IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946

[Jack Nastyface]

Maybe "hater" is too strong a word, but IIRC, there were a couple of guys on "another" gaming site that often complained how the lack of dynamic campaigns was a spoiler for Il-2, and also how the default (non-patched) AI was either predictable or unfairly advanced.  Some of this was valid:  if you roll in on a Vee of bombers, you could almost see the AI decision tree trigger when you point your gunsight at the planes.  Othertimes, I was amazed at how, when following an bandit through a loop, "I" would black-out but they would pull harder and tighter and still come through okay.

[Nefaro]

I never got into Il-2:FB much when I had it years ago.  But I picked up a digital copy of IL-2: 1946 on Steam for squat sometime in the past year.  I hear that you can just copy the folder elsewhere on your hard drive and drop the latest update files over that to run it outside of Steam, to avoid modding issues.

So I have some questions:

1) Which mega-mod for 1946 do you recommend?  The Steam version comes updated to 4.12.2 (IIRC.. it has the ReadMe for 4.12 in the install location), which is probably good enough.  I was just thinking of dropping in something that improved the textures & such a bit more.  I downloaded the HSFX mod but I'm not sure if that is too much work to worry about.

2) Do you prefer IL-2: COD nowadays, since the Team Fusion Mod/Patches have helped it along?

I'm just looking at single-player campaigns here.  It sounds like neither have terribly good dynamic ones (and COD only from the mod) but I don't feel like re-learning all the button pushing in Falcon BMS or the DCS stuff right now.   So I may toy around in 1946, or pick up COD if it's now passable (and only ten bucks).

Advice?


Edit:  Also note that my hotkey programming in the Steam version is jacked.  Goddamn thing won't save my custom key commands.  I suspect it needs to be installed some place outside Program Files and Run As Admin, so hopefully the move & patch thing will actually work okay.  I'd be pissed if I have to spend even a small amount of money again on the GOG version of something I already own.

[Nefaro]

Looks like copying the installation to a different location helped me save my settings.  Hopefully it doesn't go wonky again.

Also got HSFX installed and everything runs smoothly.  I just need to tweak any extra gfx settings and would like to force some AA & AF on if it doesn't flip the F out after doing so. 

Despite being only ten bucks, I figured 1946 has so many options that I probably don't need the limited content in Cliffs of Dover (even with the mod).  Unless the modded randomized campaign in the COD mod is impressive, I'll pass for the moment.  Will probably be flying WW1 again soon anyway, and maybe reacquaint myself with Black Shark 2.

[MengJiao]

I never got into Il-2:FB much when I had it years ago.  But I picked up a digital copy of IL-2: 1946 on Steam for squat sometime in the past year.  I hear that you can just copy the folder elsewhere on your hard drive and drop the latest update files over that to run it outside of Steam, to avoid modding issues.

So I have some questions:

1) Which mega-mod for 1946 do you recommend?  The Steam version comes updated to 4.12.2 (IIRC.. it has the ReadMe for 4.12 in the install location), which is probably good enough.  I was just thinking of dropping in something that improved the textures & such a bit more.  I downloaded the HSFX mod but I'm not sure if that is too much work to worry about.

2) Do you prefer IL-2: COD nowadays, since the Team Fusion Mod/Patches have helped it along?

I'm just looking at single-player campaigns here.  It sounds like neither have terribly good dynamic ones (and COD only from the mod) but I don't feel like re-learning all the button pushing in Falcon BMS or the DCS stuff right now.   So I may toy around in 1946, or pick up COD if it's now passable (and only ten bucks).

Advice?

I would get CLOD.  With the final patch (patch 2 -- which is automatically in the Steam version) and the Team fusion stuff (easy to apply to the Steam version -- but see the Team Fusion site -- which has some other name like Assaulting Air Assault Adventure Assaulters Combat Assault Task Force -- see SimHQ to figure that out or just assault google assault -- I have the Assault Google Plus Assault system -- yep) it is the best flight sim out there at the moment.  BoS which is based on RoF should be nearly as good, but it is 99 dollars to get into the open Beta at this point so why not just wait for the game and play CLOD and RoF and Woff in the mean time?.

