Battle of Britain & North African Theatres in IL2 Great Battles?

[[CPT]Crunch]

7 minutes ago, stburr91 said:

Well, to be fair, GB only has an average of 239.9 players, and 329 current players (on a weekend), with a brand new module having just released. GB isn't exactly doing very well either. 

Except it's not a fair comparison because it's not an exclusively steam game, who knows the percentage of non-steam owners?  How do you factor for them?  I don't and won't ever do steam again.

[357th_KW]

There's about 160 GB players in MP at this moment - hard to say what percentage of them are on steam, but it seems doubtful that 1/2 of GB players are on MP.

[BladeMeister]

8 minutes ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

Except it's not a fair comparison because it's not an exclusively steam game, who knows the percentage of non-steam owners?  How do you factor for them?  I don't and won't ever do steam again.

Probably a fair point Captn, but there must be a few thousand, maybe 10,000 + ??? and 239 isn't exactly burning up the charts now is it. Glad I like both and don't have to take a side in this competition.

 

S!Blade<><

[stburr91]

I agree that the Steam charts are not a completely accurate count of the total number of players for GB, but there is a heck of a large audience on Steam, and to only have an average of 239 players isn't that great.  

[DBFlyguy]

This game is a niche, within a niche of a niche.  In the grand scheme of gaming, no one really cares about this little game, let alone even knows it exists.  No footprint on Twitch, barely a footprint on Youtube, barely any kind of marketing, how many content creators are consistently making content about Great Battles? ...Is anyone actually surprised?  I'm actually surprised its as high as 239 on steam to be honest. 

 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by DBFlyguy

[343KKT_Kintaro]

17 hours ago, JD007 said:

The engine used for this product has had its day and needs to be retired [...] more modern GB series

 

 

Both core engines, the one in the "Great Battles" series and the one in the "Dover" series, are more or less the same age:

 

A) dStrict and Gennadich Team, in 2003 and 2004 respectively, launched their projects "Sikorsky Project" and "Knights of Sky". The two projects merged in 2006 under the name of that latter... yet later it did become "Rise of Flight", released in 2009. Unsuccesful at release, "Rise of Flight" evolved into the new "Great Battles" engine in 2017.

 

B) In 2004, in the 1C forums, Oleg Maddox mentioned for the first time that he was working on his "Storm of War" project. Later that project was planned to be released in 2006... but wasn't released until 2011 (five years late!) under the name "IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover". It evolved into the current "Blitz" edition in 2017.

 

Aren't you noticing how similar are the processes of both games, from the original seeds in 2003/2004... up the current versions of their respective revisited core engines since 2017! As a conclusion, both simulators have been designed at the same time and neither is more modern than the other. You may prefer one to the other, but if by "modern" you mean "better" in terms of performance and capability, I say the Dover series is far superior to the Great Battles series. Jason's guys did a commendable job in 2012-2014, but...

 

1) The Great Battles series still inherits problems because years ago it was mainly conceived for aircraft of a few hundreds of kilograms from 1914 to 1918, not planes weighting tons such as those from 1939-1945. When I steer my Hurricane on the ground, the Dover series provides what it is due: a very realistic taxiing. On the contrary, and it doesn't matter the plane, in the Great Battles series aircraft behave on the ground as if they were bars of soap in a bathtub.

 

2) Same thing with the number of online playable aircraft. You want the Battle of Britain in the Great Battles series but out of the two sims, only the Dover series can do it with the reasonable number of German bombers and British fighter squadrons. It does it very well in fact.

 

3) Same thing when it comes to talk about the number of crewmen on board of large bombers. I suspect that at some point in the future we'll be surprised by the TFS teams of development... the piloting of Lancasters, B-17s, B-24s... that's what the Dover series is all about! I'm almost sure that, sooner or later, TFS will bring us flyable 4-engine bombers... and that the Great Battles series won't.

 

4) Same thing when it comes to talk about aircraft carrier operations. The Great Battles team recently said it's definitely dropped, they failed to properly implement this in their game. On the contrary, the TFS guys already did some tests with lifts. Not that the entire ship is modelled, but the carrier operations are possible with the Dover series engine and I trust TFS wil end up by successfully bring carrier operations to the IL-2 games again. In the good old times of '46 I never steered my Zero until a lift on board the Akagi so that I could be transported down to the internal hangars... and my feeling is that in a close future such a feature will be available in aircraft carriers in the Dover series.

