It can be done. I have the 50 online strike achievment, and the B17, AND I worked my arse off for it. I got real good at ground attack, (I got to be good at something since I really SUCK at dogfighting). But, I worked, worked, long and hard to gain 50 won strike missions. I teamed up with a fighter that was good at dog fighting to keep people off my 6, and/or shoot down the opponents bombers, and worked for about a week to gain that acheivment. I earned my B-17, which I am sure there are several B-17s out there that were cheated to get. But, what's a pilot to do? I flew most my strike missions with the jet bomber (Arada?) so it's fast enough out fly most the fighters, and a fighter helper to keep the better fighters off my butt. However, some outflew me bigtime and got me anyway). But, allot of persistant, hard work got me the acheivment. I didn't look for strike missions though, I started them myself, and invited anyone I could reach to come join the game because I wanted to keep it as fair as possible. I had one kid whine, because he said I was cheating, because if I can brag, I won allot. Sure I did, I got good at strike, just like many are awesome dogfighters (again, which I am NOT). I just told him if he had issues with me winning, than I challenged him to get better and beat me (or my team for that matter, wasn't just by myself). Anyway... I love my B 17, I think more, because I did earn it with hard persistant game play. Im gonna go to my hanger and polish it now, because it is shot all to hell.. lol..

I agree 100%.

I don't really know why the whole unlocking method is so popular in games today. I guess it does give the players an additional goal to work towards, but I feel if I payed the money for the game I should be able to access all the features without too much trouble.

I agree about unlocking all the planes in training... or completing the campaign on ANY level/mode would unlock all the planes. Nothing too difficult. For instance, if someone has no interest in playing SIM, they might be forced to play to unlock some of the better planes, which would be lame.

i'm about 5 wins away from getting the b-17, and while it will be worth it, i will have to come to terms with the following:

1. as soon people enter my strike session, they'll see the b-17 and leave, or everyone will join my team

2. i'll only be able to use it for a short while, since i'm trying to unlock all the other planes for the birdfan trophy. (and i only have 20 days to do it, since Borderlands comes out Oct. 20)

oh and the AR-234 isn't necessarily a counter for the B-17. it takes forever to turn around, and in one game i shot down four of them in a 109 E3.

I love unlocking things! If I had everything from the start, I would still play, but not with the same drive I do now. It's a lot of fun working towards something and then finally getting the big payoff. I don't think BoP is desperate for gimmicks, a lot of people enjoy the unlock system. It's one of the most phrased things about the COD games.

Update on the unlocks found here. Basically they'll be 1/5th of what they were, except for B17. Not sure what that'll be.

The only Strike game I actually found and played in was extremely odd. I was flying a Blenheim with 4 bombs, and accurately hitting the ground targets on each pass. But after dozens of hits, the structure was still intact....nobody on either team seemed to be able to actually destroy the targets.

What's with this? Was it a random glitch, or are the targets really, really hard to destroy? It would make no sense if they could take literally dozens of direct hits from bombs and not be destroyed.

ive played 2 strike games and got annoyed with that too things just dont seem to get destroyed..i dont get it hopefully..the update will fix this an the stupid way your points dont count towards your leaderboard rankings if people quit out

That's extremely annoying. If the host quits or the game disconnects or something, none of it matters, even if it was a second from completion.

It should be in games like COD4 how as soon as you get a kill, its recorded, no matter what happens afterward.

Really disappointed to hear there'll be no single-player unlocks. After spending more time waiting for games than it took to finish the single-player campaign on Sim, even 20% of the requirements is a tedious and frustrating exercise (as when you do find a game, only about 1 in 3 are much fun, due to quitters/them being one sided/DCs), so I'll be giving up on the other planes (it's a shame, I know they're on that disk, but there's no way of getting them that isn't so painful one would question why I was putting myself through the tedium and frustration ;)). Thanks for the games to InfiniteStates, Zeroptimus, Black Death and everyone else I bumped into that was good value, but unless the patch fixes the online (which, as I understand, isn't possible as it's outside the hands of the devs), then it doesn't make sense me spending so much time just trying to get a decent game when there's offline, as well as a slew of other great games to play.

Will still hit it up offline of course, pick up the PSP version and pre-order the sequel :). But think that after this disappointment I might take a break from it for a bit - good gaming guys, have good ones :).

Does the PC version of the IL-2 series have all these unlocks too?
Just curious....