Will SoW be boring and superficial?

[HeadTrauma]

Condor or Catalina missions! S&R, Anti-Shipping, ASW...


Maybe this is worthy of a poll of some sort? Just to show Oleg that there is ample interest in these kind of missions...

[Oktoberfest]

Agree 100%. Dogfight can be boring, we need different mission types.

[Feathered_IV]

Coding in these kind of missions would help win over some of the diehard FSX users too. Oleg needs to do that if he is going to survive. He's not going to be able to retire early on the contributions from our little lot.

[Thunderbolt56]

All good points Feathered, and obviously the desire for more was the driving force behind the developement of "scripted" servers as we know them now (using both FBDaemon and Server Commander). Regardless of the diversity of the offline, single-player campaigns, I doubt I'd fly them much. 99% of my flight-sim experience is online as I feel the interactivity with other human pilots is much more immersive.

I have very little patience for AI pilots, but that's just me. As long as there are people interested in enriching the flight-sim experience there will be post-release improvements including official patches, new skins, 3rd party mission-generating programs and server scripting programs that will keep things fresh and interesting for potentially years.

Give me a much more detailed DM with higher LOD's, reinforce the FM according to accredited data, generate beautiful landscapes (that are mostly accurate) and a place to fly online and I'll be a happy camper.


TB

[tater]

Ground unit damage models, and in the case of ship, AI, needs to be FAR superior to Il-2 to help maintain interest. As long as players can fly bomber/attack aircraft, this is the case since their primary targets will be mere cartoons otherwise. Take ship attack in il-2. It's boring knowing that you can always sink a DD in one pass with a fighter as long as it carries a big bomb. The DD never evades, the bomb ALWAYS sinks the ship.

Mission builders should be given more control of the AI, too, since in campaigns, AI oddities ruin immersion. Ie: in RL, an airfield attack for minimum alt B-25s would be come in, line abreast. At max range, open fire with the MGs—no particular targets, kick the rudder a little and spray unless a target is right in front of you. Get over target, drop parafrags (207 of them, not 40 ). Egress target area and head home.

In il-2, they'd not shoot on ingress to target. They'd drop their parafrags (though since they form line astern, the rear planes must climb to avoid the lead ones, and by the 3d plane they are barrel rolling while they drop). They'd then turn around and come back and strafe. A mission that should be one pass with minimal losses will likely result in the squadron being nearly wiped out. Not immersive.

Mission/campaign builders need a handle to control the AI. They need the ability to tell the AI to make "1 pass only." They need to be able to tell the AI to fly and attack within certain parameters even if the AI doesn't like it. Ie: a radio button for a given waypoint that says "ignore AI safety" and the planes do as they are told, even if the AI thinks it is too dangerous (like flying at 15m alt and dropping a 500lb bomb). Ideally, assuming the AI code has various variables that are tweaked by 1C to get them to behave in a desired way, those values should be available in a config file, perhaps one that is mission specific. You might design a campaign where for the good of the campaign, the min alt that the AI considers safe is 5m, but for another over some very hilly terrain, you might set it to 140m (current in il-2 I think from testing b-25 skip bombers).

tater

[nearmiss]

Originally Posted by Feathered_IV

The Il-2 series is pretty. I have no doubt that SoW will be very pretty too. The weather will change. The AI will occaisionally sh*t their pants and the FM's will be great.

And we'll all go around, doing the same things as we are doing now. Just in a more detailed environment.

But really, don't you think there should be more to the future of air combat simulations than just cookie cutter dogfights and dropping a stick of bombs? Do you really just want to play the exact same pair of missions all over again for another five to ten years ?

What if other mission perameters were coded in? What other options could we get?

Maybe instead you'd like to pilot a Lysander for SOE. Fly over to France at zero altitude in the dead of night. Alone in the dark, you would struggle to find 'that little field' marked on your map and glide into it, engine off so as not to alert the Jerries.

