Originally Posted by nearmiss (Post 117489)

Your apprehensions maybe be misguided.
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Originally Posted by Foo'bar (Post 117843)

Rotating propellers really look very nice!

Originally Posted by csThor (Post 117679)

Protos

I stand by my words. I happen to favor a decidedly historical POV on flightsimming, including "reenacting" (not really the right term, but I can't find a better one) historical operations. However you can't expect that players follow historical procedures or fall in line with historical setups - not when you've made the experiences I've made.

Let's imagine a setup of 1942 Eastern Front. The Luftwaffe has the supreme fighter in this setup (in this case the Bf 109 F-4), but the VVS is numerically far superior (which you can't enforce, either). The VVS must support a ground offensive by busting up german artillery positions, tank formations and strongpoints - and the historical aircraft for that work is the Il-2. However it's still the single-seat version so the red fighters need to give them escort.

My experience is simply that such setups are impossible because they always end up being discussed to death and ground to dust in boards with always the same bollocks of "arguments" - fairness, "fun" ... You can make a level field for playing, even with unequal technical and/or numerical setups as in this one. Give the VVS a load of targets they need to destroy so their efforts must be spread out and make things difficult for the Luftwaffe by having so many spots to cover that their own ops (i.e. bomber attacks vs a soviet depot deep behind lines) have trouble getting fighter cover. Set up a lot of light AAA so that the armored Il-2s are the better choice for low-level attacks.
Varying layout and goals is what makes a field level, not having the same or very similar aircraft handy so that the dogfighters can bang it out at 500m between the two closest fields, but players don't want that. I've learned this. They want instant gratification, sportive contest and not a challenge. And I want "wargaming" as opposed to 1-on-1 dogfight contests so I stay offline. The Ai doesn't yammer when it has to fly single-seat Il-2s, Stukas or bombers ... even in the right numbers. ;)