Il2 Battle of Stalingrad on Steam

[smithcorp]

Much as the unlocks and arcade 'campaign' system are causing angst, the missions themselves are actually pretty enjoyable. I played a campaign mission last night that was just beautiful and challenging. A pre-dawn ground attack mission in the IL-2, shooting up a train. The lighting was lovely, I could see ground forces shooting at each other along the way, the train loco made a satisfying boom when I shot it up, enemy searchlights criss-crossed the sky and I enjoyed watching my escorts mixing it up with enemy fighters. On the egress, I flew over an enemy airfield and shot out a searchlight that came up just as I was nearby.

I got no experience points even though I fulfilled my mission, because I crashed trying to shoot up a line of vehicles I spotted on my way home, but I had a great time. It is a lovely sim and I can hope there will be changes to some of the elements that are causing concern. The latest update puts autopilot back in, though time acceleration is still limited to x2, so the developers are hearing some messages.

I'm still playing on Normal mode, as I want to be able to see the external view and admire my plane; and navigation on the snowy map is incredibly hard, but increasingly, I can turn off helpers and get a quasi-expert experience (at least CEM). The fly in the ointment is the campaign approach encourages you to jump around between planes, sides and airfields, whereas in RoF careers, you quickly get familiar with your local area and can use landmarks more effectively to navigate without a 'cheat' map.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

The night time missions do look fantastic!  Couple things they need to fix though.  Your AI wingmen keep their nav lights on for the whole mission.  Seeing those big, glowing green and red wing lights must be an AA gunner's wet dream.  They should also put in blackout headlamps for vehicles or at least have the survivors of a strafed column shut their lights off once they know they're under attack.

The latest update said they we're going to lower the number of night missions.  Pity.

The missions also need more variety.  Intercepts are always "proceed to action point".  Once you get there, a flight for 3 bombers always spawns in and heads right towards you.  Always seems to be He-111s if you're flying a Soviet fighter and Pe-2s if you're flying a German.  It'd be nice to see them mix it up a little and have the bombers in larger formations or have some Il-2s or Ju-87s down low to mix it up with.

[smithcorp]

Agree - I didn't mention my AI flight with their Christmas tree lights on! And it is a bit weird seeing the massive headlight of the train; and vehicle headlights, after we have started attacking them. i haven't played enough missions to see the same target planes, but I understand that's happening.

They have enough planes to mix it up a bit more. The 'proceed to action point' thing is silly, but in practice I think you can bump into AI on other legs of the course, so it isn't as dumb as "fly here, no need to worry about baddies, now when you get there, you'll find the same baddies as last time".

[Bletchley_Geek]

Guys,

thanks for the discussion on this title - I have been for some time looking for a WW2 flight sim that could replace the IL-2 bundle I got on Steam, and I appreciate very much the impressions here from people more heavily invested in the sim genre.

I got a simple question, though. Would you guys recommend the game? A brief explanation of why you would or wouldn't recommend it would be very useful. Thanks! :)

[RyanE]

As a standalone flight simulator of the period, I would highly recommend it.  As a campaign-driven game, probably not.  With that said I only play missions, and almost never campaigns.  I think is a great foundation for re-engineering Il-2.  Does it pick up where Il-2 left off...no.  I don't think it was supposed to.

Big disclaimer...I love RoF and never play online.  Just felt I needed to say that.

[Bletchley_Geek]

As a standalone flight simulator of the period, I would highly recommend it.  As a campaign-driven game, probably not.  With that said I only play missions, and almost never campaigns.  I think is a great foundation for re-engineering Il-2.  Does it pick up where Il-2 left off...no.  I don't think it was supposed to.

Thanks for the thoughts, Ryan.

I reckon that asking anyone to pick up where IL-2 left off would be a huge ask. I am not a big fan of IL-2 campaigns, really. I find the implementation to be clunky, messy and buggy. Even if it sounds like anathema, the last campaign games I thoroughly enjoyed on a flight sim were Lawrence Holland's games back in the 1990s: Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe etc. Probably the "sims" I have played the most besides Chuck Yeager's Air Combat :) They weren't the most realistic sims ever - computers had very short legs back in the day - but I did find the experience very engaging. Playing the Great Patriotic War campaign on IL-2 is an exercise in frustration - I only recall having once reached the winter of 1941 flying an LaGG-3, after countless attempts at surviving the Luftwaffe superior planes on a I-16 :-) Indeed, it was very realistic - the chances of a Soviet pilot to survive were indeed ludicrously low - but it doesn't make much for a "cinematic" experience, it was a truly hardcore survival horror experience, before the term "survival horror" was even coined...

