Germany built a number of low-performance aircraft (i.e., liaison and trainer) types in French factories after France fell. Additionally, the Luftwaffe had to leave many German built planes behind when France was liberated.

So, in late 1944-45, and in the immediate post-war period, France operated a lot of captured German planes or French-built versions of German designs.

From 1940 on, the Free French Air Force used British and American types. After the war, they retained the best of the lot (e.g., F6F, P-51, Spitfire, Gloster Meteor, A-26 Invader).

So, the Armee de l'Air order of battle for 1945 or for the battles in Vietnam is a very interesting mix of planes, few of them French.

Prior to 1940, France was attempting to use just French-built planes, but when it became obvious that the French aircraft industry wasn't up to the task, they started purchasing from British and American sources. There are so many missing from the IL2 order of battle, that you'd almost need to design a whole new simulation to properly represent them.

To be fair to the French, the Armee de l'Air held its own against the Luftwaffe, but ultimately was defeated because the French Army and the BEF couldn't stand against the Blitzkrieg.

There's plenty of fun flight simming to be had with "what if" campaigns where the German advance hadn't been quite so swift or well-managed, and/or where the French had sorted out their logistical and labor relations problems sooner. That would allow for longer campaigns, or campaigns where players can fly French aircraft that were only produced in limited numbers or which were still on the drawing board in early 1940.

What's wrong with that? IL2 is a great "sandbox sim" which you can enjoy in many different ways.

Given the popularity of arcade games like World of Planes, there's certainly a fan base for dogfights.

And, even if you're a hard core rivet-counting historical campaigner, there are still times when you want to fly the best plane in the sky.

But, like you said, being able to simulate any sort of historical mission allows us to appreciate the difficulties and heroism of combat pilots who flew the less glamorous missions.

Personally, I'd love to see a flyable Ju-52, Fw-189, or Fi-156, and would happily fly campaigns based around those planes. In some cases, the ability to deliver supplies or paratroopers, or to bring back information, was as important as delivering bombs and just as harrowing.

I didn't want to be unfair. I just wanted to record that there's relatively little room for French planes so far as we consider new planes and maps under the pretext of their historical relevance to the outcome of WWII. For this is what we generally do. Our other approach is to resurrect promising projects which historically failed or entered production too late to have influence. The D.520 would qualify for both categories, but the rest of French aircrafts hardly. Yet, all this is pure speculation on our side -- we can get any French plane provided someone models it according to TD's standards. :)

As to me, this has nothing to do with 'rivet-counting'. I'm a minor nations geek, and minor nations typically had second-rank fighters. These are seriously outmatched by the first-rank fighters of major nations. Still, most fighter units of most minor nations had a positive kill/loss ratio (even the Polish in 1939!), as major nations too had obsolate planes. Now if you take out obsolate planes from the game (luckily we have quite a lot of such Russian types), then flying a Finnish, or Hungarian, or Romanian campaign becomes completely pathetic and, therefore, pointless. The tuna can live on mackerel, even if defenseless against the few sharks.

They were both tri-motor transport, and had similar wingspan, but the similarities ends here. The S82 was much bigger, faster and heavier, its empty weight being more than Ju’s max take off weight. Payload was accordingly higher, more than twice, and there’s no comparison in range.
That said, I would prefer Marauder, Whirlwind and Helldiver…

The wrong thing, is favoring one type of plane against others, those ones that are not first class fighters.

The better approach would be to fulfill the principal aircraft available on a scenery. Not just the fighters in it.

People say, the battle of France lasted only four weeks, but the battle of Kursk, employed more tanks and aircraft, and lasted only 10 days. I really don't like that kind of biased argument. The battle of France is one of the best scenerys to be played, and the only fighter missing is the D520, that was actually rare to be seen. But the french got no bombers, and no recon to employ in the game. The british are also in the same situation.

People complain about missing planes to fully fill the pacific scenery, and I must agree. There are no torpedo lunchers on the american side, and few late war japanese bombers. Trying to win a campaign from the japanese side is very difficult. Bombs are less powerfull, and torpedo launchers are really sitting ducks.

Fair enough.

For any WW2 aircraft sim to really do justice to all nations and all theaters, and to accurately cover events from 1939-45, I've figured that it would take at least 13 "focused" simulations - each covering a specific theater and/or type of operations.

So far, we've got just two theaters of the air war covered more or less adequately - Eastern Front and Pacific Carrier Ops. Even then, there are some gaps in the Order of Battle and some mistakes and omissions on the maps.

We're birds of a feather then. I love my obscure planes and minor air forces, in particular the Finns. I'm thrilled to have rare birds like the Avia B.534 or Rogozarski IK-3 in the game.

And, its not that the minor nations necessarily had bad designs, they just didn't have the economic and industrial base to develop their designs fast enough or in sufficient quantities. I'd love to know how doomed planes like the PZL.50 Jastrzab, Weiss-Manfred WM.23 Ezüst Nyíl, Fokker G.1, Fokker D.XXIII, or the PZL.62 Kanya would have fared, even though it makes no sense to include them into a historical simulation.

I love them too. They are my favourite. 'Did you give up drinking?' -- Raikönnen: 'No'. :-P

Not counting my personal preferences, but what is 'needed' most I would opt for an early British bomber, a late Japanese Torpedobomber and, most of all, the Me 210/410.
That said, in my opinion the biggest obstacle for 'realistic' late war bomber intercept missions (no matter which theater) is AI behaviour. At present, if you try to attack a big formation of bombers with a small number of attackers, the protecting fighters will all immediately go for you, leave their bombers and chase you all over the map, even if you spend all your ammo and are no threat anymore. Your own AI (even obsolete Bf 110) will not go for a quick attack on a bomber, but happily engage in turnfights with vastly superior numbers of enemy fighters.
To create more 'realistic' bomber intercepts and survivable missions for destroyers the missionbuilder would need to be able to give several commands for attackers and defenders:
Blue high flying fighters (Bf-109, Ki-100 etc.): Attack fighters only
Blue bomber interceptors (Me 410, FW-190, Ki 84 etc.): Attack bombers only
Red fighter cover: Stick to the bombers, never get further than XXX distance from them.

