IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad Discussion

[Apocalypse 31]

My goodness. You really seem to hate DCS, your not just mad at them for the ww2 entry they made but also want to get away from their jets. But why?

Just getting fed up with the DCS hype. Modules that are hyped up then released with 1/2 features only to be abandoned less than a year later, maps the same.

DCS doesn't feel like a game, and I have rarely enjoyed my time playing it - it is more of a struggle to jam the proper keys in an expedient fashion than apply tactics and feel enjoyment (for me).

Multiplayer is also poorly done in DCS, like it was an afterthought - even which the developers admit the game wasn't initially developed for multiplayer.

IL2 just feels more game-like. Sure, its not as full fidelity as DCS, but my goal is enjoying the game and focusing on tactics and the art of war - rather than tedious tasks like turning the master-arm switch ON, turning the missile selector lever to the right pylon, ensuring the FCS is warmed up and oriented properly, ensuring that the safety latches are unlatched on BOTH the laser range finder AND the fire controls, ensuring my target is within proper range and that my lase is correct - all that to launch a HOT3 in the Gazelle.

[JasonPratt]

Heh yeah probably because 9 out of 10 dogfights end in a descending scissors. :)

I might have to poke my head into the BoX franchise, but how's the spread of aircraft that are flyable? Only lend-lease / captured western aircraft or do the(mods?) games also feature western or desert front missions?

No Steam mods that I can find. If there are other mods, perhaps someone can say.

Obviously the original IL-2 (on sale dirt cheap at Steam right now, as IL-2:1946), has absolute tons of things included, not counting who knows how many mods.

Currently you can run a career from the Battle of Moscow, through the Battle of Stalingrad, through the Battle of Kurban, all of which feature rather different terrain (especially Kurban), but all are separate purchases of course (the other two being large DLC for Stalingrad). DLC aircraft tend to not be available through all campaigns, which is understandable: getting a FW190 at the Battle of Moscow might be gauche. ;)

The Soviets fly a nice mix of Lend/Lease aircraft (freaking Airacobras!) plus their own gear. The Nazis stick with their own kit, except for an arguably competent Italian fighter. Each plane comes with skins, and with variant loadout options. I do not understand how a 1 kilogram rear-view mirror would result in a 1kph speed loss in a HS 129-B2 "Duck" tactical bomber, when a 10Kg radio compass results in a speed loss less than 1kph, but there we are.  ::) (This is extra DLC, btw.)

Stalingrad starts you with 4 operational craft on each side (2 fighters, one tac, one med bomber). I find a bit of personal amusement in the base model IL-2 (of the game's name) being the 1938 design for clear-sky warfare, with the armor and rear gun left off by Stalin's command because he was expecting to overrun German positions so hard their airforce would be wiped out on the ground.  ::)

A similar spread of 8 aircraft for Battle of Moscow, at least some of which can also be used in later campaigns I would expect. Kurban unlocks another 8 craft, though I'm not sure how many can be used earlier. There's also a special Soviet story-campaign for Stalingrad as a DLC, where you play a specific character, a fighter-pilot grounded for injury and deemed unable to fly fighters, who gets shifted to the eponymous IL-2 instead.

[Jarhead0331]

^It's Kuban, not "Kurban"...

[JasonPratt]

You mean it isn't where the Kurgan comes from?!

:hide:

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Flew the new planes over the holidays.  Love the new p47 but it's a pig for down low dog fighting.  I was far more leathal in the spit mark ix.  Also the 109k that was released with the p47 maybe the best all around fighter in the game.  It's now my best axis plane.  Supposedly the p47 is supposed to own at 20000 feet, but in online dogfight no one ever flies that high.

Yeah, the Kurfurst seems pretty deadly.  I just shot down 3 P-47s at 4500m in one.  I just don't like flying 109s though.  I always end up burning out the engine no matter how much I hold back on the throttle.  (and I ground loop a lot when taxiing onto of off of the runway.)

