Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by csThor

The problem I have with this is that people will mix armament variations with bomb loadouts and vice versa - which in 99,9% of all cases would be ahistorical and technically impossible (real life, that is).

I don`t think you`ve read the above post of mine in which I describe how it would/should work in my understanding; if you`d have, you`d have noticed that there are settings which PROMOTE exactly the things you are asking for :

- that equipment has attribute to tell the ENGINE from what date a given loadout CAN be used from, ie. no more selection guns and bomb types that only become operational two years later...
- that equipment has attribute to tell the ENGINE with which other loadout CANNOT be used with/mixed.

Plus I believe you have an improper understanding of the working of these kits. These were meant to be modular in the first place, they could have been combined. Droptanks were combined with rockets, gondolas, bombs. HISTORICALLY. Some were common, others were not so common, but possible. '99,9% of all cases would be ahistorical and technically impossible' - sorry but you`re 'painting the devil on the wall' without too much basis I am afraid...

Especially in bombers there were a lot of combinations possible with bombload. It is simple a matter of programming to set certain bombloadouts incompatible with others, or that simply mix the best of the two systems - for example, you`d have pre-set bomb loadouts selectable like a trop filter, but you can still combine this with a tropical filter, a Kutonase, electric turrett etc.

Let`s be frank about it, Il-2`s original loadout GUI was NEVER meant to handle such insane amount of aircraft and loadouts... it was meant to be a sim for the Il-2 attack plane, for which the player could select a well defined number of loadouts... then Soviet fighters were added... then why not have opposing German fighters... why not have German bombers, too... why not Western Allied planes..

Currently we have only 2 British and 2 German fighters in BoB SOW, plus a couple of bombers. Yes, loadouts can be done in the old way, ie. presets and no ability to modularly fit only droptanks, only bombs, or rockets, or a combination of these... already that 3 is so many combinations that will make your scrolling-finger ache if you need to select these from pre-sets... not to mention programmer`s work, it will be many times the work for EACH aircraft. What if when we will have 50 aircraft? I tell you : it will consume so much work that de-bugging and FM-fine tuning will be much more difficult, since you will have to do it for each..

Originally Posted by csThor

Unless there's some "watchdog" keeping the user from glueing together what can't be glued together it's a suggestion that promotes dweebery, gaming-the-game-style behavior and erodes yet another layer of historical relevancy.

Basically, you want to limit every other player to what they can use and what they cannot; this should be a tool for server hosts, not an artifical limit imposed on most players by a small, hardcore minority (and yes, I like historical settings, too, but I don`t want to ruin the fun of those who just enjoy playing in other style).

It has nothing to do with method of selection the loadout, pre-set or modular; incompatibility between sets can be easily set, which would prevent impossible/ahistorical combinations. There are not too many of those, since aircraft were limited by takeoff weight and space/attachment points, and to some extent, Centre of Gravity. If the engine is well written, there should be problem with this - realistic physics take care of the rest - you can`t take off too much overloaded,

Originally Posted by csThor

Sorry to say this but when I look at various boards (especially those of online servers) I usually see the big "BOOM-BOOM" loadouts (e.g. SC 2000 on Ju 88 ) while the historically relevant loadouts collect dust in the hangar because they don't offer enough instant destruction. I, first and foremost, am interested in flying "history-style" and this includes realistic loadouts. Most people simply don't know about them or do not care.

Pray tell me what is soo realistic about the current loadouts. That I can`t have a historical droptank for the 109F, because that loadout wasn`t made? That I can fly a Ju 88 with the SC 2000 AND full fuel load? That I can fly bombers overloaded, since nothing stops me from having max bombload and max fuel load, even if in real life it was either full fuel or full bombs.

That I am limited to those pre-set loadouts the developers given to me, even if there were other combination historically used?

Having SC 2000 on a Ju 88 - again, it has nothing to do with the method of selection. The problem can be easily solved if the server`s owner gets ability to set the availability and quantity of choosable equipment.

2, People are using big bombs because they only have targets - tanks, buildings etc. - that require big bombs.

Sure, people are not using a more historical loadout for say, a Ju 88, which was many 50 kg small bombs carried internally, and/or a couple of 250 kgers externally. And why are you surprised with that, what exactly should they bomb with 50 kgers - which in real life were used against soft targets, primarly infantry, by far the most numerous target on RL battlefields...

Now how many infantry do you see in this game? Is there a detailed DM for trucks and such that would allow fragments from small fragmentation bombs leak the engine, fuel tank, tires of a truck..?

You can`t expect real life tactics to be mimiced if the game does not mimics real life targets. Most of the time, we have tanks, guns and such as target - even in real life, they used bigger bombs against these...