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#181
01-14-2011, 06:42 PM
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Warclouds 24/7 online server works very well for me. Each side has multiple ground target areas to destroy to win the map. You have a mixture of ground pounders, ground pounder cover, and high flyers. All good flyers communicating and coordinating tasks on teamspeak. Noobs are welcomed and helped. Jerks soon find another place to fly wether they like it or not..
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#182
01-14-2011, 07:34 PM
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#183
01-14-2011, 07:47 PM
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As opposite in this game.Edit: And if they died, you never heard or saw them anymore - as opposite in this game. So lets not talk about realism regarding pilots 
Last edited by moilami; 01-14-2011 at 07:52 PM.
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#184
01-14-2011, 08:13 PM
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add to that my job often involves dealing with EDJ's and it's a facet of human behaviour i'd rather not have to deal with while having fun. my choice, not trying to impose it on anyone else now back to more conspiracy theories about what COD really stands for 
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#186
01-18-2011, 09:04 AM
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Climb down off your high horse for a while. Hood
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#187
01-18-2011, 11:24 AM
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It's simple: isn't an "online vs offline" question, is an "Perfect A.I vs Poor A.I." question.
In ANY flight sim A.I. isn't near good. The best is to have human controlled aircraft. Today we have great internet connections and computers to handle multiple human-controlled aircrafts. So, it's the "ideal" A.I.. Just need to gather the right people. A.I. in IL2? I pass: I want to come UNSEEN sometimes, see enemies doing UNEXPECTED maneuvers and work TOGHETER with teammates. Offline? We just don't have it. It's a poor overall experience. Isn't a matter of discussion, it's plain obvious: human controlled aircraft give much better experience and challenge than a bunch of predictable A.I. I can destroy easily 4 109's in an early Spit if they are flow by the better A.I. in IL-2, but if you put ONE human in the cockpit of one one of them, the world comes upside-down! The future in combat flight sims is MP. Even more for the hardcore simmers.
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#188
01-18-2011, 11:48 AM
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#189
01-18-2011, 06:52 PM
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In European Air War everything was much simpler than IL2, but the AI did exactly as they were told and didn't do anything on their own unless absolutely necessary to ensure their survival. They would evade an enemy attack or take a snap-shot if they could, but for the most part they were glued to your wing unless you told them they are free to break off and do their own thing. In this sense, while the AI is certainly not on par human intelligence i'm sure it can be made to act in a believable way. This is the Achilles' heel of single player flying. The Achilles' heel of multiplayer however is different. Human players rarely stick to how an operation is supposed to be flown, unless you spend time to find like minded fellows that will stick to the rules. Since i don't have the time to fly in organized squads, online wars or large scale coops this means that i have to bear with seeing solitary four engined heavies, some of them making a break for the target at tree top height and skip bombing, instead of flying properly in formations and bombing on command of the lead ship. For me, human intelligence that liberally takes shortcuts detracts from the immersion factor just as much as an overly rigid and predictable AI, but it can't be helped. We all have limited time to spend on this hobby and we all want to maximize our fun in this limited timeframe, so we're bound to see people taking off from taxiways and stealing a four engined heavy by coming in from dead six and getting their own engined damaged in the process, one that another player has been busy working on properly by making slashing high speed, high deflection attacks for an entire 5 minutes and yes, it happens even on objective driven, high difficulty servers as well. The truth is that unless you have the time to fly coops or online wars with an organized group (not necessarily a virtual squad, but you do need a small group of people to regularly fly with) you will inevitably see such behavior and even long time and respected members of the community will do it from time to time, not out of spite but because they only have half an hour of flying time to squeeze between picking up the groceries, managing the house bills and putting the kids to bed. I don't condone it but i don't criticize it either as long as it's not a de facto modus operandi of the guy who does it. However, the bottom line is that despite his superior intellect in comparison to the AI, a human player that takes shortcuts to maximize his time spent in combat can be as disruptive to immersion as an AI aircraft that doesn't know how to fly scissors properly. Long story short, if you want challenging fights at the expense of taking liberties with other factors (because if everyone does it, at some point i might do it as well to even the playing field) then multiplayer is just fine. If you want to fly the proper mission profile at the expense of dummy opponents compared to real life ones, then it's single player. In fact, a scripted single player campaign with carefully planned missions and custom briefings is much more immersive in regards to what surrounds the life of a combat pilot than a dynamic one or a multiplayer session. In multiplayer, the immersion is mostly found in the actual fight, the rest of the sortie however usually feels pretty bland with everyone doing more or less their own thing. Limited available time also results in scaled down maps and ahistorical