I'm really enjoying the Moscow campaign

[ShamrockOneFive]

Straight up, I thought the Battle of Stalingrad campaign was pretty decent but it felt stale after playing it for a short while. Things massively improved when the BoM aircraft started being added to it where appropriate and it gained a little variety when the custom built missions were added along with the late summer and autumn campaign for Stalingrad.

 

Right now, despite having access to all of the aircraft (not the unlocks), I'm focused on the I-16 and IL-2 and I'm having a blast. At first I wasn't a fan of the I-16 but it grows on you despite its inadequate firepower and slow top speed. Its a fun aircraft and the more you get to know it the more fun you can have with it. The Bf109s clearly have the advantage and yet if you can sucker them in to a turning fight then you can eventually get some good shots into an engine and cause them to crash or even on rare occasion light on fire.

 

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I'm feeling a tiny bit of the desperation that the defenders must have felt. The front line slowly pushing towards Moscow with the weather worsening and chances for even individual victories a little bleak.

 

Mission variety has been pretty good. I'm faced with the odd time when you intercept a solitary fighter-bomber (which my wingman promptly launched an unnecessary Taran attack! ) but by and large its been fun. Sometimes the odds are very much against you. The one intercept saw a group of 6 (or 7?) Heinkels escorted by a pair of expertly flown 109s and while my wingman was shot down, he did light up two of the bombers before succumbing. I made it out of that one in one piece by hiding in a dense cloud. Even had some interesting ones where a battle was already underway while the Pe-2s I was escorting entered the target area. It was a swarm of 109s and I-16s and the trio of Pe-2s throwing tracer fire everywhere.

 

 

Oh... and the visuals of the map have been stunning too. Especially with a early morning setup with the brown leaves on the trees and mist in the valleys and sun shining on the horizon illuminating the clouds. Stunning!

 

I'd still like to see AI planes talk a lot more (A LOT MORE) and I'd also like to see more variation of various kits and upgrades to other flights. You don't often see MiG-3s with gun pods for example.

 

Needless to say... I'm having fun! I know the campaign has some detractors but I'm having a blast with it and with all of the doom and gloom I'd like to offer an alternate perspective.

 

*Full disclosure I'm playing this on Normal. I'm not sure how well I'd fare with no icons.

 

Edited April 4, 2016 by ShamrockOneFive

[seafireliv]

I wish they had `what-if` possibilities like the Axis actually do managae to overrun Moscow. Then I would fight with the true desperation of not knowing if it might happen. Maybe they do?

 

I`ve always been a fan of the I16. To me it`s like the bullied mini of the ww2 aircraft world. the fact that it isn`t the easiest aircraft to fly has done nothing to stop me loving it- And its excellent guns! The amount of times I use to sucker 109 pilots into a turning fight and shoot them down when they thought they had a guaranteed win has been priceless.

 

Looking forward to it in the Campaign though it`s taking a while to show up.

[LLv24_Zami]

Good post ShamrockOneFive! My thoughts are pretty much same.

 

It`s been fun, campaign missions have been improved all the time from the release.

 

For example, I had really fun moments last night when I flew F-2 ground attack mission. I took off, raised my gear and suddenly I saw couple of planes coming in fast at 12 o`clock. I thought there were my escorts so flew calmly along and waited for my wingmen to catch up. When the incoming planes passed from the side a little higher than us, I took a quick glance at the leader and suddenly realized that they were MiG-3`s. I was really surprised  . I quickly ordered my wingmen to follow me so they don`t drop their bombs and start a dogfight and started to accelerate towards first WP. Luckily our real escorts took care of the MiG-3`s and our mission could continue normally. At the frontlines were a heavy air traffic from both sides and fierce fighting going on. We managed to get by that and towards our target but after a while I got shot down by AA mg. It was my own fault, flying too low and level over the road which was marked on the map as a enemy supply route. I was admiring the view and failed to take evasive action soon enough  .