I loved IL-2 in all its earlier incarnations, but once you fly in RoF or CLOD, it is hard to go back to the old Il-2, even with the Dark Blue World Mod which was pretty cool.  The MOD world for Il-2 was kind of fun, but in the end, I decided I just wanted to fly realistic planes in a realistic world and RoF, CLOD and (I assume) WOFF and (apparently) BoS are much more of what I want with much less trouble than the old Il-2 stuff.

[Skoop]

I would get COD simply because it's cheap and the TF team is still supporting it.  There are plans to release more aircraft and maps.  I keep il2 1946 on my drive because it's the only sim out there with the pacific featured, but I have moved on to battle of Stalingrad which is shaping up nicely, just a hundred dollar buy in at the moment.

[Nefaro]

I only considered COD because it's been so heavily modded and it's cheap.  My problem with it is that it's just the Battle of Britain so there doesn't look to be much variety in aircraft and it will pretty much just be a single-player experience for me during a short hiatus from other flight sims (especially since I often avoid WW2 these days). 

So between single-player and few flyable aircraft, I'm still not sure if I wanna put the time into it.  Are one of those two things not much of an issue in COD after all?

[MengJiao]

I only considered COD because it's been so heavily modded and it's cheap.  My problem with it is that it's just the Battle of Britain so there doesn't look to be much variety in aircraft and it will pretty much just be a single-player experience for me during a short hiatus from other flight sims (especially since I often avoid WW2 these days). 

So between single-player and few flyable aircraft, I'm still not sure if I wanna put the time into it.  Are one of those two things not much of an issue in COD after all?

   Those are issues.  There is a very neato multiplayer community, but you have to be pretty good to get much out of it.  I'm proud to say, I got off the ground in Multiplayer, blew a gasket and managed to land and then never played Multiplayer again.

   On the other hand, there are actually lots of versions of each plane to fly once you get the TF mod.  Plus each plane is very well modelled.

   Still, I've mostly been using CLOD to run battles I set up from The Burning Blue, so my use has been excentric at best.

   BUT, CLOD does have some big advantages over IL-2 1946:

1) fantastic graphics
2) fantastic aircraft modelling in all ways
3) Only one mod really needed
4) There are pretty good single-player campaigns (so I hear...I've been running things based on The Burning Blue)
5) And you do get a pretty good Battle of Britain if that is your cup of Tea.

[Nefaro]

Anyone tried this 'dynamic' campaign mod?

http://airwarfare.com/sow/index.php?option=com_jdownloads&Itemid=53&task=view.download&catid=4&cid=137


I dunno.. it sounds okay.  I may jump for ten bucks.  I just hadn't planned on habitually flying a WW2 sim for a long stretch.  Just a getaway for some extra variety after flying bi-planes for months now.  The Battle of Britain setting is fine, although it's a rather limited period.  If it has passable campaign mods, it may be worth the time. 

Also.. does COD still run people's vid cards and/or processors at nuclear temperatures?  Thought there were some horror stories about how badly optimized it was?

[MengJiao]

Also.. does COD still run people's vid cards and/or processors at nuclear temperatures?  Thought there were some horror stories about how badly optimized it was?

  I have no real information about that, but the great thing about CLOD is that it is definitely the one game for which all possible horror stories are probably true.  I feel lucky that the horror was so well-described.  I only got the game after TF patch 3 was out and made it workable.

  On my machine, an Alienware thing with less graphics power than CLOD requires, CLOD runs without a hitch, but then I shut off grass and anti-alias-ing and so on.  I have moderate shadows and full reflections and not much else of a graphics intensive nature.  Even with all that, CLOD is still the best-looking air sim ever.

[Nefaro]

Thanks for the info.  I picked it up last night.. just getting the mod soup stirred right now.  I've also been considering heading back into some sub simming since I haven't done that in awhile, but those always involve a large dose of 'Mod Soup' and I even end up making my own modifications of mods, so I've not been in a hurry to go through that whole mess.  Luckily the installers for this looks to be pretty straightforward other than deleting a cache folder or some such.

So I guess you guys have only been doing one-off missions, some canned ones in the campaign, or multi-player? 

