Ground Control simulation

[FTC_Riksen]

Good afternoon all,

 

I hope everyone is doing good. I'm glad to see IL-2 Great Battles continues to grow and improve but one thing, among others, that is sorely missing is the following:

    1. Ground Control simulation: Currently in game, there is no way for mission creators to ping the position of aircraft in the map or within a certain desired area. If you have ever played in online servers like Finnish or Combat BoX, you will see that they often use text messages to report a bandit has entered certain area but the information given is very limited as there is no vector to the contact, altitude, estimated among of contacts, etc. Combat BoX has gone even further and in addition to the message system, they created an impressive AI Ground Control system that creates an additional layer of imerssion but even then, we cannot obtain such information to properly simulate Ground Control, especially during the late war. So my first suggestion would be, deve, please create a trigger or MCU or whatever the name is to ping information regarding planes within an area. The information would contain name of player, location, altitude and plane type. This tool would be extremely helpful for mission creators and would also benefit single player career.

    2. Separate briefing screen: If you are like me and have ever played the old but legendary IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 series than you probably remember that it allowed the player to read a different briefing message according to the side you are playing on. This is extremely helpfull and imerssive for mission creators. Currently, however, the briefing message in MP scenarios you can only have one general briefing and cannot have additional seperate briefings. My suggestion would be to allow such separation as we had in the old game:

        - <blue>briefing message</blue>: Everything written between the blue brackets would be only visible to those flying for the blue coalition

        - <red>briefing message</red>: Same to the previous description but applicable to the red coalition

        - <general>briefing message</general> or simply no brackets: Visible to both sides.

This could be even further developed to allow pictures to be included in the briefings as well so the information could allow introduction of recon photos and all that. Creativity is the limit here ...

    3. Separate audio sounds: Similar to the above but allowing the mission editor system to play separate audio files for different coalition. Currently, the mission editor only allows you to play an audio file to both sides and you cannot set it to be played for one side only. Again, a very nice way to create an additional layer of creativity to be explored by our mission creators.

 

If you agree with these or have additional suggestions, please feel free to present them here and let's hope the devs consider this ...

[357th_KW]

These are great ideas that would be a big benefit to mission designers.

 

With regards to item 1, it would be awesome to have some fairly precise control over the area, both it’s shape and size as well as it’s relative altitudes, both top and bottom.  That way you could use the same MCU to act as a radar (give it a large area, with a floor slightly above ground level) or as a ground spotter (fairly small area, with a ceiling at the missions cloud base) as desired.

 

Item 2 would be a real game changer for bombing - right now there is simply no way to show the bombers their target, without also telling defenders exactly where they need to defend.

[Nazgul*]

@Jason_Williams

[Hoss]

I just wish it was as easy as the legacy IL2 FMB.  I really enjoyed building missions, coop campaigns, and campaigns with it.  I did use the Blue/Red/None for my mission briefings.  Everyone could read the "None" faction brief, but once you chose a side you got the Red or Blue Briefing.