 

I started flying the BoS campaign with normal settings and changed few months ago to the expert. I recommend to give it a try. When you don`t see the icons, the surprise factor rises considerably. And fun factor rises at the same pace. You get use to it after a while and now I can`t change back to the icons anymore.

[Finkeren]

I'm in the camp of "enjoying it" too.

 

I've long since accepted, that the IL-2 campaigns just isn't gonna be what I'd ideally want from a campaign/career mode (RoF comes closer to that) so now I can enjoy it for what it is.

 

To me, the campaign has so far offered greater variety and better balancing than either of the BoS campaigns (I understand that some players have had a different experience). 

 

Runs pretty damn smooth too.

[seafireliv]

I'm in the camp of "enjoying it" too.

 

I've long since accepted, that the IL-2 campaigns just isn't gonna be what I'd ideally want from a campaign/career mode (RoF comes closer to that) so now I can enjoy it for what it is.

 

To me, the campaign has so far offered greater variety and better balancing than either of the BoS campaigns (I understand that some players have had a different experience). 

 

Runs pretty damn smooth too.

There are certainly some things about the campaign I`m disappointed with. Lack of any real `character` of your pilot. Lack of AI commands. Lack of any real ranking system- You`re the boss all the time. I always loved starting from the lower rung and working up. Etc, etc. Dunno why these immersive aspects were left out.

[Finkeren]

There are certainly some things about the campaign I`m disappointed with. Lack of any real `character` of your pilot. Lack of AI commands. Lack of any real ranking system- You`re the boss all the time. I always loved starting from the lower rung and working up. Etc, etc. Dunno why these immersive aspects were left out.

 

That's why I said "I enjoy it for what it is". This is apparently the design choice the devs made, and we can then appreciate, that the beta BoM campaign is more enjoyable than the BoS campaign was at launch.

[216th_Lucas_From_Hell]

You can give commands to the AI, check the Orders section in the key bindings. One thing I did in 1946 when campaigns required me to start at highest rank: get a notebook, write down a date that matches the one you have and create a character. For example, Lieutenant Kozlov. You are not a squadron but flight leader, with some lousy rookies under your wing. Make it that every day you fly two missions. Write down the briefing, waypoints and then a debriefing. Progress onto the next chapter when you find fit, and adjust the date too.

 

I had a thrilling campaign flight when my two wingmen decided to go chase a Yak/109 furball. Seconds later two 109s and three 110s appeared. No way back now, I needed to fight. In the La-5, I approached this formation from their 2 o'clock. I feinted a turn away from them and the escorts bit the bait, then forced the engine and turned into the 110s. Coming from below, I hit one of them hard and it dropped bombs. After that I ran straight and level for a bit before pulling up, reversing and chasing the rest. Landed in one piece, shot down all three 110s and my distracted wingies showed up to handle the 109s.

[Jade_Monkey]

I think once you get over pre-concieved idea of what a campaign should be like, it's pretty decent.

 

Not its not a RPG type campaign, it focuses more on random events than characters. It's less personal but has more variety.

[Dakpilot]

There are certainly some things about the campaign I`m disappointed with. Lack of any real `character` of your pilot. Lack of AI commands. Lack of any real ranking system- You`re the boss all the time. I always loved starting from the lower rung and working up. Etc, etc. Dunno why these immersive aspects were left out.

 

Time and budget, it really is as simple as that, even before release the dev's referred to it as AQM, advanced quick mission generator, and used with that in mind it is good (AI quirks aside)

 

In RoF a Pilot Career campaign was made which their data showed was not used by enough people to have warranted the cost and dev time although very 'popular' and well received it was not a commercially viable success, especially as everyone later used PWCG in RoF anyway

 

Cheers Dakpilot

[DD_Arthur]

I think once you get over pre-concieved idea of what a campaign should be like, it's pretty decent.

 

Not its not a RPG type campaign, it focuses more on random events than characters. It's less personal but has more variety.

 

Agree.  Have flown half a dozen missions so far and have been really impressed.

