A new Dev Blog #86 is here!

[Captain_Trips]

Just now, Reisen said:

I don't know, Einstein. Maybe there's a middle ground between literally touching and multiple hours flight time.

What would that be?  Something significantly less that historical fidelity I guess.

If you half it, it's still and hour.

[BlitzPig_EL]

You are going to need two different mind sets, which when you go online today vs. offline single play, we already have.

Single play will absolutely work with historic distances, either because of super dedicated players who actually will fly long hours, or the use of time skip.

Multiplayer will work out like it always has, place the carriers/bases in non historical places and have at it. 

This isn't rocket science.

[Captain_Trips]

3 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

You are going to need two different mind sets, which when you go online today vs. offline single play, we already have.

Single play will absolutely work with historic distances, either because of super dedicated players who actually will fly long hours, or the use of time skip.

Multiplayer will work out like it always has, place the carriers/bases in non historical places and have at it. 

This isn't rocket science.

SP would work fine.

MP would be....well, what you described.

[BlitzPig_EL]

Just let 1C give us the maps and equipment, and we can do the rest.  We are a very clever bunch.

[Captain_Trips]

15 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

Just let 1C give us the maps and equipment, and we can do the rest.  We are a very clever bunch.

Well, I don't see, in MP,  how you could realistically re-enact Midway, Or Coral Sea, Or Quadalcanal, even Solomons were on average over an hour, but yes, you could park some carriers near each other and "have at it" as you say.

Good luck.

Edited September 7 by Captain_Trips

[Reisen]

3 minutes ago, Captain_Trips said:

Well, I don't see how you could realistically re-enact Midway, Or Coral Sea, Or Quadalcanal, Even Solomons were on average over an hour, but yes, you could park some carriers near each other and "have at it" as you say.

Good luck.

Sounds fun! 

 

I'd be thrilled to fly over "Quadalcanal".

[FuriousMeow]

This time pedantry is silly.

MP is MP, it ranges from real time scenarios to shoot 'em up chaos DF servers. 

The time distance is not persuasive to do BoB over something else.

Navigating over flat open water from one moving base to another and back also brings interesting challenges instead of the repetitive Channel hop. However, the PTO wasn't just long flights over open water. There was tons of fighting over land with brief jaunts over water. 

The only thing I think would be new going back to Europe again would be the non-level/non-flat runways with the narrow track 109s and Spits. People ground looping before...

Otherwise, bring forth the PTO! Post Korea completion naturally. 

Edited September 7 by FuriousMeow

[Captain_Trips]

1 hour ago, Husar said:

I heard CP team already thinking  how to solve that problem.

I will be very interested to see what they come up with.

Out of curiosity I was trying to find out how Pacific Fighters handled the distances.

3/4 scaled map and air starts.  And Rabaul still wasn't on the map.  lol🤣

Edited September 8 by Captain_Trips

[MajorMagee]

Guadalcanal could be interesting.

[LuftManu]

15 hours ago, Captain_Trips said:

Well, I don't see, in MP,  how you could realistically re-enact Midway, Or Coral Sea, Or Quadalcanal, even Solomons were on average over an hour, but yes, you could park some carriers near each other and "have at it" as you say.

Good luck.

 

That's not a "problem "of the game but rather what the "active playerbase" prefers to play 😉 And even then, there is a time for everything.

I'm sure you can get a few events to play out with some realistic flight times but most folks now want quick action in servers.
There is no correct way to play as long as people have fun with their purchase 🙂 And I am all in for realisitc settings and flight times too!

Maybe some MP campaigns are also a good place where this could be like that too.

The best thing is as @BlitzPig_EL said. If the team gives us the tools, we will make the rest. And don't be shy! The more options as servers we have, the better.

 

Oh and before I forget... COOP is also compatible with skip time feature, so you can even decide if you wanna take the full flight in some more private events.

Can't wait to have PTO and even ETO. Now that we can have big formations and skip times, I would love to have a proper startegic bomber career. It's doable but even then, I wouldn't be playing the whole trip and back to Germany in my B-17 🙂

[Captain_Trips]

1 hour ago, LuftManu said:

That's not a "problem "of the game but rather what the "active playerbase" prefers to play 😉 And even then, there is a time for everything.

We'll see.

Maybe one of the three different competitors, all making a PTO at the same time with modern engines, fighting over the same player-base at the same time, will come up with a way to make the 4 hr flight from Rabual to Henderson over flat water fun in MP.  

Why 1C wants to dive into direct competition in a theatre that is about to become crowded, when they could offer a unique underserved theatre the other two competitors don't have..well, it's their rice bowl.  If it were me, I'd choose to offer a unique product, instead of choosing to be an also-ran. No, I don't consider Clod a competitor any more then you would consider Pacific Fighters.

