DCS Faction
Command
The page from which a side commands its war in a SECTOR campaign: the front map with its own groups and the enemy it knows of, and six tabs for forces, aircraft, artillery, warehouses, log and AI doctrine. The faction director spends the side's credits and decides where, not how many: with a person or without, both sides field the same number of forces.
What it is
The Faction Command is the page from which a side commands its war in a Mission Control campaign running the campaign engine. There is the front map with the side’s groups and the enemy it knows of, and six tabs: Forces, Aircraft, Artillery, Warehouses, Log and Doctrine.
It lives inside SECTOR, the group’s DCS tools application, and is reached from gcidemo.
Three people, three powers
- The faction director commands their side, with the side’s credits and slots.
- The game master sees both sides and commands one at a time, for free.
- Pilots see their side to prepare CAS, but give no orders.
Where, not how many
The campaign engine has an automatic director for each side, sending forces into the front’s sectors. The faction director does not add to it: they take its slots. Every force they send occupies one of the automatic director’s slots and goes where it would have gone, armour to the assault, motorised infantry to hold a neutral sector.
The result is the rule holding everything up: with a person or without, both sides field the same number of forces. Whoever commands decides where, not how many. A slot that frees up stays with the director for two minutes, then the automatic one takes it back, so a side does not stand still because its commander went for a coffee.
The six tabs
Forces. The side’s order of battle, and the orders: Send, Divert, Support, Priority. At most three priority sectors per side, which the automatic director serves first and the opposing side never sees.
Aircraft. For each airbase the sorties on the ground, airborne and returning, and the aircraft in the warehouse. A new sortie is built by choosing task, aircraft with loadout and base, then the target among known enemies. A base just used, full or stopped will not launch the sortie, and says so.
Artillery. The real novelty. Batteries are sent to a point behind the line, fire at a point or a known enemy with the salvoes they have, and reveal themselves to the enemy when they fire: that is the price of firing, as in reality. They are refilled by convoys leaving the side’s factories, and a destroyed factory comes back after a while. Which means a convoy is a target worth hunting.
Warehouses. What the DCS warehouse actually holds for each base: aircraft, weapons by family under the names the player sees, fuel, read every ten minutes. When DCS does not say what is there, the page writes unlimited rather than inventing a number.
Log. What happened to the side, in order.
Doctrine. What the side’s AI does on its own: whether it sends forces, whether it flies CAS and SEAD, and how the artillery fires, off, counter-battery only or free. With the director present on the page, the AI waits two extra minutes for them before firing a ready battery: whoever commands must be able to command, not chase the automatic one.
Status
It is work in progress, like the whole campaign engine.
Access
Open at gcidemo.alessandrosimonitto.it/comando, read only. On a group’s own installation each side sees only its own war, and the filter sits on the server.