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Wait until final release if nothing else.  The single player campaign, well... it isn't really a campaign at all.  It's basically a series of quasi-randomly generated missions.  They can be quite fun taken individually but there's no greater sense of immersion or historicity to them as the results of the missions don't carry over.  There are no pilot stats, no squadron stats, and no moving battlefields so the mission outcome is ultimately meaningless beyond the amount of XP you attained. 

I suspect that the motive behind this XP/unlock grind will be introduced when the game is released as "final" and that it will be a pay-to-progress system.  I can't see any other reason to force players to go through the grind process and the removal of time acceleration to make it even more irritating. 

The raw components are there.  The flight mechanics are decent.  The game looks great but as of now, it's really lacking soul.  If you're OK with just quick missions or want to fly exclusively in online dogfight arenas, it might be worth a look.  If you want something more, wait and see what it looks like upon release.  If they live up to their promise and release the full mission builder then the 3rd party mods might address the shortcomings.  If not, I'd say avoid it.  It's definitely not worth the $100 I spent on it.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Wait until final release if nothing else.  The single player campaign, well... it isn't really a campaign at all.  It's basically a series of quasi-randomly generated missions.  They can be quite fun taken individually but there's no greater sense of immersion or historicity to them as the results of the missions don't carry over.  There are no pilot stats, no squadron stats, and no moving battlefields so the mission outcome is ultimately meaningless beyond the amount of XP you attained. 

Doh.

I suspect that the motive behind this XP/unlock grind will be introduced when the game is released as "final" and that it will be a pay-to-progress system.  I can't see any other reason to force players to go through the grind process and the removal of time acceleration to make it even more irritating. 

What do you mean by a "pay-to-progress"? Looks like their business model will be that of releasing extra planes 20$ a pop. Do you mean that besides paying for the DLC then you need to go through some shitty grindy process that makes no sense whatsoever in order to fly on the FW-190, for instance?

The raw components are there.  The flight mechanics are decent.  The game looks great but as of now, it's really lacking soul.  If you're OK with just quick missions or want to fly exclusively in online dogfight arenas, it might be worth a look.  If you want something more, wait and see what it looks like upon release.  If they live up to their promise and release the full mission builder then the 3rd party mods might address the shortcomings.  If not, I'd say avoid it.  It's definitely not worth the $100 I spent on it.

Yes, there's no rush on spending 100 bucks on this, to be honest.

Thanks, SDR  O0

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I suspect that the motive behind this XP/unlock grind will be introduced when the game is released as "final" and that it will be a pay-to-progress system.  I can't see any other reason to force players to go through the grind process and the removal of time acceleration to make it even more irritating. 

What do you mean by a "pay-to-progress"? Looks like their business model will be that of releasing extra planes 20$ a pop. Do you mean that besides paying for the DLC then you need to go through some shitty grindy process that makes no sense whatsoever in order to fly on the FW-190, for instance?

It's my suspicion that they intend to introduce a pay system similar to what's in World of Tanks or War Thunder.  That is, you pay money for in-game currency of some form that will allow you to pay for higher XP earnings (say 4x XP per mission instead of 2x) and/or to buy plane mods and skins instead of grinding for them.

[Bletchley_Geek]

It's my suspicion that they intend to introduce a pay system similar to what's in World of Tanks or War Thunder.  That is, you pay money for in-game currency of some form that will allow you to pay for higher XP earnings (say 4x XP per mission instead of 2x) and/or to buy plane mods and skins instead of grinding for them.

Okay, that's fair enough. It's not a bad business model, it's working for the two titles you mention. To what degree can the player customize the level of realism? I mean, a meaningful level of realism in IL-2 isn't precisely something you catch up with in a couple 10 minutes sessions...

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Difficulty settings in the game are in a weird state right now.  Up until the release of the beta-version of the single player campaign, players had the ability to go into a menu of difficulty settings and pick and choose which options they wanted enabled or disabled.  For whatever reason, the developers removed the custom settings from the single player campaign and left the player with two presets to select from, normal or expert.  The custom menu is still available for multi-player and quick missions, just not for the campaign.

