Ok, his first post might not be to our satisfaction, but let's not all jump on the guy. I mean, it's still his first post and there are old timers here often displaying similar or lower posting quality of which most of us have been guilty at one point or another
In answer to the actual question, the following quote sums it up pretty nicely
Quote:
Originally Posted by Geronimo989
I just installed original IL-2 from 2001 or 2002 on my older computer just to check which planes were available back then. There were IL-2 one and two seater variants, LaGG-3, La-5FN, Yak-1, Yak-3, Yak-9, Bf-109F-2 G-2 and G-6 and FW-190 A-4, all with few variants here and there. I thought that was a good number of planes back then. Guess we all got spoiled by IL-2 1946 having almost all the important planes in ww2.
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That's 8 main types with a few sub-variants each
at the release of the first title of the series.
The reason for the emphasis is that the main thing to keep in mind xHeadbanDx is to compare simulators at a similar point during their lifetime.
I can't compare to the amount of aircraft in IL2 1946, because it's the most recent product in a 10 year line of constant development and additions.
If i want to compare to IL2 1946 i'll have to compare a future version of the new sim and i don't have a time machine
So, the only thing left to do for a reasonable comparison is to compare it with other simulators as they were on their first release. In that sense, it's not coming short at all.
Cliffs of Dover will have 12 main types as flyable, a few of which will have more than one variant.
The original IL2 had 8 main types as mentioned above, plus certain variants of these same types.
Other simulators have recently shipped with even less and they still have a dedicated fanbase. RoF for example, i didn't buy it for a variety of reasons but it has an almost religious fanbase and it shipped with just 4 flyable aircraft on release.
I think the main goal for a long series life is not the amount of initial content, but having a solid base to build on for future expandability: a good engine, stable, with not many bugs, etc.
From that point on the next equally important point is that whatever content the developer decides to include, it should be well balanced. For example, it would make no sense to have aircraft of even higher graphical detail to the detriment of very low quality on everything else (it still needs to run on an average PC to ensure sales after all).
This balancing doesn't mean to alter historical references for gameplay balance, but to give the player equal potential in recreating the biggest amount of a conflict's possible aspects. For example, it would make little sense to focus 90% of the content on the allies and only 10% on the axis or vice versa, because it would create a skewed perception of the virtual world the sim is trying to display.
Finally, another thing is to balance the types of different content. It's no good having more aircraft if the rest of the world feels empty, just like it's no good having a ton of ground AI units but only 3-4 aircraft. You just decide on how much stuff a current day PC can run and then divide them roughly equally between player controlled aircraft, AI aircraft and other AI units (tanks, ships, etc), then increase the numbers in future patches and add-ons as our hardware becomes faster.
I hope this helps you better understand why they made the choices they did with this new title