[LLv24_Zami]

Btw, if here`s new guys looking for a more traditional campaign, you can use Warhamms excellent tool to create a pilot and fly stock missions using it. It doesn`t cover BoM yet but works for BoS campaign. Here it is: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/17397-check-out-il2-career-generator-ex-il2commander-campaign-russ/

[TP_Silk]

For me one of the most annoying things is that although you can give your wingmen orders, they seem to frequently ignore them if they 'see' an enemy aircraft or formation. This is especially annoying on escort missions where you want to stay with the aircraft you want to escort, but your wingmen seem to desert you the minute something shows up at extreme range.

 

Maybe they just got a case of "Oooooh, shiney!!"

[LLv24_Zami]

For me one of the most annoying things is that although you can give your wingmen orders, they seem to frequently ignore them if they 'see' an enemy aircraft or formation. This is especially annoying on escort missions where you want to stay with the aircraft you want to escort, but your wingmen seem to desert you the minute something shows up at extreme range.

 

Maybe they just got a case of "Oooooh, shiney!!"

You are right, that is annoying. Sometimes follow me command works, usually no. AI needs more work but the bright side is that it has gotten many updates lately. Few issues remain though, hopefully team can resolve those in near future.

[Brano]

I'm in the camp of "enjoying it" too.

 

I've long since accepted, that the IL-2 campaigns just isn't gonna be what I'd ideally want from a campaign/career mode (RoF comes closer to that) so now I can enjoy it for what it is.

 

Same here. If there is no way to change things,there is no need to bother. Only thing I would really appreciate to have is possibility to fly this AQMB as cooperative with few friends. That would be awsome 

[DeafBee]

Straight up, I thought the Battle of Stalingrad campaign was pretty decent but it felt stale after playing it for a short while. Things massively improved when the BoM aircraft started being added to it where appropriate and it gained a little variety when the custom built missions were added along with the late summer and autumn campaign for Stalingrad.

 

Right now, despite having access to all of the aircraft (not the unlocks), I'm focused on the I-16 and IL-2 and I'm having a blast. At first I wasn't a fan of the I-16 but it grows on you despite its inadequate firepower and slow top speed. Its a fun aircraft and the more you get to know it the more fun you can have with it. The Bf109s clearly have the advantage and yet if you can sucker them in to a turning fight then you can eventually get some good shots into an engine and cause them to crash or even on rare occasion light on fire.

 

 

 

I'm feeling a tiny bit of the desperation that the defenders must have felt. The front line slowly pushing towards Moscow with the weather worsening and chances for even individual victories a little bleak.

 

Mission variety has been pretty good. I'm faced with the odd time when you intercept a solitary fighter-bomber (which my wingman promptly launched an unnecessary Taran attack! ) but by and large its been fun. Sometimes the odds are very much against you. The one intercept saw a group of 6 (or 7?) Heinkels escorted by a pair of expertly flown 109s and while my wingman was shot down, he did light up two of the bombers before succumbing. I made it out of that one in one piece by hiding in a dense cloud. Even had some interesting ones where a battle was already underway while the Pe-2s I was escorting entered the target area. It was a swarm of 109s and I-16s and the trio of Pe-2s throwing tracer fire everywhere.

 

 

Oh... and the visuals of the map have been stunning too. Especially with a early morning setup with the brown leaves on the trees and mist in the valleys and sun shining on the horizon illuminating the clouds. Stunning!

 

I'd still like to see AI planes talk a lot more (A LOT MORE) and I'd also like to see more variation of various kits and upgrades to other flights. You don't often see MiG-3s with gun pods for example.

 

Needless to say... I'm having fun! I know the campaign has some detractors but I'm having a blast with it and with all of the doom and gloom I'd like to offer an alternate perspective.

 

*Full disclosure I'm playing this on Normal. I'm not sure how well I'd fare with no icons.

