IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Kuban

[IronX]

Announcement here:

http://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/25072-announcing-battle-kuban-and-development-plan/

Of greater interest to many may be the longer term plans:

"Our long-term vision includes the following battles, but not necessarily in this order and final selection is not concrete.

Battle of Kuban
Battle of Midway
Battle of Okinawa
Battle of ? ? ? ? ? ?"

[JasonPratt]

Battle of Okinawa
Battle of ? ? ? ? ? ?

That was someone's reply to the proposition of having an almighty air and naval-air power crushing a bled-white air power, as a game setup. ;)

[Jarhead0331]

I'll admit...I had to look it up. I've never even heard of the Kuban region.

[IronX]

Yet another Eastern front campaign with basically the same aircraft holds little interest to me, but the Pacific games sound promising. I like the reference to the spirit of 1946 too. I only hope that one day they return to the Western front. Flying a four-engine bomber would be great fun. But all of this would be years away since Kuban is not coming out until at least the end of 2017.

[Nefaro]

I'm happy to see they're advancing the date of the setting instead of going backward on the timeline, like their Battle Of Moscow release. 

For both WWI and WWII, I much prefer flying the equipment from the later war years.  Apologies to those who love their Battle Of Britain, or flying Fokker Eindeckers, but there are just more - and sexier - options for late war equipment.   8)


I'm also excited to hear there may be something done in the Pacific theater.  I hope that turns out, but not sure how solid those plans are.  Definitely want to fly a P-38 and a Hellcat in the new IL-2.  ^-^

[Father Ted]

For both WWI and WWII, I much prefer flying the equipment from the later war years.  Apologies to those who love their Battle Of Britain, or flying Fokker Eindeckers, but there are just more - and sexier - options for late war equipment. 

I'm sort of with you on that...The evolution of the fighter (in both wars) was towards a fast, heavily-armed, interceptor.  For my money, the sweet spot for air-to-air combat (in sim terms) is mid-war for both conflicts.  Early war and you're struggling to catch anything and, if you do, struggling to do anything to it.  Late war and it's all about hit-and-run.  In between you get planes which retain a decent amount of energy and pack enough punch to make a few good hits lethal, so you can get involved in sustained fights yet which also have a resolution.

Having said that, if 777 make a Battle of Britain...

[Skoop]

With the eastern front the early war was a one sided affair both skill and technological. 

The kuban campaign was the point where many of the new yak and lavochkin designs made thier mark.  Plus the setting has some cool aspects like beach heads, naval ops in the Black Sea, bombing Sebastopol.  The consensus was that many wanted to round out the eastern front line up before changing venues.  I come to appreciate the air war on the eastern front, especially mid war. The whole thing took place below 10,000, so fights seem more knife fight in a phone booth per say. 

Moving to the pacific will be awesome, glad the devs stuck with it and moving to the pacific is a smart choice because no one else is going there.

[Staggerwing]

Re: the Pacific- being able to fly a Black Cat on nighttime ship interdiction would be awesome, especially if the devs include a smidge of navigational realism.

[Toonces]

The absolute hate on the SimHQ forums has kept me away from this game (the entire BoS/BoM version of IL-2).  However, if they pull off something even remotely interesting in Midway, I'm going to go all-in and SimHQ can eat my fk.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I hope they can deliver on what they're promising.  If they can introduce a decent single player campaign and a fun co-op experience, I'll jump back into the series with both feet but I won't be sucked into pre-ordering this time around.   

[Toonces]

There shall be no pre-ordering on my part.  Purely put up or shut up on this one.  But if they put up, well then w00t w00t!

[MengJiao]

There shall be no pre-ordering on my part.  Purely put up or shut up on this one.  But if they put up, well then w00t w00t!

I didn't pre-order Battle of Moscow, but it turned out to be pretty fun.  This one seems like a very big step in an interesting direction.  With the Spitfire Vb and the A20 (they already have the P40), and shipping they can go right to the Mediterranean in 1942.  Maybe they will add the Beaufighter and maybe some Wildcats/Martlets.  Or go earlier with Swordfish and cranky French planes and do Mers-el-Kabir and Lebanon.

[Skoop]

I'm preordering the minute it's announced, there's enough content for me already in the MP realm that having early access to the plane set is going make the wait seem less.

I'm guessing the early access Kuban content will start rolling out at the start of 2017.  They added 2 collector planes for this fall (yak1b and ju52).  Which means we'll be flying pacific planes early access by the end of 2017 start of 2018.

[Nefaro]

The absolute hate on the SimHQ forums has kept me away from this game (the entire BoS/BoM version of IL-2).  However, if they pull off something even remotely interesting in Midway, I'm going to go all-in and SimHQ can eat my fk.

BoS/BoM is quite good, at it's heart.  The flight & damage modelling, and the graphics, are wonderful.  Those are a great base to start with, and makes the cockpit very immersive. 

The vanilla game is lacking beyond that, however, since it's all tied together with minimalist meta-game.  Even more so than Rise Of Flight, the enemy aircraft spawn points around your player bubble are jarringly noticeable, and their possible locations along your flight path become predictable pretty quickly.  Just one example of how lacking that side of the game is.

Fortunately some users have improved upon that weak spot, but I'm not sure how much they possibly can at the moment.  Due to core things they probably have limited ability to fix, such as the aforementioned enemy AI spawns at the edge of the "player bubble".  Pat Wilson put out a dynamic campaign mod, but I don't know how many limitations it has due to the thin vanilla single-player campaign it's built upon.


AFAIC, it's meant for multi-player.  Even then, it was practically 'Air Quake' on original release.  But users eventually came to the rescue again, creating and hosting some custom persistent mp servers with some semblance of team objectives.  Although I'm not sure if those custom servers' ongoing air wars are yet as good as those in ROF, since I decided to wait until the community had started filling the holes and worked out any issues.  I expect it to improve over time, so I'll be patient. 

I'd like to have both good single- AND multi-player, but I'll play a lot of MP if there are good persistent & ever-changing server host missions.  It's just unfortunate that it requires the community to do the final work in getting it to that point.