tac View" the DCS a little bit wit strategic and tactical options that would not be graphical or processor intensive but still serve their need..

 

first the map needs to have better roads, like small village roads, medium quality free highways and the major arteries highways that would be the most important to support logistically the ground forces..

 

since we can't have Dynamic campaign with thousands of trucks driving through the roads delivering goods and fuel,food, ammo to the troops on front lines etc.. and we can't "save" this result so to play next time and see further development in fighting i thought why not have a couple of "points" in the highways that would act as points where you hit them (graphically this could just be big red circle bullseye points that can be seen painted on the highway).. time loitering over this and dropping ordnance would mean less efficient fighting units on front line of the enemy, morale drop, lower threshold of unit withdrawal from fighting because of lack of supplies..

 

..and this puts us to the next point, the infantry and ground vehicles fighting.. for now it seems any Arma fighting is off limits for DCS for considerable future, not even going in the details of logistics, recon redistribution and the rest.. so, if we can't simulate all that, could we do similar to logistic option and have "template" divisions, or battalions that either entrench (when not moving), attack-on the move, and dig in-urban environment ..

 

this units wouldn't even need to be simulated to fire weapons, or be killed, maybe some smoke to give a sense if the unit is destroyed or not, after certain "damage is done" they either withdraw, try to find cover, or disperse-get shattered.. on TAC view we would see this much clearly than on graphical world, so this would make it much easier for the computer since more or less we would be playing full fledged Tactical/Strategic game with an option in flying high fidelity Sims planes and bombing more or less "static" targets that would be transmitted in Tac View to whole plattons being wiped out, or advancing and taking a quarter in the city, taking the whole city, having full supply,medium supply, low supply, zero supply-chance of shattering as time progresses..

 

what i want to say, obviously i rather have high-fidelity everything from GAZ trucks to T-90, Abrams, and every machine gun fire bullets, and missiles, and RPG, but sadly this cannot be done in such a great scale to make any "war simulation" playable.. or we can have high-fidelity stuff but play a war with 3 tanks, 5 APC, 4 planes and 1 Awacs as the blue force and same for the red.. meaning its more of a skirmish that involves for some reason air forces and other high-tech elements of fighting a war..

 

 

So, would you "sacrifice" graphic development especially of complex huge combination of ground units(plattons+armoured units, APC+Recon)etc.. that would give much more in a way of actual capability(apart from SAM activity this should be devoid of this so we can simulated and operate SAMs ourselves in a more high-fidelity way plus be able to hit them with planes and avoid them etc.. while hitting other "template" divisions would be more of a moving "template" that you hit with A10,Su25 and after getting hit the division analyses what to do, withdraw, try to seek cover in city ..what this would mean in actual graphic world is,if this "template" is entrenched in city it would be lets say harder to get a kill of certain unit.. if on the open one mav would kill 1 tank, in city you would fire 2 mavs to get a kill even though you locked the target etc.. what i'm trying to say is, yes it would be "arcade" in a way but actually more realistic in gameplay way.. sadly we can't do hi-fidelity EVERYTHING and have it in such sufficient numbers to simulate whole divisions moving and needing supply etc.. but with this system you still get satisfaction when after releasing your ordnance with your teammates you get to your tac view or command view etc, you see the division took 36% loss, its level is RED for morale, Orange on supply, and is about to be encircled by your friendly "division" template that just took the highway "point" thus breaking them from supply..

 

all this could even be played directly through this Command view, without graphic engine working.. or could be enjoyed by jumping in attack aircrafts or fighters to help the attack CAS do their mission first..

 

 

 

just trying to imagine a short-cut that makes simulation of huge big number of divisions moving, cooperating (all this taking time for organizing attack, countdown, cool-down) and this can be seen in command center.. plus flying recon planes close to enemy "division templates" would give some info for their "status) .." so it would bring some elements of recon flights into the system..

 

 

what do you think.. would you be able to sacrifice the 1 tank hi-fidelity kill for this more "cartoonish" yet more able to simulate large forces movement and capturing points system? ..

