CO-OPs again...

[carguy_]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

I've never been a huge fan of the old Co Op system. It always had a "staged" feeling to it, utterly artifical. I see the benefits in regards to online wars, but it still always reminded of a more Call of Duty style system then anything else, with the sole exception being "dead stays dead", or simply a football tournament. There must be better, more dynamic and immersive ways of conducting squad style combat without relying to a rather static and outdated system that requires pilots to wait for ages until a new mission was set up for running. I am seriously wondering ppl stick to this system just because they lack the imagination to get something better implemented by themseves or the Devs providing a more natural feel for historic airware.

I get it, but you must understand something.
I think that I can say for others, that it is not the same recipe as in 2008 we call for. Just as others have already mentioned, it is not really important how we implement it as long as we get a similar end result, with some of the CoD evolutionary features. And it is certainly better that what we have now - nothing.

I guess that df servers, scripted, non scripted and so on do have die hard fans. So do generic coops and online war type coops. IMO we should not say which is better. The thing is, df server fans have something similar to their liking, whereas coop fans have nothing.

And yes, the "staged feeling" is right, because it was staged to some point. Eventually, most of the players taking part in coop mision would end up in one combat area, beating the crap out of each others. However, all of them started their flight at the same moment, all of them had only one life. I`m not using the term "game of chess" for nothing here. Both sides made their moves accordingly to what combat situation looked like.

That is about it for generic coops. Now online wars.
At least two combat areas, evevn 110km separated from each others. Few types of player flights, including the light fighter squad, heavy fighter squad, bomber/ground support/resources flight. All of them starting at the same time. Now depending on what possibilities the VOW/VEF/IOW/BW site gave the sides - players ended up with adequate planes to their situation. If you botched your Li-2 escort and they got shot down, you had short or no tanks to take ground or planes to support them from the air in the next mission. Sometimes for that sole reason, reds had to put up T-34 against Tigers, or IL2 flight did not have an escort. The variants were numerous.
I had to fly many missions where out of bad resources, the Luftwaffe side had to use Emils in 1942 campaign, as fighter support. In other missions the reds flying Romanian, used Bf109 against blue German 109.

Big formations flown by players only, supported by AI, were a normal sight as non squad lone wulfs always got quickly shot down. The red side often made deception flights only to misguide enemy escort flights. Li2 flights changed routes and so on.

All this binded by every players` career,stats and mission reports featured on the online war site. Both sides in time developped their own heroes - players with the most downs, that lived throught entire campaigns. This ofcourse led to recognizing of the best online squadrons that took part in coops. One can easily say that an entire community gathered around coops, more specifically online wars.

IF we can recreate this using different tools than by all means let it happen.

And last but not least, it always mattered if you nursed your damaged plane rtb for repair. It always mattered if you managed to survive.
The one funny coincidence was that airquake flyers could rarely take the difficulty of escorting an IL2 flight with I16, against the 109g2 flight.