Thought for future expansions: Release Chronologically
 

I was thinking about Il-2 and its expansion packs, and the post Cliffs of Dover future, and it strikes me that it might be worthwhile to do the expansion packs for Cod in more ore less Chronological order, especially focusing on significant changes in the airwar.

I see several advantages, and some weaknesses.

The first major advantage is aircraft facetime. Online, most people fly the best planes they can get, which means the older models get left on the shelf. Most of the crap planes were at one point cutting edge, or state of the art, so by moving through them in chronological order, most planes will be the best at some point in time. This also means that most players would get new toys to play with every major expansion pack.

The drawback of this is that some popular aircraft don't show up until very late. For example, the first P-51A's don't show up until early 1943, the P-47C first gets in in April of '43, and the Merlin Mustangs aren't there until 1944.

That said, it still seems to me that there would be a big bang for the buck for every new aircraft added, since most would have their day in the sun.

The second advantage I could see would be story continuity. You can do the entire arc of the war in continuous, but manageable pieces. Midway is more important if you spent the last three packs on the retreat, and you've already had two carriers shot out from under you. Likewise the reversal from the German Offensive in the BoB, to trying to defend against the bomber offensive that followed their defeat, and the progression from intercepting lightly armed and armoured bombers to the later flying tanks with escort fighters everywhere.

If they want to push the storytelling of the campaigns, I think having that continuity between expansion packs would be a big thing.

I also think it would reduce the plane fatigue factor, but I think that falls under the "new toys" I mentioned above.

Any thoughts?

Harry Voyager

First addon : Britain 42, first Focke's (please, the bar !), Westland Whirlwind, Spit V etc...

The Battle of France or maybe Poland would make perfect early addons, we should have to wait for the late war planes...crap planes all the way for me :grin:

DIEPPE 1942 !
Mustang Mk.I, Spit V&IX, Fw190A, Bf109G, B-17, Do-215, Typhoon (to name a few) :D and that with almost no work for a new map, if at all. And i belive working on a map in CoD quality is a lot of work ....

Battle for Britain
Western Front
The Mediteranean (Italy/ Africa/ Malta)
The push into Germany
The Pacific Theatre of Operations

Its an age old argument, but keeping plane sets pegged to the year and the region would be nice

I thought the Korean conflict was already being worked on by Oleg and team?
Should be good fun, really crappy jets + maybe UH-19's?.. anyone?

http://outreachmilitary.org/prod041_files/image004.jpg

Ditto that. I would love to see the 8th airforce bombing campain against Germany. Large formations of B17s and Me109s, FW190s attacking and P51s coming to the rescue. So far that is one thing IL2 has not touched. It would be sweet but complex. Those bomber missions covered a large area.

SCW

- anarchists versus fascists
- birthplace of the 109
- huge number of aircraft types that fought (http://www.zi.ku.dk/personal/drnash/...spain/did.html)

what more could you want ... leave late war for the ego point whores :D

Voyager, what you say makes perfect sense. If only you could find a way to convince game developers of this.

A large area is right ;)

At a rough estimate, a section of map about 6 times the area of the BoB map would be needed to cover missions to Berlin.

and with a lot of large cities..... perhaps in 5 years our PCs can handle that. BUT, can you imagine the booring , AND demanding, work for such a map in CoD quality...horror

and remember how Oleg said that moving the boundary of the BoB map 10 km north would take one person a year of work?

London to Berlin is 950km !!!!

Not to mention how long each mission would take, flying near 2000km roundtrips.

The Luftwaffe would have it a lot easier, even if attacking the B17 box formations is no joke ;)

Chronological order of combat theaters is more or less the plan of the developers for years. Third parties are doing IL-2 Korea(Luthier) and another third party doing IL-2 Battle for Moscow.

Oleg's next addon to the new IL-2 series has been rumored to be somewhere in the Mediterranean. Considering the frame hit of large maps at this point his next theater will have to be similar in size to the BOB map. I'm thinking the Malta area as the fighting here started fairly early in the war and used much the same aircraft used in the Battle of Britain.

Hopefully by the time the Med addon and/or addons are completed computers and the game engine will be optimized enough to allow much larger maps like the European, Russian Campaigns. The Pacific Campaign can be broken up into smaller maps. The Russian and Western Europe campaign would be nice if they stretched from Moscow to Berlin, and London to Berlin respectively.

