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Originally Posted by Furio
The problem of balancing – or unbalancing – is around from day one, I believe, and is hard to control.
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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).
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Originally Posted by Furio
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…
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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.
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Originally Posted by Furio
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.
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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?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Furio
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…
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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).