This 'plane, as it was the only allied jet aircraft to reach squadron service during WW II, should have been in Il-2 1946 from it's release. Instead we got an American prototype, Soviet aircraft, that as far as I am aware took no part in combat missions, a couple of jets that the Luftwaffe actually flew in service and German drawing board fantasies.
If some third party modeller could produce a "Meteor" to TD's standards I would be eternally grateful.

Cheers,
Rob

Sure. But we mission builders are a minority group who do not produce new models. So we have to live with what we do have.

The problem of balancing – or unbalancing – is around from day one, I believe, and is hard to control. A couple of examples: in the early days of Barbarossa, VVS suffered enormous losses, being numerically superior and inferior in quality of planes. Main factors were bad organization, wrong decisions by leaders, and inexperience of pilots and unit commanders. It’s not easy – to understate it – to recreate this situation with simple mission building tools and AI planes.
In the last days of war, Luftwaffe suffered from lack of experienced pilots and fuel. Again: how can you recreate this situation with simple mission building tools and AI planes? You should include missions with player’s plane sitting on the ground with empty tanks…
As I see it, at the moment the most efficient solution is to concentrate on theatres and scenarios historically balanced: North Africa 1942, Pacific 1942-43, Russia 1943, etc. My opinion, of course.
What-ifs are a viable and attractive way out, with many enjoyable possibilities. It’s a matter of measure, I think. Fantasy planes, many of which populate 1946, should be avoided, I believe.



So, I stand corrected: there are actually players ready for a special attack, or to cheat the Emperor.;)

That’s a limitation deserving a solution, I think. The same side switching happened in Finland, France (twice, in theory), Romania and other places (such as Slovak insurgency) and countries (such as Croatia). And I didn’t mention what if side switching, such as an anti-Soviet alliance, actually considered by Winston Churchill…

I agree, but there are two independent problems here.

One is the problem of missing factions like Vichy France or Allied Romania. This is relatively easy to fix, and has been already done so in the Forgotten Countries mod years ago. It's simply a matter of decision on TD's side to add 'new' nations, each with a side flag and the appropriate squads.

Another, and more complicated, problem is how a nation (or a squad) could switch side mid-campaign. It would require a special code turning e.g. some select Italian squads from blue to red on a given date (with corresponding markings, ranks, etc.) E.g. on the day when France surrenders, some squads should remain red as FAFL, while others turn to blue as Vichy. Still, such 'hard dates' for side switches would make hypothetical scenarios much more difficult.

Another, not unproblematic, solution would be enabling squad changes (transfers) in mid-campaign, at least between battles/scanarios. E.g. when there are both blue and red Italian/French/Romanian squads, you could simply transfer from one to another. If such a transfer could be initiated via the mission script, then the rest of the problems could be sorted out on a campaign design level. The only problem is that campaign files reside in nation-specific folders, which are likely to be messed up when you switch from Italy Blue to Italy Red. :confused:

Make the AI on the German side good. Feed them Russian squads piecemeal.
For player sitting around with no fuel, just space missions apart a few days or more, and comment on it. Best campagins offline are those that have a good written narrative, and to name one that IMHO stood out: Castaways/Bushpigs.
Right. And make that North Africa//Mediteranean, planeset there is IMHO balanced till the end. Numbers will not help the axis side later on...

I think this would be enormous fun. Never understood why 1946 didn't pick that theme up. German Co-Belligerent Airforce. And think about the near endless ordnance options, unguided rockets for the Germans, guided bombs and rockets for allied bombers. Or even better, German Airforce splits in two, and German planes/armament is available on both sides.

I'd say impossible to control. There were actually very few periods of the war where both sides were evenly matched in quality and quantity. And, they typically only lasted a few months before something changed to "spoil" the even match up - drop in plane numbers and/or pilot quality, failure of supply lines, or introduction of superior aircraft.

For example, early phase of the Battle of Britain were fairly well matched in planes and pilot quality. Towards the end, the RAF was starting to hit bottom in terms of available fighters and trained pilots.

Same thing for the other evenly matched theaters you mentioned, except that the Allies won the supply battle and were able to get more and better planes into the air.

On dogfight servers, you can only really have parity by having equal numbers of competitively matched fighters, although a few people will always take bombers or other "non-competitive" planes as a change-up.

For historical missions and campaigns, you don't have to worry about balance as long as you tell the player up front that the odds are stacked against him. That will weed out the people who just want to fly a hot rod and kill things, and select for the masochists who enjoy doing things like flying the Brewster Buffalo against a pack of Veteran A6M2 at 10:1 odds (or the D3A1 against a pack of Veteran F6F at 10:1 odds).

That's a bit too brutal. For any good campaign, you need to take a bit of dramatic license to make things challenging for the player while still giving the "overall impression" of the tactical and strategic situation.

For example, it would be more "interesting" to have your hapless Luftwaffe fighter jock like sitting on the end of the runway with 10% fuel, with an entire squadron of Average to Veteran P-51 screaming down to strafe the airfield. Basically, the player is screwed unless he chooses to not complete the mission, but there's a tiny chance that with luck and skill he can somehow survive.

Generally agreed, but what constitutes a "fantasy" plane? There were plenty of planes that were promising prototypes that never made it to combat service for reasons that we might consider to be stupid, or because of tactical or strategic factors beyond the designer's control. He-112 with DB-601 engine, Fw-187 Falke, PZL.50 Jastrzab?

Agreed. There should also be the option for allowing "blue" nations to be switched to "red" and vice-versa. This would allow for USSR vs. US battles - either accidental encounters like those that occasionally happened in 1944-45, or intentional "Cold War gone hot" set-ups.