Its has also been rumored that when the theaters are complete the developers could add combined forces where you could control tanks, ships, etc.

Luthier isnt 3.Party anymore, just to ad ;)


anyway, a WW2 Cyreneika map (hard to think about it, if remembering what happens in Libya in the moment ....) would be huge, but not with much on it ;) .Most propably less buildings than London "alone" in CoD.

"The Push to Germany"

along the lines of a "D-Day" map/ planeset?
and other stages along the way, in the form of a series of maps... like down along The Rhine for the dam busters, etc, etc?

A desert map has the advantage of sparse buildings and sparser vegetation, reducing the workload both for the computer and the map-maker.

My guess (and wish ;)) for the map would be North Africa from Tobruk to El Alamein, with a campaign covering the rise and fall of Rommel's Afrika Korps. Sure, you would need a 500x250km map, but the workload on the map-maker should be lower than for the BoB map. It might even be possible to have an additional 200x200 map covering Malta and part of Sicily as well, which could easily extended with more ocean area if the intention was to allow for the Anti-shipping raids carried out by the RAF from Malta.

An Africa Korps campaign would explain why so many tank and vehicle models have been included in CoD even though they have little role in the BoB :)

I agree that a desert map with much few objects could be made larger. Hopefully this will be the case.

Taking some of the British 1940 and Med aircraft to the Far East for the fall of Java or Singapore would make for a worthwhile incremental expansion too.

and the AVG, Western China/ Burma :)

I'm with this guy :) They should be called The battle for/of Berlin and The Pacific. The Mediteranean definitely should be in there, I thought it was the most overlooked area of the previous series.

IMHO:
SCW!
Poland
France
And a forgotten campaign in sims...Bomber command vs. Nachtjagers!

I was watching the series Battle of Britain in 6 parts the other night.

One thing that really rings a bell. They were interviewing one of the RAF pilot veterans. He basically said the .303 in the spits and hurricanes were pea-shooters next to the guns in the German aircraft.

We are all very accustomed to some darn good firepower after 10 years with the IL2. I'm seriously wondering how people are going to respond to pea-shooters.

Now... just how long was it before the Spit got some firepower? I'd say that will probably be the trigger for the time frame we'll be looking at for the second addon. I say that because Oleg will probably want to use all aircraft he designs throughout the lifetime of the sim.

I've enjoyed the BOB II WOV for several years. You have had to get in close and tight to get kills with a spit or hurricane using .303 firepower.
It takes alot of patience and skill to manuever that close.

I'll probably fly the German side because of the firepower thing. My favorite German aircraft are the 109F and 109G2. So... I'll be in good stead, though I probably would enjoy defending the "island" more.

Flying the air combat sims... well you really have to let history take care of itself, and fly what you enjoy. Otherwise, you'll get to suffer the rewards (get shot down) of your patriotic fervor... LOL

1+ For a chronological progress.And yes,I want to fly every crappy plane I could!!Cant wait for the Pacific Theater with this new engine.

Yeah, then we would be flying P40's in CoD :-).

~S~

Oleg seems, perhaps, to be adopting something of a chronological approach. He's focusing on the Med (probably) as his next theatre. A third party add-on is introducing the Battle of Moscow which provideds a base for a larger Barbarossa installment. I can see how North Africa would be incremental, some changes to the models, some new planes and the possibility of expanding into carrier aviation but, as has been mentioned, perhaps the scope of some installments will preclude them from being developed untill the average machine of the time has a hope of running them. Whilst I'd give my right arm for a Mighty 8th/Fortress Europa installment, the size of it must mean it's not going to be seen for a wee while.

AVG would be great, but all the Japanese planes would mean alot more work and short of the following installment being Il-2 The Rising Sun perhaps not a that sensible.

If they can wake Galba back up that would introduce hot rod piston aircraft, gives us two iconic jets, and perhaps introduce carrier aviation too. I sort of liked how Galba and BoB topped and tailed the decade, gave us crap-planes and hot rods, pleased many audiences with their inclusivity. I hope it comes along sooner rather than later.

Given the amount of reference material required to construct a FM for CoD, I wouldn't hold my breath for crap planes. There are even major types that lack in reference materials and are therefor unlikely to be seen in CoD, so some odd ball low production run biplane certainly is not the first choice to go reference hunting for, IMO.

I know it's not very likely, but I'm all for this.