[Yskonyn]

CLoD with the TF mod is glorious! I can definately recommend that to anyone looking for a good WW2 sim! Who would've thought that after vanilla's initial release, eh? ;)

Regarding subsimming; the notion of controlling a sub and playing the hunter/prey game often grabs me to no end, but every time I have Silent Hunter installed I can't get over the fact that most of the gameplay is just boring.
The fights themselves are thrilling and look fantastic, but if you play at realistic settings you just don't have the cinematic experience from, say a movie like Das Boot. :)
Long waiting times, slow movement... It's just not for me, eventhough I really find the whole concept thrilling.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

I'll be the bitchy voice of dissent here as it seems to be a bit of a running theme today. CLOD was an absolute disaster when it was first released and I think some sort of Stockholm syndrome has developed here with the TF mod. People are so happy that CLOD is no longer anally violating them with an unlubricated pine-cone turned sideways that they're interpreting the lessened pain as a good thing. Even with the TF mod, CLOD is still buggering you with a pine cone.  They've just turned it the right way round and spit on it a bit first.

Front end interface is still a disaster.  You still cannot select a quick battle and then select nationalities to fight against.  If you choose a low-level dogfight and want to fly as Brits, you're fighting the Italians no matter what planes you try to assign as the enemy.

AI is very lacking.  Your wing-men still don't respond to commands.  The enemy AI is very lackluster and will rely on only a handful of manoeuvres so dogfighting gets stale very quickly.  Worse, they seem to have disengagement routines absolutely hard coded in so if an Axis plane has flown over the mission zone and no friendlies are within a certain radius, it turns and heads home on a nice, straight, level flight and will barely respond if you fly up behind it and start plinking away. 

One thing that drives me absolutely nuts is just how poorly anti-aliasing is implemented in the game.  (Supposedly it's OK if you have an nVidia card but if you've got AMD like I do, it's terrible.)  I hate jaggies in any game but in a flight sim, I find them unforgivable.  When I play, I want to be able to spot a bogie and instantly be able to tell if it's a single or multi engine plane and get a rough idea of its directional attitude towards me.  The further away I can determine this, the better I'm able to set up my attack or plan my defence.  In CLOD, distant targets look like a random blob of pixels and it's difficult to determine anything from looking at it other than the fact that it looks like shit.  No amount of fiddling with SweetFX, card settings or the crap in game faux FXAA will fix the problem.   

Something that I found troubling is that the game won't run on some PCs if they have IE 11 installed.  Mine was one.  I don't use IE 11 but I still found it questionable that you had to actually go into the registry and delete some Windows kernels in order to get the mod to run.  Seems kind of drastic to me and I now have to through updates and manually de-select that option whenever I update Windows 7 if I want to keep CLOD on the PC.

The core mechanics of the sim (flying and fighting) are very good.  The feeling of flight is well done, the level of detail in the damage modelling is insane, and the faithfulness with which the devs reproduced the cockpits and the functionality of each plane is admirable but it's not enough to make it a good game.  If all you want to do is fire it up and run some quick dogfights, it's well done.  If you're looking for a good campaign based single player experience, steer well clear of this turkey.

[jomni]

Edit:  it is worth noting that although Il-2 does not have as rigorous a flight engine as other dedicated platforms (XPlane, MS-FS), you can turn up the realism on this game so that is fairly challenging.  A knowledge of magnetos, fuel-air mixtures, individual engine management, etc are there for the having, and absolutely positively knowing rudder, aileron and elevator trim can spell the difference between life and death.

I remember cursing the hell out of Il-2 because it has a lot of systems simulated and not enough keyboard keys to map to.  And to think this is just a WW2 aircraft simulator.
I don't remember if it has clickable cockpits.  But I think it should once you have many systems simulated.

[Nefaro]

If all you want to do is fire it up and run some quick dogfights, it's well done.  If you're looking for a good campaign based single player experience, steer well clear of this turkey.

This is what I feared, and ultimately what I expect.  I've also seen enough complaints about the bad AA causing distant flickering and such, even on Nvidia cards.  I can probably get past this stuff, but if the game doesn't have even a halfway decent campaign generator of sorts, then I probably won't play it much.   

