Pacific Fighters Bombed - inadequate maps

[nearmiss]

Pacific Fighters, did someone leave something out? The maps are a sad case of mistakes. The Pacific War was just not studied carefully, or maps would have been different.

I was messing around with the Pacific theatre today and got to thinking why the Pacific Fighters bored me. After I learned to make carrier landings I put the PF back in the box and didn't have any more use for it. I didn't try to analyze it or anything. Afterall, I'm just a consumer.. what do I know about what I want. LOL

The Solomons are not there, Rabaul, Pillippines, Northern Australia, Western New Guinea, etc.

There are so many islands just isolated on the IL2 maps. You can't fly close to historical missions from one land base to another. The reason the US conquered the islands was to build bases and support the advance towards Japan.

Marine and USAAF aircraft have practically negative application in the sim, because they were land based.

Iwo Jima was a tough prize and the purpose for taking it was to have bases from which the US could support and launch AC against Japan. Well there are two airbases on the island, but the Japanese didn't use them. So, when the US conquered Iwo Jima... kaput. Nothing else to do, because you can't launch attacks to Japan (another map)

I think it must have been in Oleg's mind that the Pacific Theatre was strictly a war of carrier launched aircraft. Where do you fly your B17s, B24s, B25s, B26s, P61s, and B29s from and to?

THe US dropped bombs on mainland Japan for quite awhile with the big bombers, long before the A-Bombs were used.

OK, so you spawn your heavy bombers like the B29s in the air and they have no place to land after they reach their final mission targets...they can never land? I guess the PF map makers planned for the fighters to land on the carriers and let the bombers fly into eternity. LOL

As it worked out, it didn't very well. LOL

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Knowing Oleg's flair for the full realism I'd say the reason the maps are like they are is because the distances would make maps too large for IL2.

There is a simple fix... Just move things closer together in the maps. Heck, who wants to fly for 9 hours from one island to another. All the player would do is 8x to the next island. Afterall, this is a game simulation and if Tinian was on the same map as Japan so what. You'd still have a distance to fly. It isn't like we're doing GPS or sophisticated navigation. We get into the plane and waypoint our merry way to and from. LOL

[Chivas]

Pacific fighters was never meant to be the be all and end all of the Pacific theater. It was started by a third party that Oleg had to divert his team too help finish. It was the first of many delays to the work on BOB SOW. It was first rumored that the third party was modelling an aircraft carrier then it slowly developed into a standalone sim with a few aircraft and maps of the Pacific Theater.

Edit

It was also called Pacific Fighters, not Pacific Bombers, or Pacific Theater.

[csThor]

In my opinion PF was supposed to be the ultimate PTO sim, mainly because of the "weird" combination of maps and aircraft. To me it's obvious that there were more aircraft and maps planned ... But with hindsight it's also obvious that a much smaller scale would have been better. A smaller but more focused selection aircraft would have been better for gameplay, same goes for maps.

My 0,02 € ...

[nearmiss]

Originally Posted by Chivas

It was also called Pacific Fighters, not Pacific Bombers, or Pacific Theater.

That's funny... works for me.

[Feathered_IV]

I think there would have been much more wisdom in concentrating on a single period of the Pacific conflict, and doing it properly and not trying to represent everything from Pearl Harbour to the Home Islands in one hit.


btw, is pacific fighters an oxymoron?

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

btw, is pacific fighters an oxymoron?

Not more than "Air Front" or "Air War" I guess.

[KOM.Nausicaa]

The IL2 engine never allowed what most Pacific Theatre fan's secretly want: One big map, from Pearl Harbour to Japan. The problem was in the concept, from the beginning.