An argument for non-combat aircraft

The other night I get on one of my squads servers and hop in an A-10C to dust it off. As I'm rolling down the runway someone in an F-18 asks "Hey man you got a tpod on that thing? Mind designating for my laser mavs?" Sure of course. After a little while I've got four F-18's stacked up in thousand foot intervals doing holding patterns while I do my best to give them nine lines to run in on targets. Acting as both ATC and FAC was the most fun I've had in DCS in a long time (and that's saying something because I really enjoy DCS)

Giving us something to do that isn't actively killing targets but has an appreciable impact on the battle gives us a chance to really role play and is great for immersion. A tanker, an awacs, hell even a C-2 that we have to deliver a critical piece of cargo to a carrier before it can launch a sortie.

Cool little story! :)

Im pretty sure most people support non-combat aircraft in the way you describe, its just the world civilian that seems to trigger people.

Oh yes, I've been shooting it only with my educated guessing and kinda visioning ahead but I didn't expect someone would get into exactly this type of a situation and have that much enjoyment.

You could probably find old threads I made such cases for this and even the whole fire-fighting thing. I think it was more about excuses to have some Wide-Body jets (4-engines) - I keep hearing growing chatter about C-130 however that's a prop, but hey it's still good, there's no flyable modern 4-engine prop, so I kinda agree with that direction to have 4-engine props first and then 4 jet, battletesting wide-body stuff on the C-130 and then AWACS and Tankers,

As for C-130, it should really come in both flavors otherwise it would be bitter sweet because with a bit of extra you get double prize with, it's probably not like flight model would be that different much and with AC-130 you get all the combat stuff to fulfill DCS case about combat and that means it'll get more interest than if it just had cargo/troop/vehicle transport, both flavors would be sold as one module IMO that would make sense so even if for example many would get AC-130 for the guns and not expect they'll ever enjoy cargo, just having it may make them try and they may change their mind, this kind of phenomena is normal and happens to me too, I never thought I'd get F/A-18, but it happened.

But if it's only AC-130 ... then there's still like all the stuff like dropping supplies via paradrop (ammo, fuel, etc) which actually affect gameplay and the whole gameplay around escorting/defending the C-130 support, then the troop paradrops, that opens up quite a lot, and ofcourse it's not like you can just put anything in there so it won't be freeforall sandbox, but what officially C-130 could drop, AFAIK it can take main battle tanks but they never paradroped them in real life right? Only IFVs and humvees right?