distances, which greatly upsets the historical flow of a mission. A 1/2 scale map means i can take half the fuel in exchange for a gain in climb rate, maneuverability or load out weight, or i can take full fuel and laugh at combat damage and fuel leaks because i'm always going to be within gliding distance of a friendly base. I can fly a Pony with 25% fuel or a 190 with 50% fuel which makes me harder to catch, yet i have enough loiter time to cruise around the map a few times and still have enough left for a hasty retreat back to the safety of friendly flak at full throttle if things are going bad for me. Don't get me wrong, i'm not dissing it. It's just fine and entertaining none the less, plus it's a necessary compromise due to real life constraints. However, it is neither historical nor immersive when compared to flying a fully laden Pony 3 hours away from the nearest friendly base and knowing that the slightest damage could mean a not so glorious descent to a German farm due to fuel leaks or a long, arduous and vulnerable trip back home, or flying a 190 that needs external fuel tanks in order to use high throttle settings to get to the bomber's altitude as fast as possible during a ground controlled interception. However, this is something that you easily can experience in single player without even having to fly for hours on end, because you can timeskip to the relevant points of the mission. It's like placing yourself in the particular point of interest in the mission, but with the historical range, fuel and weight considerations plus the potential for trouble that your chosen mission profile implies. Unless there's a way for all players to use time compression in multiplayer simultaneously, or for AI flights to be set up to depart on a schedule and then get taken over by the players at an appropriate waypoint, there's no way to experience this in multiplayer short of gathering a minority of people that feel fine flying 6 hours to and from Berlin in their Mustangs and B17s, while the other team sits twiddling their thumbs for the first 3 hours in their 190s until it's time to scramble. The only case where everything works out is multiplayer with a special selection of like-minded individuals, but this also comes with its own drawback, the time required for the particular gameplay style. I have flown online on and off but after some connectivity issues i haven't done so in a while. I did have fun and i learned a lot of things that i wouldn't pick up if i was fighting the AI (for example, just hanging back and following an experienced player through his maneuvers to cover his six improves your own handling of your aircraft tremendously). However, all three cases come with their own inherent set of drawbacks, to the point where i definitely can't crown one of them the king of gameplay. It's more like a question of what i'm in the mood for, not what is better or more "hardcore", because while superficially similar the small differences between gameplay modes have a big impact on the net result. I really hope we'll get the rumored new multiplayer mode, with ongoing dynamic mini campaigns flown online with some sort of MDS support for AI units (possibly even being able to set up a flight as AI and spawn into it later, so you could fly bomber missions at the historical distances and conditions without having to take an entire day off work), because that would be a good enough mix of the above modes. People who like fast thrills can just go on short range, cross channel free hunting and rhubarb missions in small groups, people who like fighting for an objective can do organized fighter sweeps, strikes and escort, bombers will be there as AI in proper formations and players will be able to join into the raid if they want, etc. It would all tie into a bigger picture with campaign objectives and stat tracking for the purpose of calculating available supplies, airframes, pilots and AI ground forces for each side, leaving the players to decide how to best achieve the campaign goals for their team, designing and flying their own ad hoc missions in a persistent online environment. That way, one day i could be mixing it up in a 109 in a furball over the channel just 10 minutes after taking off, while the next day i could be flying a 2 hour round trip to occupied Europe in a mosquito, doing photo recon work for an upcoming raid by a dedicated virtual bomber squadron. The way it is today however, i can't seriously say that MP or SP is superior than the other. In fact, where each one is lacking the other one usually has its strongest points.
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#190
01-18-2011, 11:17 PM
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+ 1 to blackdog
in most posts you make very well thoughts and you always impress me, nice also to see someone from my same country. what you say IMHO is absolutely right. Teh fact is to find teh best compromise and i think that is more plausible to have smaller maps on multiplayer, mayeb keep the 1:1 scale but in restricted area. I hardly see a multiplayer that goes through planning. Even squadrons some tiems plan on teh go but what they have is order. My best period online was flying with some of 4S, maybe some Veltro and a Freccia. I didnt have time for a squadroon but i could hardly get those 2 non stop hours of game as i had also school. Although i played very little, now im over 1 year offline as when i install il 1946 , it hapens that some .dll get lost.... I would think taht for best immersion in the scenario is the Solo, but both Solo and multi are achieving. I learn to fly very well online, and i sticked also for bombing quite often, especially on desert missions. Teh best was however flying that little time with 4s , i remember when we jjust flew on bf 109 s on 3 one close to another and when we spotted a poor La-7 we hit and zoom one by one( hit, take altitude turn around and let the 2nd attack and so on) or when chatting and calling for help they tried to to find and help you. maybe il2 offered me the best multiplayer experience Last edited by el0375; 01-18-2011 at 11:27 PM.
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). 
Linear Mode
