[Kurfürst]

Question to Oleg Maddox regarding Storm of War - BoB

Dear Oleg,

My question to you is about how the new SoW engine will handle aircraft loadouts - outfittings and ordanance, like bombs, rockets, droptanks, tropical filters, cannon gondolas etc.

The current Il-2 engine seems to handle each loadout as if it was a different aircraft.
A 109 has different model if it has a bomb, if it`s a clean fighter etc. There are only pre-sets to choose from, and they work like a bit if they would a 'new' aircraft type, each pre-set loadout with its own flight model etc.

Will SoW : BoB feature more freedom to us in this regard - a modular selection of loadouts? Meaning, selection of individual components to add (guns, droptanks, bombs, all selected individually), instead of choosing pre-set?s

Shall we be able to select ANY mixture of equipments our liking, ie. say, I want to have a G-6, add a /U4 modification so it would have an MK 108, an R VI gondola kit for extra 20mm wing cannons, and as an odd selection, I also choose to carry a 250 kg bomb ? Add a tropical filter if I want? Or an external armored glass for an Emil or Friedrich ? Any combination of the above (within historical limits of the aircraft).

We can then check boxes when selecting the aircraft we want to fly, to select desired individual equipment modules, instead of just choosing from 3-4 fixed presets.

This especially applies to bombers, will there be only pre-set bombloads to choose from, or we can set up our own mixture (within historical limits of plane of course)? There could be a lot of combinations for these, and currently Il-2 only allows for only a limited number, not covering all historical possibilities.

I understand this is not so much of an issue for the BoB - fighters had very limited external stores, if any at the time - but in a later edition of BoB : SoW, as it gets expanded it will become more important.

Will loadouts have a historical date associated with them, ie. if a given loadout was not used before a certain date, then it would be only available for choosing if the date is proper? Say special types of bombs introduced in 1943 (in later addons) not being available for choosing for missions in 1942?

Thank you for your answers in advance!