I loved Battlehawks 1942 and Their Finest Hour back 25 years ago. I missed out and never played Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, and it haunts me to this day...I really feel like I missed out :(
Can anyone recommend a release in the last five years similar to Secret Weapons? I picked up BOMB recently but I don't expect it to be as epic. I also played Crimson Skies about 10 years after it was released and pretty much missed the boat there too.
Any suggestions appreciated!
There's always IL-2, available at GOG for $9.99 (https://www.gog.com/game/il_2_sturmovik_1946). It's the 1946 version and has a crapload of content including stuff from the Pacific theater and even Luft'46-type planes.
^Pretty much what Staggerwing said, but IL2-1946 goes on sale fairly frequently anymore. Just saw it for $2.49 on HumbleBundle store the other day, so if you're interested in it, wait a bit and it'll be on sale somewhere...
p.s. Its been a while since I've messed with IL2-1946, but always was able to find some interesting stuff/mods over at SAS (http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php) and All Aircraft Simulations (http://www.allaircraftsimulations.com/forum/).
Hmm interesting. You guys enjoyed Il2 1946? I know some of the more recent releases from that shop have not been so er...warmly received (CLoD).
EDIT: Checked out the reviews on Steam and they are almost uniformly excellent. Looks like there's tons of missions, campaigns and planes to fly...I am going to assume the Me262 and the Komet are in there, and German 'flying wing' planes...those are the ones I am really looking for. Is there a '1946' campaign, flyable from the German side?
Quote from: Staggerwing on May 16, 2015, 03:45:51 PM
There's always IL-2, available at GOG for $9.99 (https://www.gog.com/game/il_2_sturmovik_1946). It's the 1946 version and has a crapload of content including stuff from the Pacific theater and even Luft'46-type planes.
Nope. Cannot compare. There's no big campaign where you plot your raids, etc.
Quote from: wikipediaCampaign Battles are the heart of SWOTL, allowing the Player to plan missions inside the Campaign Battles, using the Mission builder. This feature allows the player plan their own way to fight the air war, without any limitations. Whatever the player's tactics, the success or defeat are determined by several overall Winning/Losing conditions. In particular, there are 8 factors which make up the German war economy in SWOTL:
GERMAN FIGHTER PILOTS
DEPLOYED GERMAN GRUPPEN (LUFTWAFFE GROUPS)
AVIATION FUEL
JET FUEL
GASOLINE IN STOCK
MUNITIONS IN STOCK
BALL BEARINGS IN STOCK
TRANSPORTATION CONDITION
Of these 8 factors, only the first 4 have direct impact on the Luftwaffe. The last 4 factors are general war industries, and so they affect only the German ground forces. American Campaign Battles will have as a goal the destruction of the war industries (Strategic Bombing), the Luftwaffe (D-Day Air Superiority), or both (Final Victory). German Campaign Battles concern the defense of the same elements.
IL-2 1946 is probably 12 years old+-.
It has a staggering amount of mods now, but it does not have a strategic campaign as was pointed out.
SAS has a mod, used to be " full Monty ", that allows you to fly from 1914 until the 1990s I believe, with all the bells and whistles.
Ok then.
There is one other flight sim that can be had for a reasonable price that has campaigns for both axis and allied players: Battle of Britain II.-.Wings of Victory (http://www.matrixgames.com/products/353/details/Battle.of.Britain.II.-.Wings.of.Victory). It is a reworking of Rowan's original BOB game. It is not cutting edge but the planes look pretty good considering the game's age and the campaigns are detailed, with maps and raid planning or defensive prepositioning. Also, the game engine allows for a shitload of aircraft to be part of a mission while keeping the frame rates reasonable.
jomni hit the nail on the head. I really don't think there is a game out there that does exactly what SWOTL did but that BOB game you mentioned Stagger comes close. I had so much fun playing as the Germans and researching jets in SWOTL. If you could survive the allied bombing campaign and get to jets the tide of the battle quickly changed in your favor. I remember tearing bomber formations apart single handidly in an Me-262. Flying the Komet rocket plane was a riot as well.
Playing as the allies was fun too because you needed to bomb the science labs of the Luftwaffe to prevent them from getting jets. Then there were the V1 sites to get rid of. I can't remember but wasn't it also part of the missions to try and knock V1s out of the sky as well?
Oh and one more thing. How cool was it that you could rename pilots and bomber crews? I used to name my best fighter pilots after my friends and family. It hurt like hell when one of them were shot down though.
Quote from: magnus on May 16, 2015, 06:45:19 PM
IL-2 1946 is probably 12 years old+-.
It has a staggering amount of mods now, but it does not have a strategic campaign as was pointed out.
