Historical vs fictional scripted campaigns

[Jade_Monkey]

While planning a future Typhoon scripted campaign for RAF 198 and 609 Squadrons, I am reading up on lots of ORBs that describe the events. I realized that many missions were rather boring and making a strictly historical campaign might be a bit dry. However, those types of missions can be very immersive too if you take the role playing aspect of campaigns seriously.

I wanted to learn more about what type of mission is most interesting for the SP great battles pilots. 

 

If you are not interested in SP scripted campaigns, I would ask you to please refrain from voting to keep the results relevant to that target audience.

 

Best

-JM

Edited September 26, 2021 by Jade_Monkey

[Missionbug]

I prefer a historically based campaign myself, however, as someone who has made things in the past for the old game it can be a little boring for the player and not all the information you require is readily available so option two, Hybrid 1, I think is possibly the best way to go for me.

 

Any sim/game will only allow a certain degree of realism of actual events so any mission/campaign maker will to some extent need to make things up as they go along, if there is some plausibility then all is good, after all they say the first victim of war is truth so without being there to experience it personally who can say for sure how accurate the reports we read are?  Many unit histories and personal accounts might have strayed far off the mark due to secrecy and trying to remember events so long past.

There is always going to be the need to use a certain artistic licence such as stand in aircraft and airfields where not everything you need is available, as long as things do not stray too far off and the campaign is interesting then it should be possible to please the historian and casual pilot alike.

 

With that said to be honest all four options are equally viable, I think we have all played campaigns that considered themselves to be a historic portrayal as well as others that were a complete work of fiction, the author needs to be clear what he/she is trying to do and convey that to the player, if something is paid for then I think most would want it as close to truthful as is humanly possible with what you have to hand.

 

Take care and be safe.

 

Wishing you all the very best, Pete.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2021 by Missionbug

[Gambit21]

I've never had any complaints with the historically accurate when possible, historically plausible otherwise route.

 

By and large, players do not actually want realistic missions. They don't want realistic ingress/egress times, they don't want realistic mission tempo.

They want what "seems" realistic, but what is in reality shorter in duration, and somewhat more exciting. 

 

I moved the Hell Hawks base from the historically accurate Chievres to St. Trond because the 40 minute plus ingress time was too long for

the testers. Never heard a word about it from customers.

 

Havoc Over the Kuban was based on an A-20 squadron that didn't exist, in order to utilize the interesting areas of the Kuban map (which are the mountains)

 

I think the "historically accurate at the expense of game play" approach is a mistake, whether it's in regard to available aircraft, or mission types etc. and I've seen products suffer when they rigidly follow this doctrine.

 

Be as realistic as you can while balancing game play, and don't be afraid to use artistic license.

 

"I want everything fully realistic based only on operational reports" yea right...the guy who says that wants it only until you give it to him or he's a rare individual indeed. Likely this person would not understand the operational realities where for the entire length of 16 missions, often nothing happened at all.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by Gambit21

[Props]

I have to agree with Gambit21 on this to some extent. Though I'm a "Full Real" flyer, no icons, no overlays, no Technochat, etc. and I prefer missions that are as close to reality as possible I always keep in mind that this is a computer simulation and for the foreseeable future will not equal real life experience, especially those of WW2 combat pilots. But it is still really good at bringing us close to those experiences and we are damned lucky to live in a time where we have this level of technical simulation available for us to use.

 

I recently flew a Career path for the P-51 on the Rheinland map and it was my longest lived career so far (71 kills - eat your heart out Bong;-). But it also got very boring after about the 12th mission as our home airfield moved away from the front and the next 30+ missions were all escort missions running on average 1:30 to 2:00 hours in length with a interminable weaving back and forth to and from the target. This is the only time in any IL-2 mode, career or otherwise, where I used the "warp speed" option just to get it over with. Close combat was often encountered near the target, but was short and uninspiring. I know the real life missions for P-51 escorts later in the war were actually closer to 5-6 hours (or more like the Russian Shuttle missions) so this was close to real. But boring! This is after all a PC combat flight sim and most players want the excitement of combat whether it's dogfights, ground attack, or level bombing. When I just want to fly around enjoying the landscape I can turn to MSFS. So yeah, I think a balanced approach is called for to keep things fun, since we all cannot just sit in the cockpit for 4 hour missions everyday.

 

The old Zekes vs Wildcat server (IL2 '46) did this well. Missions like Battle of the Coral Sea put the enemy carriers just over the horizon so you still had to get your navigation skills together to find them and for your return to your home flightdeck, but flying time to and from target was short. I remember having a lot fun on that map. Same with the Midway map. If they had used accurate distances and ship movements there would have been a lot of lost, frustrated players complaining about just that aspect alone. Just like the real experiences of pilots back then, but this is a simulator and as such a little fudging isn't a bad thing.   

[Leon_Portier]

Doesn't matter to me, happy with either

[Gambit21]

8 hours ago, Props said:

 

The old Zekes vs Wildcat server (IL2 '46) did this well. 

