Daidalos Team's Room -QUESTIONS AND REQUESTS ONLY - For 4.11

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Luno13

- Windsock model

Windsock: A simple version of this exists as a mod, in that there are windsocks modeled at different levels of "fullness". A simple windsock which automatically displays the correct model in the right direction based on wind speed and direction probably wouldn't be that hard, but would require some coding. A truly "dynamic" windsock which reacts to variable wind speed and direction would be a lot of work for not much gain.

Originally Posted by Luno13

- Bomb-bay door function

Available in the stock game for all of the flyable planes, but I'm not sure if they're affected by airspeed.

Originally Posted by Luno13

toggle for bomb salvo release

Might be under development for the 4.11 or future patch.

I'd like to see more variability in bomb spread, at least for medium and high altitude bombing. Right now, it is possible to "put a bomb in a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet". In real life, things like variable air density, variable wind speed and direction, vibration and imprecise altimeters meant that bomb accuracy was a lot lower, even under ideal bombing conditions. A simple randomization function for every X meters that bombs fall would be a good, simple fix.

Originally Posted by Luno13

a feature which limits how far cooling flaps could be opened based on airspeed (maybe a jam, tearing off, or snapping shut?).

Or, possibly cooling flaps/shutters might be jammed or not be able to open/close completely due to damage.

Originally Posted by Luno13

- Gunners and observers which call out enemy fighters and give updates periodically or when requested

Sort of implemented in the current game. In theory, a tail gunner will call out the vector of incoming fighters and tell you to break left or right (then cuss you out when you do!) but it doesn't seem to be implemented for all two-seater planes, and it certainly isn't implemented for multi-gunner bombers. Perhaps a review of coding for multi-seat planes?

Currently, there's no command which will allow you to ask various other planes to repeat their message or update their status or than repeating the same order.

Getting fancier with the crew intercom voices or adding new gunner/crew commands would require a lot of new programming, as well as a serious reworking of the voice packs. Consider all the pertinent messages the various crewmen on a B-17 or Pe-8 might give during a mission!

Even worse, think of all the commands the crew might give if they were to coordinate gunnery! Consider just this command: "Nose here. Incoming bandit, 1 o'clock high. Tailgunner, get him as he passes." That's 7 different routines the AI has to figure and 7 different phrases the voice-pack has to parse. Multiply that by 11-13 for the crew of a heavy bomber and you've got literally thousands of different permutations!

That's the reason the game's called "IL-2 Sturmovik, not "B-17 Flying Fortress"!

Originally Posted by Luno13

- Some love for reconnaissance aircraft!

Some cool ideas there. But, most players don't care about any plane that doesn't have guns or bombs on it.

Points for Recce: Points for flying over a map point can currently be implemented in FMB for passing over a waypoint as a mission objective. But, it would be nice if the FMB could assign different values for doing so (other than just putting a bunch of mission objective waypoints really close together).

Taking Pictures: Currently you can take pictures of the ground in IL2 with a single press of a button. That button is called PrtScn! . To get moving footage of the ground, just set up a bombsight view (if the plane has one) or a "straight down" pilot view with cockpit off and have the game record a .ntrk or .trk. But, having the game automatically set up to give you a still shot of the ground in black and white or black and white movie camera footage would make the movie makers very happy.

While TD is at, perhaps they could add a gun camera view - black and white camera offset from the cockpit, with blur effects when the guns fire or the plane pulls gs!

Originally Posted by Luno13

- Some love for bombers!

Point Values for Infrastructure: A simple way to give "value" to ground objects would be "point markers" for 10, 20, 25, 50, 100, etc. points which FMB users could place under infrastructure targets. They'd be as hard to destroy as unarmored vehicles or armored vehicles and could also trigger various effects like smoke, fires or explosions of various sizes. Currently, the only way to do this in the FMB is to put a vehicle (or multiple vehicles) within an infrastructure target.

Ground Killed Planes: Planes destroyed on the ground were, paradoxically, always counted as being less valuable than air-to-air kills, even though they were often harder to achieve. So, the 20-30 points for a ground kill vs. 100 for an air kill is sort of realistic. Anyhow, static aircraft are way too easy to kill.

Sharing Kills: Point sharing for any sort of "kill" is on everyone's wish list. Figure out how to implement it and "vulching" will be a thing of the past. Figure out how to implement it so that it's historically accurate for each air force and you're a coding genius!

