A very short Wish list for Perfection

[oho]

Maybe you can make it possible: 

1. Customize Numbers of Ground Units somehow.

2. Make Escorting fighters Stay above or Behind the Bombers. I never encountered Bombers when I Chose the 100 % escort. I was always attacked by fighters before.

3. Moving target Ground Objekts in  Columns on Roads 

4. Callsigns.

5. Heavy Bombers follow their waypoints.

 

Then it  would be absolutely perfect for me. ? 

A change regarding calculating numbers of available Aircraft is great, but for imergence and the flying expirience itself Not the top Priority in my opinion.  Not meant as critic, you are still the greatest, Patrick!

Edited June 2, 2018 by oho

[PatrickAWlson]

1. I can look into additional customization beyond low/medium/high.

2. The escorting fighters for AI flights will spawn above the flight they are escorting.  Player escorts use the "Cover" MCU and are therefore tied to the in game AI.

3. Vehicles move on roads.  Trains move. Units move in battles.  vehicles are stationary if you are attacking a depo or something similar.

4. Noted.

5. Ummm ... they don't?

[Yogiflight]

On 6/2/2018 at 11:34 AM, oho said:

5. Heavy Bombers follow their waypoints.

 

1 hour ago, PatrickAWlson said:

5. Ummm ... they don't?

From my experience, they do, but not the waypoints you can see on the in game map, those don't fit exactly to any flight path. They follow the waypoints of the briefing map in PWCG between rendezvous point and egress point. From there on they head to their base, with the player flight escorting them. Unfortunately this ends in the player flight circling above the bombers, that are circling above their airfield. So I always fly back to my base alone.

[PatrickAWlson]

OK - the escort is supposed to discontinue after the bombers cross back over lines.  Note taken.

[oho]

Great Patrick,

I just encountered fighters and escorted Bombers in the last missions, so that was bad luck before I guess.

As I fly fighter campaigns I only had  around 10 ground attack missions but I never had to attack objects, that moved along a road or moving trains. Maybe it was just bad luck or it has to do with fighter campaign?

The escort missions generate decent flight paths in the Mission briefing. When I start them, in the In-game-map I see only short white flight paths to propably the egress Point (mostly a place on my side of the front line) with the Bombers circling there. Maybe also bad luck, but I can repeat the error. Me109 campaign Stalingrad May 1942, JG52 / 1 (northern part of the map).

What I meant initialy was the stick-to-the-flightplan behaviour (values 1, 2, 3) that you quoted in another post.  So heavy Bombers should have a high value to stick to the flightplan and medium planes a medium value.

 

 

Edited June 4, 2018 by oho

[Yogiflight]

41 minutes ago, oho said:

The escort missions generate decent flight paths in the Mission briefing. When I start them, in the In-game-map I see only short white flight paths to propably the egress Point (mostly a place on my side of the front line) with the Bombers circling there. Maybe also bad luck, but I can repeat the error. Me109 campaign Stalingrad May 1942, JG52 / 1 (northern part of the map).

What I meant initialy was the stick-to-the-flightplan behaviour (values 1, 2, 3) that you quoted in another post.  So heavy Bombers should have a high value to stick to the flightplan and medium planes a medium value.

As I posted above, the in game map never shows you the correct flight path. Best example are ground attack missions, where the flight path of the in game map never leads you to your target. And the same is with escort missions. I was yesterday flying an escort mission with FW190 on the Stalingrad map and after fighting the russian fighters, I only found the bombers and my squadmates, as I roughly remembered, where they were the target of the bombers was located. The in game map doesn't help you there.

Another question would be, why the bombers never attack any target. So far they just fly to their target and RTB, without dropping their bombs. But I suppose, this has to do with the game logic, as in intercept missions in the new career mode, the enemy bombers never drop bombs, too.

[sevenless]

Hi Patrick,

 

excellent app. Congrats! I enjoy to fly a fighter career from 1942 - 1943 with FW 190 A3 and A5 with I./JG51. Much fun so far.

 

One little detail for improvement I found is abbreviations of german ranks. I was serving in german army 30 years ago, so I should know ?

 

Major = Maj.

Hauptmann = Hptm.

Oberleutnant = OLt.

Leutnant = Lt.

Oberfeldwebel = OFw.

Feldwebel = Fw.

 

Maybe you can fix that for your next update. Keep up the good work!

 

best regards

Edited June 6, 2018 by sevenless

[PatrickAWlson]

Changes made.  I did not have OFw modeled, - just Fw.  I changed it to model OFw and not Fw, this way everything is continuous.  I max out at five ranks in PWCG, so modeling both Fw and OFw   would require more code changes.

 

[oho]

Did you do something from my list with 4.0? Just currious.

