Dear Oleg,
Could I respectfully ask you not to waste your time on trying to justify yourself to people that are obtuse regarding a feature because you have limited time and there are many very valid and interesting questions asked that I would love to see answered
As a mission builder myself, I concur with a number of the other questions raised but here's a few things not mentioned:
1. Does the new FMB allow the use of AI in dogfight mode maps? Indeed, does co-op and dogfight now share features as can be achieved with mods in il2 today? In IL2 AI was fixed to co-op but this function was modded with considerable success. This is important because if one were flying a BoB map online I would like to face a large formation on it's way to bomb England, not sporadic pairs of bombers on their way to individual targets. There are other immersive advantages.
2. Would we have the ability to limit the supply of aircraft and their loadouts at airfields? Land damaged and be destroyed and the aircraft is removed from the pool since it is taken for repair
3. Can we group items together? When I set up AAA at an airfield I like to surround it with sandbagging and ammo boxes, perhaps a truck and men. This takes a lot of time - I would like to select all these items as a group, perhaps even save them as a custom object name 'AAA post' and then place and align them on the airfield at once.
4. Can we group squadrons into formations as one, then have a method to split them to different targets? I am referring to multiple squadrons of mixed types into gaggles of aircraft. Formations in the BOB often arrived as one large group then split off in different directions to their targets when over England. In FMB getting multiple flights to meet up is very hard to manage.
5. Will the AI have the sense to stop following their leader if he gets damaged and starts to lose position? Presently one only needs to hit up the leader and the rest are happy to die with him
6. Are their other maps or can this one be extended? Britain was bombed all over during the BoB, eg the Bristol based factories at Filton and Coventry in the Blitz are obvious examples.
7. When assigning escort duties for fighters can you simplify the method? Presently you have to set a target for each flight - very painful
8. Can we create our own custom columns or formations which we can save as a new object/item/template? This would be a useful feature for longer term campaigns
9. How will the points system work? Can we assign custom points values in the mission? 100 per engine and rewarding players who run off and land per kill is pretty basic and doesn't help make good missions in online squadron competition fighting such as USL (
www.uslglobal.com). Please feel free check out their scoring system which makes for more realistic combat scenarios.
Others have asked my other questions, particularly about waypoint timings and groupings - many thanks if you can find time for these.
~S~