Beat Il-2 Sturmovik Campaign

Took about a year, just beat the Il-2 grand campaign for IL-2 1946 all patched to 4.13.3. I put very long campaign mode in the config. It had decent play but then it was not so great. Not many other aircraft are shown in the missions, it started off well and became boring. The squadron commands are terrible. Keeping the squadron alive was impossible, they crash into each other etc. A.I. Bombers still don't complete their mission they turn around and go back to the base, although 1c said that was fixed. friendly ai constantly fly over enemy airfields instead of around it with heavy flak while returning to base, crashing into the ground was also a big problem. Although keeping then alive ups their skill it was pointless as missions went on. It was cool seeing p-47s and p-38s helping you at the end of the campaign.

I tried pacific fighters grand campaign Marianas as an F4F and FM2, F6F and corsair in dynamic setup where you could pick you planes for the battles. I chose corsair and F6F for a couple years but a bug in the campaign game just put me as F4F or FM2 nothing else through the entire campaign 1942-1945. It was tough fighting zeros with these 2 planes and was a nightmare going up against the J2m with them. It was an ok campaign.

Man, it really sounds like a must-buy!

Congrats on achieving such long campaigns.

Did you play dead is dead rules or did you refly a few times ?

I've done a campaign that recreates all the missions that Richard Bong scored a kill on. I have access to his flight logs etc. and knew if he was bounced, did the bouncing or no advantage, the area, flight path (within reason),. weather, time of day, altitude, you get the picture. I live 20 miles from Bong's hometown and 50 from a museum that has his memorabilia on display along with a static P-38 painted like his plane Marge.

My plan was to present them with a AAR movie that represented what a phenomenal feat it was to shoot down 40 enemy planes flown by the best the enemy had to offer and manage to survive.

I challenged all virtual pilots to fly the campaign with full realism, death come as it may, with no do-overs. I also required that theyi record the missions for two purposes.
1. to authenticate their claimed feats
2 to provide me with footage from which I could make the documentary that the museum could use to educate their visitors on how heroic and amazing Bong's career was.
Aside...now tell the truth how many of you knows who Richard Ira Bong was? America's greatest ace had been lost to history for the most part. He is hardly mentioned in many prominent books and articles on WWII Aces and flyers. Macguire, Boyington get a lot more ink. I suspect that it was because Bong was a goody two shoes and a boring farm boy from Wisconsin who just happened to drive a P-38 with the skill no one could match.

Anyway I offered cash prizes for the first virtual pilots to completed the campaign. No one ever did. Worse of all I didn't get many usable videos.

The campaign is HERE

Oh by the way the prize was $300. Here is one of the videos I did get...

Mission

Tremendous effort you did, I think I remember playing a few, but died very soon (less than 10 played, maybe even just 5). By now, with the much buffed AI skills, it is probably barely playable on anything more recent than 4.09.

About Bong's fame, being non american, I learned his name at the same time as McGuire, much much later than Boyington, TV show was unbeatable for fame.

headshake off, outside cockpit view on, labels on everything else set to realistic.

Does it really answer the question ?

tried the DBW supermod back in the day with DCG, and the AI was indeed very problematic. Also considering DCG was a 3rd party addon instead of a native game feature, the aircraft replenishment is a fixed amount (i.e. 1 aircraft/mission/squadron) instead of a variable depending on the total war situation, it kinda nullifies the "D" in DC a bit.
The game still had very good visuals, sounds and physics. But the campaign part is afterall lacking.

No point disputing matters of taste, but not in my book. As a late convert from CFS3 to IL-2 (after the latter was seriously modded, to include more ETO action) I play IL-2 '46 (+DBW) primarily because I find 'the campaign part' engaging and immersive, preferring the scripted campaigns which often feature very well written briefings, like Blinding Sun for the VVS...



....or Wili Jedermann's campaigns, like this one with JG27 in Africa...



The dynamic campaign missions can be a bit repetitive by comparison, but I still have a couple on the go at any point in time..

I'm a dynamic campaign zealot. There is no "keeping your squadron alive" factor OP mentioned unless the campaign is dynamic, hence my prev statement. But hey I revise it to "the dynamic campaign part is afterall lacking."
If your choice is static campaigns IL2 suits it very well indeed.

Yes, pacific campaigns are worse at least the new guinea allied fighter one. It is either bomb the Japanese base or scramble no missions in between, for the entire campaign. Terrible.

That pic reminds me, I have a 'flying tank' campaign of some sort started which I must get back into. Don't think I got beyond the first mission, which was a training sortie against some captured Wehrmacht kit...



Might have been a scripted job, can't remember. Likewise, I'm not sure I've ever played a WW2 combat flight sim whose dynamic campaigns weren't repetitive eg European Air War, which was saved by the scale and the variety of its campaigns and aircraft rather than of its campaign missions - or dynamic to the point of being out of control eg CFS3, where either side could win the war and German shipping plied the English Channel in daylight...



...and even if you hit something, your chances of an early bath were increased by the fact that both engines always seemed to conk out at the same time...

Sweet metallic finish on that last picture 33lima, is it modded or just gfx settings ingame?
I too have a not finished "flying tank" campaign, got stuck a few missions in losing to some hungry 109's all the time and my interest faded.

I had a look back at the mission report that came from Oden, hope it's not bad form to post the link here...

[url=https://combatace.com/forums/topic/89378-the-baltimore-whore-in-cfs3eto/][/url]

...and I see that the B-26 mission was played in the ETO Expansion, but the metallic finish is stock I think - the big difference comes from applying Arisfuser's DX mod, which as it does for WoFF, adds dynamic shadows inside and out, head movement and the ability to change the external FoV to lose the awful CFS3 'wide angle lens' effect.

I, too have parked my Sturmovik campaign for now ('Cold Winter') and reverted to resuming a probably-related VVS fighter campaign ('Blinding Sun'), trying to stay alive and in between, keep out of the clutches of the scheming desk wallahs who the well-written back story tells me, are out to nail my proletarian bottom to any suitable surface, should I give them the slightest excuse. My chosen skin isn't the best for hiding from the Fascist invaders, but it does nicely show off my sleek MiG-3