IL-2 Korea and Combat Pilot: Which do you have more faith in and why?

[AndreiTomescu]

15 minutes ago, Kubert said:

I don't know any perfect game

Sid Meyer's Pirates !

not joking.

[Kubert]

10 minutes ago, AndreiTomescu said:

Sid Meyer's Pirates

Sorry, I am young and uneducated. 

[Steini18778]

11 hours ago, Kubert said:

Maybe there is the problem, if you expect a perfection. I don't know any perfect game. Every game has its own problems. IL-2 GB is the only game I have installed all the time and play reguraly since 2020 and it was improved significantly since then. A lot of content was added, updated or reworked. Of course, there are some unsolved issues, which probably never will be solved, but most of them are minor issues with existing workarounds and definitely are not game breaking. To believe that any new flight sim will come and be better from scratch is in my opinion unrealistic expectation.

Both career mode and scripted campaigns are valid options. I am playing them exclusively, because I am not a multiplayer material...and except campaign Havoc over Kuban, which was not updated for a long time, and Achtung Spitfire!, which could get some tweaks, are all fully playable. BlackSix, Jaegermeister and Juri_JS are doing very good job in this direction. Career mode is, I would say, from 95% playable. There are some problematic scenarios, but not many of them and when bugs are reported they usually get fixed over time, if possible.

The game is not perfect, but for me is very far from being frustrating to the point to give up. 

 

All your points are valid, but i like my game as immersive as possible. When as a commander i arrange my flight and planing the mission, i see my squad crashing mid air it just kills me. When my comrades crash to the ground in dogfight it kills me, when i get home with 6 kills and lost my whole squadron it kills me. When AI has no tactical behaviour it kills me, when i circle endless against enemy it kills me. When an enemy bomber snipes me from 500+m away it kills me. The list could be endless, and yes i know it is me. But when i see that you will manage a whole squad even more in Korea, i am curious what will happen. When you let me quess ... your squadron will be wiped out in only a few missions.

[Kubert]

I assume you are talking mostly about career mode, not scripted campaigns. In this case it is very important to choose correct difficulty settings according to aircraft you are flying and time period. If you crank everything up, your squad will be wiped out every two days. It took me a lot of testing, but it is possible to achieve immersive experience for all planes. For example, BF-109 career in Battle of Stalingrad is well balanced at Parity, Medium, Medium, but do the same thing with IL-2 career and you will be slaughtered. For IL-2 is fine Inferiority, Medium, Medium for easier missions or Parity, Scattered, Medium for harder missions. For Soviet fighter is, in my opinion, the best Parity, Scattered, Medium because even BF-109 with average skill level is equal to La-5 or Yak-1 with better skill level. BF has better power to weight ratio, more effecient weapons and more ammunition. Everything must be taken into account to create immersive environment. Also rank of your squadmates and if you are a leader, make altitude advantage everytime you can. 

When it came to AI behavior, I experienced very few mid air crashes, crashes to the ground during combat happen usually only when AI have wing or tail damage, enemy gunner never sniped me from 500+m...I don't think this is possible, because even for cannon is 400 meter very far, so 500+ for machine gun sounds exaggerated to me.

You can't expect tactical behavior from the AI, they are what they are, but you can use friendly AIs as a bait for easy enemy kills or use yourself as bait to allow friendly AIs get some kills. I did that today in Steel Birds campaign.  Me and my wingman were both after the same P-39. She turned sharply. I didn't follow her in my FW-190, because sharp turns in a fast moving FW are waste of energy, but my wingman turned. I did wide shallow turn around and P-39 followed me. Knowing my wingman is after her, I didn't bother with head-on turn...instead I made a distance and served as bait flying fast in straigt line which allowed my wingman to sneak in an get a kill.  If endless turning behind enemy is killing you, then don't turn. I was frustrated the same way in my begginings. Then I started using speed, verticality and deflection shots. Take an initiative if enemy decide to bleed energy in turns.

Edited April 25 by Kubert

[Steini18778]

1 hour ago, Kubert said:

I assume you are talking mostly about career mode, not scripted campaigns. In this case it is very important to choose correct difficulty settings according to aircraft you are flying and time period. If you crank everything up, your squad will be wiped out every two days. It took me a lot of testing, but it is possible to achieve immersive experience for all planes. For example, BF-109 career in Battle of Stalingrad is well balanced at Parity, Medium, Medium, but do the same thing with IL-2 career and you will be slaughtered. For IL-2 is fine Inferiority, Medium, Medium for easier missions or Parity, Scattered, Medium for harder missions. For Soviet fighter is, in my opinion, the best Parity, Scattered, Medium because even BF-109 with average skill level is equal to La-5 or Yak-1 with better skill level. BF has better power to weight ratio, more effecient weapons and more ammunition. Everything must be taken into account to create immersive environment. Also rank of your squadmates and if you are a leader, make altitude advantage everytime you can. 

When it came to AI behavior, I experienced very few mid air crashes, crashes to the ground during combat happen usually only when AI have wing or tail damage, enemy gunner never sniped me from 500+m...I don't think this is possible, because even for cannon is 400 meter very far, so 500+ for machine gun sounds exaggerated to me.

You can't expect tactical behavior from the AI, they are what they are, but you can use friendly AIs as a bait for easy enemy kills or use yourself as bait to allow friendly AIs get some kills. I did that today in Steel Birds campaign.  Me and my wingman were both after the same P-39. She turned sharply. I didn't follow her in my FW-190, because sharp turns in a fast moving FW are waste of energy, but my wingman turned. I did wide shallow turn around and P-39 followed me. Knowing my wingman is after her, I didn't bother with head-on turn...instead I made a distance and served as bait flying fast in straigt line which allowed my wingman to sneak in an get a kill.  If endless turning behind enemy is killing you, then don't turn. I was frustrated the same way in my begginings. Then I started using speed, verticality and deflection shots. Take an initiative if enemy decide to bleed energy in turns.