I think I like the Spitfire Mk IX the best of the new planes.  I seem to be able to fly rings around most things I go up against although I did have a helluva lot of trouble with some A-9s.  They managed to pull just ahead of my reticle no matter how sharp I cut my turn.

I'm really looking forward to the Tempest.  That's the plane I flew the most in Il-2 1946 when I played online.

[Gusington]

Goddammit...

[Skoop]

^ You don't have any of the il2 BOX series yet ?

[Gusington]

No...but I think I am going to get the base game and the HS2 dlc tomorrow morning.

[Skoop]

Not sure how much you like flying Russian and german stuff, many of you will want to fly only western allied stuff which requires Bodenplatt.  No map or SP career yet in early access, but you could fly QBs and any online map is fair game as long as there's Bodenplatt planes on it.

[MengJiao]

Not sure how much you like flying Russian and german stuff, many of you will want to fly only western allied stuff which requires Bodenplatt.  No map or SP career yet in early access, but you could fly QBs and any online map is fair game as long as there's Bodenplatt planes on it.

   You can fly western planes in Kuban (Spitfire Vb, P-40E, Aircobra and A20, even in Western markings)

[Father Ted]

   You can fly western planes in Kuban (Spitfire Vb, P-40E, Aircobra and A20, even in Western markings)

You can put up some He111s and Me109s against those Spits, squint a bit, and pretend it's the BoB

[MengJiao]

  Or Malta or with p40s -- Palmyra.

[Yskonyn]

And this is by the original 'Ilya and Oleg' crew of the original IL-2 games?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

And this is by the original 'Ilya and Oleg' crew of the original IL-2 games?

Nope.  An offshoot that developed Rise of Flight.   The original main developer had some bizarre ideas that really hurt the game but after he left and Jason took over, they've been slowly but surely turning it around.  The original dev wanted a highly detailed, complex flight sim engine with complex engine management but he wanted this sim engine to be crammed into a weird game world catering chiefly to the online twitch crowd.  I think he saw the success of World of Tanks and War Thunder and wanted a piece of that so he put in a player leveling system where you needed to earn XP to unlock skins and upgrades for your plane.  It also included an AI skill scaling system so the higher level your avatar was, the tougher the AI became.  Once you reached the maximum level of 10, AI anti-air was laser like in its ability to nail you and nearly every enemy pilot was an ace.  There was no way to reset your level because it was tied to your account, not individual pilots within the game.  This was due to the fact that you didn't actually create a pilot within game.  The "campaigns" were just a series of randomly generated missions where you could select any airfield on the map and choose any plane based there.  You'd get a generic mission where you'd fly the same diamond shaped flight path, attack or defend whatever the objective was, and then RTB.  Didn't matter how many planes went down on either side as the game didn't track any stats beyond the amount of XP you'd earn for completing the mission.  Very little in the way of immersion, especially for single player.   Players would just try to plough through easy missions in order to grind XP so they could unlock all the stuff.  The dev responded by putting a maximum 2x time compression cap on single player missions.   

The community was pretty unhappy with this design decision but he simply refused to listen and would just ban people from the forums if they voiced even mild criticism.  Single players pretty much shelved the game and the online community lost a lot of people as well.  Most servers were underpopulated or completely empty even during peak hours.  They finally got the guy to step down and started addressing player concerns.  Single player still isn't great but it's improving constantly.  They still have the goofy leveling system but you can now opt to start with everything unlocked so it's mostly there as a legacy that everyone can just ignore.  The enemy AI is no longer tied to it as strongly so you aren't getting punished by ground fire.  There's a campaign system that allows you to create pilots complete with biographies and the game will now track the stats and progress of said pilots as well as the stats of squadrons. 

It's fun to play now in SP and the MP servers are filling up again. 

[Jarhead0331]

^Its so rare that a game can turn around once it gets off to a bad start making a negative first impression...that IL-2 BOS has succeeded in doing that is a credit to the quality of the game.