I have no idea whether this is possible and I am well aware that AI programming is extremly difficult (and far beyond my abilities).
And, please don´t get me wrong: In my opinion Il-2 1946 AI is still by far the best of all flight sims I know. And I am perfectly sure that in terms of maps and planeset, all other sims will just reach a small fraction of what we can enjoy here.

Eastern front is main focus of IL2-and thus logically pretty complete (And mostly fun, though early war is hard on Russian side and late war not easy as Germans.)

Pacific carrier ops is complete, if you don't want to go too late in the war. Later on a capable flyable torpedo/dive bomber is missing on both sides.

Med theather is pretty playable IMHO, too - if you are not too picky and can live with wrong Beau variant, replacing a few planes with similar ones(e .g. Baltimore repaced by a-20/B-25) a missing Hurri IId and a few others. And IMHO it still is the theatre that ages best, from the beginning almost up to the end of the invasion of Italy it is balanced on terms of individual performance, the Italian/German planeset just fits nearly perfectly to their Brit/American counterparts. Though maps for that theatre would not hurt, or are rather obviously missing.

Apart from the fact that a german bomber player is forced to fly 1940/41 He-111 and Ju-88 versions even in 1943... Or missing important Bf-110 variants (C4, F2)

From pacific, I think the most important would be the Helldiver, a flyable B-25C, and a D3A2

Of these two, I would definitely opt for the Med. After 1943, Japanese carriers didn’t play any meaningful role, and the chances for an attacking JNAF torpedo bomber, even land based, were so slim that the only viable way to continue fighting was the extreme measure of “special attack”. I don’t think any player would opt for a torpedo or bomber JNAF career ending with a suicide attack.

Expanding Mediterranean theatre could result in interesting scenarios and career. An Italian pilot will start on the blue side, and could switch to red after September 8th 1943. Italian Co-Belligerent Air Force flew mainly Spitfire V, P39Q and Martin Baltimore… And just the latter would be needed.

And while no perfect solution, with a little creative leeway, an A-20 could be used as a substitute - should be close enough. Maps would still be needed. With maybe Sicily and another North Africa map, which I think were posted here as WIP this could go a long way. And there was an absolutely fun campaign playing Battle of Malta using some Japanese islands. So Malta map would be a real treat - and that battle lasted for quite some time.

The glass nose type is possibly one of the best substitutes ever. Surely it would do for mission builders, but what about offline dynamic campaigns? Does Il2 allow substitutes?

Sure, it's a common practice in DCG campaigns. You only need a hack skin and voilá, you have an R-10 as a Ba.65, or an IK-3 as a D.520.

More A-20 variants are needed, period. It was one of the most ubiquitous planes of the war, serving with multiple air forces from 1940-45 (and beyond) on all fronts.

The DB-7 would be an excellent choice for an early war French bomber since it saw service in North Africa as well as France.

The DB-7A/Boston II would be a good choice for a mid-war British medium bomber (although the choice of British light and medium bomber types is huge).

Havoc I would be a good choice for an early British night fighter.

The DB-7C/Boston III was used by the Australians, British and the Soviets.

Lend-Lease A-20C were fitted with Soviet guns, ordinance and turrets.

It almost never looks right, though.

Looking at the number of "hack" skins gives you a pretty good indicator of the sort of planes that mission builders actually want for the game.

Ba.65
D.520
Ki-44
Sunderland
Lancaster
Gloster Meteor

That's where the tension of IL2 as a "sandbox sim" - useable in many different ways - begins to show.

Some people want non-historical missions where the Axis and the Allies are evenly matched until 1945 and beyond, complete with "what if" designs which never made it beyond the prototype stage.

Some people want historical missions where after 1943 it becomes a curb-stomp for the Allies.

Both groups are correct, but who are you going to develop content for?

There are a few campaigns that end that way. And, if you don't like that outcome you just take off, fly around a bit, land again and say that you've completed the mission to finish the campaign. (Realistically, that could happen - sometimes kamikazes couldn't find their targets and had to return to base.)

The problem here is that IL2 doesn't allow you to switch sides in the middle of a campaign. You'd need two different campaigns.

This 'plane, as it was the only allied jet aircraft to reach squadron service during WW II, should have been in Il-2 1946 from it's release. Instead we got an American prototype, Soviet aircraft, that as far as I am aware took no part in combat missions, a couple of jets that the Luftwaffe actually flew in service and German drawing board fantasies.
If some third party modeller could produce a "Meteor" to TD's standards I would be eternally grateful.

Cheers,
Rob

Sure. But we mission builders are a minority group who do not produce new models. So we have to live with what we do have.

The problem of balancing – or unbalancing – is around from day one, I believe, and is hard to control. A couple of examples: in the early days of Barbarossa, VVS suffered enormous losses, being numerically superior and inferior in quality of planes. Main factors were bad organization, wrong decisions by leaders, and inexperience of pilots and unit commanders. It’s not easy – to understate it – to recreate this situation with simple mission building tools and AI planes.
In the last days of war, Luftwaffe suffered from lack of experienced pilots and fuel. Again: how can you recreate this situation with simple mission building tools and AI planes? You should include missions with player’s plane sitting on the ground with empty tanks…
As I see it, at the moment the most efficient solution is to concentrate on theatres and scenarios historically balanced: North Africa 1942, Pacific 1942-43, Russia 1943, etc. My opinion, of course.
What-ifs are a viable and attractive way out, with many enjoyable possibilities. It’s a matter of measure, I think. Fantasy planes, many of which populate 1946, should be avoided, I believe.