But I'll settle for the Med :)

Well, even if you do it in order...
The AVG was in China rather early.. and the Pacific campaign got underway in 42. I. Love. Carrier Ops. Its just awesome... and considering islands.. the maps would be a bit easier to crank out. But considering how long it took last time to get the pacific involved.. and the controversy over American aircraft.. Im not holding my breath. Can only hope some 3rd party guys will work on those aircraft.
If not the pacific... Id still say to stay on time with 42-43 Europe and North Africa.

Honestly, I don't get what is so special about poland or france campaigns.

- Crap planes?
You can have plenty of those elswhere.
I also dubt that large audience will enthusiastically fly unknown (and, with one exception, inferior) polish planes from this period.

- Luftwaffel planes o b l i t e r a t i n g everything?
Yeah, this might be enough for those, who like to blitz over the sky in their bf109 untouchable and superior to all. Luftwaffel loving king of the sky wannabes ;-)...

These battles have no allied aeroplane that became a legend of ww2.
And you need one to sell the sim worldwide.

So why poland/france?
Enlighten me.
Btw I don't want to cause a flame war, just curious ;-)

"Crap" plane actually doesn't not mean "some odd ball low production run biplane" or "unknown (and, with one exception, inferior) polish planes from this period."

Crap means "bad, slow, low performance", and for sure no one cant say that I16 is lacking in references, or any of Fiat fighters for example.

With respect, Great Britain didn't had all the best planes in WW2, actually there was more crap planes that great ones (fairy fulmar or blenheim anyone?). Logic where USAAF and RAF had only great planes and other mostly crap, just don't holds the water. Also remember what Eric Brown said when he first time sat in the Yak fighter.

Poland and France are special because war started in Poland and France and Polish aviation gave Luftwaffe good share of troubles. Actually so called "Battle of Britain" was not very much bigger than war in Poland or France, not to mention east front which makes "Battle of Britain" appears as "happy and beautiful walk on a lovely sunny sumer day".

(Battle of Britain is bigger and more important of course . . . if you count movies made on the subject . . . )

Of course for all of that one would need to read some books, not to just watch "war in color" on TV. There is not much smart and historically correct facts on TV nowadays, anyway.

Just compare IL2 and other flight sims. IL2 made crap planes and other mostly "the great and successful ones" (read "boooring" http://www.cosgan.de/images/midi/frech/a090.gif ). Where is IL2 today comparing to others? And crap planes are partly "guilty" for that.



For me, it would be operation "Marita".

I'm share your curiosity why Oleg would put his minds on Invasion of Holland, Belgium, France and Poland or any other relative small conflict as a complete addon, you could think of something bundeled together as in: The rise of the 3rd Reich ( That sounds very very wrong ) which includes all these conflicts in europe but not the BoB ( part of it's downfall ) and the Battle for Moscow ( together with Stalingrad turning point of eastern front), but that all will be very one sided, as the Germans completely ran their opponents over.

I think the best is what they do now: Focussing on turning points in the war. Mediterranean theatre, Battle for Britain and the Battle for Moscow, it gives the most enjoyable gameplay for Both sides and provides a good basis for further 3rd party addons and whatnot.

Well, from a quick perusal of the Wikipedia article, it looks like the first unit with the 2x20mm was more or less functional in August 1940, but that would need to be checked. It does seem to fit though.

The HS.404 had already been used on prewar aircraft. About the only reason the US never got it to work was because one of our armaments houses changed part of the firing mechanism, and broke it.

The pilots preferred the more reliable .303s to the grossly unreliable early HS cannon, I wonder if this is modelled in the sim (the unreliability I mean).

Don't think there are cannons on any british plane from what I've seen so far.

The commercial value may be the deal breaker, but as another crap-plane lover, a France or Poland campaign would be a dream come true for me.

First, those scenarios have never been done before.

Second, the overall superiority of the Luftwaffe in these campaigns (questionable for the France campaign anyway) does not mean every single engagement was completely one-sided. There were more than a few losses over Poland as well. Especially bomber or Stuka campaigns should be more interesting here than over England. Flying for Poland would certainly be a challenge, but that only makes it more interesting for me. And would anyone say that late-war scenarios shouldn't be done either because of the undisputed allied superiority?

Third, I have no interest in "balance" in the planeset, and while the BoB scenario is reasonably balanced in the fighters area, flying Stukas or Bf-110s over England, especially in somewhat historical roles, isn't any less suicidal than attacking German bombers over Poland.

