IL-2 Great Battles Dev News

I wonder how that’ll work, as in will it still be BoS as the, um, ‘sku’?

It’s interesting as there are no modules, just content unlocks, so ultimately I wonder how big it can get? I guess given the complexity of versions and modules and the like, having a big single download isn’t that bad?

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Shhhhh…I’m holding out for a sudden moment of clarity and a pivot to the Solomon Islands. You know, where many of the planes they have already made can fly…plausably.

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They’ll just make a map and ten aircraft and charge 70 bucks for it just like Kuban. Any of the planes created in any pack can be flown in it. Just like original IL-2. Even if you don’t have Kuban you can fight against the planes from it and place them in the editor.

It’s amazing the efficiencies you can achieve when you don’t have to model the climate control system and it’s knob.

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I thought the maps would be bigger but looking it seems like Kuban was only about 2.5GB or so. I think compared to stuff like NTTR or Orbx with ortho imagery it is like you said really efficient. A Pacific theatre could be even smaller as well, as in lots of repeating tiles/textures.

Did they also tackle the career mode yet?

I won’t buy more at the current price. I bought BoS when on offer from 1C or 777 or whatever they are these days, and two add-on aircraft, also reduced.

The only thing that stops me buying the other two is the price. Unfortunately, I also bought it direct from their online shop.

$70 for a sim, any sim, where I’ll get about 3 usable WWII aircraft (I only fly for allies - I wouldn’t fly for the Nazis if you paid me to do it, even in a sim/game) of which two are pretty useless, in a limited operational area, ain’t gonna happen.

I also don’t like the UI at all, so that doesn’t exactly help persuade me. I bought the P-40E only to find that everyone is saying it’s a load of rubbish. Great! :unamused:

That’s a reasonable criticism. But if I can offer a counter:

Unlike any competing current sim IL2:Current gives everyone access to every map. Yes, in order to access an unowned map you must join an MP server. If you consider this based on experience with IL2:Old, that would not be much of a plus. But in IL2:Current, the maps are huge and aircraft spotting is about as hard as it is in real life. So you can join a realistic server like Tactical Air War and easily plan an attack that has some hope of success.

The planes in IL2:Current are modeled with a sophistication that matches DCS minus a “clickable” pit. So they are on par with ED’s Flamming Cliffs planes and are sold at comparable prices. Most planes that I own were bought on sale at between $8 and $10. The flight fidelity in IL2:Current is an achievement that builds on the unmatched realism of Rise of Flight. The work required to make planes in any of our current sims is jaw-droppingly difficult. We sim nerds are much smarter and more demanding than we were in ten years ago. Building something to our standards takes six months to a year. Such work just can’t be given away.

Everyone here already knows all this but sometimes it needs to be restated. Modern flight sims cannot be fairly compared to their predecessors. The exception in my opinion is single player content. Making such content is no harder today than it was in the 90’s. But for some reason it gets ignored. Maybe this is because many of the most vocal players are like me and jump right into a server before learning the location of the start switch. Hopefully 777 will correct this once they incorporate Pat Wilson’s work into the career. I personally treat Tactical Air War as single player content with perfect AI. I don’t use TeamSpeak and I rarely use chat. If you approach it this way it is quite like a dynamic single player campaign.

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Not yet. Current ETA is October.

https://stormbirds.wordpress.com/2016/12/07/battle-of-kuban-what-content-is-coming-and-when/

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thanks, @Tankerwade. Is it only for BoK owners or also for BoS/BoM owners?

I think it should be for any of the packages, but I don’t have a confirmation for that yet. They are developing it during the Kuban work but all of their dev work to this point has been backwards compatible. For example you can fly the FW-190 A-5 which is a Kuban aircraft in the campaign for Stalingrad. The P-40 will be flyable in the Kuban campaign etc.

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Anyone had any issues with the latest patch? I kept getting errors and have now started to reinstal it from scratch

I SOOOOO agree with @smokinhole hee…

@Sryan take a look at this dev blog from last year -

https://il2sturmovik.com/news/244/dev-blog-132/

The salient passage:

The most important thing is that Career mode is being developed not only for the Battle of Kuban, it will replace the current Moscow and Stalingrad campaigns as well.

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Nice early look at Kuban content and the Hs-129.

thanks for the info, @Tankerwade.

I looked around myself for a bit as well and saw they were also making an A-20 Havoc and P-39 Airacobra for BoK as well. that does make it extremely appealing.

Does anyone know if you can use the Tante Ju (Ju-52) for anything useful? Or just fly it around?

You can use it for supply runs and dropping paratroopers in the BoM single player campaign (at least). I haven’t played with the JU52 much, but it is fun to fly, and a nice change from fighters.

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Here is the link for Gambits 5 Tante Ju missions. Many seem to praise them, especially in VR.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/28858-single-player-ju-52-missions-gambit-21/

It would also make a great unit in missions - escort the VIP, escort the cargo flight into Gumrak etc.

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My issue isn’t whether it’s worth it for the work, really - it’s more about being able to justify the expense. On a crappy, insultingly menial war pension that proves the lie to the government’s so-called “Covenant” for veterans, that isn’t a small amount and it would need to be justified by me being someone who would spend a lot of time flying it.

At the moment I can’t even say I like it that much - it doesn’t make me want to make time to fly it more. You mentioned SP content, and that is the main reason why. If I were to be flying regularly on it with a bunch of guys online, in its current state, that would almost certainly be okay, too.

But neither of these is the case, so $70 is too much.

Maybe, when it’s on sale - or if one of those two circumstances comes about. Otherwise it will be a once in a while circuit of the airfield.

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I completely understand. I’ll be in the same boat someday soon enough. But until the little one starts college I am spending money like the DPRK will start lobbing 'em over any minute. :laughing: