If I recall correctly from reading Rudel's book, he would take off, grab a little alt, align and release ordnance, wash, rinse and repeat.
He even knocked out a few tanks on the edge of his airfield a few times.

Not sure if that was in and around Stalingrad though, could have been in early '45 and a few thousand km back Westward where he belonged !

Cheers,
Slug

Think it would have been beneficial not to remove:

"Two free planes" (Loft speech) version is not free of payment.

The DVD version will cost ~12,00$ in Russia (and only there), have two planes (LaGG-3, Bf 109F) "free" - unlocked - for the player unlock - these free of payment - the other 6 Standard planes by playing the "Unlock Campaign", designed for this version.

------------


That would at least offer another option for new players to purchase? For seem reason it seems to be being treated like a dirty secret? No idea why?

Crash fixes are likely coming this week.

(Lots of vodka, back slapping and threats of Siberia)... be sure! (if not, then in two weeks)

I was getting freezes/crashes during the campaign especially in outside views trying to take screenshots (ironically, for the review).

I did this, and the freezes/CTD have stopped, so it worked for me:

- Update java
- Run at native screen resolution
- Update GFX drivers (nvidia) to latest version

H

Yeah, I was calling this falling in the range between 6 and 8 depending on your particular mission experience. If you had some exciting combat, it feels like an 8, and if you're in one of those ho-hum ones it feels like a 6.



The Jedi Master

Good and fair review. I have been silently watching the debate for some weeks now, all I can say is that the passion that these game releases bring out in people who play them can only be a good thing in the long term for the genre.

I had Cliffs Of Dover and Rise of Flight on my hard drive, unused and unusable for many months (if not years) and now I play them both regularly when I have the time. I am sure BOS will become another title given time. In the meantime after a week of grinding I am putting it on the shelf with the certainty that things will improve some day.

I say this as someone who can afford to and I know many others cannot afford the luxury of splashing out on unfinished or curtailed projects. I am sad to say that having worked for many years for large financial services infrastructure firms I am not in the slightest bit surprised that the industry is being squeezed, especially in niche genres. If the niche can be kept alive by finding a more robust financial model then that is the price that has to be paid. Unfortunately you and I are the guinea pigs. It doesnt sit well in the short term but in the medium term I hope it will work out and the niche will be secured.

Just my two pennies worth.

According to "Black Cross Red Star: Air War Over the Eastern Front" on one of the heaviest days of the air assault there were up to 900 individual Stuka sorties on 5th October against the Tractor Factory. Im not sure of the size of the Stuka force but im guessing no more than 8 GW or about 200-250 aircraft. I am thinking 17 may be a bit toppy and 5 or 6 may be more realistic, maybe a few more on the longer days of September/October 42.

Heinkill,, Excellent work as always ! Pretty Much Spot on with my feelings on the game !
I however hate the unlocks a little more then you so I would Personally say 6.5 ! LOL
Still,,, Spot on and I agree with others that the review should have been on SimHQ !

Always a pleasure to read your work !

Sincerely Desode

I find it outraging that a flight simulator does not support triple screen setups in 2014.

Plus I think it is ridiculous that we are stuck with 4 graphic presets and no advanced graphics option whatsoever.

...and a max of 16 planes? It looks like a game coded with consoles in mind.

It is a frustrating title from the point of view of hardcore simmers, as you seem to be. So many of the things we have taken for granted in true IL2 titles are not present, or have been 'made more accessible' in dev speak. The devs have gone to great pains though to label this a 'flight game' not a 'flight sim' though, and stated they wanted to make the game as easy to get into as possible for a new generation of player.

The debate then starts about whether this really is a successor to the IL2 lineage, because using the IL2 name without delivering the type of game options former IL2 players expect is seen by many to be a misleading use of the brand. If you don't do your research, and just buy based on the name, you might end up disappointed.

I tried to show in the review, that you are not looking at a 'traditional' hard core IL2 title here.

H

And in the end, the old il-2 is more acessible... (for casual players).

Sokol1

Honest review HeinKill. Thank you for doing that.

The most disappointing part about BOS is that 90% of the problem this game has are bad decisions and attitude of the developers.
Time will tell, but I don't see this game surviving without some drastic changes and even then, enough damage has been done, to make people skeptical.

