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: