[blakjack]

Well, it could be longer than 30 minutes, but the idea would be to condense a mission down to mostly the action, and remove the tedium.

I'm not too familiar with the game, I've seen airstarts but don't know if there are warps that could cut off some travel time.

The ideal would be to warp closer to target shortly after take off and then warp closer to home base after egress.

The purpose of starting with AI slots is so that the missions would always run even when both sides aren't full of human players, but having them be replaced by humans as they join in. If all the AI get replaced, so much the better.

If only some get replaced, then the AI are just supplemental and you have a mix of human and AI and you never know what you will be up against.

I figure the fighter slots would go faster, leaving AI to pilot bombers, which is probably more palatable to players than AI fighters.

Having the ability to replace an AI at the start of the mission and also at any time during a mission in progress is just to make it so players don't have to wait around long for a new mission and also to maximize the opportunity for human players to replace the AI.

In other games I've flown, a bomber pilot can switch between pilot, gunner and bombardier positions and accomplish the task by themselves, but other players can join as gunners.

Not sure how that works in IL2.