SAS has a mod, used to be " full Monty ", that allows you to fly from 1914 until the 1990s I believe, with all the bells and whistles.
Its called the CUP, or Community Universal Patch. it is downloadable in 3 separate modules...Dawn of Flight covering WWI, WWII covering the obvious, and Jet Age, which adds Korea, Vietnam and beyond.
I like flying B-17 in the Swotl campaign. Finishing a tour of 25 missions was a great achievement .
So there is nothing released in the last 10 years that has a dynamic campaign that also allows piloting of the Me262 and Komet?
Nope.
You can use the DGEN random dynamic campaign generator for Il2-1946 but it's not very interesting.
You can also create a campaign for War Thunder and select the 262 or the 229 or the 163 and fly those but they have silly victory conditions that only work if you're playing arcade mode.
Is Bob 2 still worth buying at this day and age?
Quote from: jomni on May 16, 2015, 11:58:06 PM
Is Bob 2 still worth buying at this day and age?
It is still a great game with the latest BDG patch.
http://bob2wov.com/download-the-latest-patch/ (http://bob2wov.com/download-the-latest-patch/)
Quote from: Gusington on May 16, 2015, 09:47:53 PM
So there is nothing released in the last 10 years that has a dynamic campaign that also allows piloting of the Me262 and Komet?
RPS has just done a 25 best sims if you fancy a peep over there
...and it's a pretty silly list in my opinion. Farming simulator? Rising sun? Some very questionable choices and some glaring omissions.
Quote from: Gusington on May 16, 2015, 09:47:53 PM
So there is nothing released in the last 10 years that has a dynamic campaign that also allows piloting of the Me262 and Komet?
Not that I know of.
For reasons that escape me, the era of immersive dynamic campaigns being an integral part of modern sims is very long dead.
I would almost do murder for a modern sim in the style of the Dynamix Aces series, Pacific/European Air War series or the Lucasarts classics.
This thread has made me sad. Moreso than usual.
Anyone play Secret Weapons Over Normandy? IIRC it was released in 2003 but it may be my last (only) option here.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on May 17, 2015, 11:19:25 AM
...and it's a pretty silly list in my opinion. Farming simulator? Rising sun? Some very questionable choices and some glaring omissions.
I was hoping gus would see I wasn't recommending farm 2015 as a substitute to the secret weapons of the luftwaffe, more of a hopefully there's some other adult discussion about flight sims
Forgive me if its not just flight I haven't read it
Quote from: Gusington on May 17, 2015, 01:39:26 PM
This thread has made me sad. Moreso than usual.
Anyone play Secret Weapons Over Normandy? IIRC it was released in 2003 but it may be my last (only) option here.
Secret Weapons over Normandy was the first game I thought of when you posted the question. I have not played it so I google a few game vids and was not impressed. It looks like you can only fly with your view outside the plane in a pure arcade fashion. Also, there appears to be only one campaign and it's allied.
Yeah I just looked it up too.
*kicks pebble down the road, crestfallen*
Quote from: Gusington on May 17, 2015, 02:03:39 PM
Yeah I just looked it up too.
*kicks pebble down the road, crestfallen*
It passes gus my friend
I wanted to fly helicopters last week
Quote from: Gusington on May 16, 2015, 04:01:34 PM
Hmm interesting. You guys enjoyed Il2 1946? I know some of the more recent releases from that shop have not been so er...warmly received (CLoD).
CLoD is worth looking into, though it is sort of the opposite of Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. It's more like actual weapons of the Luftwaffe. Flying the Ju88 is pretty
fun though in CLoD, no matter how you look at it. -- But I haven't played CLoD in about a year. currently I'm playing DCS (you can fly the F-86 which is sort of a WWII secret weapon kind of plane in some ways) and BoS (the Ju52 is fun to shoot down and the La5 has a kind of secret-weapons look to it) an RoF (the FE2 is weird enough to have a secret weapons look to it and the you can put extra guns on the Dolphin for a secret weapon-like effect oh and there is the Gotha!)
I remember flying the Ju88, the He111 and the Dornier bomber (17?) in Their Finest Hour. That game made those bombers real to me. And I fell in love with the Bf110.
While we're at it someone somewhere should make a modern sim of the Bf110 with a good ground attack mode. I'd buy that for a dollar. And a Stuka sim with the same.
Quote from: Gusington on May 17, 2015, 06:10:31 PM
I remember flying the Ju88, the He111 and the Dornier bomber (17?) in Their Finest Hour. That game made those bombers real to me. And I fell in love with the Bf110.
While we're at it someone somewhere should make a modern sim of the Bf110 with a good ground attack mode. I'd buy that for a dollar. And a Stuka sim with the same.
