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| IL-2 Sturmovik The famous combat flight simulator. |
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#2
03-20-2008, 03:45 PM
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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 
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#3
03-22-2008, 03:29 PM
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Quote:
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 Last edited by Former_Older; 03-22-2008 at 03:33 PM.
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#4
03-22-2008, 03:39 PM
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Quote:
__________________
 Personally speaking, the P-40 could contend on an equal footing with all the types of Messerschmitts, almost to the end of 1943. ~Nikolay Gerasimovitch Golodnikov
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#5
03-22-2008, 03:48 PM
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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
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#6
03-22-2008, 03:57 PM
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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
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#7
03-22-2008, 04:11 PM
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Hi Terry!
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#8
03-22-2008, 04:15 PM
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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
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