Friday Update, April 13, 2012

[F19_Klunk]

Originally Posted by Hooves

So basically you don't have a chance against a 109 unless you have your 3 friends with you. So if my 3 friends aren't on, I'm not going to log on either, leading to others not logging on leading to a bunch of empty servers, except for the packed blue team of coarse.


I love how the realites come out of the wood work when the nerf that has just occurred benefits them. But cry foul when anything is touched on their beloved aircraft.


Realism simply will not work in an online environment. At least not the realism that 1c is apparently going for. If a single player can't log on and have half a chance of surviving 5 mins let alone getting a kill. Well guess what.... They leave and they don't come back. Like it or not that is online gaming no matter what your targeted audience. if you aren't going to somehow enforce the tactical directive of the LW, how on earth can you think that FM realism will produce anything but discontent? In this case the circumstances are as equal to if not more important than the FM.

I understand your point of view. However - For me it is imperative that the FM as are close to reality as possible - that the theatre of war is depicted realistically. Once you tread on the "balance all the planes", you will end up in a scenario which I for one do not want to end up in..all planes pretty much looks and feel the same.

This is by no means a new discussion; this has been discussed over and over again since the day of flight simulation, and has always been discussed in the IL2 community.. and is still beeing discussed amongst mission builders for different "full switch" IL2 servers such as spits vs 109 et al. They have of course an easier job these days as the number of different version of all planes are five to tenfold the amount we have in Clod--- at least for the moment.

To take this in account though and use it as an argument to balance the planes performances to non-historical characteristics is a show-stopper for me though. When I fly red (and I do most of the time) I WANT to have the same challenges as the real deal... or at least as close as possible.

If you want the FMs dulled down for a non-historical setup, it seems that you have chosen the wrong kind of game/sim. ...

//written with no purpose to belittle you point of view

PS: Regarding historical tactics, e.g 109 hugging bombers etc...
There is no chance we can ever depict BoB..or any theatre of war, 100%.... the reason alone that we don't actually die when shot down is a reason alone. Virtual pilots are more careless and tend to go solo, dimissing mission objectives. I for one always try to team up with either a fellow squadmember or another fellow red pilot... working in teams and choose targets accordingly; solo 109s or 109 in inferior tactical position. As someone said: Teaming up and outnumber the enemy is a better advantage than a faster airplane. Use the servers Teamspeak! This in itself makes it easier to team up when no squadmember is around.


Oh. and let us not "paint the devil on the wall" (to quote an old Swedish proverb) before we have actually seen and flown the patch.

[Ace Cheese]

What do you all think about the % of completion for BOM,
how long will we be waiting?

I would suggest 30% complete with 7 months left of development.

[Hooves]

U have proven my point. You CAN'T have a simulation in an online pvp environment. It is the unattainable monster due to the very fact that we aren't living in the life or death struggle.


So your choice is to either force the issue in gameplay or attempt to closely balance the sides for the quake style gameplay that we are currently attempting.

But first things first you have to admit that you can't have just one aspect of realism ( fm's ). And not have the other aspect of dealism ( circumstances). And expect anything near what happened in the scenario you attempting to recreate. If you do you are diluting yourself.

I like wolverines ideas though. Change the symmetry to objectives that make sense. This may help.

Originally Posted by Hooves

U have proven my point. You CAN'T have a simulation in an online pvp environment. It is the unattainable monster due to the very fact that we aren't living in the life or death struggle.


So your choice is to either force the issue in gameplay or attempt to closely balance the sides for the quake style gameplay that we are currently attempting.

But first things first you have to admit that you can't have just one aspect of realism ( fm's ). And not have the other aspect of dealism ( circumstances). And expect anything near what happened in the scenario you attempting to recreate. If you do you are diluting yourself.

I like wolverines ideas though. Change the symmetry to objectives that make sense. This may help.

Spot on. I agree fully what you say.

[ATAG_Doc]

Originally Posted by Dick Tator

Spot on. I agree fully what you say.

funny name.

[He111]

Thks, excellent news.

.

Originally Posted by ATAG_Doc

funny name.

Thanks, It was supposed to be so and somewhat humorously reflect to this forums moderation stance...

[Buchon]

This is not about balance but realism.

If you want talk about balance go to some arcade game where climb with your Corsair like a rocket and shot with his eight cannons or to some Call of Duty or Battlefield forum where you can degree shotguns, MGs and pistols to rush with your Thompson like gun at will.

This is about realism, this is about make the most realist WWII airplane behavior out of real documented data and real pilots to make the most realist Simulator.

Its not the 1940s airplane engineers fault don't make Hollywood planes like.

If a plane have weak points is in the hands of the pilot get over it, in fact every plane have weak points, if your plane is weak at speed you should rely in maneuverability, if your plane is weak at climb you just should stay at low altitude.