I'd buy that too.
However, I'd buy it with the caveat that it must have a dynamic campaign with some measure of immersion attached, even if it was at the sake of hyper realism.
This is the problem with modern sims. They sacrifice everything to make sure that every button, rivet and dial is spot on correct, but they give no context for anything you do. In essence, they forget the "game" part of the equation.
Maybe it's that modern developers with any kind of budget simply don't believe that there is a viable audience for such a game anymore. However, the fact that there are modding collectives out there putting in massive amounts of unpaid free time to try to to eek out every last sliver of entertainment from the last games that gave that kind of experience leads me to conclude that there's a big section of the sim community that feels something is missing.
A dynamic campaign is key! We need it.
Ok so I suppose I can't get a modern version of Secret Weapons. I've wrapped my brain around that.
So...how's Wings of Prey?
Gus, BOB2 may not have any jets in the core game but you can fly the Bf110. In ground attacks even!
Quote from: Gusington on May 17, 2015, 08:13:33 PM
Ok so I suppose I can't get a modern version of Secret Weapons. I've wrapped my brain around that.
SWOTL was great back in the day. You've hit the nail on the head for a SWOTL 2 - there's clearly a market for it.
Quote from: Boggit on May 18, 2015, 03:28:19 AM
Quote from: Gusington on May 17, 2015, 08:13:33 PM
Ok so I suppose I can't get a modern version of Secret Weapons. I've wrapped my brain around that.
SWOTL was great back in the day. You've hit the nail on the head for a SWOTL 2 - there's clearly a market for it.
But the rivet counters will spoil it. It will turn out like most modern sims. great in technical detail but lacks a decent campaign and fun factor.
Are the ground attack Bf110 missions fun in BoB? Are you guys fans of BoB overall?
Quote from: Gusington on May 18, 2015, 07:26:08 AM
Are the ground attack Bf110 missions fun in BoB? Are you guys fans of BoB overall?
I played it years ago. You can fly the 110 in CLOD AND (eventually) in Battle of Moscow. Where I will be flying the P-40 (eventually).
Man, I loved SWOTL. I liked playing the Gotha 229 against B-17 bombers. Such fun!
Also really enjoyed LucasArt's Battle of Britain game (Their Finest Hour).
LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA
GOTHA GOTHA GOTHA GOTHA
:'(
Ahem.
B-17 the Mighty Eighth, one of the last aircraft sims from Micropose, is the closest game I can think of to SWotL.
Dynamic bombing campaign using B-17 groups, flying with a crew? Check.
Able to fly a German jet against an Allied bombing campaign? Check. (No really weird jets, but the 262 is there, and as meticulously detailed as any of the other playable planes.)
One of the Grogs was even trying to run a Mighty 8th campaign renaming the crewmembers after various Grog members, a month or two ago.
Now, I have to relate here that I never got as much into it as SwotL because its initial release was buggy in some problematic ways. How well has it been fan-patched and/or modded up since then? No idea.
Mighty 8th is available on Steam here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/328900/
It reportedly runs fine (for whatever values count as "fine" for this game) on Win 8.1
I'm almost certain my current copy comes from GoG, but my office browser now hates GoG so I can't search there.
In the unfortunate absence of a SWOTL for the twenty-tens, I think your best bet is IL2:1946. BoB II is old and po-faced, whereas CloD is new and po-faced, and both have a limited plane-set. Il2 '46 is also pretty old, but does have a host of weird and wacky planes to try. There are also a host of missions and careers to try, courtesy of the still-large community.
Quote from: JasonPratt on May 19, 2015, 02:19:59 PM
No really weird jets
Whoa, slow your roll, brah. The 229 is not a 'weird jet.' It is destruction, vengeance, cannon shells, and jet thrust encased in a thick, flying-wing-candy shell of bomber-flaming sex power.
Quote from: JasonPratt on May 19, 2015, 02:23:06 PM
Mighty 8th is available on Steam here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/328900/
It reportedly runs fine (for whatever values count as "fine" for this game) on Win 8.1
I'm almost certain my current copy comes from GoG, but my office browser now hates GoG so I can't search there.
I forgot all about Mighty 8th! Thanks Jason. You can ( and I did) get it at GOG (http://www.gog.com/game/b_17_flying_fortress_the_mighty_8th) as well for $5.99
(Caveat to Gus: it is 15 years old though.)
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 19, 2015, 04:39:56 PM
Quote from: JasonPratt on May 19, 2015, 02:19:59 PM
No really weird jets
Whoa, slow your roll, brah. The 229 is not a 'weird jet.' It destruction, vengeance, cannon shells, and jet thrust encased in a thick, flying-wing-candy shell of bomber-flaming sex power.