Perhaps you'd rather fly a Storch, evacuating wounded from the combat area. Or maybe spotting for the artillery? What if you could give directions and targeting information to ground units?

What about unarmed photo recon? Take your Blenheim across to France to take photographs of the invasion barges. Photographs that the campaign generator can judge and pass you on.

Coastal Command perhaps? Why not have a crew that can actually call out the sightings of distant ships and other objects and give an intelligent description of their range, type and heading?

Or nightfighters with AI radar operators that can actually guide you to the kill?

Wouldn't you like to try to fly a danerously overloaded Ju-52 into the icy landing strips of Stalingrad one day? Or a C-47 over the Himalayas?


There has to be more to this genre than, fly to waypoint and shoot stuff down. Or fly to waypoint and drop some bombs. There has to be.

Do you want to have some fun?

You need to get the old MSFT CFS2 and work with the mission builder that is par excellence. You cannot imagine the things that can be done with a combat flight simulation game until you do.

There is also a very vibrant community of users for the CFS2 at http://sim-outhouse.com
Users are still building missions and campaigns, aircraft, scenery, skins for that great old sim.

There are of course a couple things that will never be fixed unless MSFT decides to either release the source or do an upgrade of the CFS2.

The CFS2 AI are just not competent, but there are workarounds. The scenery has limitations. The online game is no more, which is just as well it was so full of cheats. It is now possible to fly in any war theatre in the world as CFS2 includes all the war theatres.

You can still have an enormous good time, because the mission builder tools are absolutely awesome. You can build all kinds of situations for on-the-fly, navigation, etc. into your missions.

The Shockwave BOB II WOV with the new 2.07 patch has the best AI performance of any flight simulation game ever. Shockwave and the community devs have turned the old Rowan's bob into a significant combat flight simulation game. Currently, they are working on a Coop Online addition to the sim. This is great, because if you can fly with a squadron of real people against the awesome AI of BOB II you are going to be into almost real world scenarios. You'll get to fly against the largest mob of bombers and fighters you can imagine and be into some of the most immersive (close to actual) combat you can imagine.

Currently, the BOB II WOV has a campaign engine,which allows the player to jump into the battle at will or fly within the same squadron time and again. There is good flexibility for level of player participation. There are plans in the works for a competent mission builder, but they are too busy with a new addition to the sim now to build it.

The strength of Oleg's Il2 has always been the Online play. The current mission builder has been OK for building Online play missions, because the players on each side of the conflict are real people. AI performance doesn't have to be much, because the AI doesn't do that much in Online play.

If Oleg is finally going to really address the Offline game competently he has some tough competition. He will have to provide a mission builder equivalent to the MSFT CFS2 or Jane's WW2 Fighters, and he will have to spend some real effort to measure up to the Shockwave AI performance engine. I hope he will do it, because it would set the bar for Combat flight simulator games.

Don't get me wrong The IL2 series is still viable for players. I went back to the old MSFT CFS2 right before the Pacfic Fighters was released. I don't enjoy furr balls. I love building missions that recreate almost real world situations, how they would and did evolve during the war. I do the BOBII WOV for the best AI performance and boy does it improve your combat flight skills. It also supports 6DOF in TrackIR.

I hang around the IL2 boards and occassionally load up the IL2-1946 and do some flying and fighting. I still enjoy all the great replay features in IL2 and being able to go back over my flights to see what I did wrong,etc. I've bought all the IL2 series and still get a kick out of it, but not like I did for the first 3-4 years after it was released.

[bhunter2112]

I have read of Il2 being described as soulless. Maybe true. I remember flying a MCFS2 campaign many years ago where you have to protect transports leaving an island base. The transports were carrying wounded and were taking off. Then the zero's flew in.... a very immersive mission. A little text can really change your feelings about a mission.

I am hoping for a dynamic campaign with a variety of missions but I do believe that the core of the sim is dogfighting !

