TBF Avenger and other planes

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

And, even if you're a hard core rivet-counting historical campaigner, there are still times when you want to fly the best plane in the sky.

As to me, this has nothing to do with 'rivet-counting'. I'm a minor nations geek, and minor nations typically had second-rank fighters. These are seriously outmatched by the first-rank fighters of major nations. Still, most fighter units of most minor nations had a positive kill/loss ratio (even the Polish in 1939!), as major nations too had obsolate planes. Now if you take out obsolate planes from the game (luckily we have quite a lot of such Russian types), then flying a Finnish, or Hungarian, or Romanian campaign becomes completely pathetic and, therefore, pointless. The tuna can live on mackerel, even if defenseless against the few sharks.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by sniperton

I'm a minor nations geek, and minor nations typically had second-rank fighters. These are seriously outmatched by the first-rank fighters of major nations.

We're birds of a feather then. I love my obscure planes and minor air forces, in particular the Finns. I'm thrilled to have rare birds like the Avia B.534 or Rogozarski IK-3 in the game.

And, its not that the minor nations necessarily had bad designs, they just didn't have the economic and industrial base to develop their designs fast enough or in sufficient quantities. I'd love to know how doomed planes like the PZL.50 Jastrzab, Weiss-Manfred WM.23 Ezüst Nyíl, Fokker G.1, Fokker D.XXIII, or the PZL.62 Kanya would have fared, even though it makes no sense to include them into a historical simulation.

[sniperton]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

We're birds of a feather then. I love my obscure planes and minor air forces, in particular the Finns.

I love them too. They are my favourite. 'Did you give up drinking?' -- Raikönnen: 'No'.

[Derda508]

Not counting my personal preferences, but what is 'needed' most I would opt for an early British bomber, a late Japanese Torpedobomber and, most of all, the Me 210/410.
That said, in my opinion the biggest obstacle for 'realistic' late war bomber intercept missions (no matter which theater) is AI behaviour. At present, if you try to attack a big formation of bombers with a small number of attackers, the protecting fighters will all immediately go for you, leave their bombers and chase you all over the map, even if you spend all your ammo and are no threat anymore. Your own AI (even obsolete Bf 110) will not go for a quick attack on a bomber, but happily engage in turnfights with vastly superior numbers of enemy fighters.
To create more 'realistic' bomber intercepts and survivable missions for destroyers the missionbuilder would need to be able to give several commands for attackers and defenders:
Blue high flying fighters (Bf-109, Ki-100 etc.): Attack fighters only
Blue bomber interceptors (Me 410, FW-190, Ki 84 etc.): Attack bombers only
Red fighter cover: Stick to the bombers, never get further than XXX distance from them.

I have no idea whether this is possible and I am well aware that AI programming is extremly difficult (and far beyond my abilities).
And, please don´t get me wrong: In my opinion Il-2 1946 AI is still by far the best of all flight sims I know. And I am perfectly sure that in terms of maps and planeset, all other sims will just reach a small fraction of what we can enjoy here.