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

[Blackdog_kt]

The above post is mostly true. Sure, there are difficulties with many aspects of the sim, but even those that work don't see that much use on the grand scheme of things.

Originally Posted by Talisman

Blackdog,

Your work in progress looks like good stuff. I am not sure about the fuel shortage model that you put forward for the RAF though, if it is for the BoB. As far as I understand, it was pilots that the RAF was short of, not fuel. I am not aware of an historical account of an airbase closing due to no fuel. The ROYAL AIR FORCE WAR MANUAL, AIR PUBLICATION 1301 for the period covers organisation and administration in part II . It covers many things, including policy to be followed for reserves of supplies (inc fuel) and ammunition. Chapter XV states:

"The main reserves of supplies and ammunition are held in depots. Owing to the bulky nature of supplies and the vulnerable nature of ammunition and fuel, only a limited amount of these commodities is held by units. A definite amount of supplies and ammunition is normally in transit between depots and units, and this may be regarded as a further reserve. In principle, in addition to the complete or partly expended day's requirements held at units, there will be two day's full supplies in transit beween the railhead and the unit. This two day's supply may in certain cercumstances be kept on wheels or may be dumped at a convenient place."

From this, it would appear that as one would expect, fuel and other supplies are constantly being delivered by trucks and tankers, not necessarily in convoy. I suspect that the location of a tanker on the road or the location of a "convenient place" will rarely be known in advance by the enemy. I believe German intelligence was very limited, or they would have known to take out all of the radar stations.

The RAF was on home ground for the BoB with a very short logistics chain. RAF expiditionary operation later in the war meant a longer logistics chain, but RAF War Manual policy still appled. The availability and re-supply of fuel (including 100 Octane) and ammo on the UK mainland was very well managed I believe. For example, Manston was under constant attack and did not close as far as I am aware. I believe sqns did become non operational for short periods due to loss of pilots though. I think it was losses of aircrew and aircraft in the air and on the ground that effected the BoB more than anything else.

Happy landings,

Talisman

I'm not saying that we should make this a default setting. What i'm trying to propose is something that will let us fly dynamic campaigns, both offline and online. So for example, if blue team keeps successfully bombing the red team's fuel supply on a base and/or the fuel dumps around it, then the base would have to be resupplied. Same if the Blenheims start attacking bomber airfields in France, blue bomber availability would decrease. Or cratering runways would make airfields unusable for a certain amount of time, forcing players to spawn at different ones, and so on.

My aim is not to recreate a day to day recap of the battle, but let the players influence the outcome themselves by giving them a sandbox with parameters that can be tweaked. Then, it will be the server admin's job to set the starting conditions right for each team (amount of aircraft of each type, pilots, fuel, etc, along with their replenishment rates).

I'm talking about a strategic aspect, which is more or less possible with the scripts, so that we have goals to achieve even when there are no missions explicitly built for that. Essentially, this would create a 24/7 campaign with semi-realistic outcomes: if the players have the same starting and victory conditions as the LW and RAF did and they fly the same, then most probably the outcome will be the same, if the players do things differently then maybe the outcome will be influenced.

It's the essence of what the developers intended to do for multiplayer (that's why we have scripts), making it possible to join the persistence of a DF server environment with the realism of coop missions. Only this time, it will actually depend on the players to plan their own missions and fly in a way that helps their team. There will still be room for simpler fighter sweep type missions and there will be lulls in the action where players can simply roam, but essentially my thoughts are creating a sandbox environment and letting the players chose what to do with it. They can still do whatever they want, but winning such a mini-campaign or even having their favorite aircraft to fly from their favorite airbase will depend on how well they also protect their team's assets.

I am busy with various other things and can't devote the necessary time (plus it's summer), but i've had this idea for a while and i want to develop it into something that can be used at some point. Mind you, i'm not part of 1C and i don't speak in any official capacity. It's just a potential project of mine that i've had in mind for while

[Talisman]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

The above post is mostly true. Sure, there are difficulties with many aspects of the sim, but even those that work don't see that much use on the grand scheme of things.



I'm not saying that we should make this a default setting. What i'm trying to propose is something that will let us fly dynamic campaigns, both offline and online. So for example, if blue team keeps successfully bombing the red team's fuel supply on a base and/or the fuel dumps around it, then the base would have to be resupplied. Same if the Blenheims start attacking bomber airfields in France, blue bomber availability would decrease. Or cratering runways would make airfields unusable for a certain amount of time, forcing players to spawn at different ones, and so on.