The US copied the design.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F4%2F47%2FB-2_Spirit_original.jpg%2F600px-B-2_Spirit_original.jpg&hash=feeb1535ff3a80895e49a19d07ffd1aa3598ebd7)
Quote from: jomni on May 19, 2015, 06:59:53 PM
The US copied the design.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F4%2F47%2FB-2_Spirit_original.jpg%2F600px-B-2_Spirit_original.jpg&hash=feeb1535ff3a80895e49a19d07ffd1aa3598ebd7)
Well, it certainly played a part in the development of the B-2:
QuoteEngineers of the Northrop-Grumman Corporation had long been interested in the Ho 229, and several of them visited the Smithsonian Museum's facility in Silver Hill, Maryland in the early 1980s to study the V3 airframe, in the context of developing the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit. A team of engineers from Northrop-Grumman ran electromagnetic tests on the V3's multilayer wooden center-section nose cones. The cones are 19 mm (0.75 in) thick and made from thin sheets of veneer. The team concluded that there was indeed some form of conducting element in the glue, as the radar signal attenuated considerably as it passed through the cone.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229#Stealth_technology
Hmm IL21946 or the Mighty 8th?
No comment on Wings of Prey?
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 19, 2015, 04:39:56 PM
Quote from: JasonPratt on May 19, 2015, 02:19:59 PM
No really weird jets
Whoa, slow your roll, brah. The 229 is not a 'weird jet.' It is destruction, vengeance, cannon shells, and jet thrust encased in a thick, flying-wing-candy shell of bomber-flaming sex power.
There's some kind of sig-line quote in there somewhere... 8)
Quote from: Gusington on May 20, 2015, 08:12:39 AM
Hmm IL21946 or the Mighty 8th?
No comment on Wings of Prey?
I'd just get CLoD and fly the Ju88 or the Stuka or the He111 or the Italian Bomber thing. The editor works fine.
My head hurts. WTF is the Italian bomber thing?
It's the SM-79. It's kind of a wallowing sea cow, but in the air.
Here's War Thunder's take on it.
Quote from: Gusington on May 20, 2015, 08:10:17 PM
My head hurts. WTF is the Italian bomber thing?
It's the BR20M.
Wow. That SM-79 is a bomber thing. And very Italian.
But the BR20M is not a SM-79...
Quote from: Gusington on May 21, 2015, 11:36:17 AM
Wow. That SM-79 is a bomber thing. And very Italian.
But the BR20M is not a SM-79...
There's a secret weapon kind of thing in there somewhere.
Ultra mega secret!
Quote from: Gusington on May 21, 2015, 12:37:20 PM
Ultra mega secret!
Double SECRET probation!
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.247sports.com%2FUploads%2FAssets%2F947%2F520%2F520947.jpg&hash=bb3bb1d6d193293caae912f1949db2a18bbd21db)
I think I want IL21946.
This morning it sprung in my mind that War Thunder might be a good fit, Gus. But I see it has already been mentioned.
But the game is huge. Has a lot of content to unlock and on the easier settings it flies a lot like Crimson Skies. :)
Oh and was the price mentioned? 0 dollah!
Isn't it sort of pay to win?
Nah, for a free-to-play it's really quite innocuous in that regard. It's more of a pay not to grind than anything else.
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 21, 2015, 01:15:40 PM
Quote from: Gusington on May 21, 2015, 12:37:20 PM
Ultra mega secret!
Double SECRET probation!
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.247sports.com%2FUploads%2FAssets%2F947%2F520%2F520947.jpg&hash=bb3bb1d6d193293caae912f1949db2a18bbd21db)
CloD: Secret Weapon
^That is a very nice Blenheim specimen. That's from CloD? Looks very similar to the Blenheim in WarThunder.
Quote from: W8taminute on May 24, 2015, 12:56:35 PM
^That is a very nice Blenheim specimen. That's from CloD? Looks very similar to the Blenheim in WarThunder.
Yep. CLoD. Here's a damaged Blenheim at sunrise (CLoD is not only very annoying, but there may be trojan droppers on the sites that host the mods...so I'd avoid CLoD for quite a while) :
@Gus -- if you're still looking at IL2-1946, GOG has it on sale for $2.49 (http://www.gog.com/game/il_2_sturmovik_1946?pp=a93c168323147d1135503939396cac628dc194c5).
Holy crap!! Thank you Steve :)
Now you just have to start the patching and/or modding process - a game in itself! Seriously though, congratulations, there's a huge world of a game there.
Quote from: Gusington on June 09, 2015, 10:46:06 AM
Holy crap!! Thank you Steve :)
Check out the community universal mod (CUP). It should be all you need.
I will, thanks all