Richard, I honestly believe the ATAG Team Fusion crew is doing what they can within the limits of the code as they know it, but they are multiplayers. They are all virtually unpaid enthusiasts, doing amazing work to keep the title alive in the way they enjoy playing it, which is primarily on servers. If they find solutions to the soul destroying bugs in the AI and campaign engine that they can fix, they do, but it is not their focus. For example, they recently squashed the crazy AI routine that made the AI planes roll about the sky like UFOs (now they just roll like drunks...)
Both DCS and Forgotten Battles have looked at their player numbers and realized that most of their players play offline, and they have acknowledged this publicly. You see it now in the huge attention they are giving to offline content, especially for DCS (I think you have even been involved in that adventure!). The latest DCS email says it all "Our third party campaign developers have prepared a joint letter to the community. It’s worth taking a look at the upcoming campaigns for DCS World, they will be sure to keep you airborne for hours and hours." Or if you read the promo blurb for IL2 Great Battles, the first thing it says is:
- Career that tells the story of recreated battles that are historically accurate.
- Quick Mission Builder allows you to set up a combat situation in just a few mouse clicks. This is a very convenient way to familiarize yourself with an aircraft and hone your combat maneuvers
- Scenarios are single missions included in the game or created by players in the Mission Editor.
Multiplayer comes fourth on that list. On the Cliffs of Dover Blitz blurb, there are seven bullet points, and Single Player content is mentioned ... last. ClOD is just not the place to come for single player WW2 happiness.
And I'm OK with that. Team Fusion was born out of a team of multiplayer enthusiasts and it was only ever going to go that way. I think this is a matter of celebrating what CloD is, and not being sad about what it isn't. Because a single player sim it isn't.