How many of us have sit back and asked, "Why isn’t such and such feature in my favorite flight sim?" Or have asked, "Why on earth did my wingman do that?" Have you ever busted every speed limit law between you and the nearest game store to pick up the latest flight simulation because it promises to be the next best simulation on the market only to be disappointed when you get home and get it loaded? Have you ever thought, "I know what I want in a flight simulation, why don’t the game companies?"
If you are anything like me, then yes you have asked all the above questions and have come up with the best way to build a better sim. Whether you said anything or not isn’t the point. Everybody has their own ideas. I decided after a rather frustrating flight and a couple of conversations with some squadron mates that I have come up with how best to build the next great combat flight simulation.
The concept is such that it would work in any theatre for either the Allied or the Axis side. Since my on-line squadron represents a unit that saw combat in the Pacific Theatre of Operations, and a Marine Corps squadron at that, lets look at it from that stand point, shall we?
Limited Initial Plane Sets
Realistic, sensible friendly / enemy AI tactics.
Missions: Strong Co-op base
Historical Maps
Stat Tracking
Co-op Issues
Open Source or Not
1. Limited Plane Set First, let’s examine the plane set. All flight sims that I remember playing that cover the time period have always included flyable aircraft from all sides represented and all types. Why not take this approach. Let’s call the first "installment" of the game "VMF", (Marine Fighting Squadron). During WWII, the Marine Corps deployed in mostly the F4F Wildcat and the F4U Corsair along with some F2A Buffalos and F6F Hellcats. So why not take and concentrate on those aircraft. Get those aircraft perfect from the flight model down to the graphic model.
Done this way, a small group of programmers, both graphic and physics, could work on just the core aircraft. Aircraft that could be scalable even as far as how much interactivity does the individual user want from his cockpit. Does he/she want to be able to fidget with all the trim tab settings and have fully operational dials, or would they only need the cockpit frames, dummy dials and have the speed and altitude show up in a corner of the screen. The physics model could also be done this way. Is the user a full real fanatic and has to the low speed stall characteristics of say the Corsair or is the end user an arcade flyer and only wants the bird to go rack up kills.
By now, I can already hear some folks screaming and looking for long pieces of ropes in which they can practice their noose making skills. "What about fighter X or bomber Z?" Oh, I can hear the gnashing of teeth already. Fear not good aerial warriors, I’m not done. Taking the above model, starting with just a small core of fighters, after release of the initial package, you would get an update or a second module. This module could be named VF for Navy Fighting Squadron. Another module could be called VB or VMB for Navy Bombing or Marine Bombing Squadron. Remember, the visuals would already be there from the initial release, all that would need to be done is to tweak the model, add a cockpit and throw the appropriate skin to it.
Want Axis birds? It can done but only in modules. Again this way would allow a more precise FM and AI. Doing it this way would also allow for something rarely, if ever seen in flight sims, a training aircraft. If done properly, a novice to flight sims would not be able to jump right in the game, grab a Corsair (insert you favorite hard to fly aircraft) and go kill fifteen Zekes. You wouldn’t have the long aviation course that the cadets had, but the FM would give you a feel for what to expect.
2. Realistic, sensible friendly / enemy AI tactics How many times have you seen one of your AI wingmen do something incredibly stupid? Ever call for help and then watch as your wingman goes cruising off toward home? Too many times you say? Well, all else in the initial release would be AI. That’s right, artificial intelligence. Only here is where the beauty of this proposed system would work. Instead of trying to get all things right, you only work on the models needed and the AI. You only have to worry about the visuals of an AI aircraft, not the cockpit and some of the other stuff needed for a flyable plus you can spend that much more time fine tuning the AI so when you tell a wingman to cover you, he actually would. Or, you wouldn’t see an aircraft known for BnZ? trying to turn with a nimble turn fighter.
Want scalability in the AI? Sure, and why not? Currently most games will throw a curve at you. You may fly a game and fight all novice pilots then on the very next flight fight all aces. If you do see both in one mission, it's usually a flight of three or four novice pilots or three or four ace pilots. Inevitably, in the course of a tour of duty, real life pilots rarely had three or aces in a single flight. Why? If they were that good, they were usually leading another flight. Why not have an engagement where a flight of three or four range from ace down to the lowest "just out flight school still smells like cash-sells and shines like new money" novice pilots?