Anyway, the normal and expert settings in the campaign are set up rather strangely.  I had expected expert to have all the assists turned off and the player would be required to manage everything from a cold engine start to taxing, navigation with no assists, complex engine management, etc but that's not the case.  Really the only difference between the two settings are that you can't go to external views in expert mode and complex engine management is required.  By default, you still get what the devs call "technochat" which is a sort of mini HUD on the right side of the screen that shows any changes to inputs with an icon and text.  It'll give you a numerical value if you change something like prop pitch or fuel mixture for example.  Additionally, the default map settings show your position at all times and the locations of friendly and enemy units once you get close enough.  You can turn these assists off (I do) but doing so also stops the text messages that show the radio chatter translations so unless you speak Russian or German, turning off the assists means you won't know what your wingmen and control tower are saying to you. 

Normal is similar but has even more assists turned on.  Things like simplified engine management and on-screen icons for navigation and target locations but most of these can be turned off with a few key presses. 

There's more wiggle room between the difficulty settings that I suspected there would be but it's still annoying to be locked into only one of two choices rather than being able to set your own options globally.  It's a little irritating to have to turn them on or off each time you fly out.


Overall, the depth of control of the planes is decent.  It's not as involved or as in-depth as Cliffs of Dover or the study sim titles of DCS like A-10C but it's more involved than IL-2: 1946.  I enjoy constantly tweaking throttle, fuel mix, prop pitch, and supercharger settings to maintain my tachometer and manifold pressure settings so that I don't overheat or seize up the engine.  The only thing I don't like is that you can't use a trim or axis setting for prop pitch controls on the German planes like you can with the Soviet ones.  I gather that the German planes had pre-sets so you have to map toggle switches or keys to flip the controls into the pre-sets rather than using a wheel like in the Russian crates.  It means you have to use up some more controller buttons.

Bombing's a little off for the level bombers.  The devs spent a lot of time making sure the cockpit and engine controls were accurate but then they turned around and threw in a simplified bomb sighting system for the He-111 and the Pe-2.  The labelling is all in English unlike the cockpits and it all looks too clean and modern compared to the rest of the plane.  Not sure why they did that but it's not a huge deal.  It does make bombing a little too easy though.

[Nefaro]

It's my suspicion that they intend to introduce a pay system similar to what's in World of Tanks or War Thunder.  That is, you pay money for in-game currency of some form that will allow you to pay for higher XP earnings (say 4x XP per mission instead of 2x) and/or to buy plane mods and skins instead of grinding for them.

Okay, that's fair enough. It's not a bad business model, it's working for the two titles you mention. To what degree can the player customize the level of realism? I mean, a meaningful level of realism in IL-2 isn't precisely something you catch up with in a couple 10 minutes sessions...

As I mentioned before, those other two titles are Free-To-Play games.  You can download and play them without spending a dime up front, and continue to play them without doing so.

That's not the case with BoS.  I dunno if they plan on adding a Pay Boost option to the game (wouldn't surprise me either) for advancing into the aircraft you want to fly.  But the game isn't F-To-P so they absolutely would not attract extra customers because they'd be using the wrong business model and their current customers would become even more pissed off.  It would be a poor decision.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Awesome in-depth walkthrough of realism settings

Some baffling stuff in there, yes. But thanks a lot for the comprehensive walkthrough, mate, much appreciated!

[MengJiao]

As a standalone flight simulator of the period, I would highly recommend it.  As a campaign-driven game, probably not.  With that said I only play missions, and almost never campaigns.  I think is a great foundation for re-engineering Il-2.  Does it pick up where Il-2 left off...no.  I don't think it was supposed to.

Thanks for the thoughts, Ryan.

I reckon that asking anyone to pick up where IL-2 left off would be a huge ask. I am not a big fan of IL-2 campaigns, really. I find the implementation to be clunky, messy and buggy. Even if it sounds like anathema, the last campaign games I thoroughly enjoyed on a flight sim were Lawrence Holland's games back in the 1990s: Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe etc. Probably the "sims" I have played the most besides Chuck Yeager's Air Combat :) They weren't the most realistic sims ever - computers had very short legs back in the day - but I did find the experience very engaging. Playing the Great Patriotic War campaign on IL-2 is an exercise in frustration - I only recall having once reached the winter of 1941 flying an LaGG-3, after countless attempts at surviving the Luftwaffe superior planes on a I-16 :-) Indeed, it was very realistic - the chances of a Soviet pilot to survive were indeed ludicrously low - but it doesn't make much for a "cinematic" experience, it was a truly hardcore survival horror experience, before the term "survival horror" was even coined...