It would take a lot more work, but it might also be possible to have a third side as "green" or some other color - just like in multiplayer coop missions. That would allow for the odd three-way fight, like US vs. USSR vs. Germany or France vs. Germany vs. Switzerland (fleeing French pilots attempting to get to neutral Switzerland, with Luftwaffe pilots attempting to shoot them down).

I wondered about that as well. Possibly lack of development time. Possibly lack of understanding by a Russian development team about the political tensions underlying the Western Allies-Soviet alliance. Possibly a residual horror at the thought of such a bloody and prolonged conflict.

Also, not to get political, but a Western Allies-German military alliance vs. the USSR was probably a non-starter once there was undeniable evidence of The Holocaust. (But, then again, if IL2:1946 could include the Lerche, they could just as easily imagine a scenario where everyone agreed to forget the death camps, or where the Shoah never existed.)

As alternate history, a Western Allies-German alliance might have worked if the USSR had attacked Poland in 1939 (and that was a potential conflict Churchill imagined). The UK and France might have held their noses and allied with Germany in a grand Western European crusade against Bolshevism. But, that alternate history would require all sorts of early war planes we don't have.

A more easily created alternate history campaign could occur if the Nazis had been deposed in 1942 to 1944, resulting in a German Civil War. The USSR invades Eastern Germany to "keep order," with some German military units fighting alongside them. The US and UK then occupy Western Germany with other German military units fighting alongside them, and war breaks out in Central Germany roughly along the line of the Cold War "Iron Curtain."

Great gaming opportunities, but horrifying to contemplate as real life scenarios.

As we say in Italy, and surely elsewhere as well, devil lives in details. What do we mean with “balanced” or “unbalanced”? Considering that between black and white there are countless shades of grey, I would try to write some numbers, at least for a discussion basis. So, I would define “unbalanced” a situation in which one side has less than 25 % average possibility to complete each mission of a campaign. A ten missions campaign against three to one odds for each mission is an impossible one, in my opinion, or a very boring one if the player hit “refly” button after each death. Things change, clearly, if the player is only required to survive, but even then there’s a limit of reasonability. I’ve mentioned the odds faced by Japanese torpedo bombers from early 1944 onwards. They’re so low that ultimately only two options remained: stay on the ground or take off for a suicide mission. For this reason, I believe that late war, flyable Japanese torpedo bomber types are useful for a “what if” campaign only, with non-historical balancing.
At the other end of the spectrum, I would consider balanced a situation in which each side has at least 50% possibility to complete each mission of a campaign. It’s still very, very hard, with one to one odds repeated for a number of missions up to the end of a campaign. A less demanding one would probably require an average of more than 90%. If the number looks too high, just think about the 25 missions cycle of a B17 pilot over Europe.

Again, we are talking about shades of grey, or devil in details. My opinion is that operational types only should be available in game, with priority for types that had widespread use, regardless of their successes or failures. Just try to count experimental or what if types available and play the game of substituting them with important, missing types. Griffon Spitfire in place of I-185, Meteor in place of swept wing Me262, Helldiver in place of Mig 3U, and so on…
To sum it up, I would have preferred Battle of France in place of 1946, but that’s my opinion, and I’m probably wrong if we talk about development costs and commercial strategies.
Moreover, I understand that I185 and other types were a labour of love done by volunteers, to which I’m simply grateful. Thanks, guys!:grin:

Looks like my previous post killed the debate! Perhaps I used too many numbers, perhaps the general tone sounds too pedantic (remember: this is not my language, and my control of subtleties like humour is relative), fact remains that I was left alone…
It’s a pity, because the thread was interesting, so I’m here trying a new approach. No more ponderous analysis about historical facts and technical detail. No more serious and boring references to reality, but just some dreaming thoughts about… A perfect sandbox Il2! My idea is simple, and almost certainly unfeasible: to create a generator of dynamic campaign generators.
Imagine a series of menus in which you choose:
Red, Blue (and Green, according to Pursuivant).
Alliances for Red and Blue (and Green).
Player nation.
Map, or maps, in order of appearance.
Year of start, year of end.
Planeset for each nation, and for each year.
Defined or undefined outcome (who will win the war).
Pilot career for each year, in such a way that player can start as fighter pilot and then switch to bomber, or vice-versa.
Difficulty level.
Experience of AI pilots (% of rookies, veterans, aces) for each nation and year.
Then, save your dynamic campaign.
Hit the fly button.

Not quite, I did follow the discussion, but I had the impression that we were talking without an end and sometimes without proper responses, therefore I didn't respond either...

It's a game. It has to be playable to be called a game properly. If you recreate historical circumstances, sometimes it will be playable easily (white), sometimes hardly (grey), and sometimes not at all (black). Black does not make sense, like a late-war Japanese torpedo bomber campaign according to history. You either avoid it at all or brutally cheat history in order to make it playable. So simple.

As to grey, here come the many shades. Even with good survival chances, you'll have to hit the 'refly' button from time to time. How frequently, depends on your skills and on scenario design. There are many ways to improve your chances and your playing experience, even if you stick to history. This is what we call 'balancing': it's cheating in a historically legitimate way. On the tactical level, you only enter combat when you have the advantage, right? Now you can do the same on the strategic level too: even outnumbered forces can achieve local superiority, and you are at liberties at recreating those situations with preference.

Or think of the G.50. It has such a low speed that it is theroretically unable to intercept most contemporary allied planes, including the Blenheim -- unless it dives on it from a higher altitude. So assign the Fiats a higher patrolling altitude in your campaign, and you're basically done.

And this is exacly what makes your (our) dream of a supreme generator of campaigns impossible to be realized (apart from the technical hindrances): only human discretion can make history 'playable'.