 

 

I feel the same about the I-16. Recently I have been enjoying this great little plane in the BOM campaign, but also online. As I believe Finkeren stated in another tread, it can with boost accelerate very fast.    

[Trinkof]

I like the campaign also weather and Moscow map is gorgeous and I had often mission flying under an overcast, with sun rising and morning fog.... Awesome moments. Mission seem also more dynamic and Frontline on the ground more "active"

 

A shame we do not have more cloudy morning or evening g mission in MP as the light can be so fabulous and scenic...

[Brano]

I love low overcast. When after take-off in ishak I climb thru clouds and suddenly there is sun and wonderful layer of "cotton field". As I usually pull the shorter side of rope, it's good to have somewhere to hide

[Trooper117]

Yes it's a nice effect

 

Have to say though, I've only flown the IL2 on the new campaign, so far being killed on every mission, very frustrating

I'm flying on expert setting on level 10... maybe it's time I had a go in another aircraft...

[Brano]

You ruin the VVS statistics. You should die on average at 8th or 9th mission   

The problem I see from begining with AI radio communication/orders,that you,as a flight leader,cant divide your group into 2 parts. One supressing AAA and second focusing on primary target. Although such tactics were developed only in mid 1942. In 1941,there was no tactics at all.Order from Commisar of Defence to develop proper exploitation of sturmoviks in combat came 2 days before Barbarossa begun. Sturmoviks flew without fighter cover in small groups of 3-5. They could consider themselves lucky if 1-2 fighters were asigned for escort.

[Trooper117]

Yes, lack of fighter cover is telling... every mission there are F4's creaming my whole flight at the action point. Plus no fighter cover of course.

[Jade_Monkey]

I have to say that the ratio of friendlies and foes is really low, finding myself outnumbered most of the time i fly the campaign.

Maybe it needs a tiny bit of rebalancing.

[ShamrockOneFive]

Yes, lack of fighter cover is telling... every mission there are F4's creaming my whole flight at the action point. Plus no fighter cover of course.

 

Sounds unlucky! I've flown about 5 IL-2 runs so far and I've had fighter escort each time.

 

I have to say that the ratio of friendlies and foes is really low, finding myself outnumbered most of the time i fly the campaign.

Maybe it needs a tiny bit of rebalancing.

 

It's a point for sure. I'm finding myself outnumbered most of the time flying for the Russian side anyways - I haven't tried the German side yet. I don't mind it too much but it can wear on you sometimes.

[dhillr]

I gotta try BOS/BOM campaign with different perspective some day. Thanks for the nice post. 

[[DBS]Prody]

if you fly the Ju88 you will get the exact opposite feeling , i wasn't touched by any enemy bullet for the entire first chapter , they seem to have their own fight with the escorts, very rarely my gunners fired at some one - flying on Expert with level 10 pilot .

[SwallowFire]

It would be nice if you could tell me what is the difference between BOS/BOM campaign because i havent bought BOM yet. In my opinion BOS campaign is quite boring because the mission pattern is so limited and I easily got bored on the way of unlocking. Did devs add more variety in BOM campaign?

[Jade_Monkey]

if you fly the Ju88 you will get the exact opposite feeling , i wasn't touched by any enemy bullet for the entire first chapter , they seem to have their own fight with the escorts, very rarely my gunners fired at some one - flying on Expert with level 10 pilot .

Agreed. Its mostly when i fly mig3 and p40.

[ShamrockOneFive]

It would be nice if you could tell me what is the difference between BOS/BOM campaign because i havent bought BOM yet. In my opinion BOS campaign is quite boring because the mission pattern is so limited and I easily got bored on the way of unlocking. Did devs add more variety in BOM campaign?

 

Did you play the summer/autumn version of the BoS campaign? Those were already an improvement in structure than BoS was like originally. In-fact I find the BoS campaign on the whole to be much more interesting now than at release as there are more variations on what is going on and a simple thing of running into a greater variety of aircraft. Take bomber intercepts. In BoS at launch you knew it would be a Ju87 or He111 escorted by some 109s. Now you might see some Bf109E-7s in Jabo configuration being escorted by MC.202s which changes the way you would approach an intercept.