I pre-ordered it as soon as it was announced, just to show my support.

Triple screen setups worked fine when the first public beta came out. The support was broken with the introduction of presets. It is the same problem RoF has: the workaround is to just disable the post processing in the gfx options, it's that simple. Unfortunately BoS does not offer that option.

I understand companies wanting to gather to a wider audience, I do, but the issues I mentioned (including the limit of planes in a mission) could really be solved in like two minutes of coding. BoS is actually not half bad, it is just badly managed.

I don't regret supporting the developers but after this one I think I am through with early access, pre-orders, and kickstarter.

I bought into the BoS early access and don't regret that...it was fun being on the sidelines watching new features get added every month, then every week. So when the devs stick to their timelines and keep cranking content, it can be enjoyable as long as you accept you are using alpha/beta code.

Have also bought into the early access for DayZ though that is becoming a bit of a joke... I'm not sure it even has a planned release date, it seems to be in perpetual 'alpha' even though it is very playable as it is today and the game has changed radically from when I bought in (from a post apocalyptical FPS to more of a survival game where players can hunt, fish and grow food, as well as kill zombies and each other).

The one I regret was DCS WWII. But there I blame myself. I knew the track record of the guy behind it was not good, and it became obvious after a couple of months that as in the past, his project was falling way behind schedule and not hitting milestones. Should never have bought into that one. I'll eventually get something out of it thanks to ED coming to the rescue, but that was one I would not have done if I had the chance again. Wonder where Luthier is today BTW...

So, two out of three aint bad.

H

Cool, I've got a review copy and will be doing a review of Channel Battles, if you care to PM your observations on it to me, I can try to include them!

There are some good campaigns...

H

CoD failed because it was too ambitious...it did not deliver what it tried to deliver and the market was disappointed.

This title may very well fail because it was not ambitious enough....it is too hobbled by mgt decisions to dumb it down for a wider market while alienating to the core market.

The lack of configuration options is ruining this game/sim and is unforgivable. It is unbelievable that you cannot configure the graphics parameters to fit your conditions. I have a high end machine and there are times that the game truly shines in terms of the visuals/effects...only to be brought crashing back down to earth with stutters or lock ups.

Also my situation exactly. Before Custom Graphics was eliminated I was able to run BoS pretty much with maxed out graphics settings very smoothly. Can't remember now what I had turned off that my AMD card wasn't happy with, but whatever I had to give up was low impact in visuals and high impact in allowing for great performance.

Now I'm running at Low graphics settings, AA off, and the FPS Limiter set to 30 just to avoid a slide show at altitude, and near the ground it is a stuttering slide show. This was the final straw and ruined what little fun I could find in the game, and that being the fantastic visuals.

I think the decision to eliminate the Custom Graphics option, a feature they already had working nicely, was virtual suicide. If I had been planted into their organization by another game publisher with the task of sabotaging the BoS project I couldn't have come up with better than Loft is already doing. Someone needs to take all sharp objects away from 1CGS as they might hurt themselves.

And devs believe quite the opposite.
http://forum.il2sturmovik.ru/topic/2224-obsuzhdenie-versii-1005/?p=230697

For context there was a discussion about graphics quality.

Time will tell, but right now when I see comments like "let's support devs and they will make a brilliant game out of it" I cringe. They will "improve" the game of course, but in a way that they see fit, which is not guaranteed to match any expectations.
I supported ROF as much as I could with money buying stuff I never needed and with my time developing mods people (including me) wanted to have. And what devs did? Instead of fixing long standing issues they started to introduce bullsh*t nobody asked for like difficulty presets, "smoky cinema" loading screen, cocked guns at the start and whatever else I don't really remember already. And although I was enthusiastic about the IL2 for some weeks after its initial announcement I quickly understood that the game was a direct continuation of the same weird design that plagued recent ROF updates.

PS: I really need to stop looking at IL2 forums and move on. The drama is fun to watch when it doesn't touch you, but this development still saddens me because of prior emotional investment.

My support for the devs just about died with that message. Their clarity seems to be our muddy graphics and low FPS with all kinds of problems to boot.