il-2's strange obsession with being dead

[Roshko]

I enjoy the pilot careers. There is a very very very slim chance that you can make it to the end though. I am not that much of an ace, but I think that even very accomplished players will find it difficult to make it all the way through, certainly: for mediocre pilots like myself it's impossible.

That's all well and good: It WAS rather difficult for a fighter-pilot with the level of activity that the pilot-careers put us through to survive to the end.

Here is my question: Why does this put an end to the career? Of course being dead in real life is a rather effective showstopper, but this is not real life.

I respect the wish to play 'ironman' - and the good thing is you can do it.

I respect the wish for something not quite as unforgiving: The chance to replay the mission until you survive it.

But why not OPTIONALLY give us the opportunity to replay the mission the day after? Why does it have to be "either you replay the mission now, or your 55 kills 200 hours career is lost?

I totally enjoy the whole span of a career - but there is no way I'll survive that long.

Another option would be to let players fly as the replacement of the dead pilot: "Feodor Lebanov died, you are now playing as his replacement: Giorgy Moroner"?

I am writing because I just - for the third time - lost a good career simply by pressing "continue" rather than "restart mission". It's a very easy mistake to make, since "continue" does not sound like anything a dead pilot would do, right? And you typically make that mistake when you forget to be in "oh - this is Il-2 - the button texts do not always make sense"-mode.

Another really strange thing: Being dead is apparantly so bad, that the dead pilot looses his kill-stats. That's right: The minute a mission ends with "dead" - you are no longer able to see what that pilot accomplished - it's wiped out. You can see his medals and stuff, but how many he killed and what he killed is wiped. If that was real life, that would be very very disrespectful, in the game? Well it's a bug isn't it?

Edited December 17, 2021 by acebone

[Pyrex238]

I also wonder this as well.

[Eisenfaustus]

You can hit refly which resets your death and then in the briefing interface leave. This will allow you to replay the mission another time. 

Edited December 17, 2021 by Eisenfaustus
Typo

[40plus]

If you die, hit re-fly then exit the mission. It will be waiting for you tomorrow...What you are asking for already exists.

 

Also, I am the furthest thing from competent combat pilot and find it perfectly achievable to complete a career so long as you fly realistically. Don't engage in fights that could kill you. Get in, get the job done, get out. Currently flying Iron man Stuka and am surviving way longer than I had assumed I would.

[Roshko]

"If you die, hit re-fly then exit the mission. It will be waiting for you tomorrow...What you are asking for already exists. "

Ok, I didn't know that. What I did was killing the whole game. Still - there is a trap: if you hit continue after your death, you can't continue.

"Don't engage in fights that could kill you. Get in, get the job done, get out."

"Also, I am the furthest thing from competent combat pilot and find it perfectly achievable to complete a career so long as you fly realistically."

The furballs are so large that sometimes the job IS to tangle up. At any rate: "Just fly like me" is not much of an answer. I am glad that you can fly that way, you'd still be able to do it even if my suggestion was implemented.

"Don't get into a fight that could kill you" sounds to me like "don't go about having any fun". Thing is that people play differently, and that should be ok.



 

[40plus]

5 minutes ago, acebone said:

"If you die, hit re-fly then exit the mission. It will be waiting for you tomorrow...What you are asking for already exists. "

Ok, I didn't know that. What I did was killing the whole game. Still - there is a trap: if you hit continue after your death, you can't continue.
 

Agreed, I've lost one pilot to that mistake.

 

As for the fighting, I'm not saying "fly like me" I suck, and yeh, sometime you can't avoid the fight. I've found that a furball can be managed by playing it safe and focusing on the goal. Protect the bombers, not kill the fighters. Stop the attackers, not kill the attackers or their escort. It the attacker drops their bombs to get away from you, mission accomplished. You don't need to chase them down and get the kill stat.

 

My survivability increased after I started thinking like that. Your experience may vary so, If you do die, then use the trick above. 