So, I stand corrected: there are actually players ready for a special attack, or to cheat the Emperor.;)

That’s a limitation deserving a solution, I think. The same side switching happened in Finland, France (twice, in theory), Romania and other places (such as Slovak insurgency) and countries (such as Croatia). And I didn’t mention what if side switching, such as an anti-Soviet alliance, actually considered by Winston Churchill…

I agree, but there are two independent problems here.

One is the problem of missing factions like Vichy France or Allied Romania. This is relatively easy to fix, and has been already done so in the Forgotten Countries mod years ago. It's simply a matter of decision on TD's side to add 'new' nations, each with a side flag and the appropriate squads.

Another, and more complicated, problem is how a nation (or a squad) could switch side mid-campaign. It would require a special code turning e.g. some select Italian squads from blue to red on a given date (with corresponding markings, ranks, etc.) E.g. on the day when France surrenders, some squads should remain red as FAFL, while others turn to blue as Vichy. Still, such 'hard dates' for side switches would make hypothetical scenarios much more difficult.

Another, not unproblematic, solution would be enabling squad changes (transfers) in mid-campaign, at least between battles/scanarios. E.g. when there are both blue and red Italian/French/Romanian squads, you could simply transfer from one to another. If such a transfer could be initiated via the mission script, then the rest of the problems could be sorted out on a campaign design level. The only problem is that campaign files reside in nation-specific folders, which are likely to be messed up when you switch from Italy Blue to Italy Red. :confused:

Make the AI on the German side good. Feed them Russian squads piecemeal.
For player sitting around with no fuel, just space missions apart a few days or more, and comment on it. Best campagins offline are those that have a good written narrative, and to name one that IMHO stood out: Castaways/Bushpigs.
Right. And make that North Africa//Mediteranean, planeset there is IMHO balanced till the end. Numbers will not help the axis side later on...

I think this would be enormous fun. Never understood why 1946 didn't pick that theme up. German Co-Belligerent Airforce. And think about the near endless ordnance options, unguided rockets for the Germans, guided bombs and rockets for allied bombers. Or even better, German Airforce splits in two, and German planes/armament is available on both sides.

I'd say impossible to control. There were actually very few periods of the war where both sides were evenly matched in quality and quantity. And, they typically only lasted a few months before something changed to "spoil" the even match up - drop in plane numbers and/or pilot quality, failure of supply lines, or introduction of superior aircraft.

For example, early phase of the Battle of Britain were fairly well matched in planes and pilot quality. Towards the end, the RAF was starting to hit bottom in terms of available fighters and trained pilots.

Same thing for the other evenly matched theaters you mentioned, except that the Allies won the supply battle and were able to get more and better planes into the air.

On dogfight servers, you can only really have parity by having equal numbers of competitively matched fighters, although a few people will always take bombers or other "non-competitive" planes as a change-up.

For historical missions and campaigns, you don't have to worry about balance as long as you tell the player up front that the odds are stacked against him. That will weed out the people who just want to fly a hot rod and kill things, and select for the masochists who enjoy doing things like flying the Brewster Buffalo against a pack of Veteran A6M2 at 10:1 odds (or the D3A1 against a pack of Veteran F6F at 10:1 odds).

That's a bit too brutal. For any good campaign, you need to take a bit of dramatic license to make things challenging for the player while still giving the "overall impression" of the tactical and strategic situation.

For example, it would be more "interesting" to have your hapless Luftwaffe fighter jock like sitting on the end of the runway with 10% fuel, with an entire squadron of Average to Veteran P-51 screaming down to strafe the airfield. Basically, the player is screwed unless he chooses to not complete the mission, but there's a tiny chance that with luck and skill he can somehow survive.

Generally agreed, but what constitutes a "fantasy" plane? There were plenty of planes that were promising prototypes that never made it to combat service for reasons that we might consider to be stupid, or because of tactical or strategic factors beyond the designer's control. He-112 with DB-601 engine, Fw-187 Falke, PZL.50 Jastrzab?

Agreed. There should also be the option for allowing "blue" nations to be switched to "red" and vice-versa. This would allow for USSR vs. US battles - either accidental encounters like those that occasionally happened in 1944-45, or intentional "Cold War gone hot" set-ups.

It would take a lot more work, but it might also be possible to have a third side as "green" or some other color - just like in multiplayer coop missions. That would allow for the odd three-way fight, like US vs. USSR vs. Germany or France vs. Germany vs. Switzerland (fleeing French pilots attempting to get to neutral Switzerland, with Luftwaffe pilots attempting to shoot them down).

I wondered about that as well. Possibly lack of development time. Possibly lack of understanding by a Russian development team about the political tensions underlying the Western Allies-Soviet alliance. Possibly a residual horror at the thought of such a bloody and prolonged conflict.

Also, not to get political, but a Western Allies-German military alliance vs. the USSR was probably a non-starter once there was undeniable evidence of The Holocaust. (But, then again, if IL2:1946 could include the Lerche, they could just as easily imagine a scenario where everyone agreed to forget the death camps, or where the Shoah never existed.)

As alternate history, a Western Allies-German alliance might have worked if the USSR had attacked Poland in 1939 (and that was a potential conflict Churchill imagined). The UK and France might have held their noses and allied with Germany in a grand Western European crusade against Bolshevism. But, that alternate history would require all sorts of early war planes we don't have.

