Friday Update, June 08, 2012

[Blackdog_kt]

Thanks for the update and the continued support.

I rarely post specific questions because they tend to get buried in an avalanche of more popular topics that usually concern fighters or the graphics engine for the most part.

However, since we now seem to be at a point where most of these issues are being taken care of, i would like to bring your attention to the real protagonists of the BoB, the aircraft that gave the fighters a reason to go on missions: the bombers.

The issues that exist thus far have been well documented, so i'll just repeat them briefly.

Flight ceilings for He111 and Ju88: The 88 could fly higher (although maybe not too much when fully loaded) and the 111 lower. What we currently have is the opposite.

Bombsight bugs in the luftwaffe bombers: When automation is engaged, the sight tracks the target correctly by treating user input as metric units. However, the release point is calculated wrong because it treats the "bombsight speed" values as imperial units.

So, if you are flying at 300km/h and input that in the bombsight, the sight will track the target correctly but release wrong. If you convert your speed to mph and input that in the sight, it will not track correctly but will release correctly for whatever it is tracking.

IAS/TAS conversions: In many cases and for most, if not all, bombers in the sim, players report that they get more accurate drops when they use their IAS instead of TAS in the sights. Do the sights feature automatic calculating of TAS or is it a bug? I could see a reason for automatic TAS and ground speed conversions, if/when the dynamic weather module gets implemented
we will have no way to calculate ground speed because we don't have drift meters in most bombers.
(The luftwaffe bombers can correct drift by engaging automation and correcting to keep the sight picture steady while looking through the scope, but the others cant.)

Ju88 gyrocompass: It has been inoperative since the release of the sim. This makes it impossible to use the autopilot in the Ju88, which means it's impossible to level bomb with any degree of accuracy and the 88 is only used as a dive bomber or low-altitude skip-bomber.

Turret controls: If it would be possible, it would be great to implement a command that allows the player to exchange control of the turret with the AI, like it was in the previous IL2 series.

Br20: I haven't flown it much, but i think that the mouse controls for the top turret are reversed. If anyone else knows of any other bugs with it, please report them too.

110 fuel/engines: Now that the developer team is providing us with all the suitable variants of RAF fighters in terms of engines and octane rating, could the same be done for the the 110? I wouldn't consider the need for 109 high octane versions too great because not too many of them were present in the BoB. However, about half the 110 fleet or more was using uprated engines with higher octane fuel. This made it one of the faster fighters in the theater, if not outright faster (acceleration is another matter though ).

Since players tend to fly with more flexible tactical doctrines than the LW did (we don't have Goering threatening us and most of us have read some history books), it would create a lot of interesting scenarios to have the fast 110s employed as either low altitude fighter-bombers or high altitude air superiority fighters, free of the constraints of escorting bombers.

I think that correcting the above points would not only make the sim more realistic but also more enjoyable, enabling it to move to a higher level of tactical/strategic planning. Especially if some SDK/documentation is released for scripting

Don't take my suggestions as complaints. They are just things that i feel need to be added to the sim, along with everything else you are working on. Now that most of the dedicated fighter pilots will be happy and the graphics performance will be improved, two of the most demanded for features will be finished, leaving the team with some free time to work on something else.

So, let's fix the bombers and get some documentation on scripting dynamic campaigns, because it will make the sim highly (re)playable and much more enjoyable, both offline and online. Cheers and keep up the good work