 

Cheers

[Roshko]

Well, I am not complaining about my lack of survivability. We can adress my skills in a thread titled: "Acebone skills - are they good enough?" if you so wish - but the topic here is a campaign system that could allow for hours of more fun if it did not insist that "either you survive a whole campaign, or you'll never get to experience the end of it"

I fly fighter-planes. I like the melee. I like taking chances. That's part of my enjoyment of the game. I am pretty sure I am not alone. Telling me and others who might agree: "well your survivability sucks" or "go fly in this way" or "don't have that kind of fun" simply is not helping.


 

[Hotaru_Ito]

I have noticed the same thing about a dead pilot's stats being lost. I discovered that if you go into that career and click on the next-to-last day, when they were still alive, their stats will show up, minus anything they earned on their last day.

 

Also, this won't help you with vanilla career, but Pat Wilson's Campaign Generator does allow you to continue the same campaign as a different pilot after your first one is killed.

 

I agree about the "Continue" button. Should be more like "Accept results of mission." Maybe even have a confirmation come up if you died, like "Warning: this will end your current career! Proceed?" Or maybe non-ironman careers could give players the choice of restarting from the beginning of the last day rather than going all the way back to day 1 of the career.

 

Hope this helps!

[LukeFF]

2 hours ago, Hotaru_Ito said:

Or maybe non-ironman careers could give players the choice of restarting from the beginning of the last day rather than going all the way back to day 1 of the career.

 

That is something I'd really like - continuing on, but as a replacement pilot.

[migmadmarine]

Agreed, I'd love the option to re-roll (as it were) a pilot, and continue on under a different name as my own pilot's replacement. 

[Varibraun]

7 hours ago, acebone said:

Another option would be to let players fly as the replacement of the dead pilot: "Feodor Lebanov died, you are now playing as his replacement: Giorgy Moroner"?

 

Completely agree with you, Luke, and Mig on this point, I really hope it is added someday.  As an FYI in case you don't know, PWCG does allow this and is one of the reasons I fly that more often right now.  In PWCG, you can also switch squadrons and even sides during the same campaign/war with multiple pilots including playing through 1945 on the Eastern front.  However, the in game Career Mode is more historically accurate and researched (thank you Luke).

[Roshko]

Yeah - "Reroll" - that would be great!

(I think that Migmadmarine just invented a new expression there! )

BTW: This thread has had some great tips for me as a byproduct. Thnx guys. Gonna check out PWMG, and I'm glad to know that the stats are still there on the earlier dates

Edited December 17, 2021 by acebone

[migmadmarine]

2 minutes ago, acebone said:

Yeah - "Reroll" - that would be great!

(I think that Migmadmarine just invented a new expression there! )

Na, that ain't mine, think it comes from table top RPGs where a lot of character stats are determined by dice rolls. 

[Roshko]

18 minutes ago, migmadmarine said:

Na, that ain't mine, think it comes from table top RPGs where a lot of character stats are determined by dice rolls. 

 

Well that's just the word being the same. Re-rolling a die is not quite the same as re-enlisting into something, so I don't think you made a new word, but I do think you made a new expression. In any case, I've certainly never heard it used that way 

[percydanvers]

Something I often do is restart and abort the mission so it goes on the books as a "failure" and I move onto a different mission.

[Motherbrain]

By the time my pilot dies I'm wanting to play a career in another type anyway. ?

[Roshko]

2 minutes ago, Motherbrain said:

By the time my pilot dies I'm wanting to play a career in another type anyway. ?

Seek transfer

[RyanR]

It's not just death.... you can also get captured. I guess they could create an option: killed or captured pilot always returns.

 

-Ryan

[PatrickAWlson]

Since it was mentioned, for those interested in PWCG, it offers the following options:

Make as many pilots as you want in a career.  They can exist simultaneously or consecutively or both.  The only limitation is that you can only fly one in a mission.

