SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post - My hate-love with IL-2

Skybird · 10-03-09, 07:38 AM

Well, nobody forces you to try them, Xabba. For SP, you just have four options. The inbuilt QMG, very inferior. UberDemon'S QMG (better, but no fun to handle, and still takes time until you go airborn), the dynamic campaign generator (stopped using it after some flights, years ago), and static campaigns with hand-built missions. whether oyu are willing to pay money for them, or try free ones, is up to you, and depends on the focus of these campaigns, their size, and your interest in their content.

the general advantage of a static campaign mission over a dynamic campaign is that the first is hand-written. and if the author put some thought into it, it's design will always beat whatever results an AI-written dynamic campaign can present in mission design. If the platform, the sim the mission is written for, offers according possibilities, it can happen that the player in a static mission does not realise that he is up against a non-human enemy, but that the enemy gives the impression of behaving like a human. this is not the case in IL2, but I think of SBP, for example, or COTA (Conquest of the Aegean). don't get me wrong, I love the dynamic campaign in F4. However, I spend most time correcting the suicidal mission setups the AI creates en masse. the dynamic campaign creates a great overall setting, a great general experience with much atmosphere. But the individual mission design it results in - is terrible. Not even mentioning strategic decisions by the AI, which is territory completely off limits for the AI.

The WWII addon I just took because it was bundled with 1946, which costed me together with the bundled addon 8,99. I would not have gotten it for it'S original full price: 30 Euros wouldn't be worth it for me.

The campaign I started indeed creates kind of a history, it tells "my story" through the war, with a density of daily missions and changes in assignements that they said could be seen as typical for the normal, usual German pilot career. there are the occasional "unnormal" missions as well, too. For example in the evening I was ordered together with the whole squadron to fly our old Bf109-E7s to a northern airfield away fromt he front, where they would be updated, and the next flight the next morning saw us flying our new F2s back to our home base closer to the front. I do not know if I will fly all the 650 missions, probably not

, but in the booklet they discribed what lies ahhead of me if I make it up to the end in 1945, which includes changes in the enemy's planes as well, shifting force baances in the air, growing tactical pressure and fuel shortages, and when traversing to the West front, finding inferior German pilots in my squad needing to fight against Allied pilots with much better training.

So, within the limits of the game itself, they indeed try to tell the story of the war, and the story of one pilot in it - the player. Since IL-2 by default is extremely poor in atmosphere, this really is an improvement that you cannot achieve by just having a set of let's say the same 12 static missions time and again.

But back to the original topic: does naybody know how to improve the realism of the behavior of AI pilots? Any alternative AI mods?

10-03-09, 07:38 AM	#5
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,694 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	Well, nobody forces you to try them, Xabba. For SP, you just have four options. The inbuilt QMG, very inferior. UberDemon'S QMG (better, but no fun to handle, and still takes time until you go airborn), the dynamic campaign generator (stopped using it after some flights, years ago), and static campaigns with hand-built missions. whether oyu are willing to pay money for them, or try free ones, is up to you, and depends on the focus of these campaigns, their size, and your interest in their content. the general advantage of a static campaign mission over a dynamic campaign is that the first is hand-written. and if the author put some thought into it, it's design will always beat whatever results an AI-written dynamic campaign can present in mission design. If the platform, the sim the mission is written for, offers according possibilities, it can happen that the player in a static mission does not realise that he is up against a non-human enemy, but that the enemy gives the impression of behaving like a human. this is not the case in IL2, but I think of SBP, for example, or COTA (Conquest of the Aegean). don't get me wrong, I love the dynamic campaign in F4. However, I spend most time correcting the suicidal mission setups the AI creates en masse. the dynamic campaign creates a great overall setting, a great general experience with much atmosphere. But the individual mission design it results in - is terrible. Not even mentioning strategic decisions by the AI, which is territory completely off limits for the AI. The WWII addon I just took because it was bundled with 1946, which costed me together with the bundled addon 8,99. I would not have gotten it for it'S original full price: 30 Euros wouldn't be worth it for me. The campaign I started indeed creates kind of a history, it tells "my story" through the war, with a density of daily missions and changes in assignements that they said could be seen as typical for the normal, usual German pilot career. there are the occasional "unnormal" missions as well, too. For example in the evening I was ordered together with the whole squadron to fly our old Bf109-E7s to a northern airfield away fromt he front, where they would be updated, and the next flight the next morning saw us flying our new F2s back to our home base closer to the front. I do not know if I will fly all the 650 missions, probably not , but in the booklet they discribed what lies ahhead of me if I make it up to the end in 1945, which includes changes in the enemy's planes as well, shifting force baances in the air, growing tactical pressure and fuel shortages, and when traversing to the West front, finding inferior German pilots in my squad needing to fight against Allied pilots with much better training. So, within the limits of the game itself, they indeed try to tell the story of the war, and the story of one pilot in it - the player. Since IL-2 by default is extremely poor in atmosphere, this really is an improvement that you cannot achieve by just having a set of let's say the same 12 static missions time and again. But back to the original topic: does naybody know how to improve the realism of the behavior of AI pilots? Any alternative AI mods? __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert. Last edited by Skybird; 10-03-09 at 07:50 AM.