Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[Thunderbolt56]

Forced side-balancing should be an option for server admins, but not intrinsic to or with a pre-determined %. To be able to say that one side or the other can't exceed 10% advantage or something like that would be o.k. with me. I realize there are many times a squad may come to a server and want to all fly together thus making one side a bit more populated than the other, but things often have a tendency to balance out after a few minutes.

The only time I've ever really had an issue is when singles or pairs join and simply load up in "their favorite" aircraft on the team that already outnumbers the other by 2:1. Another option could be, If the numbers are seriously out of balance and the new pilots still want to join the side with the numerical advantage, they should have to fly the ragged, "pool" aircraft in a bomber role or the one with the supercharger that doesn't work.

[Lodestone]

Originally Posted by Thunderbolt56

Forced side-balancing should be an option for server admins, but not intrinsic to or with a pre-determined %. To be able to say that one side or the other can't exceed 10% advantage or something like that would be o.k. with me. I realize there are many times a squad may come to a server and want to all fly together thus making one side a bit more populated than the other, but things often have a tendency to balance out after a few minutes.

The only time I've ever really had an issue is when singles or pairs join and simply load up in "their favorite" aircraft on the team that already outnumbers the other by 2:1. Another option could be, If the numbers are seriously out of balance and the new pilots still want to join the side with the numerical advantage, they should have to fly the ragged, "pool" aircraft in a bomber role or the one with the supercharger that doesn't work.

All good ideas Thunderbolt, especially that of giving the new joiners on an over-manned team the old, dilapidated airplanes.

I'm not looking for a systems that starts shuffling people from team to team when they are out by just a couple of players. But I have, for instance, gone into our server and found the teams lopsided to the point of 30vs8, when the map is designed for the sides to be close to equal. I agree that much of the time the teams even themselves out pretty well, due to the high degree of sportsmanship most players have. But even a fair-minded player might fly around for 30 minutes not even noticing his team has a 2-1 advantage. The sky is big after all, even with 50 planes in it. Some kind of scalable team-balance system would help a lot in these instances.

I understand the wish for a forced balancing. But how should this work?

As an entrant to a server you are automatically switched to the outnumbered side or is it done when you are already flying and some on the other team leave and then I find myself in another plane on the other side?

What about 11:10 ratio (or 23:22 or 13:14, or ...)

What about 35:40? (that's no real outnumbering imho)

Could you force people to play on Russion side more in order to simulate the large numbers of Soviet planes on eastern front?

What I fear is that people will leave mostly if they cannot play on the side they like. We for instance are an RAF squadron and want to play on allied side. If we occasionally jump into blue crates it is because we want to.

[Novotny]

Originally Posted by vanderstok

Oleg,

I'd like to ask a couple of questions that pop-up when describing a typical historical offline mission.
Some time ago I read about a precision bombing attack in 1944 by Mosquitos on a building in The Hague (where I live) where the Germans kept records of resistance fighters and many other documents. I was wondering if and how such a mission could be created for SoW (I know that the Mosquito will not be in the initial game, this is just an example!).

The target they had to destroy was a big white house. They probably had lots of recon photos for preparation.

Q1: Is it possible to include a couple of recon photos in the mission screen? They are a must have for a mission like this (I think this is already on the feature list)

There were three pairs of Mossies taking off from England and following waypoints to the Dutch coast. The aircraft flew very low and fast to avoid radar.

Q2: In IL2 the AI don't like to fly very low, they will usually pop-up when maneuvering. Will this be fixed in SoW?
Q3: Will there be radar? (Yes, I believe this has been confirmed already)

The Mossies flew over land, around Rotterdam to avoid the heavy FLAK there. They must have surprised quite a lot of enemy positions and vehicles before their presence was on radio.

Q4: Is it possible to surprise AI gunners? Can we set the alert status based on scripting?

The aircraft then turned back to The Hague, slowed down and set up for their attack run. Apparently, any enemy fighters were too late to intervene.

Q5: Is it possible to redirect (or have them take-off) aircraft to a certain waypoint based on a radar detection event?
Q6: Is it possible to place aircraft/vehicles at random positions within a given range? This would mean you could fly this kind of mission a couple of times. Perhaps it's a good idea to have an option to make the alert status of crews also random?

According to several sources the first Mossie tossed two bombs through the front door, blowing up the building. Other mossies threw incendiary bombs to burn the documents.

Q7: How will the damage model of individual buidling be? Is it possible to partly bring down a structure?
Q8: Is it possible to score points by destroying a static object? In IL2 you usually have to place a couple of vehicles as "bait" and to score points

Here is a great photo taken during the raid: http://www.strijdbewijs.nl/top/o/kl02.jpg

Q9: Will it be possible to take photos during a mission and review them during debriefing?

The Mossies then headed back to sea where a group of Spitfires provided air cover.

Q10: Will Ground control warn you if they see enemy aircraft on radar behind you?
Q11: Will the time accelaration or "skip time" function be available in SoW? I wouldn't mind fast forwarding when flying over an empty sea

Thanks for listening!

Awesome set of questions, superbly illustrated - has anyone asked before could we specify each plane's load within a flight? as in the mossie example above (meaning in single player campaign mode)

[Blood_Splat]

Oleg. I was wondering if there could be anti submarine missions?

[secretone]

FYI- You can do some neat stuff offline with the FMB. I created a scenario with an F4F and 2 Avengers taking off a CVE and nailing a uboat! Sometimes the uboat flak shoots down a plane or two. Usually the uboat is torpedoed.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Just a quick quesion. We've been told that a computer capable of playing IL2 on High graphics settings today will probably play SOW of reduced settings.

My question is will SOW on low setting look as good as IL2 on High settings?

[Lodestone]

Originally Posted by Skoshi Tiger

Just a quick quesion. We've been told that a computer capable of playing IL2 on High graphics settings today will probably play SOW of reduced settings.

My question is will SOW on low setting look as good as IL2 on High settings?

I cannot speak for Oleg of course but he has said, for instance, that in SoW there are only fully modeled 3-D trees. He has also said there are many more LOD's for planes than in IL-2. So even right there that is an improvement over IL-2. I think Skoshi that the answer to this is yes..SoW will look as good on low settings as IL-2 on highest settings. Maybe not texture-wise, but definitely in model detail. My own guess is that lowest settings for SoW will look better than 'perfect' IL-2 even in textures. Or at least here's hoping

What bothers me a little is that Oleg wrote that he'll fixe medium quality for online play if I understood well. I understand that through fixing this everyone should get the same chances even with a low end computer. On the other hand you'll just get medium quality if you play together with some friends with same high end computers.

I think quality should be set by the host/server. Most servers will choose quality that will fit most of their audience anyhow (after a try and error period of course to find good settings) in order to get their house full of players. But it leaves everyone to decide if he uses better quality when flying in a coop for instance ...

up to now all cockpits for SoW are as in IL2 empty. I'd like to know if there'll be for SoW no longer ghost planes but some with manned cockpits where you can see the pilot's hand on the stick and the legs as in so many other simulations. This is really important to get a first person impression and with today's technic this is already very realistic looking.