3. Missions: Strong Co-op base OK, what else? Oh yeah, what kind of missions? Realistically, a lone wolf pilot who would go off on his own and engage in combat would wind up a lone dead wolf. Folks that want that sort of action wouldn’t like I’m going to propose. A game built around teamwork. This means squadron ops and means cooperative play. Whether designed as a historic or dynamic campaign generation, the game should revolve around how you and your entire unit do.
Remembering back years ago, I think one of the best campaigns I ever flew in a combat simulation was in Aces of the Pacific. There, you joined a squadron, reported to whatever base they were deployed to and flew as a member of that unit through a historic campaign. Flying now with my squadron, I want that feature. I want my unit to be assigned to a specific campaign and fly missions that those pilots some 60 years ago would have flown. I want that feelling of leading my unit on a combat air patrol and coming face to face with an incoming raid. Or that desperate feeling that comes from sitting on the carrier deck knowing that I have to scramble to get my birds in the air to thwart an inbound Kamikaze attack. I want to be moved up "The Slot" in the "Island Hopping Campaign."
4. Historical Maps Another point, historical maps. Now, not that I would fly from Guadalcanal all the way to Bougainville, that’s about three and a half hours one way, but I’d like the map there that if I wanted to, I could. Say for the Pacific end of a game like this, the Marine Corps fought their way up the Slot. Airfields in the Solomon Islands need to be there to make a realistic representation of the Solomon’s campaign. Otherwise, you are left trying to piece-meal a campaign together with what you have.
5. Stat Tracking I look at the current crop of flight and I have to ask the question of why assign a point value to a target? I mean, I’m not in competition with my fellow pilots to see how many points I can rack up in a single mission. Besides, wouldn’t it be easier if I could look at board after the mission and see that I shot down a Zeke and Val? Now, I have to either remember exactly what I engaged or go find some obscure log to find out what I got during the flight.
We fly to defeat an enemy that is trying to defeat us. As long we go up, shoot them down or force them to withdraw, and we all land successfully, we win. I don’t need points for that. What I do need is something that will track and debrief me at the end of a mission as to what I shot down, where I shot it down or what I blew up or what I sank. To quote a good friend, "some have it, most don't." He’s right. The last combat flight sim that I remember that had a decent tracking system was European Air War. Even then, heaven help you if you shot down more that five or six aircraft because then the stats would run off the screen and you wouldn’t know you got them.
6. Co-op Issues Another question that has run through my mind from time to time is why do I have to wait to join a co-op mission? If my squadron starts flying at 9 pm and I’m late and they are airborne to a target, I have to sit and wait for them to either finish or quit the mission just to allow me to join. Currently, you can log into a dogfight server and grab a bird and go. Why can’t I do that now? Or one of your pilots crashes on take-off. Everybody knows that it is no fun to sit and wait or again to restart a mission. Lets open this dogfight feature up for the co-op players so they can join a mission at any time during the mission.
Another co-op issue is ordnance load-out. I have to pick my load-out before I join the game. Once I signal I’m ready, I’m stuck with that load-out. If anybody gets the wrong load-out or forgets it, then everybody has to exit the game and reload and pick the ordnance they want. No, I want that so that up until I appear on the strip I have the option to go and change my thousand pounders to two tanks of napalm. And another quick thing about the load-out, we talked about scalability, the bomb loads should be also. If I don’t want to drag a fuel tank along I should be able to specify that I don’t want the fuel tank.
7. Open Source or Not Finally, there has been a lot of talk about the pros and cons of open source versus closed. I’m not going to go into them but I’ll say this. Why can’t the hands of many do the work? No, I wouldn’t want to see a 700 mph Zeke like I have seen in other games, but if you can open up some aspects of the game, you can get a lot of unexpected help from people that are subject matter experts that the only satisfaction they would need would be that they helped produce THE finest sim out there. It seems to often that people offer help, even in just the form of information on island bases used by certain squadrons. Even if you wanted to keep the flight models and the AI close to vest you could still open up the 3d models, maps terrain up to third party folks.
That seems like a lot, and maybe it is. But, at the end of the day, in a historical sim, isn’t this close to what we all want? Can it be done? I say hell yes. So let’s go folks, let’s build the better flight sim. Either that or tell me why it can’t be done.