I might buy one of the three.  I don't think I need 3 Hellcats from 3 different companies.

We'll see.  Any case, it's a ways off.

Edited September 8 by Captain_Trips

[LuftManu]

11 minutes ago, Captain_Trips said:

We'll see.

Maybe one of the three different competitors, all making a PTO at the same time with modern engines, fighting over the same player-base at the same time, will come up with a way to make the 4 hr flight from Rabual to Henderson fun in MP.  

Why 1C wants to dive into direct competition in a theatre that is about to become crowded, when they could offer a unique underserved theatre the other two competitors don't have..well, it's their rice bowl.  No, I don't consider Clod a competitor any more then you would consider Pacific Fighters.

I might buy one of the three.  I don't think I need 3 Hellcats from 3 different companies.

We'll see.  Any case, it's a ways off.

I think the preference for shorter flight times in MP is not really an IL-2-specific issue either. It's something you can see across combat flight simulators.

If you have doubts about that, I'd honestly recommend spending some time flying multiplayer in other sims and seeing how the missions and servers are generally structured. Even in very realistic simulators, most MP players don't necessarily want to spend an hour or more just flying towards the area of operations before anything happens.
Unless it's an special event or some kind of campaign. That has been my experience.

That's not to say that nobody wants the historical experience. There will always be people who enjoy the long flights, and I would absolutely love to see dedicated servers or campaigns recreating those distances properly. SP is great for this as well, again, as events.

But expecting the average MP server to make everyone fly 1–2 hours before getting into combat probably isn't realistic. That's simply what the active playerbase tends to prefer. And IMHO no sim will change this.

And that's why I keep coming back to the same point: give us the tools and let the server operators decide. If one group wants carriers 200 miles apart and another wants them much closer together, both should be possible.

More options for the community can only be a good thing, independently from the sim which again, I don't know why a comparision here was even as point. 🙂
I will end up here to not derail this to offtopic, but a conversation on MP server preferences could be a good idea for a post. You might be surprised by the community responses.

Kind regards,

 

[Captain_Trips]

8 minutes ago, LuftManu said:

expecting the average MP server to make everyone fly 1–2 hours before getting into combat probably isn't realistic. That's simply what the active playerbase tends to prefer. And IMHO no sim will change this.

 

Exactly.

That is why I think Battle of Britain would provide a better MP player experience than PTO.    (Even if you ignore the about to be crowded PTO competitive environment.)

15-30 min flights rather than hours without the resort to WT-like air-spawns or shunken 3/4 scale maps like Pacific Fighters.

Not to mention a much better use of the beautiful terrain engine.  Flying over southern England would be beautiful in this engine.

Edited September 8 by Captain_Trips

[Bell]

22 minutes ago, Captain_Trips said:

No, I don't consider Clod a competitor any more then you would consider Pacific Fighters.

You seem to be new here,1CGS said many years ago that they wouldn't do BoB because TFS is developing Clod.

[Captain_Trips]

5 minutes ago, Bell said:

You seem to be new here,1CGS said many years ago that they wouldn't do BoB because TFS is developing Clod.

Then I guess they get to compete against two other companies for the PTO.

I'll probably buy one of them.

Edited September 8 by Captain_Trips

[Aapje]

15 hours ago, FuriousMeow said:

Navigating over flat open water from one moving base to another and back also brings interesting challenges instead of the repetitive Channel hop. However, the PTO wasn't just long flights over open water. There was tons of fighting over land with brief jaunts over water. 

If I was the devs, I'd do the Solomons (including New Guinea) and then the Philippines. Then perhaps the Gilbert and Marshall Islands. They are clustered islands, so it allows for close engagements as well. Then on those maps they (and we) can experiment with the carriers. Hopefully they gradually add some more carriers, either as separate DLCs or as part of a module with a map.

From a map-making perspective, they could just give us a Midway map for free, as the atoll is so tiny that modelling it should not be all that much work. All the sea area should not need actual work. In principle we would then be able to semi-realistically replicate the battle with one Japanese carrier and one American carrier, if we just use multiple of the same carrier. The American carriers were all Yorktown class, so if we have one of that class, we can realistically do that side. The 4 Japanese carriers were all different, so that is a lot harder to do accurately.

Pearl Harbor is a lot more complicated since it is part of Hawaii and that is quite a bit of land mass, and such a map has no use but for a single one day event.

In general, all the carrier engagements were fairly brief, since the carriers were glass cannons during WW 2. Packing a huge punch, but also fairly fragile. So it makes more sense to focus on the longer land campaigns where possible.

15 hours ago, FuriousMeow said:

The only thing I think would be new going back to Europe again would be the non-level/non-flat runways with the narrow track 109s and Spits. People ground looping before...

Otherwise, bring forth the PTO! Post Korea completion naturally. 

Of course it would give us benefits of the new engine. By the time we move on from the Pacific, not only should the game engine have become a lot more polished, but hopefully they also added more features.

They can do Italy. They can do the Greco-Italian War.

They can do North Africa.

[actionhank]

16 hours ago, FuriousMeow said:

This time pedantry is silly.

MP is MP, it ranges from real time scenarios to shoot 'em up chaos DF servers. 

The time distance is not persuasive to do BoB over something else.

Navigating over flat open water from one moving base to another and back also brings interesting challenges instead of the repetitive Channel hop. However, the PTO wasn't just long flights over open water. There was tons of fighting over land with brief jaunts over water. 

The only thing I think would be new going back to Europe again would be the non-level/non-flat runways with the narrow track 109s and Spits. People ground looping before...

Otherwise, bring forth the PTO! Post Korea completion naturally. 

Agreed. I think that's the beauty of multiplayer in flight sims. Plenty of people are more than happy to dive into something that takes (in other games with more complex startup procedures) 10 to 15 minutes to startup, another chunk of time to taxi, assemble and depart, and then a long flight to the target before completing their mission and returning home. Others prefer it kept short and want to just take off from a base at the front, drop bombs and turn right back around to re-arm and do it all over again.

[Bell]

9 minutes ago, Captain_Trips said:

Then I guess they get to compete against two other companies for the PTO.

I'll probably buy one of them.

When Korea was announced,it was almost universally known that 1CGS would do PTO after Korea.

[Captain_Trips]

5 minutes ago, Bell said:

When Korea was announced,it was almost universally known that 1CGS would do PTO after Korea.

Cool.
Competition is a good thing.
They'll have plenty.

[Bell]

4 minutes ago, Captain_Trips said:

Cool.
Competition is a good thing.
They'll have plenty.

That's their business.

[Captain_Trips]

Just now, Bell said:

That's their business.

And that's my opinion.

[Aapje]

1 hour ago, Captain_Trips said:

Why 1C wants to dive into direct competition in a theatre that is about to become crowded, when they could offer a unique underserved theatre the other two competitors don't have..well, it's their rice bowl.  If it were me, I'd choose to offer a unique product, instead of choosing to be an also-ran.

I think that it is extremely unlikely that DCS will have a proper selection of modules for even just the Marianas, even just in EA, let alone properly finished, by the time 1CGS releases their first PTO module. ED have not even finished their WW 2 asset pack after more than 9 years. And Combat Pilot still has so much to do that I don't see them releasing a full-featured module before 1CGS releases a pacific module.

And if 1CGS releases a Solomon's module or such, then that will blow the socks of the modules with mostly water that DCS and CP want to do first.

I think that the competitors are more at risk of being also-rans than IL-2.

34 minutes ago, Bell said:

You seem to be new here,1CGS said many years ago that they wouldn't do BoB because TFS is developing Clod.

They have since said that this agreement expired and that there is nothing stopping them now from doing the same regions/battles.

Edited September 8 by Aapje

[Captain_Trips]

23 minutes ago, Aapje said:

hey have since said that this agreement expired and that there is nothing stopping them now from doing the same regions.

Perhaps Bell is new here and hadn't heard that.

I hope they consider the option.

 

Edited September 8 by Captain_Trips

[Reisen]

DCS is incapable of delivering a coherent setting, we don't need to worry about them.

Combat Pilot has a long, long way to go before the IL-2 devs need to be concerned about competition. Besides, Combat Pilot is covering the early carrier air war. The work on IL-2 Korea will make it pretty doable for them to cover late war scenarios like Okinawa and B-29 raids over Japan. 

Defending a fleet from Kamikaze attacks, providing ground support, and sinking the Yamato sounds like great scenarios to cover in a sim.

[MajorMagee]

As it currently stands, Okinawa would be the easiest transition to PTO. With the addition of some landing ships ported over from Battle of Normandy and some Jeep Carriers to go with the Essex Class all they would need is several types of AI Kamikaze aircraft. The missions would be Ground Attack and CAP with a modest map effort. That would buy them time to create the Japanese user flyable types you would need for Leyte Gulf, which would take advantage of the same AI Kamikazes and ships. From there they could progressively work their way back all the way to the beginning of the war by adding older aircraft, ships, and locations. 

Alternatively, they could just do the Philippines map which works for both 1941-42 and 1944-45. This would require more up front work on flyable aircraft, but opens up the most DLC opportunities using the same map.