A more easily created alternate history campaign could occur if the Nazis had been deposed in 1942 to 1944, resulting in a German Civil War. The USSR invades Eastern Germany to "keep order," with some German military units fighting alongside them. The US and UK then occupy Western Germany with other German military units fighting alongside them, and war breaks out in Central Germany roughly along the line of the Cold War "Iron Curtain."

Great gaming opportunities, but horrifying to contemplate as real life scenarios.

As we say in Italy, and surely elsewhere as well, devil lives in details. What do we mean with “balanced” or “unbalanced”? Considering that between black and white there are countless shades of grey, I would try to write some numbers, at least for a discussion basis. So, I would define “unbalanced” a situation in which one side has less than 25 % average possibility to complete each mission of a campaign. A ten missions campaign against three to one odds for each mission is an impossible one, in my opinion, or a very boring one if the player hit “refly” button after each death. Things change, clearly, if the player is only required to survive, but even then there’s a limit of reasonability. I’ve mentioned the odds faced by Japanese torpedo bombers from early 1944 onwards. They’re so low that ultimately only two options remained: stay on the ground or take off for a suicide mission. For this reason, I believe that late war, flyable Japanese torpedo bomber types are useful for a “what if” campaign only, with non-historical balancing.
At the other end of the spectrum, I would consider balanced a situation in which each side has at least 50% possibility to complete each mission of a campaign. It’s still very, very hard, with one to one odds repeated for a number of missions up to the end of a campaign. A less demanding one would probably require an average of more than 90%. If the number looks too high, just think about the 25 missions cycle of a B17 pilot over Europe.

Again, we are talking about shades of grey, or devil in details. My opinion is that operational types only should be available in game, with priority for types that had widespread use, regardless of their successes or failures. Just try to count experimental or what if types available and play the game of substituting them with important, missing types. Griffon Spitfire in place of I-185, Meteor in place of swept wing Me262, Helldiver in place of Mig 3U, and so on…
To sum it up, I would have preferred Battle of France in place of 1946, but that’s my opinion, and I’m probably wrong if we talk about development costs and commercial strategies.
Moreover, I understand that I185 and other types were a labour of love done by volunteers, to which I’m simply grateful. Thanks, guys!:grin:

Looks like my previous post killed the debate! Perhaps I used too many numbers, perhaps the general tone sounds too pedantic (remember: this is not my language, and my control of subtleties like humour is relative), fact remains that I was left alone…
It’s a pity, because the thread was interesting, so I’m here trying a new approach. No more ponderous analysis about historical facts and technical detail. No more serious and boring references to reality, but just some dreaming thoughts about… A perfect sandbox Il2! My idea is simple, and almost certainly unfeasible: to create a generator of dynamic campaign generators.
Imagine a series of menus in which you choose:
Red, Blue (and Green, according to Pursuivant).
Alliances for Red and Blue (and Green).
Player nation.
Map, or maps, in order of appearance.
Year of start, year of end.
Planeset for each nation, and for each year.
Defined or undefined outcome (who will win the war).
Pilot career for each year, in such a way that player can start as fighter pilot and then switch to bomber, or vice-versa.
Difficulty level.
Experience of AI pilots (% of rookies, veterans, aces) for each nation and year.
Then, save your dynamic campaign.
Hit the fly button.

Not quite, I did follow the discussion, but I had the impression that we were talking without an end and sometimes without proper responses, therefore I didn't respond either...

It's a game. It has to be playable to be called a game properly. If you recreate historical circumstances, sometimes it will be playable easily (white), sometimes hardly (grey), and sometimes not at all (black). Black does not make sense, like a late-war Japanese torpedo bomber campaign according to history. You either avoid it at all or brutally cheat history in order to make it playable. So simple.

As to grey, here come the many shades. Even with good survival chances, you'll have to hit the 'refly' button from time to time. How frequently, depends on your skills and on scenario design. There are many ways to improve your chances and your playing experience, even if you stick to history. This is what we call 'balancing': it's cheating in a historically legitimate way. On the tactical level, you only enter combat when you have the advantage, right? Now you can do the same on the strategic level too: even outnumbered forces can achieve local superiority, and you are at liberties at recreating those situations with preference.

Or think of the G.50. It has such a low speed that it is theroretically unable to intercept most contemporary allied planes, including the Blenheim -- unless it dives on it from a higher altitude. So assign the Fiats a higher patrolling altitude in your campaign, and you're basically done.

And this is exacly what makes your (our) dream of a supreme generator of campaigns impossible to be realized (apart from the technical hindrances): only human discretion can make history 'playable'.

Put your efforts on doing a better interface to the SEOW engine, and play to games in one.
It is mainly intended to play online, but if you combine it with the DCG for a single player, it will be a child's dream.

This option already exists for multiplayer, where you can have any number of teams. All that is needed is to transfer the code over to the QMB, FMB and campaign engines.

Note that I chose "green" as the third option because it corresponds to the color used for a third force on US military maps. (The US is blue, opposing forces are red.) Other countries do things differently.

Furio's idea is a good one, but to make IL2 "cross cultural" and truly a "sandbox sim" a better way for the menus to work might be:

1) Choose the number of forces
2) Choose the color of each force
3) Choose the nationality for each force - different forces can have the same nationality to simulate civil war scenarios. Alternate national insignia would be needed. You should also have the option of adding nations rather than choosing from the standard list.
4) Choose whether a particular force is allied, hostile or neutral with respect to every other force present.

Neutral = Will turn into an enemy if attacked, but won't attack otherwise.

