Maps on IL2 CoD

[Red Dragon-DK]

I have one quistion to Oleg and the Dev team.

We are seeing a huge awsome map now and in furure more will come from patch and adons. Are there any chance they can be linked together as a big one map and have them as seperater smaller maps?

I´m well aware it is not planed now in this release, but is it something you consider for the future?

Thanks

[Blackdog_kt]

I know what you mean.

Sometime in the future when hardware is powerful enough, i'd love to have a lifesize map of most of mainland Europe. You could start with a group of Mosquitoes and go on an anti-shipping raid to Norway, hop in a Ju188 for some solo night intruder raids in the UK, fly as a pathfinder in a Mossie or bomber in a Lancaster in RAF night raids, intercept those with Luftwaffe night fighters, etc etc. If we end up having a mini campaign mode for multiplayer with a day-night cycle on the server it would be awesome.

As for the distances involved and time required, a variation of MDS and some of the already planned features for CoD would solve that. We've already seen a video where Luthier is changing positions from one aircraft to another. If we could set up a bomber raid to start at a certain time as AI and then jump in and take control as it nears the target, all we'd need to do is schedule the flight to arrive at the target at a time we are free to fly. So, you could set up a raid the night before and have it start under AI control while you are still at work, then when you come home and have dinner the bombers are over the north sea. After that point, you could fire up the simulator, join the server and jump into your aicrarft to fly from the point of entering hostile airspace to the target.

It would also be useful in the long run for single player, especially if higher time compression settings were available.

The disadvantage of a life sized map is the amount of time it takes for aircraft to travel over it and the effect this has on playability (not a lot of people would fly 4 hours to Berlin just to be shot down by a lucky 88m flak shell), but with some imagination it's possible to sidestep that issue and enhance playability without compromising realism too much (like in the above examples).
However, the biggest advantage of a 1:1 scale map is the realistic payload considerations it brings to the table. A lot of us would fly very differently if we knew that 25% fuel will not be enough or that we have 500 miles of enemy airspace to go through with a damaged plane before we are safe.

Well, we can dream that someday things like that will be possible ;)

[Sutts]

I know what you mean.

Sometime in the future when hardware is powerful enough, i'd love to have a lifesize map of most of mainland Europe. You could start with a group of Mosquitoes and go on an anti-shipping raid to Norway, hop in a Ju188 for some solo night intruder raids in the UK, fly as a pathfinder in a Mossie or bomber in a Lancaster in RAF night raids, intercept those with Luftwaffe night fighters, etc etc. If we end up having a mini campaign mode for multiplayer with a day-night cycle on the server it would be awesome.

As for the distances involved and time required, a variation of MDS and some of the already planned features for CoD would solve that. We've already seen a video where Luthier is changing positions from one aircraft to another. If we could set up a bomber raid to start at a certain time as AI and then jump in and take control as it nears the target, all we'd need to do is schedule the flight to arrive at the target at a time we are free to fly. So, you could set up a raid the night before and have it start under AI control while you are still at work, then when you come home and have dinner the bombers are over the north sea. After that point, you could fire up the simulator, join the server and jump into your aicrarft to fly from the point of entering hostile airspace to the target.

It would also be useful in the long run for single player, especially if higher time compression settings were available.

The disadvantage of a life sized map is the amount of time it takes for aircraft to travel over it and the effect this has on playability (not a lot of people would fly 4 hours to Berlin just to be shot down by a lucky 88m flak shell), but with some imagination it's possible to sidestep that issue and enhance playability without compromising realism too much (like in the above examples).
However, the biggest advantage of a 1:1 scale map is the realistic payload considerations it brings to the table. A lot of us would fly very differently if we knew that 25% fuel will not be enough or that we have 500 miles of enemy airspace to go through with a damaged plane before we are safe.

Well, we can dream that someday things like that will be possible ;)


I'd love to see these maps stitched together too. I wonder if we'll be able to edit the stock maps too - the community has far more time to get the details right than the devs ever will.

Does anyone know if Oleg's engine is capable of loading the next chunk of map as you fly closer to it - only keeping in memory the portion required around the player? I guess this is the way they probably designed it. If that is the case then perhaps the only limit on map size is the time it takes to develop the darn things.

I like your idea for making long missions possible Blackdog. I also would really like to see the ability to save state mid-mission one day....so you can break up a mission over a number of days if required.

[Red Dragon-DK]

Exatly Blackdog. I would love to see this to. And then mabye a lot of new palyers would like to shift ofer to this Sim. Im thinking about pilots from XFS that like to go long distance to and mabye get int some of none aktion - depanding on the rute they are taken on those dogfight servers that go on for days/weeks. Cut provide supplies and stuf. Just a thought that cut make it all more exciting.

Sutts I think the engien in the new Sim are able to handle it or at least are prepared for it with small change. Just take a look, what IL2 can handle today. And that engien are old. But mabye we have to wait 1 - 3 year for this to become real?

[Blackdog_kt]

Yes, most probably. I don't have any illusion that we'll see such a feature on the first release, but over the following expansions it could be possible in 2-3 years with better hardware.