And finally, similar arguments were brought up before Il2's release about the Eastern front theatre. It turned out to be more than interesting though.


I do hope eventually some 3rd party effort can be made to model those theatres, as I don't see Oleg himself being able to afford it. Sure would be great though...!

During invasion of poland luftwaffe lost 285 aircraft to all operational causes, poles 333, so the price for this quick victory was high, especially given the circumstances.
But that's irrelevant, cos' it's about axis having superior aircraft.

What I said above is the difference between late war scenario and september '39.
Late at war allies had air superiority, but german planes were not inferior to their counterparts.
If your plane is good and fast you can engage numerically superior force. It will work on-line too.

But imagine a mission where you have to intercept the incoming bomber formation. You approach them head-on, fire a burst into one of them, turn and see them far away and yourself being unable to chase them cos' your fighter is slower than these bombers.

I can't imagine a good and entertaining '39 fighter campaign for polish air forces.
It would be stuka and recon aircraft pounding and avoiding enemy fighters at all cost.
Bomber campaign would be more reasonable, but still hard fighting for survival.

And what about multi? Who would fly polish aircraft?
Poles and few hard-core players from other countries?

These kind of campaigns could be made by 3rd parties, although I doubt that polish modding scene of this sim will be huge enough to make, lets say 4 flyables and 6 non-flyables from scratch.
But time will tell.

I personally hope for north africa '41-'42.

I cannot understand why anyone would want a Polish or French addon.

They were both stomped into the dust... in record time. It was like take off and die for the Polish and French pilots.

So... a sad part of history, nevertheless there can still be those who want to enough historical abuse. LOL

Probably just as well for the air war to progress from BOB into the Western European battles and war. The "island" was a major deployment area for the war after BOB.

The developers will probably never do a commercial Early France or Poland, because there isn't enough interest and/or dollars, but third parties were doing just that early in the BOB SOW development. They probably folded because of BOB's delays, but that shows there is enough interest with 3rd parties to develop the addon.

If you want more "crap" planes, like I do, then the Sino-Japanese conflict from 1937 to just before the AVG era would be a great way to go.

The Curtiss Hawk 75, I-16, and A5M would be uber planes in that scenario.

It would be heaven.

That is entirely untrue.

The so called "massively inferior and out of date" state of the Polish armed forces was initially just German propaganda and it then became convenient for the Allies to allow that false impression to continue as it helped allied morale to think that Poland had collapsed because of an "out of date poorly led army". Another myth was the cavalry charges against tanks. It never happened. What the Polish did have was very effective mobile anti tank units with anti tank guns that moved to new positions through rough terrain on horseback.

The myth has been perpetuated by Hollywood who like us to think that everyone in WWII was hopeless and useless except the US.

German Quartermaster General’s reports admitted the loss of 258 planes throughout the Polish Campaign. You can probably add to that another 100 or more damaged so severely as to need virtual rebuilding or not acknowledged directly as lost to enemy action.

A good estimate is around 350 Luftwaffe aircraft were lost all together over 6 weeks or so in Poland. Of those 350 around 120-150 were shot down in air to air combat. The rest were destroyed on the ground or shot down by AAA.

That compares VERY favorably with the 1100 the RAF managed down over the entire battle of Britain.

Note that the Polish airforce was still flying and active from secret airbases right up to the time the Russians invaded and the country surrendered. Up until the Russians invaded the Poles fought on hoping the British and French would grow a brain and realise teh entire German forces were occupied in the East and mount an invasion of Germany . If they had WWII might have been avoided.

+1 to what WTE_Galway said.

I would also add that Luftwaffe losses in the Battle of France were 30% higher than the Germans estimated they would be.

Is the QM report the number of planes lost to enemy action, or simply the numbers of planes lost? You have to expect a certain amount of losses to simple accidents, regardless of enemy action. I find it hard to see how a QM could get away with under-reporting losses by nearly 50%

What planes were the Polish Airforce getting the kills in? My understanding was the most modern fighter they had at the time was the PZL P.11, and that the retractable gear designs never reached production. I'll grant you, if you get into a turnfight with a PZL you can get yourself shot down pretty quickly, and the P.11 is around the same speed as the unloaded Stuka, but it's not something I would consider a reasonable match against a 109E.

