It reminds me of the old joke about 9 women doing a baby in one month ... :-)

Keep in mind that for Clod the game engine was being created for the series. BOM development will be more of a content, rather than game engine...I think everyone in the development side, know that it was Steam to blame for much of the problems. Now who should we thank for giving us Steam.

The Russian Sequel would be mostly content if the game engine and features were working and completed, but that still isn't the case. They still have alot of work to do on the game engine and features before the release. I'm not sure why you would say that Steam is to blame for anything. I believe it was Ubisoft who wouldn't release COD in the west unless there was something done with the epilepsy filter. The devs have to take the blame for taking so long to finish the game engine and features.

I play almost exclusively off line and the game engine and the game features, or rather the lack there of, need a tremendous amount of work yet.

I agree. Unfortunately the recent Q&A from luthier seems to suggest that there is very low priority on that, and a sort of willful ignorance about what makes for a next gen single player experience.

I get the sense that Clod was designed from the outset for on-line use. Relying on the good grace of the community members to provide the off line content.

The plan from the beginning of SOW, was that the community would be far more involved with this series than they were in the first. The development would make the necessary game engine with FMB, scripts, and Triggers, that would provide and excellent base for those with more knowledge on the subject of missions could add to the sim. This hasn't happened enough yet because the game was released unfinished, largely unplayable, and long before the tools were even close to being ready. I'm quite sure we have more people in the west interested in making missions for the Battle of Britain,etc while the developers have people with more expertise and passion for the history of the Eastern Front. People raved about the work of the modders in the original series, but they couldn't have done squat without the developers game engine. Modders don't have the time or money to build a game engine, we need people with the tenacity of an Oleg who didn't like what WW2 aircombat developers of his time were doing, and did something about it.

I can't remember did Oleg give the code over to the modders, or did they just crack it and after fighting a long while and banning anyone who even wrote the word 'mod' Oleg gave up trying to stop them? Maybe we need people with the tenacity of those original modders!

The biggest irritant, is the fact that alot of us wanted a "BOB" map and aircraft in IL2:FB. We were told that we'd never see it because of the new version of IL2, and the fact that it would be centered around BOB. So this was fine, and we waited...

Now, over 10 years later, we hear that Clod will have no more BOB content added, and that we're back off to Russia.

That, and the "ghost" trees, suck big time.

You know aswell as I do the devs never planned to have the original series open to modders, but that changed for the new series. I haven't seen any new game engines being built by the original modders, and you probably never will. Its funny you talk to modders and they have a healthy respect and appreciation for the work the developers have done, that made it possible for them to add to it and refine it.