 

5) Recently the Great Battles developers said that, as of the 5.002 patch, "the projectile holes will appear at exact place of the impact corresponding to the skin material and round type". Well... this is what exactly "Cliffs of Dover" accomplishes for more than ten years now and even now it is the only sim that is capable of such a level of realism.

 

6) Etc.

 

As a conclusion: requesting the death warrant for the Dover series is currently an absurdity in the field of PC flight simulation since it would cut us off from too many potentialities that other simulators can't reach. The term you used, JD007, "true potential", applies to both the Great Battles series and the Dover series and, in my opinion, Great Battles is reaching its limits while the Dover series is progressively coming to its blooming... and will surprise us. "Cliffs" was not successful at release and still lacks a QMB or a simplified GUI, but it should be left to the TFS developers to prove they will return "Cliffs of Dover" to its true destiny.

 

 

16 hours ago, JD007 said:

Great Battles has a large and growing number of players 233.2 (Average over 30 days) with a growth of +0.24% compared with Cliffs of Dover's pitiful 22 players and a whopping negative 56.03% over the same period!

 

 

Ok... so... if got it correctly, your request of death sentence at dawn for the Dover series is in fact applicable to all the serious flight sims out there ("DCS", "Dover" and "Great Battles") as a result of the disproportion between their number of active players and the number of active players in arcades like "War Thunder" or "Ace Combat". Bravo.

 

No, no, no, my friend. Agreements have been reached between companies and, for now, "Great Battles" is not going to the English Channel if not in 1944, nor it is going to the North of Africa. We have the Dover series for that. "But we don't like it and we in the Great Battles series are more than 200 daily in the charts". Again, check the position of "War Thunder" in the charts, you'll be surprised of how much your Great Battles game "needs to be retired" (I'm quoting you!).

 

 

16 hours ago, JD007 said:

COD is archaic and proves the old adage you can't polish a turd...but you can roll it in glitter.

 

 

Run your turd on your computer, I'll run my turd on mine. Or... let's be polite so that such words do not become visible on our monitors or mobiles.

 

 

17 hours ago, JD007 said:

Graphically it's still behind the Great Battles series

 

 

Not true, not even now. External views of aircraft are of an equal level of quality to me. Internal views (cockpits) and landscapes are far superior in the Dover series (bioth Channel and Tobruk look more realistic than any landscape in the Great Battles series). If you look at the edges all along the silhouettes of the clouds, they are a bit better in the Dover series than what they are in the Great Battles series, more realistic, but the Dover series clouds still are 2D-projections, an obsolete technologie, and the "trick"  is noticeable when you move your POV. This never happens in the Great Battles series, but TrueSKY will address the problem and the Dover series will present volumetric clouds same as Great Battles or DCS.

 

 

14 hours ago, JD007 said:

I agree, Team Fusion have done a wonderful job, with the engine that they have. The level of detail in their maps is most impressive, Deal pier for instance is a lot more detailed than in the D-Day 1944 map and Deal Castle is depicted as well in Cliffs of Dover but it isn't with Great Battles. Their selection of aircraft is also very impressive.

 

Team Fusion have put in an amazing amount of effort with their research and in the graphics department too, there is no denying that at all.

It's just frustrating not to see their work realising its true potential by being brought into a more advanced engine.

 

 

Again... "a more advanced engine"? Why do you think the 1CGS teams are providing, for years now, such an effort to the improvement of the "Great Battles" damage model? or to the "Great Battles" flight model? or to air combat in general? You insist on this idea of an inferior core engine in the "Dover" series than in the "Great Battles" series but, I'm telling you, the real thing is the complete opposite.

 

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by 343KKT_Kintaro
but wasn't released in 2011 --> but wasn't released until 2011

[Pharoah]

Jeepers, this is why I don't frequent forums such as these very often. IMO CLoD needs to be gotten rid of. Its old. BOX is the future. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. 

 

Now that we are where we are with BoN finally complete....and CloD 'owning' the BoB and N/Africa campaigns (which is just stupid imo), what are we left with then? Italy/the med? They've said multiple times they can't/won't do the pacific so now what? Unless 1C has decided to pull up stumps in its support of this game, they have to choose something new. The difficulty imo is BoN should have been the final WW2 package, not what we just got. What else do we have to look forward to in the ETO besides the late war a/c that we just got? Don't get me wrong, I love BoN however anything they release now (Pacific aside) will just be a step 'backwards' in terms of a/c advancement. The N/Africa campaign was June 40 to May 43. 