For example,

1933 - Chinese Nationalists vs. Chinese Communists vs. Beiyang Army (a warlord's private army) vs. Japanese Army Air Force. 4 sides. All are hostile to each other. Colors chosen for each side are arbitrary.

1945 - US vs. Soviet vs. Luftwaffe - US = Blue, Soviet = Red, Luftwaffe = Black. US & Soviet are hostile to Luftwaffe and vice-versa. US and Soviet are Neutral.

Alternate 1946 - German Civil War. US + UK + France + Co-Belligerent Luftwaffe vs. Soviets + Polish People's Liberation Air Force + German People's Liberation Air Force with Hungarians and Romanians being neutral with respect to everyone else and to each other. So, 4 "sides" and 9 colors.

Obviously, for most scenarios it's still going to be "red vs. blue"

This part looks really good.

I'm wondering if it might work well as a stand alone project, similar to what Lowengrin did with his Dynamic Campaign Generator.

People could define campaign parameters - nationalities involved, maps, planesets, etc. and share them.

Sure it could work, the only question is who is able and willing to do it. Both DCG and DGEN-mod, as we have them now, are the result of many years of work.

You could use the chat box at his website and ask if its possible to make the addition of swapping sides and other tweaks.


http://www.lowengrin.com/content.php?article.11

Or at the forum requests area

http://forum.jg1.org/forum/67-dcg-feature-requests/


:)

Real good starting point could have been Stauffenbergs assasination attempt. Let it succeed. Germany still strong enough to be a pain, maybe even a threat. War in the Pacific going better, but no end at the horizon. Germany then is easiest to neutralise if it becomes an ally. German high command would see the opportunity to end a war going South - and maybe too eager to get rid of the political leaders. Then either Soviets see an opportunity, or Germany and Allies do (Also some time could pass with an uneasy peace).

Another scenario could have been that Roosevelt does live a lot longer. He does not believe Joe Stalins lies, listens to Churchill - and the Allies fall apart earlier in the war. Then German forces fight with the US+Brits+French+Others. Stalin and The Emperor, now both with the back to the wall join in together. Bonus: Almost any late war plane we have can fly for one or the other side. And on nearly any map we have.

Some time ago I made a fantasy alternative history DF mission along some of the lines you gents are talking about.

Here is the description I did for it...


It's on the Manchuria map and has all the late war and paper napkin "wonder planes" and several mod additions from HSFX.

The question is not whether Paul is able to make such an addition. He is, provided you can offer him a job. The question is whether Il2 can handle a player swapping sides.

;)

OMG! That sounds like real fun! :grin::grin::grin:
Please, were can I get it?

Technical questions apart, it’s undeniable that Il2 has a strong potential for what if and alternate history scenarios, and it’s easy to understand why. The game has an unequalled plane set, a rich ground and surface objects inventory, and a varied choice of maps. Yes, it would require tweaking in campaigns, but not much more. Perhaps some new skins and, if required, new national markings.

With a little ingenuity, minor or experimental types could be put to good use. Then, it would be just a matter of creativity, and El’s example, some posts above, shows well what can be achieved. Surely it could be a lot of fun and, perhaps, perhaps, it could have some commercial value.

Sure hope it can be made to do just that. There is so much opportunity in betrayal - even the historical ones. Also players could make their own choices, and according to that the story continues.

Thinking a little further a really capable mission generator could use players results to generate different missions. And even good very old Wing Commander offered that - though its different for an all scripted missions game.

Agreed. It's possible that a mod team might be interested. Modders have already done a lot to improve the stock UI with the "Forgotten Nations" pack for just about every nation that ever had an air force, plus a few fictional ones. The modded plane set also offers a lot more potential for 1930s and post WW2 battles.

Just about any alternate war scenario has to include Hitler dying before 1945. But, the good news (bad news for history) is that he survived literally dozens of assassination attempts!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassi...n_Adolf_Hitler

So, choose the year that Der Fuhrer takes the dirt nap and set your alternate history accordingly.

Something that hasn't yet been mentioned for Alternate History is a civil war between the SS and the Nazi party vs. "German Nationalist" (perhaps even democratic) forces led by the Heer and remaining non-Nazi politicians. Basically, the German equivalent of what happened in Italy in 1943.

But, there weren't that many Nazis in the Luftwaffe, and in a civil war it's quite likely that the Luftwaffe would have sided with the anti-Nazi forces. So, you'd have to invent some reason why the SS-Luftwaffe had the same quality and quantity of pilots and planes as the "Nationalist Luftwaffe".

Even so, plenty of opportunity to fly cool German planes against each other.

Another option for Alternate History is a second Russian Civil War, where Stalin is assassinated, killed or deposed after 1941, resulting in a conflict between the "Whites" and the "Reds," with the Western Allies and/or Germany backing alternate factions. The campaign would use the stock maps of the Eastern Front, but the plane set and allegiances would be different.

Attachment 15034

I have put the mission files for my Za Tzarista! mission in a zip file. I hope this attachment works.

Just put the folders in Missions>Net>Dogfight and it should work. Not sure it will work without HSFX but give it a shot.

Apologies to the really good mission builders out there, but it's something that I can whip up without too much bother.

So what's happened to all the modeled planes and etc that were not added to this game?

Which ones are you referring?

To begin with, it’s third party’s choice to submit a plane or ground object for inclusion in official patches. Then, TD has the responsibility of the final decision, according to quality and technical standards. As far as I know, of course.:)
Also consider that no new Northrop Grumman types can be added, for legal reasons.

#26 here

http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.ph...,45665.24.html

gives you an idea how complex it is to import an already existing 3D model into the game.

About the late war Japanese bomber campaigns...

