Some new official info from ubi forums

[zauii]

Originally Posted by fireflyerz

Yawn...

Trying hard to show your superior careface..? Come on you can do better than that chippy.

[fireflyerz]

"chippy" ? , carpenter ?....I think not Doogle.

[Gribbers]

Q1. Paintschemes only - seems reasonable to me

Q2. 2 campaigns - that's one more than I thought

Q3. 21 bombers in formation - way more than I could ever shoot down (or get near) unless I had all setting on Easy - and can be ramped up based on comp spec - seems reasonable

Q4. Airfields are 'alive' - excellent, sounds awesome and will make large improvement on IL2 where I thought airfields were bland and lifeless

Q5. No animated charaters - Good, this is a flight sim, not an RPG

Q6. We get kill markings on some fighters - excellent

All these points seem like good news and improvements on the original IL2. Along with almost all the vids and screens I've seen so far!

I don't think I'll be making any negative comments about the game until the it's installed and I've had at least a couple of hours gameplay in the campaigns.

....unless I can't install the game for some reason...then I'll be making comments alright

[Blackdog_kt]

I think this polarization is getting old. It's neither the criticism nor the admiration that's annoying, that's natural, expected and should be expressed. It's the way some people go about expressing it, thinking they are the holders of the universal truth and turning everything into a black and white discussion: "it will be awful", "no it won't, it will be the second coming of baby Jesus", "you fanboy!", "you hater!"

My personal opinion? It won't be bad, it won't be perfect, it will be balanced in its content and with today's medium spec PCs in mind, but will also give you the tools to do more if you have the hardware.

Also, how about some perspective? We are comparing a sim in its infancy with other sims that have already been running for a few years, that is, the lifetimes of each one are different and this skews the comparisons because in a constantly updated product bigger lifetime=more development time in total.

You can't compare today's CoD with today's IL2 or today's RoF because of the above reason and you can't compare today's IL2 and RoF with the CoD of 2-5 years in the future because we don't have time machines.

What we can do is compare sims at similar points during their life and within the content of that time.
So let's take a look at that:

CoD on release:
Around 12 flyables
A lot of AI units (air, sea and ground)
Mission builder which keeps the old interface to help us churn out missions fast, along with some improvements
Scripted campaigns
Various enhancements over what is a well known previous series from a well known developer team, which makes it easy to quantify the changes and gives an idea of what to expect (FM/DM, engine management, AI, graphics and sounds,etc)
Very popular subject, even if done in the past by many others

IL2 on release (the original in 2001):
A good amount of flyables (don't remember the exact number, i think it was 7-8 main types per side if we don't count the sub-variants)
Sufficient number of AI units
Mission builder which at the time was totally non-intuitive and totally different from the kind of interface one would expect
Scripted campaigns
Totally unkown product/developer at that time
Completely unknown subject matter (eastern front)

RoF on release (the original, not the Iron Cross Edition relaunch):
Four flyables
Four AI aircraft, plus a couple of each type of ground unit per side
Capable mission builder which at the time of release nobody could get around, lack of documentation for mission builder
Campaign was a random string of missions downloaded from a master server where the player's flight of 5 would invariably meet an enemy flight of 2-3 and if you strayed off the path a bit you might trigger a recon 2-seater, its duration was not selectable and it would often give unrealistic and non-historical encounters, especially after the add-on DLC planes were released, for example: you are flying a Nieuport 17 in late 1917 and you meet up with some Fokker DVIIs
Developer known from some work in the IL2 community (i think they made DF server admin tools for IL2), but other than that nobody knew much of them
Known subject but niche-within-a-niche in a way (everyone knows about WWI but most people fly WWII or jets)


See what i just did there? I used common sense.
So my mystical arcane powers of logical deduction, granted to me after i sacrificed a trainload's worth of virgins (what? it's obvious such powers are in short supply around here!), tell me that if IL2 and RoF are still going, then CoD will do at least just as well, if not better

[addman]

Originally Posted by Gribbers

Q1. Paintschemes only - seems reasonable to me

Q2. 2 campaigns - that's one more than I thought

Q3. 21 bombers in formation - way more than I could ever shoot down (or get near) unless I had all setting on Easy - and can be ramped up based on comp spec - seems reasonable

Q4. Airfields are 'alive' - excellent, sounds awesome and will make large improvement on IL2 where I thought airfields were bland and lifeless

Q5. No animated charaters - Good, this is a flight sim, not an RPG

Q6. We get kill markings on some fighters - excellent

All these points seem like good news and improvements on the original IL2. Along with almost all the vids and screens I've seen so far!