Unrealistic Torpedo Bomber Behavior: Going for small ships you can take out with one bomb/torpedo is a potentially historically valid choice. Fatal damage to a ship wasn't always obvious, since fire or flooding could take hours or even days to kill a ship. Pilots in subsequent attack waves might see the main target(s) all on fire and "sinking" because they were down at the bow or stern, and decide to take out undamaged ships instead. Cautious/ cowardly pilots might be deterred by intense AA from a capital ship and decide to take out something less well armed.

Small Bomber Formations: Small formations are already available as a coop option. Just have the server admin specify that bombers only fly as flights, and that human players should choose the lead bomber if they want to be flight leader. If you want to be sneaky about letting other players know which plane you're in, don't fly lead. For dogfight servers, flying solo is the name of the game. Get some friends who also want to fly bombers, have them spawn when you do and form up once you're in the air.

What would be nice would be mechanisms for players to take over command of a flight if lead AI planes are shot down or turn back.

It would also be nice if the lead bomber had the option of commanding the other planes in his flight/squadron/group to drop bombs on his command.

Incentives for Escorts: Incentives for escorts bringing the bombers back are already available in some online campaigns, and the admin of a well-run coop server can make escorting bombers worth your while in subsequent missions. Complaining about lack of teamwork on a dogfight server is futile.

People and Animals as Targets: Troop concentrations, cavalry, horse-drawn vehicles and livestock are all available as mods. They look a bit funny when they move, but they're otherwise beautiful. The problem is that adding human or animal targets to the game would alter IL2's ESRB rating, so they cannot be added to any official patch.

Fuel Tanks: Fuel tank switching, fuel shut-offs and manual fuel pumps would require massive recoding of the game. Currently, all fuel tanks drain at an equal rate. Load balancing if fuel tanks drain at a different rate, figuring out flow rates for pumps, recalculating performance based on differential fuel use/loss, figuring out damage to fuel pumps/shutoffs, and so forth would be a massive headache.

Fires: Fire progression is also poorly modeled. Sometimes small fires (black smoke) takes unrealistically long to progress to full fires, sometimes a full fire will burn for hours without spreading or damaging adjacent structures. Sometimes an empty fuel tank will continue to burn (remember, all tanks on the plane drain equally, so it's actually burning the fuel in all your other tanks). Also, there's only two different sizes of fire: "small" and "large." But, some features of fires are very well modeled. At times, if you use fire extinguishers or dive hard from a high altitude, fires will go out. Sometimes they will restart.

LSO: An LSO would be a nice feature, but it would require a lot of modeling and coding for relatively little gain. Although it is possible to place objects on a carrier deck, creating an animated figure which would respond to your plane's actions would be a lot more work. Currently, very few objects in IL2 are animated, or can be animated. (Notice all those stiff, board-like flags on ships in IL2?) Anyhow, not all nations used LSOs, some just used glide slope indicators or lights which indicated whether you were cleared to land or not.

Carrier Catapults: Carrier catapults have been successfully implemented as a mod. Basically, you give the plane a short-lived emergency boost or RATO which simulates catapult take-off (but without all the steam coming from the deck).

Catapult Rails: Catapults from launch rails are trickier, since I think that the game interprets contact between the launch rail and the plane as a collision, and I think that the game might have trouble figuring out how to launch a plane at a non-parallel angle to the ship.

A workaround might be some kind of modified "air start" where the plane has the ability to hold station at some angle with respect to the ship, and actually launches a foot or so above the end of the launch rail.

Alternately, catapult rail launch might work from a stationary ship as long as you define the plane as "air starting" a foot/meter or so above the launch rail. Anyhow, possibly workable, but lots of work for not a whole lot of gain. Consider, there are currently only three planes in the game which were catapulted from rails: Ar-196, Hurricane & MBR-2. Only one is flyable in the stock game.

Water Geysers: More typically, water geysers represented undershooting the target. Guns big enough to cause explosive effects will damage targets near enough to be hit by them, which is the same as getting hit by a column of water. The big problem is that there are only two sizes of water geysers in the game: small arms and bombs. Big guns or big bombs should produce bigger geysers.

Aircraft Fragments Causing Damage: Big enough airplane parts already do cause damage if you hit them.

