Curious...Why is this game so hard to get right?

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by AbortedMan

Dude, wow, thank you so much. That was a perfectly well written and satisfying explanation, and it really does put it into perspective. Thank you again.

I was extremely excited to catch up to your 110 today, I was yelling over comms in excitement as it was happening...I pulled out all the stops to get to you, my crate was shaking like you wouldn't believe! ~S

Yeah, that was a intense run. It's funny that no matter what happens, you can 90% of the time get 1-2 ships in each run but you'll also get a bandit on your tail on the way back.

I'm generally not good enough in proper maneuvering in dogfights so i mostly fly ground pounders (or i fly high and careful when flying fighters) and that's probably why it took a while for you to catch up. I knew that sooner or later you'd catch me, so i focused on maintaining speed and postpone maneuvering for as long as possible: the nearer i could get to the friendly coast, the higher the chances of you breaking off or us running into more blue aircraft and turning the tables.

That's one of the things i like about the extra parameters we have at our disposal with this sim. It's now possible to fly not only by your skill in combat, but also your skill in engine management or your capability to plan ahead and the outcome can be influenced by all these factors.

Again, good fight and i'll see you again, maybe on the same team too (i do fly the Blenheim quite often). Cheers

Originally Posted by bw_wolverine

I don't think that's really the situation here. It's not a matter of sometimes you get the whale and sometimes the whale gets you. The situation here is that the actual Battle of Britain is not able to be modelled here and the conflicts that are being modelled here (the air conflict) are entirely not balanced.

If we had a sim capable of delivering a Battle of Britain with many many aircraft involved, we'd be seeing entirely different attitudes on the boards I think.

But we don't. We have basically a survey dog fight simulator, and as a survey dog fight simulator the summer 1940 aircraft are not a balanced group.

It's not the fault of anyone playing the game. It's just not what we were promised in the title.

I'm seriously getting tired of it. I tried going back to ATAG for PvP action, but it's just not there for me, or maybe I just am not good enough for it. Either way, it's not much fun.

I'm taking a break from the game for a while (going away) but when I get back I'm going to probably going to get hardcore back into designing and running co-op missions like I used to in 1946.

At least until the game is capable of giving us real Battle of Britain content that gives the Hurricanes and Spitfires something useful to do before being shot down.

What you say has also a lot to do with mission design and how we use what we're given. Missions are a time consuming thing to get right because it's the modeling complexity thing once again: we can do a lot of interesting things with scripting now, but it requires players who are familiar with some basic programming principles.

I think the best we can all do is pick a field or two we are interested in and work on that. The way i choose to see it is that if i can successfully orchestrate and execute a bomber run with inaccurate FMs and bombsights, it will be even easier for me to do so when the bugs are corrected.

Like i said above, i'm not that much of a hot shot in dogfights so i mostly fly bombers. Other players may focus on something else. Some people do skins, some people design missions, some people do scripting, etc.

For me the important thing is to just pick what i like and can be moderately good at, then work on it a bit to identify how it works. This has a double benefit, because on one hand i can identify bugs and workarounds for them, on the other hand i can help other players get up to speed much faster than they would if they had to repeat the same process on their own. I think it's safe to say that i've spend much more time testing and researching the sim, than simply flying it.

What i'm trying to say with all this is that as we are building up our collective knowledge base, we are getting closer to what you describe as a "proper" BoB environment to fly in.

To get the "real BoB", we need bombers that work, triggers for area bombing (by the way, they added those in this beta) and missions that use them by setting the appropriate objectives. Then, mission design will move to LW attacking and RAF defending, so we'll be getting more of what we read in the books and less of a furball between Calais and Dover.

Originally Posted by camber

It is a bit discouraging that a "professional" 109 pilot is fairly unbeatable unless he chooses to make mistakes..I have have had plenty of engagements like AbortedMan, I position for bounce, 109 sees me and turns away, uses superior speed to avoid me getting into guns range, uses climb to get above, then starts the immelman cycle. I can maybe defeat many passes, but will never get a guns position. Either he will damage me, or another aircraft will join and tip the balance either way. Lucky there is always a few 109s that will lose their cool, or will not see you in time There is of course that special 109 pilot who has never missed me in a full deflection shot, and never failed to cripple my plane or kill me with the first shot. Fully 4-5 times more effective than any other 109 pilot I have encountered

I think there is sufficient wiggle room within historically known performance to make 1v1s rewarding for both. You always get a lot of people yelling once you suggest addressing game "balance" but what do you do once within historical range and you must precisely specify the performance? Throw the dice?

camber

That is very similar to all my years of flying 190As in the previous IL2 series: go low and the Spits will get you, climb above them and the P47s/P51s will BnZ you, climb above the ponies and jugs and you don't have the performance to fly properly

If you think about it, this also falls within the realm of mission objectives. The 109s can dominate because they are on a constant freijagd. They choose when and how to engage. That can't happen when you have bombers to escort.

Like i've been saying for some time, the easiest way to get accurate fighter matchups (in terms of situational conditions, not arbitrary balancing) is to ask 1c to get the bombers fixed first and make it easy for mission designers to factor them in their servers.

Of course, nobody will fly the way Goering ordered the real LW to fly and we'll see variations, but still there will be changes in how people fly. I don't expect to see 109s burning all their fuel zig-zagging above the bombers as close escorts. In fact the most possible thing is that they'll be timing their departures, taking off after the bombers, overtaking them about mid-channel and doing a forward fighter sweep to tie up the defences, cruising to target and back at their own best cruise speed.

But still, they will have an objective to perform and other players to cover, so they won't be able to just pick and choose when and what to engage. If they get tied up with a group of Hurricanes and get dragged low, then spot a group of Spits sneaking by them at higher altitude, they have no choice to duck and run because those Spits will tear through the bombers. They will have to follow and engage them, starting at a position of disadvantage.

And this is more or less how things become fun and balanced, without placing artificial constraints. We just need to have something to do as players, something that other other players will depend on to get their own mission completed

In other words:

Originally Posted by Friendly_flyer

The only way to simulate something similar to the actual BoB would be to force the fighters on the Blue side to burn half of their fuel on boring form-up with bomber formations, and force the red side to concentrate on the bombers and stop wasting time with enemy fighters. If people don't want to fly realistic missions, you won't have realistic missions.

The Eastern front is really better suited scenario for the kind of low level fighter-on-fighter air-Quake style of fighting that dominated the servers in IL2 1946. I look forward to go tank busting in the IL2!

a lot depends not only on what we're given, but how we fly it.


P.S. Interesting thread and i want to thank you all for being articulate, polite and intelligent in this discussion. This thread is a perfect example of how we can disagree on things, but still get something useful and interesting out of it.

I hope we get more threads like these, because that's how ideas form that we can use to enhance our enjoyment of the sim. Carry on gentlemen