A truly "realistic" DC would be no more than what we got in Il-2...the same missions over and over until an objective is achieved, followed by a new mission that is then done over and over until the next, and so on. You wouldn't affect the war, you wouldn't even be responsible (alone) for the objectives. You could win the war after getting shot down on day 1 because, well, lots of wars were won after people died on day 1. No one wants that, we want our mission results to affect the course of the war so that success will win the war and failure will lose it. That's not realistic at all for a single pilot to matter like that, but it's a concession because it's a game.

The problem with scripted campaigns is replayability. No one denies a scripted one is better the first time you play it because you can put all these nuances and triggers and events and such. But how many times are you going to play the same missions? What good is putting all this work into missions that people won't want to play more than twice, especially if you make them tough so that multiple attempts are needed to get past each one? A DC removes that issue, you set initial conditions and then it moves on from there. The best DCs had both. Longbow 2 had a DC with scripted missions that would appear when certain conditions in the campaign were met to "move the war forward."

The answer is a campaign that is both dynamic and scripted, the problem is sims like Il-2 and F4 are a little TOO dynamic while ED's and some others in the past were TOO scripted. ED has been "descripting" theirs with time, making it better, but it's still not there yet.



The Jedi Master

The answer is a campaign that is both dynamic and scripted, the problem is sims like Il-2 and F4 are a little TOO dynamic while ED's and some others in the past were TOO scripted. ED has been "descripting" theirs with time, making it better, but it's still not there yet.

I always wanted a Ka-29/Ka-50 hunter killer team, with the AI Ka-29 acting as a FAC and designating targets (as actually used). IMHO, this would've been a great addition to BS2 (and a way to incorporate the JTAC features).

So they keep shooting themselves in the foot eh? You'd think they would have learnt the first time with the poor sales of BS/A-10 and that they're going under. Oh wait... they're still going strong and not only that we're getting our fast jet and a 'legendary aircraft' together with a new graphics engine and more goodness for LOMAC. Yup, they shot themselves in the foot so bad they had to speed up to a run development wise.

The reason why ED is "going strong" like you said is simple: Military contracts!

That's why I think that ED doesn't have any interest in DC, DC don't have much use for military contracts and the civilian market (us, sim players) seems only to serve the purpose for ED to earn a little more extra cash (ED's secondary market). I have my doubts that if it weren't for the cash that ED receives from military contracts that this current ED's model of business would work.