Aircraft Fragments Falling Apart: Rarely happens, usually when there's an explosion just as the plane starts to fall apart. Could possibly be dealt with using coding, but then the game would have to keep track of each falling object rather than just one. Lots of work for little more than eye candy.

Self Shadowing: Probably doable, but: Huge increase in frame rates. Potentially lots of coding. Mostly eye candy. Might conflict with CloD "do not compete" agreement.

Exhaust Flames: Realistic exhaust flames tied to engine RPM/fuel mixture and start-up procedure have been available as mods for quite a while, although not for all planes. My ignorant guess is that DT will address the issue if they ever tackle night fighting/night bombing ops. Of course, most planes designed for night fighting had exhaust dampers.

Fuel Grades: Another wish list favorite, right up there with APIT 0.50 caliber loadouts for U.S. fighters and dynamic weather. Easily modeled by giving planes that had the capacity to use 100 or 120 octane fuel their own flight model, but that doubles or triples the number of FM "slots" required. Might be better handled by new coding. Opens up a whole can of worms over low octane/high octane FM performance.

Realistic System Reliability: Modeling realistic systems failure - instruments, fuel, oil and hydraulic lines and pumps, controls, etc. - would be a massive coding job. Realistic engine reliability is a small step towards modeling this. Realistic damage to airframe and control surfaces due to overspeed and g-forces is nicely modeled in the current game. Guns sometimes jam on their own, especially at high g's, although jamming could be better simulated when shooting at high altitude (guns iced up or lubricant froze) or when shooting inverted (some guns were more prone to jam if you did this).

Cloud Types: One step towards another usual wish list suspect: dynamic weather. High cloud types (i.e., the wispy cirrostratus clouds you see far above you even at high altitude) would be the least of it. Mods which allow moving clouds, multiple cloud layers, colors and thickness have shown it's possible, but they're still very crude.

Wake Turbulence: Available as a mod. Nice little effect. Relatively easy to implement, although I'm not sure that the mod can tell the difference between the sort of turbulence the engines of a B-29 would produce and those produced by the engine of the Fi-156!

Reloading Drums: Reloading any ammo would be welcome, since many guns were fed from ammo drums/boxes which could be reloaded. Currently, IL2 treats all flexible/turret gun ammo as one big belt. At the very least, there should be a feature which tells the game that one belt/box is out, making the gun shot shooting for X number of seconds before it can shoot again. Coding ammo drums/boxes vanishing would be a nice touch. Many planes for Pacific Fighters were rushed. Flyable He-111 was later work. The attention to detail shows!

IL-4, Pe-2 periscope: Other than being cool eye candy, what would this get you? Currently the game gives you an option of external views which sort of simulate periscopes.

Beaufighter Observer/Gunner: Would be welcome. It's strange that the stock Beau doesn't have a gunner.

IL2 Field Mod Gunner Position: Do you really want to simulate the world's worst job? Would require creating rear gun cockpit and there might not be sufficient references to do so.

Mosquito Mk IV: DT has said they plan to make cockpits for a lot for current planes to make them flyable. Perhaps this one will be on their short list.

G4M2: Probably easy enough to rework cockpits for this one. Increased loadouts would be easy to do. Experimental belly pack full of explosives, intended for kamikazes, would be a nice addition.

Su-2: I think that a cockpit is in the works for this one.

Beaufighter Mk.X: Available as mod. Easily added.

I-16 type 24 4MG: Easily added as new weapon loadout option.

R-10: Possibly a cockpit in the works for this one.

Ki 51, Ki-30 or Ki-15: I think that at least one of these is in the works by an independent mod team.[/QUOTE]

[Lagarto]

I vote for more AI-only reconnaissance aircraft - they make great targets For example, Hs 126 would be a nice addition for early war campaigns. And of course some more Japanese bombers (for the same reason): Ki-30 Ann, Ki-48 Lily and G3M Nell.

[addman]

Touch up the old Fiat G.50, cockpit and externals. It really needs it.

[Luno13]

Available in the stock game for all of the flyable planes, but I'm not sure if they're affected by airspeed.

This is the first time I've heard about it. Are you sure it isn't a mod?

Even worse, think of all the commands the crew might give if they were to coordinate gunnery! Consider just this command: "Nose here. Incoming bandit, 1 o'clock high. Tailgunner, get him as he passes." That's 7 different routines the AI has to figure and 7 different phrases the voice-pack has to parse. Multiply that by 11-13 for the crew of a heavy bomber and you've got literally thousands of different permutations!