 

Anyway will be interesting to see where they go. I'd really love to see a Pacific campaign, but ground based a/c eg. Guadalcanal and the slot, the cactus airforce would be a great one (F4F4, SBD, TBF, etc) or a New Guinea campaign or Burma/India campaign. That way they don't have to do carriers. OR they can finally model some multi engine bombers for us. 

[Koziolek]

10 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

 The only thing it does better than Great Battles is the number of units it can support.  

Let's see what happens when they extend the ground objects rendering 10x like the promised - that may be the end of huge aircraft formations

[IckyATLAS]

7 hours ago, BraveSirRobin said:

Are those Steam stats?  Lots of GB users are not on Steam.

I agree it is not clear how many of the GB player community are registered on Steam as a share of the total number of players, and this is true I suppose for CLOD too. As an example, I am not on Steam, and always bought since inception everything directly on the Il2 website. It has a lot of advantages to go direct, but this is a personal opinion and taste.

12 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

Would be a pity because BOX would be much superior in terms of overall visual quality.

I did say overall visual quality, which means that there are some visual effects that I find far superior in CLOD. An example is depicted in the picture below and is the visual rendering of flames coming out of the exhaust of a spitfire in this case. It is just excellent and very realistic (in terms of physical behavior of a flaming gas) when you see it dynamically in game (latest video trailer from TF). The way this is done in BOX is really primitive and should be improved.

 

[343KKT_Kintaro]

39 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

An example is depicted in the picture below and is the visual rendering of flames coming out of the exhaust of a spitfire in this case. It is just excellent and very realistic (in terms of physical behavior of a flaming gas) when you see it dynamically in game (latest video trailer from TF).

 

 

In the Dover Series, in flight on board of some aircraft like the Spitfire of the Hurricane, I literally watch at my exhaust so that I know if whether or not my mixture is properly adjusted: flames are too yellow? not good. Flames are entirely blue? the mixture is correctly adjusted. Your captured screenshot, IckyATLAS, shows two flames, one is yellow, the other one is blue, which is fine to me, the real problems come when you fly too long with 100% yellow flames, this indicates a bad adjustment mixture and may engage a bad performance of your engine.

 

Other commendable features in the Dover series, only a few examples:

 

1) You can turn your gunsight on and off, and even adjust the brightness level and/or the width of the reticule depending of the type of target you are about to shoot at. In the Great Battles series you turn your engine on or off... and you simply witness automatic procedures over which you have no control (which includes the gunsights). Futher more, your cockpit view permanently aligns with the gunsight, which is clearly unrealistic on board a 109 for example. After all of this... still saying Great Battles is a "more modern" sim? Is this a joke?

 

2) No Magnetic declination in Great Battles. It is perfectly modelled in the Dover series.

 

3) I'm very happy that Great Battles finally implemented the radio navigation systems in the sim... but the Dover series was doing that for years, since its the very beginning, so please... please... stop saying GB is "more modern"...

 

4) In Great Battles, the engine management and the engine damage... work by means of exact timers and pre-established exact numbers. They work with a much more random (thus realistic) behaviour in the Dover series. A known example is the Allison engine in the P-40E, present in both series of games: if in the Great Battles series you exceed a pre-established amount of RPM you'll break your engine for sure, end of story. How long you'll fly on board your Kittyhawk in the Dover series? Permamently exceeding 3,300 RPM at levelled flight, I made a few tests one or two years ago and the engine failure happened at different times in different tests. You have not such a level of realism in the Great Battles series.

 

The superiority of Great Battles over Dover is a myth that was forged because of the failure of 2011 and the difficulty of resolving a limited dnumber of IRRELEVANT problems. Great Battles, indeed, presents a more simplified user interface, an easily accessible QMB... and things like that. In terms of simulation, and this is what matters, "Cliffs of Dover" is the most advanced simulation that has ever existed in the category of survey-type combat flight simulators for personal computers. In fact the level of the Dover series is halfway between a survey simulator and a study. This is really exceptional, "Cliffs of Dover" is a gem, and those not liking it should feel some respect and leave TFS do its work rather than stating things like "needs to be retired" or "needs to be gotten rid of". The BMS people keep developing an improved Falcon 4.0 (originally dates back to 1998)... they mind their own business... and that's fine as it is... and I guess you won't create an account at their official forum in order to them that DCS is better and that their game "needs to be gotten rid of"... so please stop saying such things about the Dover series. How arrogant!