If there was a dynamic online campaign with AI units and automatic managing/tracking of supplies on the strategic level it could open up the sim to a lot bigger and more diverse crowd.

Like you said, there's loads of people who fly both civilian and combat sims, the first for the complexity and long flights and the second for the action. Well, if they could find both aspects of simming in the same piece of software it would create a bigger community and more sales: you're flying on a short cross channel hop and mixing it up low over the sea and the next minute you're taking off in a catalina flying boat for a quiet, 3 hour lone wolf sortie chasing U-boats in stormy weather and icing conditions. It would be great ;)

The best thing of it all would be that the more complex flying would be needed to advance the strategic objectives of the campaign, while at the same time the more action oriented players would still serve a valuable role by providing barrier patrols for the multi-engined aircraft to do their job, which in turn would create an advantage for the action oriented folks and so on. In this way, one style of gameplay contributes to the success of the other and we could fuse the tastes of different people under a common software environment.

[BigC208]

You could also maybe start the mission, take off and skip to the point where you first enounter enemy contact. Not much use in flying to Berlin and back in a combat box, following the guy ahead of you. Focus on the action parts. Forget wich sim had that skip forward function. Maybe Microsoff Combatsim 2? The people that want to spend the time can still do it at normal speed. Say a photo recon flight requiring navigation skill, a patfhfinder mission or night interdiction in a Hurricane II. Do it on a moonlit night and use realistic dead recogning navigation using landmarks, compass and stopwatch to get to your target. Just finding the target will give you a newfound respect for what these guys did 70 years ago.

I would like to see a May1940 Blitzkrieg, Western Europe map with a corresponding planeset. There would be a lot of ground attack and defence missions. With this maps detail level it should be very realistc. Same map could be used or adapted for 1941-45 scenario's. Lots of low level atack potential.

[McHilt]

Exatly Blackdog. I would love to see this to. And then mabye a lot of new palyers would like to shift ofer to this Sim. Im thinking about pilots from XFS that like to go long distance to and mabye get int some of none aktion - depanding on the rute they are taken on those dogfight servers that go on for days/weeks. Cut provide supplies and stuf. Just a thought that cut make it all more exciting.

Sutts I think the engien in the new Sim are able to handle it or at least are prepared for it with small change. Just take a look, what IL2 can handle today. And that engien are old. But mabye we have to wait 1 - 3 year for this to become real?

Douglas 'World Cruiser's Route' comes to mind... :grin: a more peaceful approach, but still... interesting stuff.
Oh, I'd love that too.

[Blackdog_kt]

You could also maybe start the mission, take off and skip to the point where you first enounter enemy contact. Not much use in flying to Berlin and back in a combat box, following the guy ahead of you. Focus on the action parts. Forget wich sim had that skip forward function. Maybe Microsoff Combatsim 2? The people that want to spend the time can still do it at normal speed. Say a photo recon flight requiring navigation skill, a patfhfinder mission or night interdiction in a Hurricane II. Do it on a moonlit night and use realistic dead recogning navigation using landmarks, compass and stopwatch to get to your target. Just finding the target will give you a newfound respect for what these guys did 70 years ago.

I would like to see a May1940 Blitzkrieg, Western Europe map with a corresponding planeset. There would be a lot of ground attack and defence missions. With this maps detail level it should be very realistc. Same map could be used or adapted for 1941-45 scenario's. Lots of low level atack potential.

Obviously that wouldn't work in multiplayer, but it's an excellent idea for single player.

I think such a "skip to next waypoint/encounter" feature existed in some of the old dynamix sims (aces over europe and aces of the pacific).

I'm sure it was also in European Air War and it made a ton of difference for singe player: that game had a map stretching over most of continental Europe (at the cost of quality, since it was very flat, but it did the job for the time it was released) and you often got escort missions deep in Germany.

[TheGrunch]

Doesn't it exist in Il-2 as well? Alt+X for Time Skip or something. I never used it so I don't know how it works but it's there.

[Blackdog_kt]

I'm not entirely sure...there is definitely a feature that allows higher time compression (screen goes black and you get a mission timer while it accelerates time to 32x), but i don't remember any "instant warp" to next waypoint feature.

In any case, there's some nice ideas in here that show what could be possible a few years down the road.

[Mysticpuma]

I like the idea behind this and as a Single Player option I think it would/could work well.

In a similar way, I can imagine a Co-Op style of Multiplayer which could have an in-depth Mission where Pilots in Axis Fighters say 32 Players, with 50 Bombers take on 46 Hurricanes and Spitfires in a 128 player battle.

If the Sim allows it, one player could be an Allied Controller monitoring the AI Radar and have to Vector in the Allied Pilots to intercept?

Later with updates it could be expanded to Long-Range Mustangs to berlin with B-17 and B-24's against similar Axis Fighters.

Only time will tell....but the options are so variable this Sim will be the new IL2 and last for years. Heck if you think about it, the old IL2 isn't by any means dead in the water yet!

Cheers, MP