Will SoW be boring and superficial?

[_ITAF_UgoRipley]

I agree, too.

Not that I'm bored of it, but I would welcome any kind of "change" to the usual workload, as suggested by Feathered: other tasks, other responsabilities, new mission goals...

Just to remind you/us (it could very well be the change-from-usual-routine step #1) Oleg posted some time ago that we'll have a 2-seat trainer...
That sounds very good to me, also in this perspective.

[Avimimus]

I agree. Anything that gives a sense of purpose and as sense of impacting the game world is key. I also like the idea adding support for improved transport, liason, recon, ASW and SAR missions. People will build aircraft for these purposes, I'm sure of it.

[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

[Xiola]

No it wont be boring and superficial.

[Feathered_IV]

Originally Posted by Xiola

No it wont be boring and superficial.

That is a purely emotional response with no evidence to support the assertion. A shame, because I really do hope you are right.

[tater]

Actually, a cool recon idea would be to have a recon plane loadout possible. Then a recon missio type where you are assigned a target. You fly passes, and the "weapon" takes images at the same time it "shoots" targets visible in the swath. The game could then count the number of units "hit" with the invisible camera bullets, and present that information on the next briefing. Useful for online war type play.

[csThor]

IMO a "recon loadout" is not really the way to go as the aircraft assigned to recon units were often specially designed for the job and/or had special equipment on board. IMO creating both close-range (tactical) and long-range (strategical) recon aircraft variants for player use would be much more realisc. Anyone fancy artillery direction while flying a Hs-126 over the front?

[tater]

Yes, obviously purpose modified planes would be prefered where appropriate. I didn't mean putting it on any plane, but for the guys who build the actual planes. They make it look like an F-5 instead of a P-38, then to make it function as a recon plane, they add the "recon weapon" loadout to it.

So I wasn;t trying to imply that any plane would be a recon plane with a mouse click, simply that such a loadout would exist in the toolkit for people building the actual aircraft.

That said, I seem to recall spitfires with cameras behind the cockpit shooting laterally. That would be an easy "loadout" type change, perhaps.

[csThor]

I'm wary of "crutches" like that as they tend to become the end-result. I'd prefer a solid and historical representation.