 

Now please read the last post of DBFlyguy: "This game [Great Battles] is a niche, within a niche of a niche". This comment of DBFlyguy is much more lucid than it appears at first glance. When I started this flight sim thing in the early 1990s, I was knowing the time when PC combat flight sims were numerous and had short lifespans because  they were quickly replaced by better ones. The  consumers were eager enough to buy them, the source codes were less time-consuming to develop, etc. Trust me you Great Battles fanboys, you don't need to focus on eliminating "Cliffs of Dover", we all have a bigger problem.

 

 

[HBB*Hunger]

I'd like to fly over Africa, Italy and in a BoB-Scenario despite the GB/CloD hickhack. I don't care. 

GB is the platform we're (Hungers Bunte Bühne Coops) using and loving so ?‍♂️

 

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by HBB*Hunger

[BOO]

Clod does a few things better and a few things poorly

BoX does most things well enough but cannot do a few nice things Clod can.

 

The majority will always choose a relatively well specced mass produced family car with air con and a main dealer servicing deal over a classic car with a Hayne's manual and a leaky softtop. 

 

Exclusivity of theatres isnt going save one title nor offer a truly acceptable option to the player of the other. All it achieves is animosity and resentment whilst ultimately harming both in differing ways.

 

Niche as we are, we are also usually very supporting of the genre when not forced into one corner or another. I think both could happily exist side by side without the contrived restrictions.

 

Sadly I only see it going only one way as it stands. 

 

[moustache]

19 hours ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

While North Africa is indeed a theatre I'd like to see in the series, I think the "simplicity" of making it is being over played by some.  Sure it's sand, but there are also areas of scrub, wadis, villages and cities on the coast, not to mention topographic relief that you don't have with just ocean.

of course, but it would be even simpler and more within the skills of the game to make this terrain realistically, much more than the others... and it would certainly be less heavy than the other maps, we so could maybe have more small details

[Art-J]

6 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

I agree it is not clear how many of the GB player community are registered on Steam as a share of the total number of players, and this is true I suppose for CLOD too. 

 

Just for the record, in CloD one can only launch and play the game via Steam (even if it was purchased directly from 1C store), so the Steam charts numbers for CloD given above indicate total number of players actually - which makes the proportion even worse in relation to GB.

 

Correcting some of Kitaro's usual, rose-tinted and borderline arrogant comments about CloD's advantages, I'll point out:

a) there's nothing more "realistic" about taxiing in CloD where one needs to stop the plane first before attempting to initiate a hard turn, and where virtual chocks have to be used often to stop some planes from rolling slowly even at idle RPM. Both simulators have their serious issues with ground handling, they're just different issues;

b) there's not much point in observing exhaust colour if mixture control lever doesn't work in some planes even though it should (P-40s);

c) no, damage visualisation has never been fully dynamic and hit-point accurate in CloD, at least not in 100%. Some of it is, yes - machine gun hits are displayed where they should, but cannon hits rely on fixed damage decals showing up only in predefined, modelled positions - which are approximate to hit area of course, but still, not exact. So it's a bit of a mix of old and new technology and it seems GB will try to become all aroud more accurate in this regard after 5.002 is released.

d) Higher resolution cockpit and external textures in GB planes are a fact, not subjective opinion, and this is where CloD is still catching up with GB, not the other way around. Rest of visuals - strictly subjective. I consider Channel map to be better looking in CloD, but Tobruk map is worse than any of maps I tried in GB.

 

Don't get me wrong, I occasionally play CloD as well, its other advantages Kitaro mentioned are real and valid (mostly ability to easily handle big numbers of units, lack of engine timers) and I agree with them, but If they were THAT crucial for current SP and MP players community, there would be more people playing CloD than GB, and we know that's not the case.