I think it depends on what the campaign creator wants. After all, some IJN&IJA units did continue to practice "standard" method of attack until the end of war, with some success(including the successful torpedo strike on USS Pennsylvania, as late as August 1945).

I would love the opportunity to fly as the member of the "Fuyo squadron", performing night time attacks from Kyushu to Okinawa...Although that would require to have a map which includes both regions, as well as a flyable Judy!

I mean the TBF Cockpit and P-61s

We cannot have those because they fall under the "agreement" with Northrop-Grumman that limits flyables to what came in the stock PF.

The model I wonder about the most is the IJN battleship Haruna. Shots of it in 3d Max were posted years ago, and it never came to fruition.

Basically:

If it was military hardware made or upgraded by any company that NG ever owned and it's currently in the game, it can't be improved or altered. That means no changes to the F4F, FM2, F6F, or TBF, or most existing US ships.

If it was military hardware made or upgraded by any company that NG ever owned and its not in the game, it can't be added. That means no new US ships (with a very few exceptions), no Ryan FR Fireball, no P-61, no F3F, XF5F, XP-50, F7F, F8F, F9F, or J2F.

Plenty of cool aircraft and ships were developed for PF, but fell by the wayside for various reasons. SB2C, P-47H, Ki-44, etc.

Modders, being modders, abandon projects for all sorts of reasons, from death (IL-4) and earthquake (Boomerang) to burnout to lack of interest.

The Haruna was NOT a modder project. It was shown in an early official development update.

The Nihon Kaigun is really hurting in two very important areas:

1. Cruisers, as the IJN heavily relied on it's cruiser force throughout the entire war.

2. Battleships. We need an IJN battleship that is representative of what saw the most action during the war, not a monster that played a pretty minor role if the truth be told. The Kongo class, of which Haruna was a part, fits this bill perfectly.

My understanding was that many models for PF were farmed out to independent design teams (which I mistakenly described as modders). After the NG debacle, it seemed that 1c/Ubisoft lost interest in the project, stranding many of these projects.

Of these lost efforts, the only one successfully revived was the TBD.

Agreed, but it's not just the IJN. EVERY Navy in the game could use more ships, in particular the UK and Italy. In a more perfect world, every navy in the game would have an early war AO, FF, DD, CL, CA, BB, CVL and CV type (if they had them).

For the US, UK and IJN, there should also be middle/late war AO, FF, DDE, DD, CL, CA, BB, CVL, CVE, and CV types.

Due to the variety of types and their historical importance, it would make sense to have perhaps more than just 2 different types of DD, CL, CA, BB, and CV/CVE/CVL for the IJN, USN and RN.

There also need to be more small ships and boats, like tugs, minesweepers, torpedo boats, tankers, and coastal merchants. For the US/UK, and to a lesser extent the IJN, there should also be a decent sample of the various amphibious and amphibious assault support ships which were so important later in the war. While attacks on capital naval ships made history, most of the day to day work of convoy protection and anti-shipping strikes revolved around those types.

Something that is not modeled, is early war catapult planes, used to chase enemy recon planes. It could be quite frustrating, but it was live or death for ships, to avoid recon, or to pester single bomber flights. They could even be used to chase submarines.

Another thing badly implemented in game, submarines... you can´t play submarine hunting the way ti is implemented now.

Submarines show a lot from the air when at periscope depth, but it appears that we allways fly over muddy waters here.

Catapult-launched planes and catapult-assisted takeoff are available as mods. So, that means that they're technically feasible, although they currently might not be up to TD's standards.

Mostly, however, catapult launched aircraft were used for recon and artillery spotting, rather than direct attacks. Since IL2 doesn't currently support player controlled artillery spotting missions (but again, available as a mod), there's not much point in having catapult-launched planes at the moment.

Hurricanes launched from CAM ships were obviously a different breed, but they were more of a gimmick than a sustainable form of convoy defense. Actual numbers were quite small, and there were only 9 combat launches.

For now, the best you can do for CAM launches in unmodded IL2 is just set up air-start missions using a Hurricane Mk I.

Agreed.

At the very least, submerged submarines shouldn't just be represented as a periscope, but also as a submarine-shaped "shadow" on the water's surface. Basically, a mobile "oil slick" centered around the periscope, or perhaps a submarine-shaped shadow model. I think that this is a fairly easy fix, requiring only a bit of graphics work.

Submarines at greater depths should be represented as submarine-shaped "shadows" of lesser intensity, using the same fixes above.

Unfortunately, getting submarines to "work right" requires two big programming tasks.

First, submarines and ships would need to be given sufficient AI that they'll take evasive action. All sea vessels would need basic collision avoidance and station-keeping routines. Ships and subs would need to be given basic attack routines vs. other ships (e.g., torpedo runs for SS, DD and PT types). Ships would need standard torpedo, sea/land attack and air-attack avoidance routines. Submarines would need the option of crash diving when attacked, or the option of maneuvering like ships while fighting it out on the surface.

The second big programming challenge is to allow submarines to maneuver below sea level. While it probably isn't necessary to model sea bottom depth or physics in any detail, submarines would have to be programmed so that they can "fly" beneath the water's surface, from the surface down to their crush depth.

Once you've got true submarine operations, it would then be relatively simple to include mines and depth charges.

Mines are just bombs which fail if dropped in water that is too deep and which only trigger if a ship or sub gets within a certain distance.

Depth charges are basically delayed action bombs which have increased damage effects with a longer delay (simulating the more damaging effects of an explosion at a greater depth).

ASW radar could be modified from currently developed AI radars (although this would take a lot of technical research, programming and graphics work).

MAD gear could be derived from ASW radar. (But, but with simplified physics. And with all the challenges associated with developing any other sensor system in the game.)

