The primary issue was one of focus, IMO. SoW is right to concentrate on a narrow time frame, and I'd hope additional content would try to add on that, either before or after. Narrow theater, narrow the content to fill the time/theater.

PF should have focused. Somewhere.

If CVs were the centerpiece, they should have improved the shipping in more ways (better DMs, moving ships on DF maps, realistic CV ops, etc)

If using the more complete land-based campaign engine was the way to go, then pick someplace and make some useful maps for it. Don't waste time on maps that are useful for ONE MORNING of the war (and have no ships to put there), and instead build... The Slot. Or a better New Guinea map(s). Or A few Burma maps to have fighting go from early to late in the war.

tater

Good points. It's interesting to note that although we here in the USA or Great Britain, or the Netherlands, or Australia, or New Zealand, or a few other places, seem to know the basics of the war in the Pacific, it seems very evident to me that the PF team did not know very much about the war in the Pacific- and maybe, why do we expect folks from the former Soviet Union to know a lot about it? They were after all not involved there, and I doubt many schoolbooks devote pages to the Solomons on most Russian text books- the same as how my local schools do not teach much about Stalingrad or Kursk

It seems to me that the "famous highlights" were given a look, but the basic and needed infrastructure of the war in the Pacific was not looked at, or maybe simply misunderstood. So Pearl harbor, Guadalcanal, Peleliu, etc, are given maps that at worst fairly represent the areas, or at best can encompass a segment of the Island hopping campaign

But when looked at in detail, there is no framework- what of Rabaul? What of Vella LaVella or the Slot in general? Missing. Inexplicable, to us. How can Guadalcanal exist without the Slot? Well to me that's an obvious question, perhaps to the dev team, not so obvious.

And it might not be hard to understand if looked at like this:

What type of Russian Front sim could somebody do, if they did not have enough info about the Russian Front? Or- better yet- they were under the impression that they *did know* but were wrong about the scope and scale?

Therein lies the story of PF in my opinion- the dev team underestimated the scope and scale of the war in the Pacific. The "high spots" were covered, or the high spots as they saw them were covered. When instead, the war in the Pacific was so complex and intertwined and non-linear that a "hit the high spots" approach leaves so many holes in the net that the omissions are more obvious than what's included

I love PF not for it's maps and campaigns, but for the tools it gave me to make PTO content. But as a sim unto itself it is a flawed work in my opinion

Well put sir.

Yeah, it was a failure to really understand the big picture. It's like they had a kid's picture book about the Pacific War, and made maps of the areas on the map with an explosion icon on them were a battle took place, lol.

Never mind that many were very one-sided and sort of pointless (from a PF standpoint)

One really funny thing (to me) is that the Tarawa map is big enough that there should be other islands on there, but there are none. You could easily have had places so that the map would at least be useful online with each side having an island.

Part of the problem is simply scale. The PTO is HUGE. Not that big maps are impossible, they are not. Timing is also and issue. Once an area fell, it tended to stay that way until it flipped back after an allied invasion. Given the distances, it makes for poor campaign play unless the map areas are very artfully picked.

While it is entirely possible to make the Slot in one map (without any FR issues at all), even had they merely made the map go NW as far as the Russell Islands it would have made sense. They could have broken it up.

The extant Papua map (know as "New Guinea" in PF) is fine for a few months, but it would have been worth abandoning other maps to then do a proper New Guinea farther west.

Really, playing to the strengths of the game engine, Burma would probably have been the best choice. Maps for the fall, and later recapture by the Allies. Maps in the middle for the period with a sort of static front with various AFs operating at once. A true "Forgotten Battle" as well.

tater

If I had to pick just 2 campaign areas for PF focus, it would be Burma, and the Slot. The nice thing about the Slot is that it requires few aircraft.

Burma would require a complete IJAAF set, and the "usual suspects" for the Allies. The USAAF planes we see now in PF, and the RAF units we see.

The Slot would have been all the Navy planes in such a PF. The IJN would have Val, Kate, A6Ms (up to the A6M5 early models at most), Emily, and Betty. Nothing else needed. The USN/USMC would have F4F-4, TBF, SBD, F4U-1 (not defaulted to the RN!), F4U-1A and F6F-3. USAAF/Commonwealth would get whatever was in Burma (plus the F4Us the RNZAF used from the USMC). Maybe the B-17 and B-24 if they were not used in Burma much.

All the later war stuff don't bother until the planes for the 2 areas in question are filled in.

tater

Hi Terry!

yeah, tater, I agree....Burma in particular is curious. I talked to somebody who made some of the default PF skins. He told me that there were some planes- like the H81A-2- that were used last minute because the dev team was completely unaware that they were used! So he got the call to make default skins last minute, too

It was an interesting conversation, and explained a lot of little things to me, like why some skins were the way they were, and why some things were missing, or represented strangely- there were simply errors made in lots of things

Agree
 

Well put. What kinda makes me laugh is all the negative vibes about how Americans don't know enough/anything about the Soviet Union's sacrifices in WW2 and here is a good example of the reverse!
I really hope that Oleg gets some gamer/outside help in the "play" of the game. These Russian developers can get the nuts and bolts beautifully but their games tend to be "dry!"

Possibly all too true! I guess everyone is jingoistic to some extent but ZI hadn't thought of it the way you put it. I think you may be right

I feel this is more than a little true too. It can be hard to get to help a developer though...last year I was in contact with a developer for Shockwave's upcoming AVG simulation. I was arguing hard for individual skins since there is so much individualism present on the AVG aircraft. Anyway, I posted some screenshots of my AVG skins to illustrate my points, and suddenly I was PMing with the guy running the effort

I called him on his cel, he called me back but he lives in a different time zone and we never connected...I wish Scott and his team the best, but I really wish I could have talked to him on the phone rather than just online. Just didn't work out. But deep down, when that sim comes out, I know I'll spot something I will feel I could have helped make a little better, and mentally kick myself for not trying to talk to Scott harder. But try as we might, it never panned out. It can be hard, even if the dev wants help or is willing to at least listen

Maps (hopefully objects, too), and skins are a prime example where they should really have things open (as they plan to with SoW).

I understand keeping the big maps for their own releases, but only to a point. Face it, if there were no arbitrary limits for map size for player built maps, and players made a kick-ass med map, why would 1C care? Would it stop players from buying a Med add-on? I think not, since the med add-on would have new planes, possibly new technologies (better AI, improved X, Y, and Z), etc.

Face it, unless they are having 3d parties build the maps anyway, they probably won't be all that great. They have not really shown the ability to make good maps themselves. The only good il-2 maps came from Ian, yogi, jurinko, et al, the rest are cut and paste jobs.

BTW, the lack of "lateral thinking," in terms of campaign/immersion stuff is one reason why I lobby so hard for open-ended systems for things. Features that are optional in campaigns. I'd love to see the AI opened up a bit, too. Each plane must either be assigned a generic "type" of AI to use (fighter, fighter bomber, level bomber, dive bomber, etc), or there are some variables in the code. They don't have to let is see the code to have access to the variables. Have a text file for each plane such that the AI parameters used are moddable by mission/campaign builders. Odd things can come of this, unpredicted things. A campaign builder might decide to do something crazy and assign the wrong "type" of AI to a plane and get a useful result for gameplay.

People like Chris are FORCED to be very creative in il-2 campaigns to get things even a little the way they want them. The devs are not forced, and they tend to think "inside the box," IMO.


tater