Hi guys,

I read this forum much more than I play BoS, because it's just not fun playing it alone or on random mostly empty servers, and my squad only plays once in a week.
I've played the stock campaign as a tedious requirement to unlock the armaments I needed for my weekly online session then used the "unlock all" option for the ones I was missing, then started to have fun again playing IL2 1946 offline campaigns, plus other games/sims.

To me, there's not much to spend in order to improve drastically the offline part, I don't have any serious hope our ideas can come to fruition any time soon but there's no harm in making a list of possible improvements, so hopefully we can have this discussion of what our dreamed sim would be and not rant to much on what's not in boS.

The inexpensive, very fast fun improvement:
add a "career" button to single player menu, create an avatar (choose amongst 10 old black and white pilots portraits), name it, give him a short life summary if wanted, then choose one of a few options :
-avatar never dies, if killed/captured he can continue on next mission
-avatar never dies, one mission needs to get a "mission complete" status to be able to play next.
-avatar can die or be captured, then career is finished
Now play the exact same missions as proposed in the campaign, just have the avatar stats be incremented with flight time/number of missions/kills.


The next step:
same as above, plus :
-a game generated short bio (à la RoF bCareer)
-possibility to import a personal photo for avatar
-game generates names for squadron mates, follows their stats as well as players' (again à la RoF)
-every mission, before it starts, can be chosen to be played full or short, if played full implement a "jump to next event" key (as in EAW, Strike fighters, but please no black screen for minutes as in IL2).

The next step:
same as above, plus:
-briefing is not only written, but spoken (as in EAW). With not so many situtations (go bomb this/straffe that/escort this/intercept that" it not so difficult, have a painted (or photo) scene with pilots listening to their leader meanwhile, and a writing of the generic briefing to review it after it's been told.

One step forward:

give the possibility to 3rd party to use the above to create their own mission suites bundled as a carreer, with mission branching.
Have the possibility while in mission to get a wingman to say something specific recorded by campaign builder, like "hey this was damn good one we had last night celebrating your 20th kill, I still have a hangover" or any other silly comment.

Well that's all I have at this time, please chime in and add your own ideas on "how any WW2 sim can be a fun game at the same time"

A Career Mode for BoS is not planned by the official team but Jason is working currently with 3rd party volunteers to adapt Pat Wilsons software from RoF to be used for BoS.

Also for making suggestions, there's a section for that on the official 1CGS forums although the career/ campaign subject has been throughly covered there. But posting there is the best place to get feedback from as the Devs rarely read anything over here.

Official forum is not for me due to moderation, but feel free to report any suggestion you find useful over there.

Again, I have no hope, despite Jason trying his best, I know how stubborn BoS russian devs are, just want to chat here with who's interested.

If it proves useful, great, if no so be it.

I agree rollnloop on all points, as I feel the same way.

Also, the chance your post would ever get read in the "suggestion" section is pretty rare at the BoS forums, so you are not missing out.

Sadly, the hope of any type of "career" or "campaign" mods in BoS seems slim to me. Aside from the fact the developers don't want to do it, there is also the question on the engine of BoS being able to handle anything over small scale. The DN engine seems to choke up rather quickly with anything remotely large scale.

Sadly the lack of willingness by the devs to do a grand campaign, might relate to showing the DN engine in a bad light if it is not capable.

Again if PWCG ever does get made, it will be better than what's available now, but still under par with a simple Dgen campaign. Again like everything else in BoS it seems people will settle for less, just because what available now is so dull. Sad times.

And finally, considering the money from BoS EA was used to make BoM, I wonder how much life is even left. I mean after BoM they need funds to continue, and frankly, I just see how at this point.

We are going to have to improvise for sure with what is available. I fear that it is going to take a long time for anyone to come up with a career mode to compare with ROF....or a past IL-2 simulation. But something that has helped bring some hope to the forefront has been the combat parser that Lupson made. All we need is the ability to parse more data....something to give us an idea of assessing what really happened throughout the mission.