I'm not in these combat sims for the experience of tweaking my prop pitch and fuel mixture, or flying around on long uneventful missions.  I'm in it for the fights and some immersion into a long and somewhat unpredictable campaign.  I should probably just stick with WOFF and start learning Falcon 4 BMS.  ;)  The latter shouldn't be too difficult since I've been familiarized with Falcon 4 and the US avionics over the years.  It's just the extra time investment and fear of mod issues that often pop up on games that old.

Regarding subsimming; the notion of controlling a sub and playing the hunter/prey game often grabs me to no end, but every time I have Silent Hunter installed I can't get over the fact that most of the gameplay is just boring.
The fights themselves are thrilling and look fantastic, but if you play at realistic settings you just don't have the cinematic experience from, say a movie like Das Boot. :)
Long waiting times, slow movement... It's just not for me, eventhough I really find the whole concept thrilling.

I admit that sub simming can have some long stretches of boring but fortunately most of them have a very high time compression, so it's not all that different than flying a flight sim mission on 4x or 8x TC while waiting for sightings.  The reason I've enjoyed sub sims in the past dozen years or so is because I started using manual targeting with increased difficulty options & mods.  If I was just using ye olde 'Red Triangle' in the Silent Hunter series, I would get bored with it rather quickly as it becomes too easy.  The torpedo solution generation in Dangerous Waters sucks so bad that you're usually better off doing it yourself, so I even do part of that one manually despite not having the in-game tools.

The real problem is the goddamn ridiculous amount of mods you need to download and enable to get any of the Silent Hunter series up and running with the fewest amount of bugs.  I think SH4 is probably the easiest since the TMO mega-mod has almost all the fixes needed, although I go in and further modify a few things to my own tastes.  Even that takes a fair bit of time to do.  The mess that is SH5 is a fookeen nightmare, however.  There are so many bugs and soooo many little mods to fix them.  They also have to enable in a somewhat specific order, along with all kinds of special notations and maybe a few text edits involved.  I see that there are some Mega-Mods but those can also be a pain since they often include extra mods that change gameplay facets which I don't want changed.  Either way, modding SH5 is a damn nightmare that can easily end in severe frustration if the modding process doesn't work and your game keeps crashing.  I haven't built up the urge so much that I'm willing to endure the torture just yet.  But damn does it look awesome if you happen to get it running smoothly after such trials. :D

[Yskonyn]

The core mechanics of the sim (flying and fighting) are very good.  The feeling of flight is well done, the level of detail in the damage modelling is insane, and the faithfulness with which the devs reproduced the cockpits and the functionality of each plane is admirable but it's not enough to make it a good game.  If all you want to do is fire it up and run some quick dogfights, it's well done.  If you're looking for a good campaign based single player experience, steer well clear of this turkey.

I agree. It's pretty much a multiplayer sim at this time.
The Dynamic Campaign mod does add some nice SP action to it, but the AI is not very good. For that BoB2 still rules (and is cheap!)

The real problem is the goddamn ridiculous amount of mods you need to download and enable to get any of the Silent Hunter series up and running with the fewest amount of bugs.  I think SH4 is probably the easiest since the TMO mega-mod has almost all the fixes needed, although I go in and further modify a few things to my own tastes.  Even that takes a fair bit of time to do.  The mess that is SH5 is a fookeen nightmare, however.  There are so many bugs and soooo many little mods to fix them.  They also have to enable in a somewhat specific order, along with all kinds of special notations and maybe a few text edits involved.  I see that there are some Mega-Mods but those can also be a pain since they often include extra mods that change gameplay facets which I don't want changed.  Either way, modding SH5 is a damn nightmare that can easily end in severe frustration if the modding process doesn't work and your game keeps crashing.  I haven't built up the urge so much that I'm willing to endure the torture just yet.  But damn does it look awesome if you happen to get it running smoothly after such trials.

Yeah I suppose you're right. The time acceleration helps. And personally I just need to have the External Camera available to enhance my experience, eventhough it's not very realistic. :)
Some mods prevent you to, though, for the sake of realism. But I rather prefer realism to only affect enironmental effects, systems, weapons and stuff. Not view settings. At least not in a Sub sim.