Seeing as it takes forever +/- 2 weeks for the A-10 to get anywhere significant, why not whip up the ME after generating a mission and put some Blue assets on your planned divert airfield?

But yeah, too much work just to get "the atmosphere."

Currently working on some "atmosphere" elements on my missions, like A-10s coming overhead or landing or choppers overflying the airfield... anything to make it seem like there are other guys out there as well. And I really miss the tower/controller/ATC of Jane's F/A-18... who would scold you if you went above/below your assigned pattern altitude. Plus if you bolter and as you come around, you will see 2-3 other flights land as you make your way back to the pattern. I don't even bother with tower comms in DCS A10.

Beach and Ice: You both nailed it. Atmosphere. I use to call it "gameplay", but you get the idea.

The DCSA10C is the best sim ever, but also one of the dullest.
Even F-19 on my C64 was more fun. A DC is a must! (yes I know thw F-19 did not have one). How hard can it b?A lot of strategy games out there can keep track of many resources, so why not implement it in a sim like DCSA10C? It would be a winner!
Oh and we put men on the moon.
Hell, might even bury F4.

The gameplay is spot on, no faults with regards to flight models (what do I know about that anyway?) and we have real A-10 enthusiasts, pilots, and weapon crews that contribute to ED to make sure things are as real as possible. But like other ED sims before it, it does lack atmosphere. The quick missions that the mission generator whips up are good and there are other assets in the area -- nothing like seeing explosions and smoke and knowing someone just got killed while you are en-route to the target area. However, you do not SEE the other guys, you just know they're there. That's why I fly MP a lot, so that I bumble around the sky with another human being.

That there aren't more flight sims that do it should be some indication that it takes a lot of work. There's definitely a lot more to strategy games then just keeping track of resources. This has been discussed quite a lot of times in various groups on this site so you might find it interesting to search around and see some of the issues that are brought up.

Here's a link to a reply I made in an earlier discussion in this group that I think still covers most of the points I would make. The first page of the thread has a link to an interview with Kevin Klemmick who did the CD for Falcon 4.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ub...tml#Post3237970

Elf

For me, the whole learning the A-10 is where the atmosphere is at. Doing what a real pilot would do to drop X on Y is enough for me to get atmosphere.

There are some really good points, and answers back to my original question! Just to ad to the lack of atmosphere... I play FSX alot and initially it was somewhat lifeless. With addon traffic programs (my traffic, ultimate traffic), weather generator (ASE), ATC live sound feeds it has all really come alive.

Amazingly, after all these years, the only place you can find what he's talking about is good old, twelve years old, Falcon 4.0.
As far as I know, anyway.

Even the really old Tornado had a bit of a dynamic campaign (1993?)

EECH has a good campaign system too. Although it suffered from the ground war not advancing like it should (tanks and stuff moving and taking territory). And while Falcon 4 has a great system - I often felt a lot of "interpolation" was going on. By that I mean, if you checked out a unit on one mission then came back and followed up later you'd see they had generated losses on their own and I don't know it was in response to any direct action by any campaign entities. Someone more familiar with the F4 campaign system could probably comment.

I've always wished for a persistent world where all the enemy and friendly forces are actually physically on the map (and virtual world) at the beginning of the campaign. A finite level of reserves could be held in warehouses (that if bombed would then be deducted from the overall inventory). EECH sort of did this with their "vehicle generator buildings", but I don't know that there were any finite limits placed on the generation of vehicles (aircraft, armor, and helos).

The other big thing I think is important to a virtual battlefield is object destruction permanence. As the war progresses, you should be able to see persistent damage to buildings, vehicles, runways, etc... Nothing improves immersion more than seeing the smoking remains of a convoy you blew up 6 hours ago or the shattered buildings that a previous flight destroyed.

I know these are wish lists..but I always enjoy this topic.

BeachAV8R

This is definitivly something i'm looking forward, however i think a dynamic campaign is not possible at this time.

To do so, we need the possibility to have a "create group" and "create WayPoint" command, and they aren't implemented yet. I'm not a big programmer but i did some scripting back in the Operation Flashpoint 1 time - without those two commands, nothing can be done on the game - except maybe by hard coding or heavy LUA modding.... and i'm not sure.