 

There's still some life in CloD, it's catching up with GB in many other aspects too, to be included and/or improved in big upcoming VR and all-around visual update, which I'm very much looking forward to, because it's still the only "recent" sim where I can fly my beloved Beaufighter. Let's wait and see then what the update brings to the table. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. If it turns out to be really well made, then great - it will finally offer some representation of North Africa this theater of ops deserves. If not, people can get back to asking "what if there was an African DLC for GB".

 

 

 

 

 

 

[343KKT_Kintaro]

56 minutes ago, Art-J said:

Both simulators have their serious issues with ground handling, they're just different issues

 

 

Thus, with such an example (the aircraft ground handling), there's no need to ask for the death penalty for one of the two sims. All of us should aim for peaceful coexistence (please reread the violence of some Great Battles fans in the present thread...).

 

PS: hey, Art-J, it's kiNtaro...

 

[Enceladus828]

Hey guys, at 44:13 in this interview between Enigma and Han and Sneakie, there is no law/swim lanes established that Team Fusion will do the Battle of Britain and the MTO including North Africa while the devs do the Eastern Front and late war Western Front. However, it wouldn't make sense/would be strange from a business point of view for the devs to do a Battle of Britain or a North Africa installment focused on Tobruk from late 1940 to June 1942 when it's already depicted in the IL-2 Dover series; it would also not make sense for Team Fusion to do a Battle of Normandy or a Battle of Kuban installment.

 

The devs are allied with TFS and they aren't competing with each other, they're just trying to give us content. Jason stated: The two series will not be compatible with each other and likely cover different theaters of the war for the foreseeable future, but together both series will give you many options for gameplay and awesome content to enjoy.

 

It's absolutely stupid that people believe the IL-2 Dover series is standing in the way of IL-2 Great Battles/blocking the devs from doing certain areas when it is clearly not, and how these people want CloD to go away as that way the devs will do a GBs version of Blitz and/or Desert Wings-Tobruk, or that the devs should just do those places regardless. No, if when 1C abandoned CloD and their work was the final work ever done on the game -- TF nor anyone else got in there -- there still wouldn't be an IL-2 GBs BoB or North Africa installment.

The reasons likely pertain to game engine limitations, feasibility, profitability, and lack of knowledge on the place compared to other places. I, Jason, the devs, and many people here probably knew next to nothing about the North African theater until Desert Wings-Tobruk came out. That goes to show that without TFS we wouldn't have a North Africa depiction.

 

If the devs ever did an installment in the Libyan-Egyptian desert it would likely be an El Alamein Tank Crew installment and if they did an aerial MTO installment it would likely be Tunisia or Sicily.

Edited October 12, 2022 by Enceladus

[simfan1998]

On 10/1/2022 at 11:19 AM, JD007 said:

It would be great if these two theatres of the war could one day be incorporated into the GB series.

 

IL2 Cliffs of Dover has a very dated UI. It has problems detecting joysticks and even worse, no mouse control for the aircraft. Graphically it's still behind the Great Battles series. The engine used for this product has had its day and needs to be retired.

 

Both of these theatres are extremely enjoyable and would look and play much better incorporated into the much more modern GB series, making all the assets available to the player in the one game. 

Try that in boX
 

 

 

[JG7_X-Man]

CloD is dead - the only people still buying game are new to the genre and don't know better. I am 100% sure the developers know this.

The need for a new engine is apparent.

[Enceladus828]

On 1/16/2023 at 6:24 PM, JG7_X-Man said:

CloD is dead - the only people still buying game are new to the genre and don't know better.

Nope, there are many people who like CloD and are excited for the Visual Update Package which will bring VR. There are people who bought Desert Wings-Tobruk because it offers a very complete depiction of the North African Campaign and you can fly many planes which haven't been flyable in a high fidelity combat flight sim in a long time (P-40C, F4F, CR.42) or haven't been flyable before except in WT and IL-2 1946 Mods (Wellington including torpedo variant, early Beaufighter, Gladiator, D.520, Ju-88C), a great depiction of ships ranging from torpedo boats to battleships and this depiction of ships is much better than what we got in Pacific Fighters and in IL-2 GBs.

 

Don't know where you got that those who buy Desert Wings-Tobruk are people who don't know any better.

 

On 1/16/2023 at 6:24 PM, JG7_X-Man said:

I am 100% sure the developers know this.

I am 100% sure the developers know that CloD is NOT dead.

[kraut1]

Yes, indeed would be great to have the mentioned modules.

I like CLOD Blitz / Desert Wings Tobruk very much too.

