Sim Enduring Confrontation, Combined Arms

Game Discussion Simulator Battle
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For those that have played occasionally or consistently in the Ground Simulator Battles, you have the feeling at least a few times: "Why must my multi-ton monster be stuck corner-peeking in a !#@&(=% city like in COD?!

The answer is simple: You shouldn’t. You should be able to roll across terrain and be trading fire with the enemy at distances that would leave infantry as tiny specks on the horizon, and there is a way to do so;

Enduring Confrontation Combined Arms.

Functionally this would act exactly as Air Sim EC already does, but with the added options of any vehicle being available as a spawn on the massive maps used in Air EC. Planes, Tanks, Helicopters, and naval vessels on maps with ocean access in the truest sense of large-scale combined action.

Spawns are simple to figure out:

  • Plane spawns are already tied to airfields and their sustainability,
  • Ground vehicles and helicopters can have the choice of spawning at airfields with the bot defenses and moving towards any of the objective points, or spawn at the minimally protected bomb target points for a quicker travel.
  • Naval vessels can have spawn regions either the edge of the map if the oceanic surface provides that option, or they can utilize ports and bay areas as staging zones, fed by the AI ground convoys.
  • Airfields would be protected by AI flak and gun crews with 3km engagement envelope from each position.
  • The highest tiers also by SAMs that exceed helicopter ATGM engagement envelope by at least 1km, EG: 8.0-9.7BR get SAMs with ~6km envelope, 10.0+BR use SAM sites with 12km.

Example: Port Moresby Combined EC spawnmap, not showing SAM coverage

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Now what about objectives for the ground vehicles to do beyond engaging other ground vehicles?
Beyond the obvious notion of hunting enemy players, there can be several tasks.

  • Permanent capture points based on the largest named cities/suburbs already present on most maps, or strategically suitable locations such as the valley plateau in grid D6 and the elevated plains in grid D3 in the map above
  • time-limited rescue of shot down AI aircraft that land inside friendly-held grids,
  • Identify and Destroy a hidden bunker system in enemy territory.

Naval vessels would be largely taking part of the global tasks, such as screening ports and destroying AI naval convoys, along with providing long-range fire support to ground vehicles and AA cover to air.

This requires at least a basic screening of the Air EC maps to fix terrain holes and surface contact issues, but the initial building blocks are already there and presents a whole new kind of gameplay for everyone.

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Sounds fun, especially playing as a light tank, but getting to the front lines (or even sniping range of the front lines) would take forever in my fat challenger 2. Only concern I have is that with the option to play helis, naval, planes, and tanks, there’s gonna be like 3 people doing each, unless you can get a large lobby.

it would be cool to be able to supply ammo to friendly tanks from a utility heli, too

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Sounds awesome!!

Hopefully someone is listening. :)

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No, way more than that. You’d need to turn 4x4km detailed ground maps into 12x128km ground maps. That’s sadly too excessive.

Also, how do you want to handle distances? In your example of Port Moresby, the ground forces nearest to each other would have to travel about 15km each for an encounter. That’s a lot of driving doing nothing…

And how do you ensure they meet and not drive right past each other?

Don’t get me wrong, I generally like the idea, or anything that increases immersion and offers more depth to the currently very simplistic game mode(s), but I’m not sure it’s feasible.

It obviously works well for mixed ground, but on a much smaller scale…

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This is going to straight up disable the AWS Hamster seeing that Gaijin can’t be bothered to pay for larger server with bigger bandwidth.

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Maybe it wouldn’t be as big as an air sim map, but even a size increase to a 16x16km would be really interesting to play. Sure, there’s a lot of driving, but at the same time there’s a lot of flying from the airfield in ARB. Which I honestly think is a good thing, seeing how it allows for more communication and camaraderie instead of instant battle.

I’m sure key objectives could be peppered along the front lines, as they are in Air sim. It would be interesting to have to capture roads and routes, or to engage enemy convoys from the ground (yay no more getting pilot sniped by a deadly accurate AI Gepard)

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IMO this is exactly what World War mode should have been, not the clan wars nonsense.

There are some pretty big problems, some of which have been already mentioned like low-poly terrain and general map distances.

While it would be great to be able to drive through the entire map, it would be more feasible to have multiple smaller playable zones for tanks. Something like five or six zones spread around the map around points of interest. Some could be urban, some forested, some fields. Specific points around the map could work as “despawn” points, allowing players to move between points.

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I made this as its own post, but it’s pending forever:

I think this game would really need some kind of game mode that incorporates Air (planes & helis), Land and Sea, and this probably always had been the original goal of the game. But not in the way of GRB and its stupid CAS. So here is an idea of how to do it:

What if we could have air SIM EC sized maps, or even larger. In this, we have ARB EC going on (3rd person, mouse and keyboard, ARB flight mechanics, no enemy markers but yes friendly markers). Combat planes, bombers (and helicopters?) can spawn here with infinite respawns like current SIM EC. Games can last multiple hours.

But now, in some sectors of the map, a GRB battle is going on. Maybe protected by SAM sites in the rear (like we had in the event) and ofcourse by spawned SPAA in the GRB battle or even outside it at the area of the heli-pads.

Now, if a GRB battle is lost or won, there will spawn new GRB battles, in new sectors, depending on the outcome of the previous battles, so basically in the main ARB EC, the game and frontline is progressing.

So basically the ARB EC can provide CAS for all of the GRB battles going on. And there are multiple (independent) GRB battles going on the air map. Maybe there needs to be some communication / spotting for the GRB players to ask from CAS from the planes. Maybe recon planes could have a special function in spotting. But otherwise I think spotting of ground vehicles should be pretty difficult (eg. no markers etc.).

Maybe even a naval battle could be going on in one of the sectors.

Of course this needs complicated map design because all of the map sectors needs to support GRB (with proper spawn points and caps and every sector needs to have interesting design for GRB etc). And maybe it’s a bit complicated from a server point of view, as it needs to be a single server that supports maybe 100’s of players (multiple GRB at the same time as well as the ARB EC battle)

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There is little reason to have a high-detail map beyond rendering the terrain elevation changes, trees, buildings to scale at distance. If IL-2 Great Battle Tank Crew can manage to utilize functional, but lower-poly 10,000km2+ maps and have player ground vehicles rolling through all of it, there is zero reason why Gaijin, basing much of their initial WT rollout from IL-2 Birds of Prey/Wings of Prey development, cannot do the same their maps and engine.

Maneuver warfare and vehicle recognition, which, granted, is well proven to be lacking by most of the sim ground ‘visitors’ as they are not-so-lovingly referred to as among other names.

But this is not meant to be a team deathmatch where you focus on destroying all your enemy’s finite spawns. This is meant to be where players, operating with the intent to complete the Strategic Objectives, fight. Not a Team Deathmatch with an alternate victory by capping a white ring somewhere.

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The convoys are one of several objectives that would be considered a team target in this Combined Arms EC, not just a specific vehicle type target. Arguably ground and helicopter players situating for an ambush or moving engagement can perform better than an aircraft would against the AI convoys as they are now.

As it is there are still roving AI ground vehicles that patrol the secured territories on several EC maps, which someone with a sharp eye or a thermal TGP can occasionally spot and engage for a fairly decent reward.

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This thread keeps making me think of that one loading screen of the Abrams perched on a hill, having just killed a vehicle in a convoy. The possibilities are limitless in this gamemode. It would also be great to annotate a map with lines, rather than “Attention to the designated grid zone!”. You’d be able to mark enemy positions, mark emplacements for airstrikes, and coordinate rendezvous points

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