My aim is not to recreate a day to day recap of the battle, but let the players influence the outcome themselves by giving them a sandbox with parameters that can be tweaked. Then, it will be the server admin's job to set the starting conditions right for each team (amount of aircraft of each type, pilots, fuel, etc, along with their replenishment rates).

I'm talking about a strategic aspect, which is more or less possible with the scripts, so that we have goals to achieve even when there are no missions explicitly built for that. Essentially, this would create a 24/7 campaign with semi-realistic outcomes: if the players have the same starting and victory conditions as the LW and RAF did and they fly the same, then most probably the outcome will be the same, if the players do things differently then maybe the outcome will be influenced.

It's the essence of what the developers intended to do for multiplayer (that's why we have scripts), making it possible to join the persistence of a DF server environment with the realism of coop missions. Only this time, it will actually depend on the players to plan their own missions and fly in a way that helps their team. There will still be room for simpler fighter sweep type missions and there will be lulls in the action where players can simply roam, but essentially my thoughts are creating a sandbox environment and letting the players chose what to do with it. They can still do whatever they want, but winning such a mini-campaign or even having their favorite aircraft to fly from their favorite airbase will depend on how well they also protect their team's assets.

I am busy with various other things and can't devote the necessary time (plus it's summer), but i've had this idea for a while and i want to develop it into something that can be used at some point. Mind you, i'm not part of 1C and i don't speak in any official capacity. It's just a potential project of mine that i've had in mind for while

Understand what you are saying Blackdog, but I thought that BoB airfields were well established military air bases with dispersed and protected underground storage tanks which could not be easily spotted from the air. In other words, not a neat pile of drums on the airfield for the LW to take pot shots at. I guess the underlying point I wish to make is that I would prefer to fly the BoB, as near as the sim allows, rather than a made up battle. My thinking is that battle maps focused more on the attrition rate of aircrew and aircraft could be a way to achieve that. I had hoped that the specific nature of the BoB would offer maps a little different from the same old IL2 1946 maps, especially as sequels on the Eastern front, etc, are likely to offer up more of the standard ground war support scenarios.

Just my thoughts Blackdog. I am grateful to all server hosts and map/mission makers that are trying to make sense of CloD.

Happy landings,

[notafinger!]

I can't say I'm interested in dynamic scenarios for multiplayer, especially on a public server. Those things are best served for online wars between squads in something like SOWC. A very small portion of the community reads the forums so they have no idea to use the radio menu to call for a supply convoy to restock an airfield with their desired plane. Instead the chat window begins to fill-up with "why are there no E-4's?" & "when is this mission over?".

Many people simply want some online scenarios that make some historical sense fought during normal hours of operation. For BoB that means targets like convoys, ports, radar stations, airfields, & aircraft factories with some decent sized bomber formations.

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by notafinger!

I can't say I'm interested in dynamic scenarios for multiplayer, especially on a public server. Those things are best served for online wars between squads in something like SOWC. A very small portion of the community reads the forums so they have no idea to use the radio menu to call for a supply convoy to restock an airfield with their desired plane. Instead the chat window begins to fill-up with "why are there no E-4's?" & "when is this mission over?".

Many people simply want some online scenarios that make some historical sense fought during normal hours of operation. For BoB that means targets like convoys, ports, radar stations, airfields, & aircraft factories with some decent sized bomber formations.

That is the point where you answer politely and help those folks out.

What is lacking in these scenarious are rewards. Ppl look for success when flying online, not for historical missions out of pure principle.

You need incentives to have people fly those missions, some kind ongoing reward system.

For example, moving frontlines, or mission rotations based on outcome. Let's say we have a Dunquirke scenario starting with some Bf109E1s and Hurricanes. Red Wins this scenario , the Dunkirque Area is held and on top of that red recieves the Rotol Hurricane.
Or the Blue side wins and gets the 110C7 or the E3, depending on what is more useful for the next mission and moves on the channel battles. Now here it depends if red is capable to recieve reinforcements via ships or blue is able to sink them fast enough. In this way you can develop quite a bit of dynmaic gameplay.

Stuff like this will even get the fighter jocks thinking in what way to deploy their fighters...or to switch to bombers so they can have more fun later on in other scenarios.

Naturally, this does not follow historical developments, but then again we are also not in a life and death struggle whose outcome will effect the fate of whole people, a rather strong incentive. If you want people to contribute in those servers in a meaningful way, simply reproductions of environments and expecting ppl to fly accordingly won't work.

[Blackdog_kt]

I agree with Bewolf. We can't force people to fly a certain way, only provide incentives. Incentives means dynamic outcomes, which means we can have either one but not both:

1) We force people to fly a certain way and recreate the battle itself

2) We "nudge" players to fly in a realistic manner by giving them incentives, but naturally the battle will take a different course each time, according to what the players do.

