Any chance for implementing Night Fighting?

[Avimimus]

Originally Posted by Viking

This was discussed some time ago and Oleg didn’t think the interest for night fighting with all the long eventless flights in pit black nights would justify the time to make it possible.
I find the topic interesting myself but for how long? Seriously?

Viking

Actually, SWOTN (a mod for SWOTL) was the last great mod for that game. It is still one of the best depictions of night combat.

There are real challenges to navigation and vectoring at night. Combat between small aircraft is especially challenging. Atmospheric conditions are very important for navigation. The actual bombers had more flexibility, with each bomber crew charting a course and conducting the final run using their own bombsight.

The variety of missions is also much greater than people expect (flying decoy using chaff was dangerous as it drew fighters, pathfinders conducting target marking, attacks on naval targets, lone aircraft conducting harassment flights, German fighters ambushing bombers while they were landing etc.)

The fact is, Oleg doesn't know much about night combat for two reasons:
- It wasn't as developed on the Eastern Front
- On the western front the majority of night bombers were drawn from the Commonwealth not the United States (and thus, despite being equal in size, draws little international press and has never been modeled in a professional sim)

I'm personally hoping that 3rd party mods will convince Oleg to support night bombing through creating a radar operator who vectors the pilot (like the Chain radar stations except that the operator is in the aircraft - this means that Oleg would only have to model the radar's performance, not the actual interface and design)