It's tough when a 1995/1998 simulator beats DCS in immersion factor!
To be fair, the ground war is abstracted in both EF2000 and TAW. EF2000 (WARGEN1) abstracted it with airfield control based on turn and probability, and TAW (WARGEN2) had ground units planned, but then had them taken out because Atari rushed TAW to market. Falcon 4.0 (and to a lesser extent EECH) are the only flight sims that represent a ground war, and Falcon 4.0 can only due this because of the bubble system it uses. Also, Falcon 4.0's development effectively bankrupted Microprose, so I have a feeling that its campaign engine is a one-time-only deal.
ED has stated that they will not introduce a bubble system, as this goes against the philosophy of the military customers (which is to have the instructor/scenario designer have control over everything). I could see something like this happening with today's hardware as long as we had the following:
A dedicated server (with dedicated server software) that controls the entire battlefield
a ground bubble specifically for air clients, and an air bubble specifically for ground clients
Tasking specific to the client would always be part of their bubble (e.g. going to provide CAS to a unit currently outside the client's bubble)
Bubble size would be determined by the server, with possibly dynamic bubbles based on the number of clients
The bubbles would only apply to un-like units, e.g. the bubble for air units would only apply to seeing ground units and vice versa. Long range SAMs would need to be an exception, as the bubble would need to be at least 1.5 times their radar range (to allow for RWR hits).
This way ED could have their cake and eat it too. The server would keep track of everything, and since it has no requirement to render it could use the entire CPU to manage the battle as well as the information distribution. Clients would receive only the updates they need, which would keep internet traffic down, allow the CPU to deal with the client actions, and yet still not be unfairly surprised by threats since like platforms would be exceptions to the bubble. Of course, this would require some serious work in netcode, and it is a non-starter until at least the DCS 2.5+ dedicated server is released.
I love what you guys have done for EF2000 and TAW. Thank you so very, very, very, very much!! I love it so much that I spent a few days trying to troubleshoot or find a way for me to move the position of my joysticks at the game controller window. Sadly, I failed there, but found a workaround that I will share on combatsim forum. It may help someone else running the same problem as I am.
My main concern regarding DCS is that they should at least attempt to create this bubble for the civilian market, as in, us users. I'm sure that it will pay off in sales afterwards. Create a sort of system that runs in parallel with the current mission builder, when the user selects the dynamic campaign it runs that part of the code instead. When the user selects "user made or designed missions/campaign" it runs its current campaign engine/mission editor.
At least it would make a good, sizable chunk of the users happy.
Edit: I would be happy with a TAW/EF2000 or Strike Fighters dynamic campaign. Which would be a huge evolution to what we have now
Last edited by DrStrangePool; 06/20/1606:20 AM. Reason: extra thoughts
