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
Sounds awesome!!
Hopefully someone is listening. :)
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…
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.
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)
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.
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)
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.
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.
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
That is precisely what one could do, and more. Imagine a group of 8-10 random players, coordinating attacks on a grid sector with an active AI ground battle or a hostile-held city cap. Two of them are running Air intercept, another two or three are loaded for ground attack. One is 30 klicks out in the ocean with a Battleship, one in mobile artillery, and the rest are pushing into the grid to direct fire. Those of us that have flown in Sim EC semi-regularly find a few randoms that have assisted or provided cover for others. Spontaneously coordinated, because they know it’s not how well one does in EC. It’s how well everyone does that brings victory.
In fact there were custom-made battles I had taken part in where over 60 players were in the Battle of the Bulge map, using late WWII tanks and aircraft of the time to fight it out. And it was fun.
You couldn’t have all nations agains each other since tanks wouldnt be able to detect an friendly, but that is nothing bad. This will increse the number of players especialy the ground ones. Wich is good. Players that play planes would stay and tanks would increse. Also more SAMs would force planes fly higher and for that you need bigger map so you can climb and get the speed. I read something about battle zones for ground so that would be really good idea but I wouldn’t force players stay in that zone. Thay can drive anywhere.
For me yes. Add few more things and make a suggestion. +1
Correct. The one overarching mission restriction would be to never have an all versus all like some air sim ECs I’ve seen. And those aren’t favored by anyone with some experience in sim flight anyway.
Gaijin would need to up the distance with the visibility mechanic substantially as well. Currently a maxed out and Aced Keen Vision skill for ground vehicles tops the Line-of-Sight Detection of other ground vehicles at ~1.251km, or ~3.752km while looking through binoculars or a gunner optic.
For the random queue battles the chance to see another player vehicle at that distance save for aircraft/helicopters (As there is a separate detection calculation for air vehicles maxing at 28.5km through optics/binos) is beyond my ability to figure.
However! Full size maps like the Port Moresby one I show in the initial post would need to have ground-to-ground sighting go from that ~3.751km max with binoculars, to something roughly tripled at 10-12km. Not only does this mean that small, mobile reconnaissance vehicles have an inherit benefit to their abilities for scouting, but that aircraft also benefit by having the ability to detect hostile vehicles against the ground without a TGP.
And I know there are many a pilot whom have tried to see a tank or SPG from a mere 1km above ground surface, and the vehicle just doesn’t show against sand or grass until you’re practically hitting it with your wingtip.
How about airborne troops? By using large transport aircrafts we may skip the boring driving time.
Anyway I actually know nothing about a real war. Just an idea.
It’s possible to design a sequence of missions, from utility heli drop to set up a fob, escorting C17 formation to fob, escorting AI convoy to some frontline and join ground battle from where the actual engagement begins…
Sounds more like a world war idea now xD
I’d love an open enduing confrontation map where tanks would have to travel from position to position, engage with objectives, fight AI, get ambushed by real players etc.
In 2014 I played the Call of Duty: Ghosts Campaign, and they had this one awesome mission where they dropped M1 Abrams out of a C130. It would be sweet if we could get something like that
You ain’t airdropping MBTs into combat, especially ones that are 40+ tons. But seeing an AI paratrooper drop as an objective completion thing would be awesome.
Well yeah, it’s COD, but you can drop some stuff (Known as a Low-Altitude Parachute Extraction System (LAPES)):
Stryker getting dropped:
Youtube Video:
Stryker 60K airdrop - YouTube
M551 Sheridan:
Not one of those vehicles dropped like that have crew in or are even mobile immediately after landing, so it’d still defeat the purpose. But infantry would be cool to see dropped in and holding a city or section after capture as an additional area effect.