[PatrickAWlson]

The actionable items on the original list are 1 (more detailed ground unit config)  and 4 (call signs).   Haven't made any changes in those areas yet.  Call signs are a distinct probability in the near future.  More detailed ground config would have to be discussed in more detail as to what is desired and what can be done.

Edited July 4, 2018 by PatrickAWlson

[CCIP]

One suggestion I have in regard to escorts:

 

If the player is playing a bomber/attack career, would it be possible to list the presence/absence of escorts for the mission in the briefing?

 

One thing that would confuse me in planning strikes was not knowing whether I'd have any fighter cover until I was well under way to target - unless I set escorts to 100%, but that almost felt like 'cheating' in certain situations. I think if the briefing could list the escort flight present, that would be handy

 

And for a more advanced idea - in line with the current additions to pilot/aircraft availability, it'd be neat if it was possible for the player to request an escort when planning a mission (and then having that request approved/denied, taking available units into account).

[PatrickAWlson]

The player should always be escorted.  AI flights maybe, maybe not.

[CCIP]

Ah I see, thanks!

Is this true of both bomber and attack missions? I can't remember an escort on about half of my missions flying the IL-2 under 3.5 recently, although I may have simply failed to rendezvous with them!

[PatrickAWlson]

Yes.  They should be waiting for you at a waypoint shortly after you take off - I think the ingress WP.  They are not right over the airfield.  I can/should note that waypoint in the briefing.

[CCIP]

Thank you! I'll keep that in mind now (that was my first attack career) - I was playing without any map icons, so chances are I just passed too far from the ingress point to "attach" the escort. I'll be more careful about it next time

 

Just out of curiosity - will crew/aircraft availability changes  post 4.0 make it possible for escort to be cancelled if there aren't enough fighters/pilots? 

Edited July 7, 2018 by CCIP

[PatrickAWlson]

19 hours ago, CCIP said:

Thank you! I'll keep that in mind now (that was my first attack career) - I was playing without any map icons, so chances are I just passed too far from the ingress point to "attach" the escort. I'll be more careful about it next time

 

Just out of curiosity - will crew/aircraft availability changes  post 4.0 make it possible for escort to be cancelled if there aren't enough fighters/pilots? 

Hadn't thought of that but it is a natural outcome.

[CCIP]

Also, just pitching in a thought re: #1 (ground unit customization) - I think it'd be neat to be able to customize the type, formation, and chance of appearance of certain ground units. I know it's kind of limited by IL-2's available object set, but one of my pet peeves that the game falls into is the myth of the Wehrmacht as a heavily mechanized and motorized force on the Eastern Front during this period, when in fact it was overwhelmingly an infantry-centric army that relied mainly on horse transport. Obviously the ground objects limit what can be done right now, but I'd love to be able to tweak around and make all those panzer formations and trucks a bit more sparse on the battlefield

[oho]

The customization I had in mind was mainly for the quantity like number of flights. Very often in the AAR I see a lot of ground action going on which makes the CAP a slow motion movie. So maybe a limit of max number of ground units for each side would be ok with me. If this number is reached, you stop deploying. A difficulty would be to determine which ground units are most important for the airforces and for my own flight and to make a order of importance. But I believe in your abilities here ;-).

The number of tanks can be reduced propably, as CCIP said.

 

[PatrickAWlson]

@CCIP

Agree, but can you detail how that would work given the object set in the game?  In real life it was infantry and wagons.  The Germans attacked Russia with more horses than trucks.  However, I don't have horses, wagons, or people, so I am stuck with what is available.  My battles are large scale tank battles because that is the only thing that I have.  In RoF where I have infantry and machine guns I use a lot of those and relatively few tanks, artillery, trucks, etc.  

 

If somebody can mod in infantry, as was done in RoF, I would change things tomorrow.

 

@oho

Agree and I have experienced same.  Interestingly enough the game still flew well enough at normal speed, but time compression became useless.  What I have done in the past is make AI targets a single truck or something like that ... just enough to give them an excuse to attack.  Meanwhile, player targets are fully formed.  

 

[CCIP]

Oh, I agree with you! The main limitation is definitely the objects available. I was mostly thinking enabling subtle tweaks to numbers and chances - like being able to set min/max/average group sizes and types of vehicles used. For example, I wouldn't mind being able to dial down the overall number of moving tanks, make their groups a little smaller, make arty batteries a bit smaller but more spread out, and increase the number of small "infantry" positions (that might be made up of land MGs and some dugouts) of just a few units instead. Nothing big - but it'd be handy to have access to those as tweakable parameters. 

And yes, if someone can port over ROF units, that'd be great!

 

[PatrickAWlson]

That scaling is on the backlog.  No timeline but I will work it before I start in on 5.0