Veterans and Juri's single player missions (to name two contributors) give us some insight into what is currently possible in knitting some sequential missions together in such a way as to give a historical belonging to the squadron and the mission objectives, with a fog of war excitement that is most assuredly missing in the standard BOS campaign.

Throw into the mix something like this... Luftwaffe Pilot Tracker, BOB , with some tweaking to make it BOS or BOM pertinent...and you have a tracker/log book of sorts.

We are just a couple of third party modded utilities away from making the game much better.

Now we need....more radio command features....more radio banter added for immersion...and more missions....and we might have a stop gap of sorts, making the best of what we have...Or just record your own missions....Dead is Dead style...... Adolf Galland,JG26

Of course....the number of consecutive missions is limited, in fact everything is limited..You could be flying 8 missions with II/JG52 and the next 8 with JG54.....Even the number of aircraft is limited....but this for me..is making the best of what we have.....

"Moscow isn't interested "

I believe that there will never be a 'proper' campaign or career system from the developer.
The NOSB mentality will not allow it to happen, sadly... I honestly believe that the man in charge is simply not allowing himself to be 'beaten' (as he sees it) by the fans who want change.
This mentality has done massive damage to the games reputation and standing, and he would rather fight it out than 'give in' to people who just want some changes to make the game what it could be.

Can you elaborate a bit on these ?

NOSB ?

NOSB = Not one step Back

SD

Rollnloop..If you go into your IL-2 Sturmovik 1946/samples/speech you will see 14 folders each representing different languages..and each with approximately 9 different actors voices....recording immersive banter such as...."fighters, anybody? get him off me..they are chopping me to pieces, thanks for the cover, we are under attack, what the hell...

Well, you get it....BOS has nothing like this...and for me....this kind of detail is something else that separates a really good simulation from just a quickly made game....I know it's going to take time....

More AI radio command features.....It's nice to have formation commands...but I'd rather have an option to control the fighters, or bombers (heaven help me) under my command. I'd like a better breakdown...Just a quick example would be to have the breakdown in telling your men to attack fighters...or bombers. Once again....following the IL-2 design would have made a better sim.

These are some of the things that people who are not familiar with the earlier IL-2 don't understand our references back to the game. It had evolved....and then we took this huge step backwards.

I read from Jason's post that he had someone working on the PWCG conversion but that person disappeared. Does he now have a new person/persons(3rd party) working on this conversion? I have not read any post from Jason that says he has a new person/persons working on this? I hope he does, since " Moscow is not interested", this seems to be the only other viable way to establish a career/campaign mode. PWCG would be a great addition to BOS and breath a little life into it. SharpeXB have you read(a link?) where Jason said he has someone new working on this project?

S!Blade<><

I fully agree Jagdneun, IL2 h1946 had the right commands, even more with latest DT additions (thinking of the "drop on my command" for level bombers).
Then again ideally there would be more than one actor for each character, so your leader/wingman/tower doesn't always have the same voice. Is that so expensive to add a few recording sessions to the whole budget ?

Now that even 1946 missed and other sim had right is radio range. I must admit I don't know what the typical range of VHFs was back then, but I know first hand that nowadays when reaching the limit messages get distorted to the point of being unreadable, before being unhearable. BOBIIWOV had this well done.

-thanks SD-

BoS as it stands is the foundation of a great sim, just as a concrete slab is the foundation of a great building. In both cases you need to add the vertical dimension, depth/height, to make it truly useful. For a building, that's walls, a roof, utility infrastructure, etc.
For a sim, you need stock content that isn't repetitive after 2 hours. That usually means a diverse number of single missions and a few scripted campaigns with interesting design.
You need a dynamic component that at a minimum allows the user to make their own engaging content without a PhD in mission designing, and ideally would do it for them ala the old Il-2's DGEN. ROF's career was close to this idea, but never got as far. Still, much better than what BoS has.
Of course, you also need MP that works equally well for large numbers of PvP and smaller numbers of friends flying coop against the AI, in essence SP with human wingmen--so you need both good SP and MP for decent coop.