  My take on the game is much the same as Ryan's.  I don't play campaigns very often.  BUT the I-16 campaign in Il-2 was something I did play and it was one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.  At the moment, BoS doesn't seem like it is going to come close to that, but I think, these days, that's fine with me.  Would I recommend BoS?  I'd say, no not at the moment, unless you really like Russian planes.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

The tone of the message in today's update blog was very placatory but also vague.  I suspect they adopted a somewhat conciliatory tone to try and assuage the angry backers (the scores on Metacritic are plummeting by the day) but they didn't really offer up anything concrete.  Just vague promises that they're listening to the complaints of the community and that we can expect great things 6-12 months down the road.  Sounds like the Hope and Change speeches from the last election.  Hopefully the results are better this time round.

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Hi Everybody!

I'd like to start today's dev blog with a few quotes from Loft's recent posts on the forum where he replies to a player who has completed the entire Campaign (MK.MrX) and shared his thoughts with us.

"Thank you for the information and thank you for the critics. We know about all flaws of the single player campaign and we realise all demands (about its insufficient variety and non-linearity) that you have.

We've successfully made the base for the game and completed the system in general however we haven't had enough time to fill the universe. We have detailed and described plans for improving the campaign, and it'll take from 6 to 12 months to make them reality. Those months have been spent on providing early access. So we hope that you, our actual and future customers will give us time to accomplish our goal.
Meanwhile we're making missions that involve escorting and intercepting assault planes, also some existing templates are being remade. New content is being added as well: ground objects, vehicles, AA artillery, specific colors of signal rockets for different regiments are to be added soon, etc.. After that new missions will be added including aerial domination, for example. These will be followed by intercepting transport aircraft and protecting them accordingly. There's a possibility that Ju-52 may become available in the game as a non-flyable plane in transport escort/interception raids.

Some time later a special page with all pilots stats will be published. You'll be able to check your progress on the game's web page and also see your friends stats. In the future the system of achievements may also be developed for the multiplayer as well.

Yes, we still have a lot to do. That's why we've came up with this decision to create a solid system that could be easily expanded, saturated and upgraded."

The first week with single player campaign on your PCs was rich in stormy discussions on the boards. There was quite a lot of fierce debates in our studio too if you ask. But the work is on as well the life on the forums, still constructive, positive and promising. Absolutely brilliant briefings were suggested by Feathered_IV and FlatSpinMan. Their ideas of immersion into the atmosphere of frontline routine and ruthless battles could be a great addition to the game missions. But I believe there are a lot of talented pilots on the forums who would be happy to share their creative approach with the community. That's why I suggest you all to write and publish your creative briefing descriptions for any type of IL2BOS mission in this specific section. We'll be checking it regularly to pick the ones that we like most and the best of them will be added to the official game build.

Also preparing the forum for the release we want to reorganize the subforum called Tutorials and Manuals. There you'll be able to post your own video guides, manuals and descriptions for the in-game vehicles and discuss control set ups for your planes.


CHANGELOG

    Turret gun ammo counter added to GUI;

    "Choose a mission" screen got its design improved;

    Info about the mission task is now shown prior to its start;

    In Chapter 2 of the campaign the target area marker is now shown correctly;

    Incorrect counting of landings fixed in campaign;

    Friendly fire is now punished with x0 EXP penalty in campaign;

    Skins will be shown correctly both to the player and the AI wingmen (for player - according to their choice; for the bots - standard or winter pattern);

    AI planes will know how to distribute ground targets between each other;

    Ammo counter and recoil fixed for the WB81B pods;

    "Floating" icons on the search lights fixed;

    Trimmers and stabilizers are now set for cruise flight;

    Frequent stall situation for AI bots on Fw 190 and Bf 109 fixed;

    Techno chat will also be showing overheating, damaging and ammo depleting for the fixed armament;

    Mission won't generate spawn points too close to the maps end any more in campaign;
    The AAA will be getting more and more aggressive as you level up through campaign;