Not so true. On the Bismarck attempt at crossing between Iceland and Britain, when it was spotted by a PBY, (if I remember well), the registry relates that the Arado on board was launched on an attempt to give chase, the PBY actually pulled away, the Arado not being capable of climbing fast enough to make contact, but the attempt was made. Also many early war ships got floaters for an intended defense task. You may discuss their effectiveness as fighters, which actually happened, but they did try.

Well, it depends on the waters you are flying over. On clear waters they don't look like a shadow. They clearly looks like a distorted ship, at least at periscope depth. Planes used to straffe this shapes underwater, and they were very vulnerable even to heavy machine gun fire.

I would be happy with just the periscope depth submarine, the other thing goes unto the dream wardrobe, but well, who knows!

A nice attempt unto this was made in CLOD. Just with ships I must say. I didn't played enough with it to judge how well was it implemented. But this is a thing asked once and again from IL2, way before TD took the flame.
I think TD have been also pestered with this, but until now it never entered into the agenda.

Your other suggestions are excellent, but just the possibility of attacking a periscope depth submarine is a huge change.

BTW, you must add that depth charges clocked to higher depths, don't make a big water flush as seen on films.

There were some situations where catapult-launched recon planes were used for purposes other than recon and artillery spotting, but those missions were their primary duty.

Mind you, I'm not against catapult-launched aircraft, but it would take a lot of development work required to provide the necessary planes and ships, as well as catapult take-off capacity.

Also, not that many sim pilots are into flying slow, vulnerable planes, calling out fire missions while dodging flak and fighters, even if your primary weapons system is a battery of 16 inch guns. :)

True, but IL2's ability to model water clarity and texture is extremely primitive. In IL2, you've got a choice of shallow water texture and deep water texture "painted on" to the water's surface, rather than the sea bottom being textured and water opacity being modeled as a function of ambient light conditions, water turbidity, bottom depth and so forth. So, realistic modeling of light on sub-surface objects isn't an option.

That means that the only option for a periscope depth submarine is a "shadow" - which could be a suitably distorted texture of the submarine's hull. My ignorant guess is that the simplest fix would be to tweak the submarines' shadow models so that the periscope makes a submarine-shaped shadow on the water's surface.

But, that means you just get a dark, hazy submarine-shaped thing that doesn't alter its size or visibility with depth. Also, it's exactly the sort of short-cut that modders love and TD seems to hate, so it might not be good enough to ever be an official fix.

1c completely rewrote their graphics engine for CloD, and took their sweet time doing it. In terms of graphics capacity and appearance, CloD is several generations more advanced than IL2. Say what you will about game play, but CloD is a gorgeous to look at.

To get all the pretty effects you see in CloD or BoS, you'd need to entirely rewrite IL2. That means an entire development team working full time for years to create a brand new simulation. That's way beyond the limits of a couple of dedicated hobbyists.

You can attack submarines at periscope depth, but remember that it's actually almost impossible to get a kill against a sub using guns. The angle of bullets striking the water and water resistance means that even a 20mm cannon shell isn't going to have the force required to penetrate a sub's pressure hull when it's more than about a meter deep. At best you get a periscope hit, which forces the sub to surface.

Good point. So, a quick and dirty fix might be to make depth charges more powerful with depth (like the next larger size of bomb) but with a proportionately smaller bomb splash effect. For example, a depth charge fuzed for 30 meters might have the damaging power of a 250 kg bomb, but produces the "medium bomb splash" effect when it goes off. One fuzed for 200 meters would have the damaging power of a 1,000 kg bomb, but just the "small bomb" splash effect.

Realistically, though, new splash effects for mines and depth charges would need to be created. For simplicity, you'd need large, medium and small depth charge/mine effects at shallow, medium and deep depths. That would give the "mound of water" effect, followed a few seconds later by a fountain of water.

I have some experience with another game, no less old than Il2, and with similar texturing effect. In that game, a workable solution would be:
To duplicate the water’s surface.
To place the second one at some depth, 20 meters – 60 feet would probably be a good compromise.
To reduce opacity of both surfaces (a different way to say “To augment transparency”). I would guess 80% opacity for the upper surface and 20% for the lower should work, correctly representing the effect of clear waters.
Done that, the submarine would be visible at periscope depth, and disappear at a realistic depth.
There’s another possible solution, if I’m not mistaken.
Again: to reduce surface opacity.
Then, to place a continuous dark cloud under water surface.

Il2 fans, aren't limited to dogfighters. We played a short campaign as the crew of a B17, and believe me it was enormous fun!


What I was talking about have nothing to do with graphics, on CLOD ships under air attack DO take evasive maneuvers!
The problem on IL2, is that ships have no AI at all. They are just mindless robots that follow the line. Even ground vehicles got a lesser AI capacity, but ships got no AI at all.

Once I did a mistake while text editing a CV path, and it made a 180° turn over it's center. They don't event interpret that as a round turn.

Yeah, but on real life the sub will submerge anyway, and stop being a threat. A submerged sub can´t follow no convoy. Success don't always need a kill, a kill is just a bonus, seeing it as long term suppression.

Do you know how they were capable of showing under the water line of ships on IL2?

To my knowledge, if they can do that, they can do a ship that just go on that line and show it.

I just took a ride in a Rufe floatplane around Pacific Island map. For what I saw, water surface has 100% opacity. Not an inch of submerged ships, submarines and floats shows through. The feeling is confirmed by plane’s shadow on water. My guess is that the shallow water effect is simply “painted” on, with a texture applied to water surface near beaches. Of course, I have no idea if the methods I suggested are applicable to Il2.:confused:

The method you suggested sounds primising, at least for me. A transparent upper layer could only be a problem if you watch waves from close to sea level, so that you can see through them, but this could be resolved by fine-tunig opacity.

