Pacific Fighters Bombed - inadequate maps

[KG26_Alpha]

Well it was voted for.

I voted for North Africa

[nearmiss]

Originally Posted by *Buzzsaw*

Salute

PACIFIC FIGHTERS was a valiant attempt, but in my opinion it suffered from two central mistakes:

1) The maps should have been drawn at 1/2 scale. That is, 1/2 real size. The Pacific is too big to map in real scale. Look at the New Guinea map as an example. It is huge, but it still does not include all of the critical areas which were fought over during this campaign. No Rabaul, no Guadalcanal, no slot.

The game could have had a code mod to double the rate of gas consumption to make ranges realistic in these 1/2 scale maps.

2) The designers tried to cover too large a set of campaigns and ended up covering none of them well enough. Either more design time, (and money) was required, or the designers needed to be realistic and focus on fewer campaigns. For my money, they should have dropped Pearl Harbour, which was is a one shot deal, one mission map for a campaign. Too much work for no return. Narrow the game down to five campaigns: Solomons/New Guinea, Saipan, Phillipines, Burma and Okinawa. (with southern Japan included in the Okinawa map) With the extra time they saved, they should have built more ship models. Not having ships like Yamato, or the American Battleships was a big ommission.

But this discussion is so much hot air anyway, we'll have to live with PF for a LONG time. I don't think we'll see another Pacific Flight Sim for a while.

Good post

[ElAurens]

Two years ago called and wants it's thread back.

[6S.Maraz]

About map size, the modding community has shown that big maps (up to 800 km large) are possible in IL-2, if only there are not many ground objects. So a map with few islands and hundreds of km of sea could have been done, and Oleg surely knew that.

I believe that if such maps weren't done, it was for playability reasons. Except for few die-hard simmers, few players would have liked a 3 hours flight to their target. Look, for some players even a 20 minute flight is "boring" if they cannot shoot at someone!

So I don't think that Oleg should be criticized about map size in PF. Sure, some important places like Rabaul, Philippines, were left out. But I think we could have had that as add-on maps, if only the greed of some US companies (that still wanted to make money from 60-70 years old projects) had not killed PF.

Maraz

[Friendly_flyer]

It's possible to fly a decent bomber mission over water on the Gulf of Finland map.

[tater]

Greed? How about for lack of a copy editor or competent lawyer.

[robtek]

@tater
its all about to satisfy the shareholder in our capitalism.
the companys would have lost nothing if they had said: "ok, we allow you to use the names for this game only! next time ask beforehand."

[tater]

Not true, robtek. The entire thing was predicated by the use of the company name on the box with no copyright/attribution, IMO. A company is required to defend its name. The box of course has a global copyright on it saying that everything belongs to ubi/1c/whatever (don't have my box in front of me, it's at home). Without the note that NG is property of NG, they are in fact saying on the box that THEY own the NG name.

Slam dunk, taken to court, they'd have to recall the product, pay damages, etc.

Had the PF box not had NG's name on it (NOT the plane names), nothing would have happened. Since they had ubi over a barrel on that, they could demand anything they wanted and get it. You can argue with that, certainly, but it was entirely predicated on the lack of a decent copy editor and legal team to vet the box art (any company as big as ubi should have run the box past editors and lawyers as SOP).

Note that I'm not trying to be an apologist for NG, but there are two corporate entities here, and only one gets the flak on the boards for "greed." You could make a similar argument for being too greedy to pay a few hundred bucks to have the art checked.

[nearmiss]

I found the AAA site

http://allaircraftarcade.com/forum/index.php

I dl the engine and weapon sounds mod, and the two map mods.

There is just so much going on and the mod makers are having a field day.

More power to them.

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I think their map mods are pretty good, but they are mostly color improvements. Most of the maps still need more work.

Trees do not grow in Salt water. The idea of all the trees is great, but taking trees beyond the shoreline into salt water should not be.

The Pacific Islands were covered in Jungle.

Roads and tracks were barely seeable from the air, because of trees and foliage.

Trees often extended very close to beaches, often overhanging waters edge.

Trees and greenery was everywhere, especially Pacific Islands, mostly jungle.

Lakes, rivers and streams should have trees along waters edge borders.

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The water that runs from the oceans inland should not end in a nice soft arc, they need to end in sharp jagged narrow ends or tentacled ends.

You will always see trees growing along the waters edge of any body of water, this is never the case in IL2 maps. Trees love to grow beside fresh water and border all lakes, rivers and streams all over the world.

There are large open spaces of land in IL2 maps bordering the edges of all rivers and streams, which is just not the case. There are certainly some open spaces around such areas, but nothing like in IL2 maps.

There are large open spaces on both sides of all roads and tracks. I always hated this because finding the ground enemy was always too easy and the combat engagements just seemed stupid.

The IL2 maps/battlefields are just laid out in perfect view for attacking aircraft to find and destroy ground targets.

It would be great to have partially concealed roads and tracks making it hard to find the enemy, and conversely the enemy could hide. Much more realistic.

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Don't get me wrong I like what has and is being done. The current map mods are mostly a green up or winterize some maps. Maps is definitely the big bug-a-boo for the Pacific war theatre. The maps are nowhere near as good as they can be at this point. Burma looks pretty good but you still have the same kind of issues with trees not bordering water, streams, rivers, roads and tracks.

IL2 maps are just too neat ---

[Aviar]

"Wow! Oleg has really opened up things."

You must be joking. I'm sure you know that those are all illegal hacks?

Aviar