From that point on, it's a choice of what the server admins want for their environments.

Originally Posted by Talisman

Understand what you are saying Blackdog, but I thought that BoB airfields were well established military air bases with dispersed and protected underground storage tanks which could not be easily spotted from the air. In other words, not a neat pile of drums on the airfield for the LW to take pot shots at. I guess the underlying point I wish to make is that I would prefer to fly the BoB, as near as the sim allows, rather than a made up battle. My thinking is that battle maps focused more on the attrition rate of aircrew and aircraft could be a way to achieve that. I had hoped that the specific nature of the BoB would offer maps a little different from the same old IL2 1946 maps, especially as sequels on the Eastern front, etc, are likely to offer up more of the standard ground war support scenarios.

Just my thoughts Blackdog. I am grateful to all server hosts and map/mission makers that are trying to make sense of CloD.

Happy landings,

I agree in principle with what you say, but when practicality is concerned we the users can't achieve something like this in one go.

Theoretically speaking, even if the RAF fuel reserves are hard to get to on the base and they have the historical amount of fuel with an non-historically low amount of players (so more than enough fuel for everybody), the blue team could hit the fuel supply lines (AI ship and truck convoys) and the main storage areas (refineries, etc in industrial areas) and still strangle the red team out of the game, or vice versa. At some point the amount of fuel on any field will be low and it will need resupplying, attacking those resupply convoys will prevent topping up the tanks and effectively close down the field.
That's especially true if most of the team is busy flying furballs between Calais and Dover and the other team is bombing targets of value.

But of course opinions differ. You prefer to fly the BoB itself and there's nothing wrong with that.

I would prefer a more dynamic nature to such a campaign so that players can influence the outcome, that's why i would code it that way if i ever got to it.

Come to think of it (and thanks for the discussion, this is how ideas come along ), it just dawned on me that the amount of available aircraft, supplies and pilots should also reflect the average number of players on a server, otherwise it defeats the whole purpose of such a campaign.

Even if we had a server with 100 players on every night, they are still few compared to the size of a real air force. So, having the historical number of aircraft and pilots on each side might mean that there's 150 available aircraft and 70 virtual lives available to each player. If on the other hand we adjusted the amount of available planes on the server to match that ratio with the given server population, it would be much more realistic (ie, it's a scaling issue).

Originally Posted by notafinger!

I can't say I'm interested in dynamic scenarios for multiplayer, especially on a public server. Those things are best served for online wars between squads in something like SOWC. A very small portion of the community reads the forums so they have no idea to use the radio menu to call for a supply convoy to restock an airfield with their desired plane. Instead the chat window begins to fill-up with "why are there no E-4's?" & "when is this mission over?".

Many people simply want some online scenarios that make some historical sense fought during normal hours of operation. For BoB that means targets like convoys, ports, radar stations, airfields, & aircraft factories with some decent sized bomber formations.

Resupply would be handled automatically via scripts and triggers that spawn the AI convoys. The players would simply receive a status update via the "radio" so that they know what to protect (just like the on-screen messages on ATAG that inform us of AI bomber spawns asking for escort), while the other team would have to discover the convoys on their own. But yes, like you say, what i'm after is a sort of online war module so that each server can run a mini-campaign every second week or so if they choose to.

[Talisman]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

That is the point where you answer politely and help those folks out.

What is lacking in these scenarious are rewards. Ppl look for success when flying online, not for historical missions out of pure principle.

You need incentives to have people fly those missions, some kind ongoing reward system.

For example, moving frontlines, or mission rotations based on outcome. Let's say we have a Dunquirke scenario starting with some Bf109E1s and Hurricanes. Red Wins this scenario , the Dunkirque Area is held and on top of that red recieves the Rotol Hurricane.
Or the Blue side wins and gets the 110C7 or the E3, depending on what is more useful for the next mission and moves on the channel battles. Now here it depends if red is capable to recieve reinforcements via ships or blue is able to sink them fast enough. In this way you can develop quite a bit of dynmaic gameplay.

Stuff like this will even get the fighter jocks thinking in what way to deploy their fighters...or to switch to bombers so they can have more fun later on in other scenarios.

Naturally, this does not follow historical developments, but then again we are also not in a life and death struggle whose outcome will effect the fate of whole people, a rather strong incentive. If you want people to contribute in those servers in a meaningful way, simply reproductions of environments and expecting ppl to fly accordingly won't work.

I must say that I like the historical context and that is why I fly this sim and mostly historical servers if possible. If I was not concerned with the historic context I would probably fly a combat sim/server that had the same aircraft on each side. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.