 

That was my favorite "fart around" server when CoOps were slow.

[sevenless]

Hybrid 1 is the way to go, if full historical is to "boring" or "monotonous". This is a game after all, not a reality simulation.

[Mtnbiker1998]

I very much agree with what Gambit said above, but I also think theres room for all of these options. Just depends what you're in the mood for. I (and I'm sure most of you too) am a big history nerd and It can sometimes be really, really awesome to fly a mission knowing that these are real events, someone actually flew this flightplan, engaged these actual targets in this actual location. Thats cool as hell. Historical campaigns are neat and definitely have their place.

 

That being said, sometimes I don't wanna fly for 40 minutes to and from the target, and I'm happy just knowing that, hey, this plane was in this general location around this time period engaging similar targets, this is just a "more fun" version of it. That totally has its place too.

 

And theres also great examples of some really fun gameplay that can come from totally ahistorical missions too. Gambit's Havoc campaign is a perfect example of that. All the various "what if" missions are also great, they can tell a story or offer up unique gameplay, all of which are good things. (I for one have always thought It'd be fun to fly P-51As in defense of Moscow, hoping we get one one day in a Mediterranean battle)

 

So I ended up not voting in this one, because given the choice I'd rather have all of them.

[Chief_Mouser]

For me, historical as possible but with added extra 'what-ifs' if historical equals boring. So I voted for Hybrid 2, but as long as the planeset is historically accurate for the time period all I really need is a well thought out and well-made mission: which you guys do brilliantly. Thanks for making them for us... ?

[AEthelraedUnraed]

I'd like to play historical missions, but of course no-one's gonna want to fly many of sorties on end without seeing any action. I think it's completely fine to cherry-pick just the most interesting missions, and still call it a "historical campaign".

 

One other problem is that good references about historical missions are not always available. I'm writing a historical campaign now (similar to Gambit's Hell Hawks over the Bulge campaign in many aspects), but sometimes the only reference I have is the USAAF Combat Chronology 1941-1945, which only tells me that the TAC that I'm interested in supported ground troops near some village. Occasionally I'm able to corroborate this with after-action reports by the infantry, but even so I often adjust the missions to make them more interesting, like shorten a 2-hour ground battle into 15 minutes or something, or add a few plausible ground formations or events. Hence I'm going with Hybrid 2.

 

As a side-project I'm also recreating missions from the KG55 war diary that someone posted on the forums a while back. These are an unusually detailed resource, and often provide information on the number of aircraft, loadout, target, take-off, on-target and landing times, weather, number and type of enemy aircraft encountered, flak encountered, searchlights, important observations etc., all of which I'm accurately recreating. I found it very possible to create interesting missions, but you have to cherry-pick even more than usual: probably only 1 every 20 missions makes the cut.

[Jade_Monkey]

59 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

I'd like to play historical missions, but of course no-one's gonna want to fly many of sorties on end without seeing any action. I think it's completely fine to cherry-pick just the most interesting missions, and still call it a "historical campaign".

 

One other problem is that good references about historical missions are not always available. I'm writing a historical campaign now (similar to Gambit's Hell Hawks over the Bulge campaign in many aspects), but sometimes the only reference I have is the USAAF Combat Chronology 1941-1945, which only tells me that the TAC that I'm interested in supported ground troops near some village. Occasionally I'm able to corroborate this with after-action reports by the infantry, but even so I often adjust the missions to make them more interesting, like shorten a 2-hour ground battle into 15 minutes or something, or add a few plausible ground formations or events. Hence I'm going with Hybrid 2.

 

As a side-project I'm also recreating missions from the KG55 war diary that someone posted on the forums a while back. These are an unusually detailed resource, and often provide information on the number of aircraft, loadout, target, take-off, on-target and landing times, weather, number and type of enemy aircraft encountered, flak encountered, searchlights, important observations etc., all of which I'm accurately recreating. I found it very possible to create interesting missions, but you have to cherry-pick even more than usual: probably only 1 every 20 missions makes the cut.

 

Yeah, even the most exciting accounts I've read boil down to : went to place X, saw two 190s, shot one down, came back. Or found nothing, strafed some airfield and got some AAA damage.

 

Doesn't really provide materials for the most thrilling missions.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

6 minutes ago, Jade_Monkey said:

Yeah, even the most exciting accounts I've read boil down to : went to place X, saw two 190s, shot one down, came back. Or found nothing, strafed some airfield and got some AAA damage.

 

Doesn't really provide materials for the most thrilling missions.

Shooting down two 190s can be pretty exciting, if you haven't got a numerical advantage. Perhaps even let the 190s start from an advantageous position, e.g. spawn them above you inside the cloud layer (to hide the spawn) and let them bounce you from behind. As long as your mission is plausible from the historical references you've got, I consider it a historical mission.

 

I like ground attack, so strafing an airfield should be fun too.

Edited October 7, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed