Strategic DCS offers players a fully player-controlled and dynamic strategic campaign. A successful campaign requires a coalition to focus on the right mix of tasks for any particular play session.
The overall goal is for your coalition to control all of the objective zones on a map. The objective zones are the filled circular zones on the F10 map. Capturing objective zones also increase the number of ground units your team is able to build.
It can be helpful to think about the various mechanics of SDCS by the type of tasks they enable a player to perform. This list is a starting place to better understand how a player can use the mechanics of SDCS to fulfill the objectives of the campaign.
The most straightforward task you can perform in SDCS is flying air-to-air combat missions. Enemy targets are not just other player aircraft though – you can also destroy enemy AI aircraft, like cargo helicopters, AWACS, tankers, and CAP fighters. Destroying these AI aircraft may significantly hamper the enemy team. SDCS has a few key related mechanics:
If your aircraft is destroyed or fails to make it back to a friendly airbase, there will be a cooldown period of 20 minutes before you can fly another fixed wing aircraft from your starting base. During that cooldown, you can take a helicopter, or you can slot from a different friendly airbase.
An airbase might not have all weapon types available to a player, and you may be restricted to a certain quantity. For example, if you want to use AIM-120 AMRAAMs or AGM-88 HARMs, you will need to find an airbase with a Shelter. Even with a Shelter, you may be restricted by how many of a certain type of weapon you can carry. For example, players cannot take off with more than 14 APKWS rockets on their aircraft.
Auto GCI is an automatic text report that updates you on nearby detected enemy aircraft. Auto GCI does have certain line-of-sight and detection requirements – it does not know everything. Auto GCI can be highly configured using chat commands.
The next task we will discuss is helping your team defend a zone. You can know if a zone needs defense a few ways – text chat in game from your team, being on Discord or other voice communication, watching the messages in game for when friendly ground units are destroyed, or just getting shot at by enemy units! If the enemy is trying to capture the zone, they will need ground units – aircraft alone are not able to capture zones.
Defending is helped greatly by flying CAS or other air-to-ground missions. It is also our first look at controlling ground units. Of course, enemy attacks usually have aircraft in addition to ground units, so you may need to fly a CAP mission to help defend the zone as well.
SDCS has a fog of war, but friendly AI JTACs can help you identify enemy targets. First, they will add markers to the F10 map, and second, you can request that they smoke a target area.
Generally, Red coalition ground units are of the Eastern Bloc, and Blue coalition ground units are NATO. Additionally, you can see all friendly units on the F10 map to help you tell friend from foe.
You will not receive an immediate notification of any kills you make, but you will get a summary if you land back at a friendly base.
Players can control ground units if they have the Combined Arms module. You can control the vehicle directly (by driving and gunning) or by setting waypoints and having the units follow the waypoints in the standard Combined Arms interface.
We ask that players using the waypoint control system try to use roads and avoid having the AI drive through terrain with a lot of obstacles (cities, forests) as the AI pathfinding can hurt server performance.
Certain “deep forest” zones will also auto-delete units that spend too long in them.
To move larger groups of units longer distances, SCDS has a full set of relocation options. Units can be transported (from a FARP, Factory, or Airbase) by AI helicopter or player cargo aircraft to another FARP or Airbase – once landed, you can move the ground units normally. If the vehicle carrying the units is lost, the units are also destroyed.
You can also use ships to move groups of units across the sea – this does not require nearby Airbases or FARPs to function.
Attacking a zone successfully generally requires a little more planning and teamwork than defending a zone. Attackers have to find and destroy enemy ground units, usually under protection of enemy air defense units. You may also have to fly further to reach the zone than the enemy team does.
A successful zone capture gets your team closer to victory, but every zone you control also increases your team's ability to build ground units by increasing the Resource Point cap.
Both ground operations with Combined Arms and air-to-ground missions are greatly helped by knowing where enemy units are located. JTACs are AI ground units to help generate intelligence about the location, composition, and number of enemy ground forces within their line of sight. In addition to creating markers on the F10 map with detailed information, JTACs can lay smoke near a target, to help locate it from the air.
JTACs are not magic however – they give the general location of an enemy unit, but the location might be off by a few hundred meters. Still, JTACs are vital to scout a zone before an attack to gather intelligence on the general position, type, and numbers of enemy ground units you will have to defeat.
Players flying certain helicopters can also act as an airborne JTAC – they will receive text notifications about the bearing of enemy units while they are in flight. A player flying as a JTAC can help coordinate other players in fast jets, helicopters, or ground commanders to find and destroy enemy units in a more dynamic fashion.
FARPs are player-placeable spawn locations for helicopters and Harriers, rearm and refuel locations for any aircraft, and pick-up and drop-off points for ground units being transported by air. Having a few FARPs near an objective zone will let you deliver ground units closer to the fight, and will let players spawn in certain aircraft closer to the frontline as well. Spending less time in transit means your team will be more effective in the attack, and ground units can also reinforce more quickly if they have to drive a shorter distance.
FARPs also give the attacker additional directions to attack from – FARPs can be placed in flanking positions to exploit any weakness in an enemy's defenses on the ground and in the air. Generally, FARPS should be on or near a roadway so that ground units can quickly get on the move. If you want to load advanced weapons (for example, guided missiles) from a FARP, you will need to have a Shelter at the FARP.