Dead is dead.  For all intents and purposes, captured is the same as dead.

Dead is seriously wounded.  You might miss months.  This is how I play.

Dead is lightly wounded. You might miss a couple of weeks.

Dead is not hurt at all.

The world does not turn until you submit a combat report, so you can fly a mission as often as you want.  PWCG figures out which one was the last one.

When your pilot is wounded time does not advance beyond the usual, so you can fly a different pilot while the first one heals.  If you want to advance time to heal your pilot you can take leave and heal.

 

The stats of all pilots, AI and human, are carried forward in the campaign.

 

As sort of stated above, PWCG and the 1C career each have some advantages and disadvantages.  The 1C campaign is more strictly accurate.  PWCG is more willing to bend reality, like using the Stuka D in Moscow.  Which you prefer comes down to a a variety of factors.  I do not view one as better than the other, just two options.

 

Professionally, I am a software architect with over 30 years industry experience.  I have been developing and maintaining PWCG since 2009.  PWCG remains under continuous development, with the last release being a few weeks ago.  PWCG is Java but contains absolutely no network code (and does not use log4j  ).  It never phones home or anybody else.  

[Roshko]

Thanks for that answer Pat!

I am trying to use the PWCG, but I have one problem, you see I am flying on Linux, not windows, and for the life of me I cannot get the PWCG to acknowledge the fact that my wine has java.

I know that there is not many of us flying on linux, but we are some. It would help tremendously if you also make the *.jar file available, not just the *.exe - and that should be fairly easy to do, since the *.exe is nothing but a wrapped *.jar, right? I mean, you already have the *.jar - If I am not mistaken?

If you could send the jar to me personally (acebone-at-gmail) that would be soooo swell, but I think that the long haul solution is to simply make it available alongside the *.exe?

And thanks for your contributions to all of us, I really mean that
 

BTW - back in the days when I last flew, it was the original Il-2 and later "Forgotten Battles". We had an awesome campaign-generator, and I am quite sure that it must've been PWCG?

If so - PWCG has another additional advantage over the built-in system: You could really track the changes you made to the war-situation. Did you get that bridge? Yes - well, it's not there for several missions now. It really made us (me and my old squad) feel that we were fighting in a war, and not just a series of missions.

[Avimimus]

Reminds me of this idea:

I think the fact that one is a replacement pilot - but assigned to a random unit in the same campaign - is interesting... 

Edited December 19, 2021 by Avimimus

[Roshko]

You'd have to hope that your reassignment would be to a squad flying the same A/C if you originally chose your unit based on it's plane.

In Stalingrad I wanted to fly the p-39, so (if memory serves me). The squads flying p-39 were all the furthest from the front, so I chose the one closest. Why not just transfer to the same unit, or as suggested above, re-incarnate as the old pilots replacement? I'd be annoyed if I had to fly 50 extra kms or have to switch to a plane I was not currently into? That's my take on it anyways.

But there seems to be a marked interest  for some sort of "dead is not altogether dead"-solution, and the operation to develop that must be by far less complex than a lot of the other tasks.

 

[PatrickAWlson]

@acebone The IL2 campaign was DCG by Lowengrin.

 

Per PWCG format - yes, the exe is just a wrapper around an executable jar.  The wrapper specifies some extra memory and a string command line parameter to tell PWCG whether it's BoS or FC.  However, many of the internal paths are specified in Windows format, so that will be problematic.

[Roshko]

Oh yes - Lowengrin, that's right.

Yeah, that's gonna take some work. One could put the paths in some ini-style text-file, and let linuxers muck with it themselves - most of us are used to it, but that would be somewhat of a hassle too. Too bad.

I'll give it another shot with Wine - although I can't for the life of me figure out why it's not working.

Thnx anyways

You know, I'll just sacrifice 10 gigs of harddisk and install a virtual machine

Edited December 19, 2021 by acebone
i found out how to spell "hassle" :)