 

The BoM missions are slight better than the best of the BoS campaign missions (now). There is more variety and more randomness IMHO. I was on an escort run with some IL-2s and we ended up running into a furball right over the target area with 109s escorting 110s being intercepted by a flight of I-16s plus the I-16 flight I was flying.

 

There are still boring missions with not a lot of activity. But I feel that's accurate in its own way as not every mission should be an epic slugmatch.

[LLv24_Zami]

Warhamm`s Career Generator now supports BoM campaign: http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/17397-check-out-il2-career-generator-ex-il2commander-campaign-russ/?p=346527

[Brano]

I do manual reports after each mission into my notebook. On real paper with real pen

Yesterday I started P-40 "career". And even this plane is not BoM relevant ( first E models started to appear within VVS in April 42) I took it in terms of role-playing as PVO campaign. I do only intercept missions. Out of six missions flown,I've been shot down twice,but managed to bail out or ditch. So far 5 He-111 and 2 fridrichs on my kill list. Not bad at all :D

[SwallowFire]

 

 

The BoM missions are slight better than the best of the BoS campaign missions (now). There is more variety and more randomness IMHO.

Thanks for you information Shamrock. I might consider buying BoM when it is on discount.  

[Finkeren]

It's really strange to me, that some people seem to have such a radical different experience with the campaign from my own. I'm well on my way to hitting lvl 11, and I simply don't feel the odds are draconian. 

 

So far, I have flown at most 2 or 3 missions, where the the odds were heavily against me. In the heat of combat numbers of enemies are hard to determine exactly, but I seldom get the feeling of being outnumbered, and except when flying the P-40 I don't generally find my entire flight wiped out by the end of the mission.

 

On average, my estimate of mission balancing I experience is someting like this:

 

Escort: Own flight 2 - 4, bomber/attack flight 3 - 6, opposition 0 - 6 (not all at once)

 

Intercept: Own flight 2 - 4, friendly fighters in the area 0-4, opposing bomber/attack flight 1 - 6, opposing escort 0 - 4 (no escort about half the time, very seldom a full flight)

 

Ground attack: Own flight 2 - 4, escort 2 - 4 (I have yet to fly one with no escort), opposition 0 - 4 (about half the time I see no enemies)

 

Ground support: Own flight 2 - 4, escort 2 - 4, opposition 0 - 2 (far majority of missions I meet no enemies over the target)

 

Bombing: Own flight 3 - 6, escort 0 - 4 (have flown 1 mission with no escort so far) opposition 0 - 4 (no opposition 1/3 of the time)

 

Most of the missions were flown for the VVS, but the Luftwaffe ones didn't feel very different (apart from the fact, that we were flying better aircraft)

[Dakpilot]

I think it's a random problem   at level 11? I had three ground attack missions in a row with a full escort and encountered no enemy aircraft, it was actually quite relaxing and fun rather than boring, also always waiting for someone to turn up kept (a tiny) bit of tension

 

**edit**   this was in BoS recently

 

I think random can be good and bad lol

 

Cheers Dakpilot

Edited April 5, 2016 by Dakpilot

[[CPT]Pike*HarryM]

I had a kind of funny one the other day in the JU-88. Arty Strike, so I take 4 500KG, 2 other planes in the group (3 total). F4s for escort. #3 refuses to take off. Hmm. On the way to the target my escorts peel off to engage some bandits. When getting closer to the target, I use the bombsite to scope out the area (not to level bomb, am going to shallow dive bomb). There is some cloud cover. As I watch, 2 planes fall out of the clouds and smash to the ground near the target, LOL. This turns out to be 2 of the P-40s who are giving cover over the area that collided, the 2 remaining planes shoot me up pretty badly (since my escort was MIA). As I come in for a crash landing just barely on the friendly side of lines I get the "Start Landing Approach" message. I bail too low and die, but get the "finish mission" option. An altogether odd mission. 

