IL2 DCG Campaign Balance

[onelifecrisis]

Those of you that play DCG campaigns - do you find some (all?) of the DCG campaigns are rather poorly balanced? Or is it just the RAF one?

Today I started an RAF campaign in Normandy 41. I'm playing with Full Squadron Density and Two Flights per Squadron. So basically, the RAF sent up 60 planes on the first mission, including mine. The result? 60 RAF planes downed, and barely a dent in the Luftwaffe forces.

Now I know the RAF suffered losses over Normandy in 41, but I also know they didn't get totally annihilated in less than an hour. Historical (in)accuracy aside, this seems to me to be an exceptionally poorly crafted campaign in terms of the gameplay balance. I find myself wondering whether the chap that made it ever bothered to actually play it.

So, to my question: if I abandon my dream of flying a dynamic RAF campaign in IL2 and try instead to fly as, say, a pilot in the USAAF (I'd love to fly a P-38) then should I expect equally poor balancing on those DCG campaigns as well? Or are the others better?

[Biggles]

Are you serious? ALL 60 downed!? That sounds incredible. I've sure as hell never seen anything like it. In my campaigns both sides take losses, if anything, the axis somewhat more than the allies.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Biggles

Are you serious? ALL 60 downed!? That sounds incredible. I've sure as hell never seen anything like it. In my campaigns both sides take losses, if anything, the axis somewhat more than the allies.

Every single plane.
I've flown a lot of missions and half-missions in Normandy 41 as the RAF, but always testing - testing to see what reduces stutter, what increases framerate, which DCG settings I wanted, etc. Every time I started a new campaign fresh, and the RAF always take heavy losses. But this is the first time I played out a mission in full, and it was a long-range mission so all the other flights had time to carry out their missions as well. Not a single plane made it back. I went down in a sea of Bf-109's without another spit in sight (I took two of them with me though ).

It's hardly surprising when you look at the normandy 41 campaign file: A ton of Veteran Bf-109's are pitted against Average Hurricane Mk1's and Average Blenheim bombers. And the Axis have AAA of course. How the hell is that supposed to result in good game balance?

I gave my squadron spits, and there's one or maybe two other spit squadrons, but it's not enough.

Edit:
Those hurricanes should be MkII and Veteran I reckon... or Average MkII's against Average Bf-109's maybe. The Axis should have an advantage over Normandy in 41, but losing the entire RAF in one hour is just daft.

[Dowly]

What's the AI difficulty? Not sure, but it might be that if you have it on Squadron Default, the LW is higher AI than the RAF, you know, to simulate the experience from Spanish Civil War. But not sure like I said, never checked it.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Dowly

What's the AI difficulty? Not sure, but it might be that if you have it on Squadron Default, the LW is higher AI than the RAF, you know, to simulate the experience from Spanish Civil War. But not sure like I said, never checked it.

I do have it on Squadron Default.
I agree the LW would have experienced pilots... but I reckon in 1941 (right after BoB) the RAF pilots were hardly n00bs.

[onelifecrisis]

I'm tempted to try setting the RAF flight size to 4, so that all 80 planes go up instead of only 60 of them... but I'm not sure it'll help that much. :hmm:

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

I'm tempted to try setting the RAF flight size to 4, so that all 80 planes go up instead of only 60 of them... but I'm not sure it'll help that much. :hmm:

Well I just gave this a try. Here's the result:


Some of the RAF made it back alive this time.

[Raptor1]

Frankly, the Normandy '41 campaign is horrible, I absolutely hate it

[onelifecrisis]

I'll try replacing the MkI hurricanes with MkII's and see how much difference it makes... if that fails, I'll just skip ahead to the next part of the campaign.

I'm glad to hear it's not a problem with the other campaigns, at least.

[Raptor1]

Dunno how it is with the other campaigns, I just hate the Normandy '41 campaign specifically, there's just no point in it

Try the 1943-45 campaigns, it should get more balanced there

[Fincuan]

This isn't directly related to DCG, but for a P-38 campaign I'd recommend BBall's excellent Double Nickel. I have a coop version of it which works great with 4.08, but the M4T offline version should work too. If not, just pm me and I'll send you the campaign.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Fincuan

This isn't directly related to DCG, but for a P-38 campaign I'd recommend BBall's excellent Double Nickel. I have a coop version of it which works great with 4.08, but the M4T offline version should work too. If not, just pm me and I'll send you the campaign.

Thanks man, I'll take a look!

[Suicide Charlie]

Hmm... Odd. I flew the Normandy '41 campaign in it's full and smacked the **** out of the Luftwaffe. I do remember it seemed that both the AI and the squadron make up was a lot more balanced then what you're describing though.

Some of the campaigns are definitely one sided though. The BoB campaign on the Finland map... I played one mission and deleted it. I'm sorry, but there's no way I'm going to fly through an entire campaign getting my ass handed to me in nothing but Hurricane Mk I's. Even if you had vulernability off it'd be near impossible.

[onelifecrisis]

FOR ******** SAKE!


So as you know I gave up on RAF Normandy 41 because the RAF got wiped out in 1 mission. I then tried RAF Mareth Line 43. Things seemed to be going well at first, but on one long mission I noticed on the debrief that a lot of allied planes were crashing at the end of the mission, and I couldn't find the crashes marked anywhere on the debrief screen. So I loaded up the ntrk and watched as an entire squadron of AI Spitfires flew their patrol, then flew out to sea, then ran out of fuel and crashed. There's two or three allied airfields here on this map where they could have landed, but no! They have to fly out to sea and get wiped out! So I deleted that campaign and generated a new one: RAF Italy 43. Now all our planes start (and so presumably finish) on airfields, so hopefully no crashing into the sea. I set off on my first mission, a bomber escort. No sooner have we finished circling the airfield than I hear screaming on the radio and MISSION OVER appears on my screen. Again I watch the replay to work out WTF happened. The answer? The entire squadron of A-20's I was escorting decided to take a shortcut through the side of a mountain. So I delete that campaign and generate an RAF Normandy 44 campaign. I'm running out of war here, but I glimmer of hope remains. I mean Normandy 44 must have been tested to death, right? Wrong. First test, I get this:



If anyone knows of any alternatives to DCG, I'm all ears.

[Raptor1]

I never had this many problems with DCG... (Except the AI's general stupidity, but I find that ignoring the AI's existance completely works)

And, yes, there's an alternative to DCG, it's called BoB2