[xXNightEagleXx]

we know the problems in having dynamic campaign.. processor power is weak, memory problems, many many many units necessary to simulate anything close to a real war..and have that in such a way computer doesn't die in the first minute of simulation..

 

so, i thought, would you like the idea of "Tac View" the DCS a little bit wit strategic and tactical options that would not be graphical or processor intensive but still serve their need..

 

first the map needs to have better roads, like small village roads, medium quality free highways and the major arteries highways that would be the most important to support logistically the ground forces..

 

since we can't have Dynamic campaign with thousands of trucks driving through the roads delivering goods and fuel,food, ammo to the troops on front lines etc.. and we can't "save" this result so to play next time and see further development in fighting i thought why not have a couple of "points" in the highways that would act as points where you hit them (graphically this could just be big red circle bullseye points that can be seen painted on the highway).. time loitering over this and dropping ordnance would mean less efficient fighting units on front line of the enemy, morale drop, lower threshold of unit withdrawal from fighting because of lack of supplies..

 

..and this puts us to the next point, the infantry and ground vehicles fighting.. for now it seems any Arma fighting is off limits for DCS for considerable future, not even going in the details of logistics, recon redistribution and the rest.. so, if we can't simulate all that, could we do similar to logistic option and have "template" divisions, or battalions that either entrench (when not moving), attack-on the move, and dig in-urban environment ..

 

this units wouldn't even need to be simulated to fire weapons, or be killed, maybe some smoke to give a sense if the unit is destroyed or not, after certain "damage is done" they either withdraw, try to find cover, or disperse-get shattered.. on TAC view we would see this much clearly than on graphical world, so this would make it much easier for the computer since more or less we would be playing full fledged Tactical/Strategic game with an option in flying high fidelity Sims planes and bombing more or less "static" targets that would be transmitted in Tac View to whole plattons being wiped out, or advancing and taking a quarter in the city, taking the whole city, having full supply,medium supply, low supply, zero supply-chance of shattering as time progresses..

 

what i want to say, obviously i rather have high-fidelity everything from GAZ trucks to T-90, Abrams, and every machine gun fire bullets, and missiles, and RPG, but sadly this cannot be done in such a great scale to make any "war simulation" playable.. or we can have high-fidelity stuff but play a war with 3 tanks, 5 APC, 4 planes and 1 Awacs as the blue force and same for the red.. meaning its more of a skirmish that involves for some reason air forces and other high-tech elements of fighting a war..

 

 

So, would you "sacrifice" graphic development especially of complex huge combination of ground units(plattons+armoured units, APC+Recon)etc.. that would give much more in a way of actual capability(apart from SAM activity this should be devoid of this so we can simulated and operate SAMs ourselves in a more high-fidelity way plus be able to hit them with planes and avoid them etc.. while hitting other "template" divisions would be more of a moving "template" that you hit with A10,Su25 and after getting hit the division analyses what to do, withdraw, try to seek cover in city ..what this would mean in actual graphic world is,if this "template" is entrenched in city it would be lets say harder to get a kill of certain unit.. if on the open one mav would kill 1 tank, in city you would fire 2 mavs to get a kill even though you locked the target etc.. what i'm trying to say is, yes it would be "arcade" in a way but actually more realistic in gameplay way.. sadly we can't do hi-fidelity EVERYTHING and have it in such sufficient numbers to simulate whole divisions moving and needing supply etc.. but with this system you still get satisfaction when after releasing your ordnance with your teammates you get to your tac view or command view etc, you see the division took 36% loss, its level is RED for morale, Orange on supply, and is about to be encircled by your friendly "division" template that just took the highway "point" thus breaking them from supply..

 

all this could even be played directly through this Command view, without graphic engine working.. or could be enjoyed by jumping in attack aircrafts or fighters to help the attack CAS do their mission first..

 

 

 

just trying to imagine a short-cut that makes simulation of huge big number of divisions moving, cooperating (all this taking time for organizing attack, countdown, cool-down) and this can be seen in command center.. plus flying recon planes close to enemy "division templates" would give some info for their "status) .." so it would bring some elements of recon flights into the system..