[[CPT]milopugdog]

My only issue is micro-stuttering when the large mini map is open by large amounts of aircraft.

[LLv24_Zami]

HarryM, AI P-40 crashes to the ground very often when diving. I was going to make a bug report about it.

[[CPT]Pike*HarryM]

In the replay it was the leader out front, and the other 3 bunched up a ways behind him, and 2 collided when turning to stay with him, so looks more like an AI (formation) bug, but I do think the AI pilots have a bad time controlling the P-40. 

[LLv24_Zami]

In the replay it was the leader out front, and the other 3 bunched up a ways behind him,

and 2 collided when turning to stay with him, so looks more like an AI (formation) bug, but I do think the AI pilots have a bad time

controlling the P-40.

Well that's normal, AI planes collide sometimes but collisions happen in real life so not so much of a problem.

 

But I have now witnessed many times P-40 just dive to the ground in BoM. It can be also seen in debrief map, there is no cause displayed for their destruction.

Bf-109 AI had same problems at early BoS campaign.

[seafireliv]

I do like the Campaign `for what it is` as said. I do like the dynamic `randomness`, I just wish they put a little more effort into putting `you` in the game.

 

I have seen some strange things though, like we were sent to intercept enemy bombers and came across one He111 which seemed a bit bizarre. Send 1 He111? I know the Germans were confident on approaching Stalingrad, but not THAT confident! maybe the others got delayed? Never saw any more bombers that mission.

 

The wingmen do seem to follow orders when they feel like it which can be frustrating at times. Perhaps it is done that way to make it `feel` more Human?  Also my Wingmen have never obeyed the order to return to base- Now that`s directly disobeying orders!

 

Also, you don`t get much info on the state of the Wingmen in a dogfight, this is especially important when playing on no icon settings. I would normally know from a distance who to attack when looking at two dots if my Wingmen would called for help. Now he`ll ony speak if wounded.

 

I hope they add more to this eventually.

[ShamrockOneFive]

The wingmen and the radio control stuff is probably the weakest area of the game right now. They don't really use flight tactics at all and they rarely listen to you when you issue orders. I'm not sure why that all is but it can be frustrating.

 

The single bomber thing looks a bit weird on the face of it but then I've read reports where pilots would come across a singular plane. Bombers were sometimes used as mail/cargo delivery or sometimes I'm imagining the aircraft as something like a photo recce Ju86P. That first one falls a little flat when they fly into enemy territory... That kind of only 1 plane attacking a target thing should be a rarer occurrence than it is.

[=362nd_FS=Hiromachi]

I'd rather say that the major issue is complete inflexibility of mission ending. You have to reach a fixed area (or escort aircraft to given place) and what happened during the mission doesn't really matter. I just had a very satisfying and emotional flight in P-40 when I had to intercept 8-10 Ju-88s (I swear, those things can take a lot more punishment than He-111 and those MG-81s create a lot bigger threat than anything He-111 had) escorted by couple 109 F-2s which resulted in very disappointing ending.

I managed to bring down 5 bombers, but in process my pilot was slightly wounded and what is more oil system was disabled (I dunno, but it always happens when P-40 gets damaged) and there was absolutely no way to reach the exit point 30 miles away.

 

Game does not provide any secondary/emergency airfields you can land to complete the mission, even though there are much closer ones. I still managed to fly ~10 miles and found a decent field near the front, engine in process stopped but with a bit of flaps I could glide and put the thing on the ground as gently as possible. 

 

So all in all with little help of wingmen I managed to disrupt bombers attack on the Skhodnya, shot down 5 bombers and damaged one more, brought the aircraft back to Alabusheva, without the engine and with wounded pilot. I was credited 0 points and mission was considered failure despite all this. It's quite unfair and unrealistic, normally I believe I'd receive a medal or possibly a citation. And at least a month in field hospital to spend with nice nurses