Mariana Islands

This is an unreleased module. This module has yet to be released and the final features and options are ultimately unknown. Any listed functionality is purely based on early announcement and/or pre-sale hype and it may all have changed dramatically by the time the module even reaches an early access or alpha stage.

In the first newsletter of 2020, Eagle Dynamics announced the release of a new free terrain for DCS: World to supplement the aged Caucasus map. As the game has grown, it has come to cover a far wider array of aircraft, eras, and combat scenarios than it was originally designed for, and the new territory is intended to fill in a lot of those gaps.

The new “Mariana Islands” map is meant to be suitable and applicable for both modern and WWII scenarios. It is meant to provide a logical use for the new Chinese assets being rolled out. It is meant to have a have some inherent sense of balance in terms of what terrain is available for both red and blue coalition (that is, both will mostly be carrier-based, but will perhaps have one or two tiny island airbases as well). And it is obviously meant to provide a natural playground for the much-hyped upcoming Supercarrier module.

Approximate coverage of the Mariana Islands map

Features

Parroting the sales pitch in the news release:

• A very large ocean area with a few islands. Ideal for carrier operations.
• Islands that are situated such that airfields have natural red, blue, and contested locations.
• Andersen AFB on Guam.
• A total coverage of 400×400 km.

Missing features

All of it… It has not been released yet.

Links and files

• 2020-01-03 Newsletter offering the first details on the terrain.
• Introducing the Mariana Islands Map in the DCS News section.

More information

• Mariana Islands on wikipedia.
• Mariana and Palau Islands campaign on wikipedia.
• Guam and Northern Mariana Islands on Google Earth.