Well, it doesn't need to be that complicated. As long as any one gunner is alive and "sees" enemy aircraft, there can be a general call-out. At the very least, just one line "Enemy spotted!" will do just fine.

But, most players don't care about any plane that doesn't have guns or bombs on it.

That's why you make a system of points: incentive for those that need it. But I imagine that there may be more interesting projects. I was probably over-reaching with reconnaissance objectives as nothing like that has ever been done in a game before anyway...but I would be quite happy to fly transport duties too in a Ju-52 or C-47, or tow gliders in a Pe-8 (now possible) or He-111 Z or in a formation with 3 Bf-110s...Or even gliders themselves!! (with points bonuses/incentives for online players for landing and delivering the goods).

Ground Killed Planes: Planes destroyed on the ground were, paradoxically, always counted as being less valuable than air-to-air kills, even though they were often harder to achieve. So, the 20-30 points for a ground kill vs. 100 for an air kill is sort of realistic. Anyhow, static aircraft are way too easy to kill.

Interesting tidbit, but online is a different world, and people do things for slightly different reasons.

Unrealistic Torpedo Bomber Behavior: Going for small ships you can take out with one bomb/torpedo is a potentially historically valid choice. Fatal damage to a ship wasn't always obvious, since fire or flooding could take hours or even days to kill a ship. Pilots in subsequent attack waves might see the main target(s) all on fire and "sinking" because they were down at the bow or stern, and decide to take out undamaged ships instead. Cautious/ cowardly pilots might be deterred by intense AA from a capital ship and decide to take out something less well armed.

Good point. But ships have guns in Il-2 too right? Some players will want to be cautious or avoid the BBs outright. But in the game there is literally no point to attacking a BB, whereas in reality, there would be some alternate source of motivation.

Small Bomber Formations: Small formations are already available as a coop option. Just have the server admin specify that bombers only fly as flights, and that human players should choose the lead bomber if they want to be flight leader. If you want to be sneaky about letting other players know which plane you're in, don't fly lead. For dogfight servers, flying solo is the name of the game. Get some friends who also want to fly bombers, have them spawn when you do and form up once you're in the air.

This was possible a few years ago, and I have done it, but the online community is shrinking. Also, why settle for a three plane formation with friends when you can have a 12 plane formation with AI and friends?

Incentives for Escorts: Incentives for escorts bringing the bombers back are already available in some online campaigns, and the admin of a well-run coop server can make escorting bombers worth your while in subsequent missions. Complaining about lack of teamwork on a dogfight server is futile.

Well, there is indeed a greater sense of camaraderie in coops, but that's because everyone waits for ten minutes in the lobby, and all spawn at the same time. Dogfights have way more potential because the player can join or leave as his/her schedule permits. I don't expect a perfect finger-four from complete strangers, but a point system with adequate rewards could serve as an incentive to do something else than just fly directly to the enemy lines at full power and get shot down in three minutes.

People and Animals as Targets: Troop concentrations, cavalry, horse-drawn vehicles and livestock are all available as mods. They look a bit funny when they move, but they're otherwise beautiful. The problem is that adding human or animal targets to the game would alter IL2's ESRB rating, so they cannot be added to any official patch.

I'm not familiar with all of the legal issues, but what about the modeling of pilot death in Il-2? The pilot can slump in his chute, crumples when he hits the ground, the screen goes red to black as he bleeds out, fleeing truck drivers can be strafed, and the game displays certain online status messages such as "X turns Y into a heap of meat!" . Are these not a part of the rating? Again, graphic gore isn't necessary, but maybe the horse and infantry can just disappear, fall over, or stop moving?

Fuel Tanks: Fuel tank switching, fuel shut-offs and manual fuel pumps would require massive recoding of the game. Currently, all fuel tanks drain at an equal rate. Load balancing if fuel tanks drain at a different rate, figuring out flow rates for pumps, recalculating performance based on differential fuel use/loss, figuring out damage to fuel pumps/shutoffs, and so forth would be a massive headache.

I agree, but something should be done about the practical death sentence of getting a fuel tank leak or grey smoke when over enemy territory.

LSO: An LSO would be a nice feature, but it would require a lot of modeling and coding for relatively little gain.