To illustrate, Il-2 was a 2 story house, ROF a single floor, and BoS is a slab. Some 3rd party options like scripted campaigns and Pat and Lowengrin's DCGs made Il-2 and ROF into multi-story dwellings. The original CloD was a single floor with a leaking roof, collapsing walls, and no doors or windows, but at least there was enough there for the handymen (modders) to buttress it and make it livable.




The Jedi Master

Great analogy Jedi...Use the Force... Now it remains to be seen if BOS's slab is built on bedrock or shifting sand....with that old engine core...

I don't think it's going anywhere but a slow slide into beyond... it's got nice legs, shame about the boat race!

It's funny. The same people complaining about the same thing years ago.

Is it like 1946 yet?

Is it like 1946 yet?

Where's the Campaign?

Where's the SP content? 1946 was better. We all want 1946 back. Yadda yadda yadda....

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=34096&highlight=Lokitexas

Cliffs isn't even barely out the door at that time and yet it's being expected to have all the content that a ten year long series had. And yet CoD now has a bunch of this content. So give it a chance guys.

I don't care what Il-2 46 had. I care what Il-2 FB had in 2003, released 18 months after Il-2 was. No ten years of work, no community spitting out tons of missions and campaigns, just a massive update with more content. In other words, Il-2's BoM of the day.

CloD still doesn't have that much--stock CloD has 2 scripted campaigns that are pretty lackluster, no coop, and a handful of single missions. It was in development for years and years, longer than BoS.


I don't really care what the community has made for any given series, as unless you know where to look to find it you won't get it. So, out-of-the-box comparisons only of what the developer gave you for your money.

What did Il-2:FB offer? Multiple scripted campaigns. Dynamic campaign engine. Lots of single missions. Quick and Full Mission Builders that were easy to use. Coop and dogfight MP.

What does ROF offer? Two scripted campaigns (4 if you buy the Ilya and Mihiel). Semi-dynamic career. Lots of single missions. Quick and Full Mission Builders, the latter not so easy to use. Coop and dogfight MP.

What does CloD offer? Two scripted campaigns (jokes). Dogfight MP only. Lots of single missions. Quick and Full Mission Builders that were easy to use.

What does BoS offer? No scripted or dynamic campaign, just a glorified QMB. Dogfight MP only. A few single missions. QMB and FMB, the latter not so easy to use.

The inescapable conclusion is that as time has passed sims come with less and less content, shallower and shallower, because apparently the people who WOULD be making campaign engines and scripted missions are instead busy making hyper-accurate FMs and other systems modeling? AI is about the same. Actual gameplay is about the same (read something, start in cockpit, take off, fly, land, leave to read something). In short, the only improvements we have in new sims over old ones is the plane modeling and modest graphical improvement (because DX9 doesn't allow more than modest).

So, if the explanation is we have crappy content because those resources are instead dedicated to making the planes more realistic than ever before, I say %&##$% the realistic planes. Back off on them, make them less complex, and instead pay people to give us something to DO with the planes.




The Jedi Master

He doesn't friggin know because he has never owned it or played it... if he had a little more maturity and could actually decide for himself what IL2 and IL2 1946 had in spades... I think it just irks him that he hasn't had the same experience and can't relate to it...

Then perhaps you should stick with old IL-2 if you don't appreciate what's changed with sims. Yes all the work today goes into the aircraft themselves and it's massively more complex. It's probably not an overstatement that one aircraft today is more work than an entire game was back then. Especially with DCS that's certainly true.

Yes he does, and it's me. I've gotten a litle bit done before I've even talked to Pat, but after this weekend we will hammer out a battle plan.

This is a screen of some scratch work I was doing, by this time I have the 109 F-4 and G-2 (not in pic) in the PWCG, but not completelyy implemented:




PWCG for BOS is happening, guys, just be patient...there are a lot of goals to achieve and only about 4 hours a day (I have a day job) to get them done.