But currently we have in GB already some preliminary alternatives / see below.

Of course it's a matter of taste if you want to accept some compromises or not.

For Battle of France/Britain e.g. you can fly already comparatively realistic missions with BF109-E3(e.g. with standard MG-FF weapon mod and manual propeller pitch control), with Hawker Hurricane and BF110 too. The very important Spitfire on the other hand only very restricted because of the only available cannon armament (there is a mod to simulate the gun jams / stoppages of the early MKIb).

I myself have already flown ca. 40 BoF / BoB BF109 missions with reduced armor, manual propeller control and simulated standard MG-FF ammo for the E3 and I liked it.

And for North Afrika and  Italy43/44 there are already many of the required planes available.

 

[JG7_X-Man]

@Enceladus You are entitled to your opinion. However, I do this for a living.

 

Accounting 101: Average Daily Sales is what determines if a product is dead or not. 

1. Select a date cycle (annual/quarterly/monthly)
2. Calculate Total Sales for each of the date cycles above
3. Divide #2 by the corresponding cycles with #1 and record the data by date to get a daily average
4. Now take your calculated average daily sales and compare it to historical data.

If your average daily sales is trending lower than your historical data - your product isn't doing so well.

 

You don't have to be an financial wizard to know CloD has been trending down since its release in 2011 and now it is in the exponential range. 

 

Here is an example of a title [DELETED] that is doing fantastic:

 

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by JG7_X-Man

[Enceladus828]

Okay well, CloD is still being developed and therefore is not dead: Status of Team Fusion - Team Fusion Notes - IL-2 Sturmovik Forum (il2sturmovik.com)

 

 

Also, IL-2 1946 is in a much greater exponential range and yet people are still playing it (has Pacific, aircraft carriers, and Heavy bombers to name a few) and it's still being developed by TD and other modders.

 

22 minutes ago, JG7_X-Man said:

Here is an example of a title [DELETED] that is doing fantastic:

 

 

Not sure what this game is.

[JG7_X-Man]

@Enceladus Business model suitability is about rate of sale. Not just a sale.

When you go from selling 20 copies a week to 20 copies a year, the writing is on the wall.

[Enceladus828]

6 minutes ago, JG7_X-Man said:

When you go from selling 20 copies a week to 20 copies a year, the writing is on the wall.

Nobody except TFS knows how many copies of Blitz and Tobruk have been sold but by looking on Steam how many reviews both installments have, far, far, more than 20 copies a year have been sold

?

[DD_Arthur]

The only people playing CLoD are beta testers or members of Team Fusion.

Been like this for a long while now.

TFS visual update - if it ever arrives - will give us revolutionary features such as er…weather, VR and a revamp of the same tired old maps….

[JG7_X-Man]

It just dawned on me what's going on here!

 

Side A: CloD is still alive I think they are selling XXX numbers a quarter

Side B: CloD is dead I think they are selling XXX numbers a quarter

 

Reality: Former owner X sells to new owner Y.

 

If sales were so good, why would X sell to Y?

 

 

[Enceladus828]

@JG7_X-ManI'm not going to continue this strawman argument with your trolling comments that lack any merit.

 

What I am going to tell you is that if TFS packs it in once they release the Visual Update Package, the devs won't be doing a Battle of Britain nor their version of Desert Wings-Tobruk. The reasons pertain to game-engine limitations, feasibility, profitability compared to other places, etc. 

 

I have no problem with a Battle of Sicily in GBs, but I can tell you that the devs won't be doing the Siege of Malta from 1940-42 nor the Italian Campaign from 1943-45. Malta is too ambitious as if you start at 1940 then you'll need a 1940 plane set which GBs doesn't have, but more importantly, you would need aircraft carriers like the Illustrious, have a large naval component with cruisers and battleships for both sides and be able to handle dozens of planes per each side. The largest ship we got for BoN was a destroyer, not a light cruiser like the Dido.

 

For the Italian Campaign, it would probably only add the G.55 and Re.2005 so it would be best for it to be divided into 2 collector maps. In this interview at 46:23, Han and Loft say they won't be doing Italy, and if you want Malta, Battle of France and Italy, you have to do most of the work.

 

CloD is probably the only hope of us getting lesser known places of WW2 like Malta, Greece, Palestine, and Italy, so if it ends it will only make things worse.