This is not about balance but Realism.

This is IL-2 !!

[F19_Klunk]

@Hooves

The missions' design are imperative .. for me anyway... to achive some kind of sensation of accomplishment. That is why I prefer servers for IL2-1946 such as "Spit vs 109" / "Zeke vs Wildcat".. they are objective driven(!). For me it has the past 5-6 years only been "winning the mission" that is the main goal.. not scoring as many kills as possible. That is why F19 and F16 F19's and F16's (our squadrons ) get killed in droves online flying inferior bombers/attackplanes.... chasing to win the map.

In that aspect, IL2 1946 would never have been what it is to me and many others without the 3rd party development such as FBDj.

So far the multiplayer aspect of CloD is only in it's beginning in comparison; ATAG-server is pretty much the only server that comes even close to beeing objective driven -but then again; how many online servers are there? A handful?
So instead of balancing FM.. away from realism, MG should focus on developing tools for missionbuilders to design just that; objective driven missions.... with ..as u mentioned.. symmetry to objectives.
If they don't come up with these tools, I am sure the community will eventually - just as they did with IL2:1946. As I said - without US all servers for Il2:1946 would be quakewar.

EDIT: That particular IL2-T attack showed aboved was actually one of those missions in which we all survied when going for target ..NOT dying in droves

In short; I prefer balancing mission objectives rather than "balancing" FM/DM and other characteristics of these historical airplanes we all love. We can never really simulate the actual war (too many aspects), but we can simulate the actual planes.

[klem]

I don't know where this idea that the 109 was a better dogfighter than the Spitfire has crept in from. There are many accounts of the Spitfire being superior when in a dogfight against its contemporary 109. Read Al Deere's 'Nine Lives' and his acount of several 109s trying to dogfight two Spitfire MkIs over Calais Mark at the time of Dunkirk, they brought three 109s down. Read Johnny Johnsons's 'Wing Leader' and his early accounts of flying with Douglas Bader. The 109's preferred tactic wasn't dogfighting, it was what we would call energy tactics. The 109's wing loading was far higher than the Spitfire or Hurricane which reduced its turning capability but it had a much better power to weight ratio which is why it could outclimb them. Heinz Knoke wrote in his book 'I Flew for the Fuhrer' that his most reliable tactic for evading them was a spiral climb which would leave the allied fighters clawing for height and risking a stall. Even Adolph Galland infamously asked Goering for Spitfires when told he must fly close to the bombers because he was aware of their superior dogfighting capability. It was not how he wanted to fly the 109.

As for the idea that the 109 was generally the best aircraft in the BoB, that assumes they always had the advantage (which they generaly did due to the enforced defensive tactics of the RAF) but when the Spitfires had the advantage of height etc. the tables were turned because the Spitfire was a perfectly good energy fighter too, it just didn't have too many opportunities to demonstrate that. It was not as well armed as the 109 which is why you could put up a balance of attributes and claim the 109 was better but the 'best' aircraft depended on the circumstances.

Regarding CoD FMs, they need to be realistic as far as possible and provide close relative performance to the real thing although they are unlikely ever to be perfect and we should stop trying to chase an elusive 5% or whatever. In any case pilot skill and opportunity will often negate a reasonable or even large percentage of performance. Just give us FMs as close as you can get.

As for Gameplay and 'historical accuracy' that can only be achieved by mission design and engagement rules, assuming FMs are near enough correct, but this will always be prevented in CoD due to the limitation in numbers the game can support. This is why CoD can never represent the scale of the BoB, the best that can be achieved is a representation of a few of the raids. Mission engagement rules are hard to put in place in a general use on-line server because, for example, most Red pilots are reluctant to fly tight Vic formations, are probably incapable of doing it anyway, and fly combat spread instead for obvious reasons. The kind of scenarios flown in the MMPOG 'Aces High' were the closest I ever came with several hundred participants pre-registered and allocated to Squadrons/Units with clear rules of engagement and a moderator to kick/ban anyone who broke those rules. Oh yes, and you only had one life so you were MUCH more careful about what you did and how/whether you engaged. These take a lot of work to set up, even for a small scale representation of a few raids in CoD. I'm sure the community would really enjoy them but many would not because many just want to dogfight and get kills. You can fly for ages in those scenarios and never see an enemy (as it often used to be in RL) and recent matches between 56RAF and 5./Jg27 on a small scale have left us both searching unsuccessfuly for up to an hour.

So, lets have the FMs as close as possibe including the engines, no daft flight capability with half a wing, 109 pilots suffering and aircraft performance affected by fuel explosions, reasonably balanced AI gunners, etc. etc., and then we'll see how good we are.