I am a major IL21946 fanboy but the scripted campaigns were horrible and the dynamic campaign text is mostly non immersive. I do not mind daily front patrols, I am interested in historical accuracy but put a little info in the mission description ! I make my own in the FMB to make up for this.

[nearmiss]

Originally Posted by bhunter2112

I have read of Il2 being described as soulless. Maybe true. I remember flying a MCFS2 campaign many years ago where you have to protect transports leaving an island base. The transports were carrying wounded and were taking off. Then the zero's flew in.... a very immersive mission. A little text can really change your feelings about a mission.

I am hoping for a dynamic campaign with a variety of missions but I do believe that the core of the sim is dogfighting !

I am a major IL21946 fanboy but the scripted campaigns were horrible and the dynamic campaign text is mostly non immersive. I do not mind daily front patrols, I am interested in historical accuracy but put a little info in the mission description ! I make my own in the FMB to make up for this.

There are so many things you cannot do with the IL2 FMB. One good example... Pokriskinin flew the P-39 against the Germans and was very successful, because he applied tactics. He would send in the P-40s to attack German Bombers, but he would stair step his P-39s at higher altitudes. Then when the German fighters came in each flight of P-39s would drop into the fight at different times with high energy levels against the German fighters. You cannot duplicate this in IL2, because all the AI aircraft will jump into the battle. Only the player and sometimes his wingman can be held out of the fight. The P-39s were very effective when proper tactics were applied, but in IL2 when all the fighters jump into the furrball the German fighters will always win.

When you build a mission to attack ground targets the AI will persist to attack until they are bingo or out of weapons. During the war fighters would rarely attack ground units more than once, because the odds of getting hit were very high if they persisted to attack. I've had missons where my entire flight and all other friendly flights were eventually destroyed by Flak. I couldn't do anything to prevent the suicide. LOL

There are nowhere near enough programming tools in the IL2 FMB to build anything close to for real combat. The FMB is fine for building a setting for Online missions, because you human players can be told to disengage and they will. You can apply any tactical play as well, because humans can receive and act on good instructions.

Of course, if you just jump into hyperlobby you'll just furrball unless you get involved with a squadron that has other goals.

[leitmotiv]

Excellent post F_IV. I noticed one of the new combat add-ons for FSX has: horrors! no fighters or bombers, but does have a Me 323, and a number of German gliders, and it is all war missions of various types. The FSX add-on with fighters is for WWI and also has a "height climber" zeppelin. Navigating a 1917 "height climber" mission at high altitude from Germany to London would require incredible skill. Just coping with the winds and the blackout would be enough (will the add-on black out city lights?).

I look forward to somebody having missions with night bombers flying from the UK to targets deep in Germany. Just dealing with weather and malfunctions (not to mention finding the target in 1939-42 without the better-trained navigators and technical aids which came in 1943) would be job enough. Right, a PBY patrol would be great. North Atlantic patrol in a Coastal Command Liberator or Fw 200 or Ju 290. Radar night fighters vs bombers would be a real challenge. How about flying the Hump in C-46, C-47, or gas tanker Liberator (the father of one of my friends flew one of these "Booms," as they called them)? If you run into a JAAF fighter, you had better have a plan! Ju 52 over Crete---what a mincing machine, C-47 over Normandy, how about flying a Horsa to land right by Pegasus Bridge? I would really like this. Land a German glider on top of Eben Emael. Flying patrols out of the Aleutians---the worst flying weather in the world. Fly an Oboe equipped Mosquito precisely to drop target markers over a city. Fly an X Gerat-fitted Heinkel 111H to put incendiaries or bombs on targets covered by overcast. These would move the system away from gaming to being a real flight simulator. You would get a real education in how the systems of WWII aircraft worked.

There has to be more flying and less routine cookie cutter arcade brawling.

[robtek]

@leitmotiv
youve brought it on the point for me.
thats what i would really love.
to be a good pilot with all the handicaps those obsolete technik has,
that would be the real challenge in this game.
and that includes of course real CEM.