Yes a 24/7 on-line war would be great from my point of view. You could drop in any free time you had. Especially if the AI could run the war, organizing bomb runs and intercepts if players weren't available to take over. Or you and a wingman could just do a frejag fighter sweep or jabo run, with AI triggers to intercept you if spotted. Just the anticipation of not knowing if you are being intercepted by human pilots or AI can be intense. Nothing against AI pilots, its just that they are usually relatively easy compared to good human pilots.

I like this idea too, but AI opponents is something that could be used in a different way too. Instead of having them as triggered support cast for intercepts, they could be limited to flying the bombers. A 24/7 online war, even in a 1:2 scaled map would have some serious transition times.
Imagine now that the players can schedule bomb runs for the AI, leting the bombers fly to a certain rendezvous waypoint under AI control. Escorts take off with human pilots and head there, plus human pilots jump into the previously AI bombers as they reach their rendezvous point...voila, you can fly long range bombing missions without having to fly all 3-6 hours of it, as long as you plan it to coincide with a favorable time zone for you

On the matter of how complete the game will be, i think that these guys are so perfectionist in some things that even a half-finished SoW will be better than many fully-finished titles from other houses. I can live with a reduced singeplayer offering as long as i have the map, editor, QMB and necessary aircraft to create missions myself right out of the box, plus a user-friendly protection scheme that will never prevent me from playing a game for reasons outside my direct control, a solid multiplayer offering and good performance. If you have all that, missing campaigns for a few months is not that big of a dent. If you lack more than half of those features is when you're in trouble.

As others have stated before, i can compromise on certain things and wait for some features, as long as there's still something left in it and it's not a hassle to operate software-wise. I think it won't be 100% complete out of the box, but still be more expansive than, for example, RoF, somewhat of a middle ground. That means switching between SoW and IL2, just like i used to switch between IL2 and European Air War when IL2 was first released. Plus, if SoW is as mod friendly as they said it will be, there will be lots to keep me busy until they get a working campaign.

Edit: Straight from the horse's mouth so to speak


The way i read this is that they will build a single campaign engine both for single and multi, that you can then manipulate to produce the needed result. Sounds like a built-in enhanced version of DCG to me. This is not bad in my opinion and it's one of the reasons everything in SoW takes so long...it seems they are not just building a flight sim, but a flight sim "operating system" that you can then work with to produce what you need. Of course it's taking long, one is like editing a photo in photoshop, the other is like programming photoshop yourself from scratch.

Oleg drops a hint here and there that SOW will be a great but not all inclusive part of his plan.

"BATTLE ENGINE"....not Flightsim engine.

"get the modes of gameplay from the only one universal gameplay engine in which are present elements of many known types of online and single gameplay of very different games.

Is it possible that within 2 years we will see WWII online done right for those inclined to subscribe?

Well, no matter the longrange plan, I believe we will have the next generation WWII flightsim soon and it will spawn much more.

Interesting points Blackdog.


Wheels

I kind of agree with you sunchaser. The man is a bit cryptic sometimes and part of it is due to his use of the English language, you have to read a bit between the lines to know what he's hintint at, and then you can't be completely sure that what you'r guessing is what he means.

My personal guess is they are building not so much a flight sim, but an engine that they will be able to license for other game types as well. Why else go to the trouble of making cockpits for vehicles, mannable AA guns and adding support for modding the living hell out of it? I think they saw how much can be done with modding, both good and bad, so they went with a compromise plan. Make the engine open-ended and easily moddable so people won't have to hack things in order to mod it, which also means an easier way to control what mods to run at any time. I mean, if you had a panel similar to the realism settings that can toggle mods on and off, you wouldn't need multiple installations and it could probably be enforced by the server in online play, just like the realism settings are.

Pure speculation on my part and of course the amount of time and money required to build all the things that have been discussed and requested would be enormous. But i have a suspicion that they are going to go that way to ensure a long term revenue stream and set a new industry base. With the MSFS studios closing down, a well done engine could attract the civiliam sim crowd. With well done physics you could branch out to a driving or boat sim. With a 24/7 online war capability you could gradually branch out to a subscription based MMO model, and so on. And the neat thing about it is that if they pull this one off, they won't even have to do everything themselves.

I guess that modding the simple stuff into the engine will be pretty straighforward, but getting the tools to create a different game altogether will require some extra tools and licensing fees. It's a clever approach and while i may not always agree with a work in progress plan (case in point RoF), if the initial offering is enough and the groundwork is robust we'll be seeing moderate amounts of whining about omissions early on, followed by a growing avalanche of new theaters or even titles to keep everyone happy. The thing here is to keep all the options open, as long as you don't outright discard old but proven practices you can move forward and still keep the traditionally-minded part of your fanbase. I think they understand that, as Oleg said he now thinks that the single player campaign is taking a back seat to having interesting online game modes (online dynamic campaign that you could join in progress a la DF servers would be awesome for example), but that they won't abandon it just because it's not the latest trend.

Apart from that, we can't do much but wait and see