A bit more work, but either of your solutions is better than mine.

And, as long as the game allows the option for actual submersible operations, then IL2 could ditch the periscope version of the submarines and just use one submarine model.

ASW operations are an area of the WW2 operations which are is potentially fascinating, historically important, and barely represented in the game.

Its post-WW2, but this video has some cool ideas as to how ASW aircraft did their work. Just about all the technologies shown in the video were developed during WW2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnkwoO7uBEE

Agreed, but the most accessible planes in the game are the fighters and single-engined attack planes, since that's what IL2 was originally designed to simulate, and that's what most players seem to want.

There are so many aspects of the air war during WW2 that aren't well modeled in IL2. You're lucky that you had a group of friends willing to play an unusual mod campaign.


Completely agreed, but, it would be a big programming task to give ships any degree of AI. I'm not sure it's an area that TD wants to tackle.

True. You use the weapons you have, but unless you've got surprise on your side and/or the submarine tries to fight it out on the surface (Kreigsmarine doctrine from 1943 on) then it's not an effective tactic to use guns. Rockets, bombs and depth charges are the weapons of choice.

Realistically, an ASW patrol plane would also try to keep contact with the submarine and try to summon reinforcements if their attack failed.

What do you mean by accessible?
Most players maybe, but campaign designers? what do they want?
Take a good look on HSFX and you will see a thing or two about what it is wanted.

Unusual? it seems that I came from a really different world.

I don't think so. Ships don't need a whole AI, we are not talking about developing huge tasks of attack formations, nor the need to dock perfectly when arriving into a port. I don't expect destroyers to be launched on patrol trough a convoy, nor putting themselves as a torpedo screen protecting a capital ship.
This could be done by setting a main sheep, and associate it with a set of ships to mimic it's behavior. This main sheep may only be programmed to react upon air attack by moving on zig zag, or doing whole turns to avoid bombing runs. The ability to evade collisions with semi sunk ships will be appreciated too!

The difficult task would be if it is decided to do it historically correct, by limiting every type of ship to it's historical maneuver limits. That would be too much, a generic behavior would be enough. Anyway it will be 1000% more than we have today.

Yeah... you sure got lots of them on the first two years of war... I mean rockets, and depth charges thrown from a plane. Do you know that uboots, at the beginning of the war harassed convoys with their deck canons? Also, the British got a whole procedure to strafe submarines on those years. It was deemed an effective tactic, mostly developed on the gulf of biscay. Still, I must admit that the submarine was expected to be on surface to do that.

Accessible = easiest for a new player to understand. Multi-engined and multi-crewed planes require extra commands, and a bit more understanding of how aircraft work in order to fly.

HSFX and other online sites represent a community of very committed fans and modders, with an emphasis on online and squadron play. They're a good representation of what "advanced users" want.

There aren't enough mission/campaign designers to really figure out what they want. My guess is that they're a subset of "advanced users".

I agree, but the problem are that ships in IL2 have no AI at all, and their maneuvering physics is really bad (e.g., your example of a CV being able to turn on its axis). Upgrading ship physics and AI to even a basic level would require a huge amount of work. My impression from TD members public comments is that they don't want to do it.

This is what I've described as "station keeping" and ability to move in formation.

Your ideas are similar to suggestions made in the past on different threads, and represent the sort of basic AI that ships should have.

1) In the FMB, it should be possible to set formations of ships, with other ships keeping station around a ship in the the center of the formation.

2) In the FMB, it should be possible to set standardized ship behavior, like zig-zagging.

Neither of these fixes requires any AI work. Just additions to the FMB.

Basic Ship AI would require:

1) Collision Avoidance - so that ships slow down and/or turn to avoid land, shallow water and other ships.

2) Torpedo Defensive Maneuvers - so ships will turn into, or away from, a spread of torpedoes to "comb" (i.e., sail in between) the torpedo formation. All this requires is a 90 degree turn in the direction of the largest formation of torpedoes (or a 90 degree turn away from it).

Slightly more sophisticated AI would require the ship to speed up or slow down to avoid torpedoes.

3) Bomb/Kamikaze Defensive Maneuvers - Ships attacked by bombers or kamikazes will make the tightest turn they can to left or right, possibly randomly alternating left/right turns, to spoil bombing/suicide attacks.

Again, agreed. But, it's somewhat difficult to find data for things like turning radius or acceleration. Also, like aircraft, a maneuvering ship is affected by things like centripedal force and inertia. It's a whole different area of engineering/physics.


WW2 era submarines were intended as surface vessels that could submerge (vs. modern doctrine where submarines are designed as true submersibles), and this heavily influenced early war submarine design and doctrine.

The big issue for the mid/late war anti-submarine planes was anti-submarine/anti-shipping radar. That allowed ASW planes to detect subs and ships dozens of miles away. Some radars were sensitive enough that they could even sense sub periscopes.

Not surprisingly, submarines were quickly fitted with radar detectors allowing them to detect and avoid snooping aircraft, so there was a "technical war" with each side developing better radar systems (and, later in the war, MAD systems) and defenses against radar.

The "Battle of the Atlantic" from 1940-43 was not unlike the RAF's Night Bomber Campaign from 1942-44, with each side gaining a temporarily advantage based on some new gadget being developed.

Personally, I'd LOVE to see a simulation of aerial and naval operations in the Bay of Biscay from 1940-44. Lots of really interesting ships and aircraft. Plenty of desperate small actions. Historically quite important. Utterly ignored by any sim to date. Sadly, doing it right would require massive amounts of work that's far beyond my limited skills.