Operation Wags Event | PTO Development Report | Foothold Missions

Dear Fighter Pilots, Partners and Friends,

This week, the DCS community comes together in support of one of our own. Operation Wags is a community-wide charity event backing Matt "Wags" Wagner in his fight against bone marrow cancer, bringing together content creators, developers, and thousands of virtual pilots across two weekends: July 31st–August 2nd and August 7th–August 9th. Whether you fly, watch, or simply spread the word, every bit of support helps. Learn more below.

Eighty-two years ago this week, U.S. forces stormed ashore at Guam, kicking off the recapture of American territory held by Japan since December 1941. It's a fitting time to check in on the WWII Pacific Theatre of Operations Assets Pack, where aircraft like the SBD Dauntless, SB2C Helldiver, TBF/TBM Avenger, and the IJN's B6N "Jill" are now moving from finished art into fully functional DCS assets, tested and integrated into the sim's systems. This dev update covers that progress, from dive bomber AI behavior to new multi-turret ship technology. Check out the details below.

Down in the community spotlight, we're shining a light on Foothold, a deeply detailed dynamic mission that's been expanded and maintained by Leka since 2024, building on the original 2021 mission by dzsekeb. With persistent campaign progression, custom mission management, and support for 10 languages, it's a great example of what this community can build. Learn more below.

Thank you for your passion and support.

Yours sincerely, 
Eagle Dynamics

For more than two decades, Matt "Wags" Wagner has helped shape DCS into the sim and the community so many of us call home. Now it's our turn to help him.

Operation Wags is a community-wide charity event supporting Wags in his fight against bone marrow cancer, running across two weekends: Friday, July 31st – Sunday, August 2nd, and Friday, August 7th – Sunday, August 9th. Content creators, Eagle Dynamics, third-party developers, mission builders, and community leaders from across the DCS ecosystem are coming together for one purpose, to raise as much as possible for Wags and his family.

REDFOR will be stacked with familiar faces from across the creator and developer community. BLUEFOR is you, whether you're a veteran virtual pilot or brand new to the fight; there's a place in the skies for you at this event. Fly missions, hold or take objectives, chase down your favorite creators for bragging rights, or just be part of something built to support someone who's given so much to this community. Every sortie, every stream watched, every share, and every conversation helps close the gap to the goal.

How you can help:

Donations can be made here: {LINK REMOVED}https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-matt-wags-wagners-cancer-fight

Can't donate? You can still make a difference by sharing the event, joining the servers that weekend, watching streams from participating creators, and helping spread the word on social media. Every bit counts. Thanks to the generosity of Eagle Dynamics, third-party developers, hardware manufacturers, and community partners, there will be giveaways and prizes for participants and viewers throughout both weekends.

What's always made DCS special isn't the aircraft or the technology; it's the people. Operation Wags is creators setting aside competition, developers standing alongside community members, and thousands of virtual pilots rallying behind someone who spent decades building the hobby we all love.

We'll see you in the skies!

Eighty-two years ago this week, U.S. forces stormed ashore at Guam, beginning the recapture of American territory that had been in Japanese hands since December 1941. It's a fitting week to check in on the WWII Pacific Theatre of Operations Assets Pack. While the full unit list has been public since last summer, the harder, less visible work of actually bringing these units to life in DCS is where the real progress has been happening.Many of the aircraft, ships, and ground units from the announced roster are now in our internal development build, moving from static models into fully functional DCS assets. That's a distinct milestone from being modeled or textured. It means these units are being tested, tuned, and integrated into the sim's systems rather than sitting as finished art waiting on a shelf.

A big part of that integration work is AI behavior, and dive bombers are a good example of why this takes real engineering time. A Val or a Helldiver doesn't fight like a fighter or fly like a level bomber; it needs to identify a target, roll into a proper diving attack, release at the right altitude, and pull out. The entire attack profile is different from anything else in the AI's existing playbook. Getting that dive-bombing behavior tuned correctly for each of the Pacific dive bombers is part of what's happening under the hood right now.

This pack, from Sherman tanks to Japanese Ha-Go and Chi-Ha tanks to the Marine and IJA infantry, are also being built out with proper Combined Arms functionality, so players commanding ground units will have full control over PTO forces rather than a limited AI-only implementation.

One more piece of news worth sharing: this pack is bringing new technology to DCS for ships with multiple turrets. Rather than each turret being tied to the ship's main model, turrets are now separate objects in their own right. Our hope is to lower resource consumption for heavily-armed ships like cruisers and battleships, which is good news for framerates in missions built around a Pacific surface fleet.

There's never been a better time to check out one of the community's most ambitious ongoing projects: Foothold, a dynamic mission originally created by dzsekeb back in 2021.

Since 2024, the mission has been expanded and maintained by Leka, who's poured 4-6 hours a day into it for the past two years, taking up the work dzsekeb started. The result is a deeply detailed community-built campaign experience, one that shows just how far creative mission design can push DCS World.

Foothold's goal has always been to get as close as possible to a persistent, dynamic campaign feel, and it shows in the details. Every campaign restart lets you handpick your opposition through the mission manager. Choose which SAMs you'll face, select enemy fighters, and toggle features like StartNormal to flip your starting position on the map. Rather than a traditional sandbox, Foothold scales enemy CAP, CAS, and airborne activity to match the number of players online, so it holds up whether you're flying solo or with a full squadron.

The Foothold Manager goes deep: set enemy aircraft and ground skill levels, toggle MANTIS (Skynet) on or off, configure rewards for kills, flight time, refueling, and CSAR, and set penalties for friendly fire or death. You can even choose which aircraft are offered a friendly escort. Vietnam and Cold War era players get their own layer of customization too, with restrictable weapons and aircraft selections for each era.

Foothold supports 3 eras, Modern, Cold War/Gulf War, and Vietnam and is available across nine maps: Persian Gulf, Syria, Sinai, Caucasus, Iraq, Kola, Cold War Germany, Normandy (WWII), and Afghanistan, with the WWII Normandy and Afghanistan versions built by community members TiTi and Santaowns, respectively.

Among its features: persistent campaign progression, a custom ranking system from Recruit to First Lieutenant, custom CTLD and warehouse logistics, airdrop and CSAR systems, custom strike/CAS/CAP/recon missions, adaptive AI reaction logic, and a huge in-mission shop, all built on the MOOSE scripting engine, with support from Applevangelist at MOOSE, and available in 10 languages.

If you're looking for a mission that reacts to you as much as you react to it, this is well worth your time. Join the Foothold Discord to get involved and share your ideas with the team behind it, learn more here:

https://discord.gg/cshgmgXuxE.

Thank you again for your passion and support.

Yours sincerely, 
Eagle Dynamics