There is a nice ILS feature in Il-2 now. When the player is to the right of the glide slope, long beeps play, to the left, short beeps, and right on the money, a long tone. This is inherently all an LSO would have to do... just with an infantry figure and flags. I guess putting that on a ship would be harder, but not every object on ships is static (guns).

Aircraft Fragments Causing Damage: Big enough airplane parts already do cause damage if you hit them.

I was never aware of that. As far as I can tell, a nearby explosion causes the damage, but not impact with parts.

Cloud Types: One step towards another usual wish list suspect: dynamic weather.

I wasn't expecting dynamic weather (quite a coding challenge I bet) but at least user-selectable high-alt clouds in the same way we can select low alt cloud density and height.

Pe-2 Belly Gunner: Other than being cool eye candy, what would this get you?

Completeness.

IL2 Field Mod Gunner Position: Do you really want to simulate the world's worst job? Would require creating rear gun cockpit and there might not be sufficient references to do so.

It's fun for a masochist like me - the later gunners didn't have it easy either. As for cockpit, it shouldn't be different from stock. A hole was cut and a canvass strap was used as the seat. This is the same in all Il-2s in the game. The guns can come from the TB-3.


Again, these were just ideas and suggestions. I know it's not a perfect world with infinite resources and manpower (and if it was, I would have the skills, time, and passion to program things myself). DT are working hard, and they've added a lot of features we'd never thought we'd see, and more surprises are coming. It's difficult to not get hopeful once in a while

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by Lagarto

I vote for more AI-only reconnaissance aircraft - they make great targets For example, Hs 126 would be a nice addition for early war campaigns. And of course some more Japanese bombers (for the same reason): Ki-30 Ann, Ki-48 Lily and G3M Nell.

It might be good to spread the love a little... the Luftwaffe already has two recce aircraft although the Hs 126 is a very interesting type on it's own. The Piper L4 was used quite a bit by the Western Allies who currently have zero recce types.

Additional flyable Japanese bombers would definitely be a good thing. There are quite a few types and it might be nice to see something other than the G4M1 all the time. It was used well into 1944 and probably into 1945 (alongside the newer G4M2 variants) BUT some variety would be great and the Ki-21 is currently not flyable for online scenarios.

[Lagarto]

Originally Posted by IceFire

The Piper L4 was used quite a bit by the Western Allies who currently have zero recce types.

Great idea! Generally speaking, this sim fares much better with low-altitude, eastern-front-type, tactical fighting. It just wasn't programmed for high-altitude massive combats and it shows. That's why I'd rather see some more early-war Japanese bombers - or French, for that matter (Potez 63, please) - than a Lancaster, even though I agree it's a beautiful aircraft

[Tempest123]

Putting around in a storch or a piper would be a blast I think in Il2, coupled with the the recon target. Could be some fun missions, STOL -style

[ElAurens]

The L5 Stinson was/is in one of the mod packs, as is the Storch.

You are nothing but a target in one.

The sim is not sufficiently realistic enough to make using them anything but a suicide mission.

I did manage to hold off two A6M3s in the Stinson in an online campaign for several minutes. It was fun, but the outcome was never in doubt.

Even the largest of maps in the sim tend to concentrate the action in one or two areas, hence there is no where to hide, and certainly no where to run at 100 mph.

[Zorin]

I have one request that should be fairly easy to implement.

Could you please add some very basic tiles we can place as objects in the FMB for dirt roads, paved roads and rail tracks?

Make them height and pitch adjustable and we mission makers should be able to cope with most topographic situations on the maps and have a very powerful tool to create our own railyards and villages.

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

The L5 Stinson was/is in one of the mod packs, as is the Storch.

You are nothing but a target in one.

The sim is not sufficiently realistic enough to make using them anything but a suicide mission.

I did manage to hold off two A6M3s in the Stinson in an online campaign for several minutes. It was fun, but the outcome was never in doubt.

Even the largest of maps in the sim tend to concentrate the action in one or two areas, hence there is no where to hide, and certainly no where to run at 100 mph.

As a flyable it'd be almost pointless but as an immersion factor in campaigns and single missions having recce aircraft can be very useful. Especially if a recce aircraft can be set to operate as an artillery spotter. Mission objectives could be to protect the spotter aircraft on it's mission from enemy aircraft... that sort of thing.

But your right... as a flyable... doesn't work in very many situations.