Linear Campaign List

[jameson]

Joey, sorry you couldn't spare the time for Joint Ops, me neither as it happens. You could try and find yourself a squad and learn quicker with them, but again it is a regular time commitment, usually one or two evenings a week. Regarding training missions, there were some in the earliest version of the game which were interactive, where you could take over control of the plane and practice what had just been demonstrated, but they have not survived changes to the game engine as the game has been upgraded. There are no training missions in the game just movies you can watch.
Briefly, the game was originally called Il2 and was version 1.0, this is a different game to 4.11.1 as the game engine underwent radical changes when reformulated and released as "Forgotten Battles" which was version 4.01. Subsequently another game "Pacific Fighters" was released which could be added to Forgotten Battles install and then the game became the "merged version" (4.04) which explains the "m" in 4.11.1m which you see in the lower left hand corner of the screen when the game loads. This 4.04 and later addons were released on dvd as Il2 1946 v4.07. This is the base version to which all patches are added now.
Your game version inside steam will crash upon loading should you attempt to mod it with hsfx or dbw. Find the Il2 folder in your steam folder and copy it somewhere else on your harddrive. Depending which version of bungling bills bloatware you have, it's probably best to make a folder called c: games and put it in that. This will allow you to make changes to the conf.ini folder without windoze complaining or preventing them. You will need to find this patch from SAS: "Direct 2 Drive Patch for all versions". Download this and add to your copied game folder as per instructions. You will need to register first.
I suggest you stick to playing this new vanilla 4.11.1 for now, whilst learning. Make another copy of this virgin 4.11 as a backup which you can then copy again should you wish to add a mod pack ontop. It's not unusual to have 4 or 5 versions or more of il2. Copy Il2.exe to your desktop from the new folder and you can play like the rest of us, without steam. You could delete the steam version or keep as backup whatever, but you will no longer need steam to play. This is important if you wish to play online via Hyperlobby as it doesn't play well with steam.
I also suggest that you find the games pdf manual in Il2 game folder and read it, there are other pdf's in there which have/should also to be read. This game is quirky even odd at times and the answers are in the manual. (possibly!) The IL2 bible (The Nuggets Guide) is here: http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...ik-Essentials? together with Sturmovik essentials which gives links to almost all Il2 related websites.
You may like to try the original il2 game demo for free from mission4today, you will have to register but it's probably the best Il2 related site there is. You will also find there thousands of missions and campaigns made by players over the years. Some very early missions do not work or misbehave with 4.11 because some map heights have been changed over years, but most will work.
Some of the campaigns Vpmedia listed for you have over 100 missions and by reason of statistics alone you will have little chance of completing it without being killed at least once, but good luck....