Theater idea

[toonces]

Hi all,
I've been working on the Nevada theater, and in working on it an idea has come to me. There are two reasons for this idea:
1. Snakeman has expressed his displeasure with the Nevada tiles a couple of times.
2. My inability to put together a coherent "ground war".

I've been doing a bit of research into Adversary/Aggressor squadrons, Red Flag, NWASC, etc. And, tonight, I sort of had an epiphany.

My idea is to create an east coast USA type terrain. Specifically, I think Key West/Florida would work well. A secondary scenario could be built around Virginia Beach...but I prefer Key West.

I think this would work well. First, we have good tropical-type tile already with the Korea tiles. Second, if we include a part of Florida, at least southern Florida, we can put some of the southern bases in like Miami, Tampa, etc. Ideally we could put Jax and Cecil in there, but I think it could be workable with just south Florida.

Additionally, we can put one or two CV groups offshore Key West.

This would allow me/us to put some Adversary groups in Key West and perhaps a few surrounding fields (to dillute the strikes the Falcon4 AI will schedule) and we could let the BLUEFOR/"Students" fly from the CVs and the Florida mainland bases. This would be a great training ground scenario.

Now, to make this type of scenario really sweet, we could get ccc to create two new aircraft for the database. If we could get a T-45 Goshawk (maybe take an A-4 slot for it...) and a T-38 Talon, we could set them up with AIM-9 and guns only. They would represent Blue air. An F-18/F-14 squadron would fit as well. This could represent students in the pipeline for fighters, as well as students in the RAG/FRS. OPFOR could be well represented by VFC squadrons flying F-5A/F-5E and F-18A/F-14A depending on how we set up BLUEFOR.

This could set up an interesting WVR-type training scenario, with unusual but realistic planes. And, we could use existing tiles, so the terrain would be inherently better than Nevada. Finally, with some of the airfield gurus we have, we could put in 'real' TACANs and such, and maybe even get some open source charts and all.

Anyway, this is just an idea I've been toying with. I don't think we could necessarily make a working "ground war". This would be purely air war. I keep running into the idea that this isn't so bad though. It could be fun just for messing around with WVR fighting with new planes, and fun for TEs, and fun for multiplayer. And, I'm still not convinced that a working campaign can't be built around air only. I haven't proven it yet, but I still hold faith that a campaign can be built around the air war only.

Ok, just throwing this out there. If we can get terrain and DB edits, I'll work on creating the campaign part.

[ccc]

hmm.. sounds like another training ground mod.. best for pure AA war and MP flying.

And, I'm still not convinced that a working campaign can't be built around air only. I haven't proven it yet, but I still hold faith that a campaign can be built around the air war only.

> can TE victory condition do the job? if not, how about a simplified campaign like this..put in relatively fewer ground units, let them moving to one obj to win. put very few attacker sq and much more pure AA fighters. in this case the influence of AG strike will be minimized to some extent, and the fighting for air dominance may decide which side can deliver air strike on ground units.

btw new 3d model is minor issue, the main workload is terrain creation..and some database tweaking.

[Snake Man]

I can put the initial theater together in no time, but first you need to give specific grid coordinates for this theaters location, also would it be 64 or 128 segments in size?

Maybe you can draw a box in a map, like CCC did with the Kurile theaters suggestion while back. That would give be specific point where to build the theater. We can then look screenshots and airbases to decide if we need to shift it to some direction etc.

[toonces]

Snakeman,
Ok sounds like there's some interest. Let me flesh out my idea some more. I have a cool VT-7 A-4 to show you guys...but I gotta get Falcon up and running again before I can show you...

[toonces]

Some WIP pics:













source: http://www.hyperscale.com/2008/features ... 8dwa_1.htm

Edit: I don't presume to be a great skinner, but these are just for fleshing out some ideas for this prospective campaign...

[toonces]

Hopefully I'm not boring you guys to death yet.

Did a 2v2 ACM test off Vandenberg AFB. This is so cool. I think with the right skins and terrain this might be a really neat idea (or I might be the only clown on the internet that thinks this is pretty rad.)

[ccc]

the quick skin looks good. the ingame screenshots nicely show how it looks in WVR dogfight.

imho, don't bother SM to make another new training theater. just put the skin in Nevada mod, and have a tweaked campaign along the SW coast area.

[derStef]

skin looks not that bad for WIP, but the orange should be "reder"...

keep on doing, dude!

cheers
Stef