Despite the fact that online IL2 servers consist mainly of fighter versus fighter combat its unlikely much of the air to air combat consisted of PZL P11 turn fighting Emils :D


Here you go, some details:

I am also against too much early war stuff like poland. What's so interesting about it? It's short and it's unbalanced. Even for offliners, what's the challange fighting against p11 when you have a 109? Or the other way around: what's so interesting in fighting a far supperior ennemy?
It would also be an extremly short campaign, both online and offline.
I think that, for these reasons, the few ressources should be put in some other fronts

You are an arrogant ignorant :rolleyes:.
"stomped into the dust... in record time", "It was like take off and die for the Polish and French pilots"... jesus, it was not a video game, talking like that about ppl dying defending their country in inferior machines is immature.

If it was take off and die, where did those luftwaffel loses came from LOL :rolleyes:?
Luftwaffel was performing like a piece of sh.t in these campaigns, when you take into account their technical and numerical superiority.
285 aircraft lost to all operational causes, poles 333, it's laughable :rolleyes:.

I doubt that anyone on this forum (nearmiss included) underestimates the bravery or effectiveness of the Polish pilots. I think he was just doubting the attractiveness of such a campaign to modern simmers! (correct me if I am wrong nearmiss)

One of the things that make the Polish pilots fight heroic was that they took off knowing that they would be facing a more numerous opponents in aircraft of a more 'modern' design.

To my mind this makes what they achieved even greater. Despite this, after their homeland was overrun they retained their fighting spirit and despite all odds made their way west and continued the fight from France and then England. Just at a time when England needed as many highly skilled and experienced pilots as possible.

There will be those among this community that will carry on about Germany never intending to go on with Operation Sea lion. Fortunately with the help of the Polish pilots carrying on the fight from England this argument was never put to the test.

well, in the VOW we had a Poland 1939 campaign.
The only fact that made it "ok" for the red pilots was that in the missions were not much Bf109 (we used the E-4/B because of its lower performance) and the weird DM of the P.11 :D
There were also two missions where the P.11s had to fight Slovakian B.534 .. funny fights.


BUT, i also cant imagine that a lot of players would have fun flying, or better fighting in, a P.11 (or the polish bombers) in CoD qualitiy...at least not online.

France 1940 would be something different - that was a close call. Both sides with almost equal equipment. But i doubt we will see a french campaighn from the official 1C side. Perhaps 3.party in the future.

Chronological releases seem kinda skewed through my eyes actually

If I've understood their plans it's going to be BOB, Korea, Moscow (, and then maybe the Med?) which seems better to my ears since the people screaming for Mustangs and early jets will get alittle something, then I will hopefully get my precious Butcher Bird with Moscow, and so on
covering plane types faster than a strictly chronological plan :P

Just think of it like this: we will get early RAF and LW first, then we'll get post and late-war U.S and North-Korean/Soviet types, then we jump back to early-mid LW and Soviet types, and from there we seem to be getting early-mid RAF(and maybe early U.S) and LW+Italy

Sounds very good to me, but then again I love crap-planes as much as I love the Mustang and the Fw190D-9 ;)

And if the Med will be the next theatre from MG, then what's after that from Galba?
the six-day war? the fall of Berlin? :)

If that's the case, he could do it in less arrogant way, with different words :rolleyes:.

The Korean add on was by a third party who licenced the engine. As far as I know this hasn't changed, Just that the some of the developers from the Korean product have Joined Oleg to get the engine and Cliffs of Dover released before they can complete thir work.

Cheers!

Yeah, I remember that, and that we were shown at least one update with pics of the Mustang and a few other Korea flyables, so I guess I just assumed that Korea will be out before Moscow, even if that might simply be wishful thinking :D

Luthier's latest comments suggest since joining Maddox Games his third party Korean project Galba addon in on the back burner for the foreseeable future. This suggests that he will probably working with Oleg on his next addon presumably the Med.

that is also my understanding... would be interesting to hear Saqsons opinion on that :)

Doubt it very much if we would ever see a Polish campaign, I remember reading a book about Rudolf Hess's trial where the Russians wanted him hanged for his part in the early stages of the war, his American lawyer pointed out that because of Germany's non aggression pact with USSR, and the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland that they were as guilty as Hess at the time. Hess ended up with life imprisonment instead.

As this game is billed as a great Patrotic war sim in Russia, I doubt we will ever see it offically, as like the swastika issue in some countries, there are parts of history that would rather be forgotten.

Just my 2 cents worth

ps my vote goes with the Med, Malta, Tobruk ect, hopefully with RAF carrier ops in the future.

Cheers Sauf