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

[5./JG27.Farber]

I kind of agree, they dont seem to have research the aircraft included to well.

[Madfish]

*facepalm*

Just unbelievable...

[phoenix1963]

I think if you add Blackdog's excellent post to B6's extraordinarily honest comment:

Originally Posted by BlackSix

We can't find a free programmers with knowledge of aviation in the Russian labor market. This is a very big problem.
Also, we lost a lot of employees from the old team.

... I think you get the answer.

I've worked modelling supersonic flow for nearly 40 years and people who can program well and understand the physics are fairly rare. Remember, Oleg's history: he came out of the military aircraft sector at the end of the Cold War and started il2 (after a porno tetris game - unless I've got that wrong).

Which, despite all our frustrations, is why the moaners will only help destroy ww2 simulation. The market is small, the skills needed are rare, in demand and fairly expensive.

I think, though, that a comment like this earlier from B6 would have earned some sympathy from many here.

56RAF_phoenix

[Al Schlageter]

Originally Posted by 5./JG27.Farber

I kind of agree, they dont seem to have research the aircraft included to well.

I don't know about the German a/c but for the British a/c they have reams of documentation supplied by a member on this board.

[ElAurens]

Also remember that the atmospheric modelling in the sim is not set at "standard day" conditions which are what most published performance numbers are corrected to. That in and of itself can skew the numbers generated by all aircraft in the sim.

Also have to remember that no online engagements on ATAG are taking place at 20K ft. plus, where the Spitfire and Bf 109 are more even. Not that I'm an apologist for the Huns, or the dev team, but it is a simple fact that online everything happens well below 15K ft. At these altitudes I'd rather have a properly modeled P40, but that's another story.

Please try to understand that in the current state of affairs, there is no way to simulate anything remotely like the air combat of summer 1940. It's one of the reasons I am looking forward to the sequel, at least on the Russian Front we know that the Russian planes are inferior to the German ones, unlike the BoB, where there was relative parity between the Spit and 109.

[Friendly_flyer]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

there is no way to simulate anything remotely like the air combat of summer 1940. It's one of the reasons I am looking forward to the sequel,

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!

[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

[AbortedMan]

Well said BD.

In retrospect, I imagine an easier fix would be to eliminate the "deathmatch" condition that is inherent on server missions, talking about ATAG here as there's is the only server I can play on.

Perhaps proper mission design that caters to proper gameplay should be the goal/request here. I'm off to seek the proper channels accordingly...

[ATAG_Bliss]

Originally Posted by AbortedMan

Well said BD.

In retrospect, I imagine an easier fix would be to eliminate the "deathmatch" condition that is inherent on server missions, talking about ATAG here as there's is the only server I can play on.

Perhaps proper mission design that caters to proper gameplay should be the goal/request here. I'm off to seek the proper channels accordingly...

Well I'm all ears to "proper mission design" with what is currently working in this sim atm. We've spent a few 1000 hours of our own time trying to make reliable missions (reliable meaning something with objectives that is fairly stable for the masses) with "what we have to work with".

I'm sure most think that even this air quake type missions you feel is happening on our server is accomplished in a matter of minutes. I cordially invite any one of you that has a scenario in mind to, by all means, make the mission having win scenarios/objectives, test it (spawn points, AI timing, objectives, handle 50 players etc.,) then and only then might some of you guys realize just how much is screwed up in the dedi server environment.

I know some of you think that this sort of thing is easy and are probably flabbergasted as to why we don't have 100% historical BoB scenarios going. Well, quite simply, 2 reasons. 1st one, the game can't do it yet. 2nd one, we try to cater to everyone. There are some people in timezones that hardly have anyone to fly with. Regardless of what side they fly for, regardless of the amounts of players on the server, they will always have something to shoot at or bomb. We are 1st and foremost a public server that caters to everyone in any timezone.

I'm sorry that we can't please everyone. We never thought we could, but until you have a very serious understanding of the problems in the dedi server environment compared to the SP/lobby portion of this game, you might be a little more understanding of the situation.

I don't think we remain one of the most popular servers because of mission design at all. I believe it's because they work. Again, it's taken quite a bit of time to figure this out, and it takes quite a bit of time to test old things that didn't work (to see if a particular patch has fixed them) and so forth, especially without any sort of read me telling us what has been fixed.

I'm sorry we can't please everyone, but (I've said this 100 times) many of the things we do in mission design go hand in hand with what the game is capable of. I'm sure anyone can slap a mission together, but it's only when you start getting a crowd of players in do you really know the limits/problems/slideshows etc that we try to avoid entirely.

[Warhound]

Originally Posted by AbortedMan

In retrospect, I imagine an easier fix would be to eliminate the "deathmatch" condition that is inherent on server missions, talking about ATAG here as there's is the only server I can play on.

Perhaps proper mission design that caters to proper gameplay should be the goal/request here. I'm off to seek the proper channels accordingly...

Most of the conditions DO exist on ATAG..the problem lies largely with the players themselves.
Get 10 players together on the British side and deciding on what to do always ends up in one single thing... "Let's go to the 3 airbases in France and strafe em!"
Similarly if you ask on Teamspeak if anyone wants to fly bombers, you're lucky to get 1 or 2 guys who join.
And asking for escorts for those 3 bombers might get 1 fighter..who often forgets about you before even joining up ("oooh a shiny contact ,let's go investigate").

I think if people bothered to fly in more historical ways before asking others to do it we'd be a long way towards seeing more engrossing situations develop online.
Heck even the "Storm of War" campaign stuggles to find 8 guys willing to fly bombers out of 100+ signups from what I hear.
Would love it if we could get a weekly event going on ATAG where people join up with the intention to fly bombers and escorts as a team.
Right now most pilots just fly fighters, join furballs and don't see the inside of a bomber even once a week.
If we can't change this there is no way to get more truthful BOB-scenario's (except coops I guess...) and the best place as always is to start with yourself and your squaddies.

note : I'm fine with and can hugely entertain myself on ATAG as is, even if I'd love a weekly or 3x a week time where more organised flying is attempted.
There is no need to force people to fly in such and such way, limiting fighters and forcing people to fly bombers fe. will just result in an empty server.
But if nearly noone wants to fly bombers ,escorts or "real" missions I don't see the point in pointing fingers at others when they don't fly in the way you want em too.