Thanks for your advices. I am here for many years and had many bad experiences. Year after year it only slowly got better. I curios how the AI will dogfight in Korea. Coming from the original IL2, i saw a huge downgrade in AI. Better flight model now, but less challenge.

[Kubert]

Only things I miss in IL-2 GB are the system of commands from IL-2 1946 and inability to split eight squadmates into two flights. Except that I prefer IL-2 GB over 1946. I tried 1946 few years ago again, but it felt too arcadish to me. Impossible to fly without technochat due not animated buttons and levers in a cockpit, planes were too fragile...too many ripped of wings and tails, and AI wasn't much better in my opinion. Ground avoidance in terrain with hills, lack of self-preservation in flak heavy environment, more maneurable fighters usually won a fight and so on...pros and cons are here for both games, but I wouldn't call GB huge downgrade.

[Steini18778]

12 minutes ago, Kubert said:

Only things I miss in IL-2 GB are the system of commands from IL-2 1946 and inability to split eight squadmates into two flights. Except that I prefer IL-2 GB over 1946. I tried 1946 few years ago again, but it felt too arcadish to me. Impossible to fly without technochat due not animated buttons and levers in a cockpit, planes were too fragile...too many ripped of wings and tails, and AI wasn't much better in my opinion. Ground avoidance in terrain with hills, lack of self-preservation in flak heavy environment, more maneurable fighters usually won a fight and so on...pros and cons are here for both games, but I wouldn't call GB huge downgrade.

Just compare the time it took. IL2 was right from the start a good product. IL2 GB startet without campaign, only an foolish mission mode where you can switch side. You had to unlock weapons. There where only a few planes available as AI planes. While campaign mode was available in RoF we had to wait 5 years to get it. Dont get me wrong most of the problems are solved now, but the original product was from the start a great product and we had to wait a very long time to archive this now. Visibility and target identification is still a huge problem for many. Only after 8 years they started accepting this issue. In all my optimism i was very often dissapointed. Great products are archivable when you make the right choices, 1C did many wrong choices and had to change them over time. Why? I dont know. I played TC demo and it was a blast for me. Great mission with air support. But the final product had no content, many bugs and disadvantages for human controlled vehicles. It is a dead product for years now. For IL2 Korea i see many new problem along the way. Bad visibility in some planes without refraction is only one thing all players are confronted now. Sorry, but my optimism is gone. 

[FuriousMeow]

On 4/25/2026 at 10:45 AM, Steini18778 said:

Just compare the time it took. IL2 was right from the start a good product. 

I'm gonna have to disagree with that. It was new and the only non-MMO WW2 at the time and that's a big reason so many have rose tinted glasses of it but it had quite a few issues, some that didn't get better. Out of the cage every single plane had the same torque/pfactor/prop direction until AFM in patch 4.

High altitude wasn't modeled, even after the AFM patch. 

The stock AI used cheats to fly, didn't have the same FMs why it was easy to code them but they pulled impossible maneuvers.

It didn't have a career mode either until well later after a 3rd party mod showed it was possible and then was integrated as an official part of the game.

The cockpits were only modeled based on the head-on-a-stick viewpoint so the head could never be moved, it was fixed centrally in the cockpit.

I'm not going to go further into it, but it wasn't great from the start - it took several years and releases to get good but it still had lots of its own problems. They all do in one way or another.

For Combat Pilot, its easy to get excited about it - if you haven't been through several of these development cycles before - because it can be everything to everyone since its so barebones but as it gets put together piece by piece, things get dropped or moved to the back burner, and the more final product comes into view that's when the hopium runs out and either bitterness or copium replace it. That's when reality hits, its not custom tailored game for each person's ideal dream game and has lots of compromises.

Edited April 27 by FuriousMeow

[Steini18778]

13 hours ago, FuriousMeow said:

I'm gonna have to disagree with that. It was new and the only non-MMO WW2 at the time and that's a big reason so many have rose tinted glasses of it but it had quite a few issues, some that didn't get better. Out of the cage every single plane had the same torque/pfactor/prop direction until AFM in patch 4.

Sure, it was not perfect, but right from the start it was a blast for all. The AI was cheating, but at the end it was fun. I prefer fun over endless dump AI circling or crashing. IL2 GB has gone along way to archive the same status of "fun" for me. But still AI is dump and circling endlessly. We will see how it will perform in a jet simulation. You dont have to forget that the engine is coming from RoF. Thatswhy i trust CP more, because they build their product for WW2 with other doctrines in mind.

[Akira]

Who ever release PTO i'll buy it, simple as that, no faith or emotion factor involved. Im not interested in Korea so my flight gear will keep on collecting dust.

 

[FuriousMeow]

On 4/28/2026 at 6:17 AM, Steini18778 said:

You dont have to forget that the engine is coming from RoF. Thatswhy i trust CP more, because they build their product for WW2 with other doctrines in mind.

That makes absolutely no sense.

You say the engine is coming from RoF, which I'll point out is a WW1 air combat Sim. Air combat sim.

Unreal Engine is coming from first person shooters. That's what it was designed for, first person shooters. Its had all kinds of development thrown at it to expand it, but that's where its coming from.

As far as AI, its been terrible in every sim I've ever played. I use it for gunnery training. Multi-player is the only place I can find some level of immersive combat.

But we will all see as it gets more feature complete just how much of the perfect Sim they'll manage. I expect quite a bit of keyboard pounding from some.

 

 

Edited May 3 by FuriousMeow