Hmm, ongoing patches to keep this type of software improved or up to date isn't really the same thing as bugs and probs in 'Cliffs', but maybe the comparison wasn't ideal.

Let's alter the analogy to something more appropriate.

Dateline - July, somewhere in England.....

After warming up the engines for what seems like an age, you trundle down the runway and the Blenheim reluctantly leaves the ground, slightly crablike. You should have dialled in a bit more rudder trim. Gear up, throttle back, coarsen pitch, let her gain some airspeed and then settle down, set course and trim for a gentle cruise climb.
After what seems like no time at all, you're halfway across the channel, worrying about engine management, because they're sensitive these babies. You're really worried about whether you'll get hit by flak, or whether the fighters will find you. The tension rises as the target area approaches. You give the southern area a wide birth because that's where the flak seems most intense, and turn precisely in order to line the crate up for the best angle to the target. The tension is growing, the moment of truth is upon you. The flak intensifies and you're getting very nervous.

'For God's sake this flak is heavy - and oh my goodness there're two 110's in the sun!!'

Your gunner shouts - 'Drop the bombs! Drop the Bombs and let's get out of here!!'

Then your Bomb Aimer comes through on the intercom;

'Sorry skip, looks like the ground crew forgot to load the bombs!'

You immediately turn away, the sweat is streaming down your neck, your heart feels like it's going to burst out of your chest any moment, but you're getting away. Suddenly a flak burst on your port side. 'Jesus! there's a hole the size of a dustbin lid in the port wing!' After trimming her out as best you can, you nurse your damaged Blenheim back across the Channel and back to base. You wrestle with the controls, the trims won't compensate for the hole in the wing, but you line her up adequately and come in for a bouncy but safe touchdown.

'Where's the blasted ground crew, I'll tear their silly heads off!'

You run across to where the ground crew are on their third cup of tea of the day and scream,

'We just went through hell over the Channel! We got hit by flak, the 110's almost got us, the engines were overheating all the way back, and you bunch of fools had forgotten to load the blasted bombs!!'

The ground crew don't even look at you, they just stand up, turn around and walk away.

Then you feel a tap on your shoulder, it's that pretty girl from the NAAFI that makes such wonderful buttered scones, and she says;

'What you need to do is go into the Full Mission Builder, find the Blenheim in the objects viewer, select the Blenheim, go the armament bit and change the default loadout to the weapon of your choice, not forgetting to select the correct fuse type, make sure you click save, then go back and do the whole mission again'.

'Thanks darling' you say 'But I would have been far happier had the ground crew loaded the bombs in the first place. Are you doing anything later?'

'Well I'm going to go on the RAF forum and have a damn good moan, fancy coming along?'

'You bet, I want to see if other squadrons are as fed up as we are. I'll get a few cans in first.'

:grin:

Did you check in the bomb bay for a receipt from M&M enterprises for "1 Bomb Load"?
But, Hey! I've had similar expriences in IL-2 but couldn't blame it on a bug in the software!

Hopefully it's on the short list for things to fix.

Cheers!

My game runs worse than it did when it first came out before the first patch.

Or ...

"And there goes my 145th kill, now home!" you say into the radio to your wingman.
"you see fritz, i told you all you have to do is wait for the spitfires to disengage then you can fly right up behide the whole sqd and shoot the whole lot down with out worrying!"
The trip home was uneventful until your wheels touchdown on the runway, when the rest of your flight piles into the ground in a huge ball of flames for no reason.
you shrug your shoulders and sigh "oh well, that always happens"

Catch 22 is the perfect book to quote mate, given the circs.;)

where's all the cool stuff that has always been in IL2 that not in this game, like blowing wings off and the airframe ripping apart. I have seen 1 wing get blown off in over 70 hours worth of play and i havent seen anthing disintergrate like in IL2 46, those were features that i felt were great!
Dont get me wrong i love the dmage models we have now but it feels like the weapons cant do nearly enough damage to see the extent of the damage experience.

I think that given we mostly have small caliber MGs and 20mm without mine load it is about right. Once the 20mm is fixed and the first Fw190 makes an appearance things will start to be torn apart with no problem.

Yup. Essentially our 20mm's are slugs/armour piercing with the possibility to detonate the second the tip of the shell hits the aircraft skin.

What this does is create a loud bang that sends miniature debris and a small shockwave towards the surface, perhaps shredding it a tiny bit and denting it.

Once we get the proper mineshells which I believe were designed to explode a little after impact (inside the fuselage) this should severely improve damage dealt to aircraft structure. Once the 110's get their proper MGFF/M's and the 109E4 with MGFF/M's make their appearance the brits will be suffering wingloss syndrome all the time.

That's all perfectly fine and valid and i'm not going to pass judgment on what is actually a very reasonable viewpoint of yours. I happen to have a bit more free time currently but i know i wouldn't be so active in the forums if real life issues were more pressing, so i perfectly understand what you mean.

It's when some of us with a bit more free time try to make what you describe happen for the rest and the "usual suspect squad" crawls out of the woodwork and saps all our enthusiasm and incentive with their negativity that grinds my gears because like you said, i'm essentially an unpaid volunteer here and they go crapping all over my efforts to improve THEIR enjoyment of the game. That's why i've said a few times recently that some are not worth the time others spend to improve the sim and i'm firmly standing by it.

As you can see, i'm making no mention of how the game happened to be shipped in such a state or whose fault it is or even whether it's an allowable business practice. All that matters to me is getting things fixed, i happen to have some free time so i roll up my sleeves and get into it. I don't care whose fault it is at this point, i just want to expedite the process with what little bit of personal testing results i can supply to the developer team.

Spending my free time for the benefit of others (giving tips left and right when i could just as easily keep what i know to myself and fly more, since the sim works fine for me) only to have some of the same people i'm trying to help drag the whole effort through the mud and derail every single thread, i guess you can understand it feels like getting spat on the face after giving your seat to another person in the bus.

Long story short, if we don't spend time on the things other can't deal with and rush off to fly other sims while telling us to quit trying, it's them first and foremost that won't get their wishes granted in terms of what CoD should be. They are biting the community hand that feeds them because they feel slighted by the developers and are acting out of spite, plain and simple: "if i can't have fun nobody should", but they don't realize that in order for their fun to materialize someone else must find the sim interesting enough to tinker with before he can give them player created content or compile the list of bugs the developers need to fix, it's a very shortsighted attitude that completely defies the fact that their enjoyment depends on having other people do the work they are not prepared to do themselves.

I'm not talking about you specifically, we might disagree on many things but you actually take the time to word your posts in a proper, non-offensive manner. It's the one-liner brigade of "mix a valid complaint with a bit of whine and a touch of thinly veiled snide remarks and insults" i'm referring to ;)

Have you tried a full re-install from steam, most people have seen a large improvement since the early patches, I know CoD has lots of issues but I would suggest in this case the problem may be at your end, worth a try, if you have enough spare bandwidth to download the files again.