 

 

what do you think.. would you be able to sacrifice the 1 tank hi-fidelity kill for this more "cartoonish" yet more able to simulate large forces movement and capturing points system? ..

 

Technicality Dynamic Campaigns is not a problem itself, old games did amazing jobs (and i'm not referring only to F4). The problem is that dynamics campaigns requires a lot of skill in optimization which seems much more than ED can provide.

For optimization i'm not only referring to find better algorithms but also a whole engine with tricky low level tasks. I can't provide much information due to contracts but i can guarantee that most game do practically only "high level" optimization by improving algorithms cost, just a few do "low level" optimization by changing how the SO will treat each low level behavior (eg. paging).

 

In conclusion, DC is not a nightmare unless you can't deal with it. We cannot take in consideration F4 DC issues (such bubbles) because those were what was necessary at that time for those computers. That said what you are saying are practically high level optimization, that helps to sustain a better FPS but you might find in situation where you have huge frame drops without a clear reason (speaking about programmer side). That's why some spends a lot of money on third parts Engine but as all engines it is generalized and it might not be enough for specifics games like DCS world where you have a lot of objects and you might calculate it passively or actively (only actively is a suicide), you need low level DB that must be fast and be sure that the SO will behave in the best way, for last but not least a lot of high level optimization in the rendering process and the AI behavior........so definitely not an easy task, specially for someone who is already struggling with at SCRIPTED/TRIGGERED CAMPAING

Edited June 9, 2013 by xXNightEagleXx

[Feuerfalke]

Processing power is not the problem. The problem is a realistic campaign.

 

Falcon had a dynamic campaign, but it was more or less a set of random missions with effects being transferred to the next. Even the bridges were repaired in the original version from one mission to the next. No matter if it's 4 days between missions or 20 minutes.

 

ED has stated, that it will come, but when it comes, it will be DCS standard = detailed AND realistic.

[xXNightEagleXx]

Processing power is not the problem. The problem is a realistic campaign.

 

Falcon had a dynamic campaign, but it was more or less a set of random missions with effects being transferred to the next. Even the bridges were repaired in the original version from one mission to the next. No matter if it's 4 days between missions or 20 minutes.

 

ED has stated, that it will come, but when it comes, it will be DCS standard = detailed AND realistic.

 

Well technically a scripted/triggered scenario is much lighter than a dynamic scenario, not because one is scripted and the other dynamic but because a scripted scenario relies on counted aircraft doing mission practically through player path, sometimes some objects popup somewhere "far" from player path but this happens due to a trigger so basically it is because the player destroyed a bunch of enemies, detaching them from the engine. A dynamic one usually is thought as a scenario where every objects have its own objective and task, the player might spot them and decide what to do but that's just a consequence of a mix. Saving state from one mission to another is just a consequence of a campaign.

As you can see a dynamic campaign with DCS standards is very very very heavy, so extreme optimization is a MUST, because the game is already heavy with its scripted/triggered engine or else we must hope that the responsible for these performance drop is the actual engine itself and a new engine that require coding from start will lead to a well performance one.

[Kaktus29]

i agree with those that say optimization is a must and is the most problematic part of ED..they don't have the skills to do this, today's computers are strong enough to do a DC but only if you employ the CPU correctly if not the whole thing freezes and dies in the first minutes of the mission..

 

i still think mixing "C&C" style of gaming together with 3D flying plane is the way to go, it employs the CPU better(CPU is best for number crunching which is exactly what you want in big ,medium war where thousands of troops duke it out, while graphics is for planes looking sweet and throwing bombs and missiles that look good as well.. so to make the targets on the ground much much more "simplified" and more "static" while still moving would make 3D engine run well, while the C&C strategic map where you guide your war would run smoothly and provide information that you need to actually wage war.. the flying part is more of a lesser work, where you do this small part in a small part of the map..and then this info is registered on the map, and AI incorporated..

 

i hope.things get better.. ED deserves this..