I don't think I'll be making any negative comments about the game until the it's installed and I've had at least a couple of hours gameplay in the campaigns.

....unless I can't install the game for some reason...then I'll be making comments alright

Nice example on how to look at something from more than one perspective.

With regards to the massive bomber formations I'd like to add that my rig back in 2001 (Athlon 900Mhz, GF2MX, 512MB RAM) couldn't run at a decent frame rate with lots of planes at the same time in original IL-2. Yes there have been massive hardware advances the last few years but the complexity of games goes 1:1 with this. Ok, you could have hundreds of planes at the same time in CoD but what do you trade trade it for? simplified engine complexity? simplified A.I? Cuz you're gonna have to trade something away. Hardware is evolving and so are games with it and thank God for that, I don't want to play tetris on my triple-core rig.

[addman]

Blackdog_k: Wish I'd seen your post before I wrote mine, didn't have to write mine LOL!

+1 1/2

[BadAim]

LOL, Blackdog is trying to use logic around here, again.......Silly lad.

[ECV56_Guevara]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

What we can do is compare sims at similar points during their life and within the content of that time.
So let's take a look at that:

CoD on release:
Around 12 flyables
A lot of AI units (air, sea and ground)
Mission builder which keeps the old interface to help us churn out missions fast, along with some improvements
Scripted campaigns
Various enhancements over what is a well known previous series from a well known developer team, which makes it easy to quantify the changes and gives an idea of what to expect (FM/DM, engine management, AI, graphics and sounds,etc)
Very popular subject, even if done in the past by many others

IL2 on release (the original in 2001):
A good amount of flyables (don't remember the exact number, i think it was 7-8 main types per side if we don't count the sub-variants)
Sufficient number of AI units
Mission builder which at the time was totally non-intuitive and totally different from the kind of interface one would expect
Scripted campaigns
Totally unkown product/developer at that time
Completely unknown subject matter (eastern front)

RoF on release (the original, not the Iron Cross Edition relaunch):
Four flyables
Four AI aircraft, plus a couple of each type of ground unit per side
Capable mission builder which at the time of release nobody could get around, lack of documentation for mission builder
Campaign was a random string of missions downloaded from a master server where the player's flight of 5 would invariably meet an enemy flight of 2-3 and if you strayed off the path a bit you might trigger a recon 2-seater, its duration was not selectable and it would often give unrealistic and non-historical encounters, especially after the add-on DLC planes were released, for example: you are flying a Nieuport 17 in late 1917 and you meet up with some Fokker DVIIs
Developer known from some work in the IL2 community (i think they made DF server admin tools for IL2), but other than that nobody knew much of them
Known subject but niche-within-a-niche in a way (everyone knows about WWI but most people fly WWII or jets)


See what i just did there? I used common sense.
So my mystical arcane powers of logical deduction, granted to me after i sacrificed a trainload's worth of virgins (what? it's obvious such powers are in short supply around here!), tell me that if IL2 and RoF are still going, then CoD will do at least just as well, if not better

Best post in decades.
CoD potential is what we have to look at. I am anxious about release. But more anxious thinking of what will be CoD in a year or two. Imagine: the desert, nigthfigthers vs. nigthbombers, early ww2 in Europe or even SCW, all things we miss in il-2 will be there, waiting around the corner. We gonna love this sim.

[Tacoma74]

Originally Posted by ECV56_Guevara

Best post in decades.
CoD potential is what we have to look at. I am anxious about release. But more anxious thinking of what will be CoD in a year or two. Imagine: the desert, nigthfigthers vs. nigthbombers, early ww2 in Europe or even SCW, all things we miss in il-2 will be there, waiting around the corner. We gonna love this sim.

Yes, but that takes a lot of patience. Which sadly I'm realizing not many people have at this point. It's not something that happens overnight. More than likely we won't get another installment for a couple years, but until then we will get plenty of patches of coarse. Constant improvement is what made the original IL-2 what it is today, and I expect CoD to be the same way. CoD is still in it's baby shoes, and will be for awhile yet. But rest assured, it's gunna be awesome!

So I guess on the 128 player servers we have to make sure only 20 people take a bomber. Otherwise its going to stutter like the King. Im not overly concerned in truth, they did the best they could with an old game engine, it could run a little better if they ever do fix DX11. At least now we know why they kept IL2 in the title because it will appear like a small upgrade to the original.
Maybe they might reduce the price of the initial title by 50% seeing as we are only getting half the game.