Pilot Characters

[usagold2004]

Would anyone entertain the idea of having pilot characters? Like in some new shooter games where you gain points which you can spend on character atributes...

in a flying game, maybe you could upgrade your pilots eye sight, or boost his G tolerance, or maybe he could be mechanically skilled and get a little extra horse power out of the engine...

throw in your ideas or shoot it down. fights on

[Skoshi Tiger]

The only way it would work would be if your points were taken off your apponents. Lets take reaction time.

For example My natural reaction is a 10th of a second and yours is a 15th of a second. But i've gathered rubber and built enough research facilities to create a 'G' suit, which give me extra extra reaction (during high 'G' manuvers) of a 60th of a second, so this is subtracted from all other players reaction times so now my reaction time is still a 10th of a second , but yours is a 15th of a second plus a delay 60th of a second which is 24 hundreth of a second so I whip your Butt!

Also we could code in the following snippet.
line 2347524: if (UserName == 'Skoshi Tiger') { Invincibility = TRUE; Status ='Legend" };

[furbs]

offline maybe....online i think we should all have a level playing field

[Igo kyu]

The other way to look at it is your pilot starts off almost completely useless, and only becomes fun to fly after you have been flying for a long while. Which means less sales. They had something similar in CFS3, and I didn't find it enjoyable.

[Thunderbolt56]

lmao

[Feuerfalke]

Not for the player, but with AI being able to fly with you on dogfight-servers, it would be great fly online with characters you trained and flew with offline.

Basically like the old M1-Platoon-game or Janes Apache Longbow. You could make up your own crews (at least the names) and they got better the more targets you let them kill and the more missions you brought them back from.

[Feuerfalke]

Not for the player, but with AI being able to fly with you on dogfight-servers, it would be great fly online with characters you trained and flew with offline.

Basically like the old M1-Platoon-game or Janes Apache Longbow. You could make up your own crews (at least the names) and they got better the more targets you let them kill and the more missions you brought them back from.

For advanced squad-management, you could also send them to trainings, but have to live with their absence for several weeks. Or send them for R&R if their fatigue is too high or their morale is low due to lost comrades. But that is primarily for the offline-part, again. ;)

Unless there is an online campaign of course.... :cool:

[Lucas_From_Hell]

Didn't MS CFS had this feature?

Well, unless Oleg lied to us on the previous interview, now it's hard to suggest many improvements, considering that they are about 80% ready, but maybe they'll use such ideas in the updates and add-ons of the game.

But about the idea itself, I find it interesting, but I'd change it in someways. Only the point system, as shown in CFS, wouldn't be very realistic. My idea would probably take too much work, and I don't even know if it's possible.

It would work this way: in offline AND online gaming, they could create an analysys of your flying style, and based on that your pilot would get more experient. For example, if you are a turn fight maniac, after a while your pilot will grow more tolerance to G-force, causing less black-outs during tight turns, and so on...

But, well, let's see what the developing team will do on the initial Storm of War volume, and then let's ask 'em for more.

[ALien_12]

That idea is used in CFS3. But I don't really love it.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Unfortunately no matter how good the programmers, they can't actually make you better than you actually are. The only way they could do it is by, as lucas suggests, placing an arbiary value on things like G tollerance, and then arbitarily increasing or decreasing these values.

How would people like this for an idea.
New pilots would find it hard to hit anything with their guns, so they would have very small 'hit bubbles' to simulate this lack of skill. As a pilot gains 'Experience' and 'Skill' it naurally becomes easier for them to hit their target, so the 'hit bubbles' become bigger simulating this increase in skills. not only that, but as your skills become better, your 'Aim' is improved and the damage is shifted towards the more vunerable parts of the aircraft, thus making it easier to destroy the target.

I, for one, would think this very arcadish and against the idea of a Simulation. I think that you should be supplied an environment and any feeling of accomplishment comes from being able to use that system to the best of YOUR abilities and move along the slow and gradual path of training and self improvement.

Yes it would be good for AI pilots to have more depth and be able to train them up, But Human pilots in my opinion should have to cope with what god has given them.