Once you feel comfortable with the basic mechanics of SDCS, you should try some of these more advanced tasks and concepts. These are not more difficult to do, but they may be overwhelming to a new player. These advanced tasks usually take longer to pay off (as you wait for troops to move across the map), but they are essential to winning a campaign.
Once your team has gained ground, you will probably need to establish air defense to prevent counter attacks. Air defense in SDCS falls into two categories – mobile air defense and IADS.
Mobile air defense are mobile units that operate on their own in the air defense role (e.g. Gepard, Tunguska). They are helpful to bring with your other ground units in an attack, and are useful against helicopters and low flying aircraft. However, they lack the range and stealth of the IADS networked air defense.
IADS – Integrated Air Defense System is comprised of multiple types of units. IADS has different units to detect enemy aircraft, track enemy aircraft, and engage enemy aircraft. IADS SAMs can give a large zone of protection against even high-altitude enemy aircraft. All static SAMs (e.g. Patriot, S300) are put in one large network, where SAMs will only turn on their own radars if there is a target in range for them to kill. This network helps keep your SAM sites safe by preventing them from showing up on enemy RWRs until they are ready to shoot.
IADS detection is performed by both E2 airborne AWACS and ground based early warning radars. E2 deployment is done on the F10 map by making a marker, and EWRs can be deployed from crates that can be spawned at Factories (like other ground units).
AWACS and EWRs use line of sight to detect enemy aircraft. These systems also have certain blind spots – very low and slow aircraft may not be visible to these systems. The air picture generated by your team's AWACS and EWRs contribute to both the IADS as well as the Auto GCI mechanic. You don't need both AWACS and EWRs to detect enemy aircraft, but they do work together.
AWACS and EWRs require balance – your team is restricted by how many you can place at a time and they usually stand out and are easy to kill, but they need to be near the front line with good visibility to be effective. Without AWACS and EWR coverage of an area, your large and expensive static SAM sites are worthless.
Static SAMs are unit “compositions” for the purposes of creation and deployment. These compositions (in particular the large Patriot/SA-10 compositions) provide both tracking using their own radars, and engagement using their missile launchers. Static SAMs will not use their own radars to track and launch at targets unless they are detected by AWACS/EWRs and the target is in range. The largest compositions will also contain point-defense systems to destroy certain incoming weapons that threaten the SAM site (e.g. they will defend themselves from AGM-88).
Static SAM sites may suffer damage as one or more individual units gets destroyed. If the SAM site is partially destroyed, you can use chat commands to delete the site to reclaim your RP, and you will need to place the SAM site again.
Attacking and capturing an airbase helps your team fight more effectively at the front line, but you do not need to capture every airbase to still win the game. Attacking an airbase is similar to attacking an objective zone, but the enemy will usually have better defenses protecting an airbase.
Once you have a unit very close (100 meters) to the center of the airbase, and control 80% of the units in an area, the airbase will change coalitions. Before the attacker can use the new airbase though, they will need to deliver a Base Crate from a different location. An airbase will need a Shelter built to enable players to load advanced weapons (for example AIM-120s).
Logistics puts the “Strategic” in Strategic DCS. Good logistics means your team is getting the most use out of the Resource Points available. It also helps reduce the risk and time required to deploy new troops.
As has been proven many times, a team with fewer player-hours in a campaign can still win if they know how to use the logistics in the campaign.
Resource Points are the main “currency” of SDCS. Every ground unit requires at least 1 RP to deploy – some, like Patriot and SA-10 take 50 RP. There are three levels of RP:
RP is a “budget”, not an income – you cannot stockpile RP. You can increase your team's RP limit by capturing more objective zones.
When a unit is destroyed, RP is not immediately freed up again – your team will need to wait for it to slowly recharge. It may take many hours for your team to be able to rebuild a ground army after a failed attack. Partially destroyed static SAMs still cost their full RP cost, even if there is only one unit from the composition left alive. You can reclaim units and SAMs from the map to return RP back to your team.
There will be a guide dedicated to making the most out of your RP.
Factories are essential. They serve as player-placeable spawn locations for ground units. Ground units can be delivered to the frontlines from your Factories by driving, AI helicopter cargo, or player cargo flight.
Like with EWRs, factories require a balance – too close to the enemy and they can be destroyed – too far, and it might take several hours for reinforcements to get to the frontlines.
This is probably the most daunting task judging by the length of the wiki article, but it is actually pretty easy to do – there are just a lot of options available to the player, and the wiki covers it in detail. There will be a separate guide to help new players learn this aspect of SDCS.
A team gains control of an objective zone by getting "offensive" ground units within the zone. For example, tanks or IFVs, but not JTACs.
The filled color (Red or Blue) indicates which team controls the point. A White fill means the zone is not controlled by either team.
The border color of the zone typically is the same as the fill color, but if the border is Black, it is a contested zone (both teams have offensive units present).
Zones will change control between teams if the attacking team has 80% or more of the offensive ground units in the zone. When a zone changes control, any defending ground units are removed from the game.