[Foo'bar]

Also we could code in the following snippet.
line 2347524: if (UserName == 'Skoshi Tiger') { Invincibility = TRUE; Status ='Legend" };

Parse error at line 2347524: Unexpected semicolon at end of line.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Parse error at line 2347524: Unexpected semicolon at end of line.

Not to mention the unterminate string constant! Such sloppy programming is inexcusable!!!

[KG26_Alpha]

Hmm

I see it now.............

E-bay

Sow pilot for sale:
G resistant 10
Vision 10
Hearing 10
Hero Status 100+
Pulling power = celeb status. ( some translation might be needed )
Alcohol tolerance = Elephant.

[Former_Older]

Would anyone entertain the idea of having pilot characters? Like in some new shooter games where you gain points which you can spend on character atributes...

in a flying game, maybe you could upgrade your pilots eye sight, or boost his G tolerance, or maybe he could be mechanically skilled and get a little extra horse power out of the engine...

throw in your ideas or shoot it down. fights on

This is almost precisely what Combat Flight Simulator 3 introduced, and it was poor in concept.

The idea of making a pilot more individual is laudable and desirable, but the execution of it is always a problem. What we're talking about here is more like an RPG...boosting eyesight? Nonsense, this didn't happen...G Tolerance? Again, fantasy, the pilot was trained and his personal tolerance is his personal tolerance, end of story. Those two 'stats' are straight out of CFS3 and that system was awful in the opinion of many people. "mechanical skills" are pretty useless in the cockpit. Engine controls are available, that's all you're manipulating in the pilot's seat. My knowledge of the internal combustion engine never made my car faster while I was driving it

The fidelity of the system by which an individual 'character pilot' has strong and weak points may be useful for named non-player aces, but for a human? Firstly, nobody wants to be at a disadvantage, and while it may make the game 'more interesting' for some by introducing this RPG aspect, the sim should be about simulating reality. As I've noted, "boosting" eyesight is science-fiction, not fact. In addition, this lends itself to 'plus stacking' where the only goal is the "best build": "plz help. My 4th level OKL char is porked, what did I do rong?"

The only thing such a system could do is make a novelty accessible to players, and only at first. Two months into the game, every player will know how to 'stack pluses properly', and then every Pilot Player Character will be exactly the same- just like they are now in Il2, with zero time money and effort spent. Then development time and resources will be spent on "fixing" the PPC system, becasue of the complaints or exploits, and all we'll have to show for all of this is the same, perfectly level playing field we have right now

Bad idea in my opinion, waste of time, effort, money, and it makes high expectations that can't be met.

[usagold2004]

Older:

I think you are right about the exploitation where ultimately people will figure out how to stack the skills and it would be a novelty for a short while only

as far as eye sight and spotting targets, g tolerance increase, and mechanical ability...those are not fantasy as you say.

Two pilots with identical eyesight but differing experience levels will pick out other planes at different rates. the more experienced pilot will usually find them first.

g tolerance is a practiced technique where most people will be able to increase their g-tolerance through practice and experience

mechanical ability will give one pilot an advantage over another. chuck yeager is a good example. in order to get his jet to go faster than a competitors jet, he had his tail pipe bent to give him more thrust.

[choctaw111]

I don't really think the pilot attributes is a good idea.
The pilot attributes that we have now are simply as good as we are able to fly.
That is to say that not all simmers have the same skill.
Oleg has already said that Il2 is not a sim where everyone can become an ace or a good pilot.
That is determined only by the players skill.
Not the same when you can fly long enough, get pilot attribute skills and wind up having better "skills" than a more experienced pilot. Even then a seasoned pilot may win a dogfight over someone who just has pilot attributes.
A good pilot can win dogfights in an aircraft that has poor performance compared to a mediocre pilot in a better plane.

[Oktoberfest]

Worst idea ever.

Experience you gain while flying. We all started rookie. Some stayed rookie after 6 years of flying and some became aces. We have all different attributes in real life, and even though all characters are the same in IL2, our own attributes shows while flying the game :

patience, skill with the joystick, spotting enemies, etc...