I ask this not because I don't believe there are some out there who are UBER-hardcore, or because I want to start trouble... But I thought it would be good for me to build a heavy bomber campaign. I've made small start, laying out a a bit of a story and four or five missions that are a bit raggedy but with some refinement might be worthwhile.
I won;t be secretive because that would completely nullify my reason for asking this question. My campaign follows (or at least it will if I continue with it) an American B17 pilot who completes his tour in the UK and goes for re-assignment to B29's in the pacific.
Using the vastly under-rated B29-Alley map I have started to create an alternate history, but within the realms of possibility. I just flew my first mission in the B29 section... Take off from Tinian-north, fly up to Kyushu, flatten an airifeld and then get back to Tinian before those plucky fighter pilots turn you into fish-food!
It sounded good in theory. But then I went to fly the mission to check a few things. Now I new it was a long-haul. I have virtually worn the white print on the keyboard off my square-bracket buttons fiddling with time compression, but still, four hours later, I'm landed and wondering what the hell for.
3 Hangars, 5 static aircraft and two fighter kills.
[sarcasm]Oh, gee whiz.[/sarcasm]
I thought I was kind of, semi hardcore with bombers. I have no problem flying for a bit of time in a long straight line. But this was painful!!! I was just curious. Is this overkill? Or is this about right and do people do this for fun?
I'd be very interested in hearing people's thoughts on this because I've made a start, it seems a shame to abandon it now. But I don't want to go down in history as the creator of the worlds most wrist-slitting-inducing bomber campaign.
Rob.
Think everyone will have their own opinion on this. Some play for the reality aspect , e.g. Long flights, patrols etc with a short fight along the way while others prefer to get straight in and mix it for the adrenalin rush. Personally for me it depends on the mood I'm in. Go for it cos someone will like it.
Better get off now , just painted a wall and I have to watch it dry :wink: :lol: joke
Personally when i fly bomber missions i generally air start relativly close to the target. then have a longer flight heading back to base, usually with some enemy fighters in tow.
Ill set up my mission so the player is either already in formation with the AI bombers and about to start turning towards the target, or just as the bombers are building their formation.
I do like to fly bombers but climbing to 20000ft, forming up and then flying massive distances to the target gets seriously boring, especially if its a campaign and you have to do it over and over. Most will end up just using time compression which in my opinion is worse for immersion.
And if you dont use autopilot it gets increasingly difficult for human players to keep up with the AI pilots when climbing and travelling great distances.
Just my 2 cents
StargazerWoods, thanks for asking.
There are many interested in the long haul aspects, in fact the 352nd virtual Fighter Group are building a huge map of Europe for just that purpose.
This will be a great addition for virtual squads and groups who get together online for re enactment type scenarios.
There are probably as many who would fly a Heavy Bomber campaign with airstarts close to the target to avoid the long flightimes. (I would fit this category, I hate long, eventless trips to the target.)
There are some extremely well done campaigns already available that feature historical flighttimes and I am sure yours will be a good addition to the list, if you continue.
one of the things that is missing from il-2 is realistic heavy bomber offline campaigns, including the long flight times, flak formation flying and surviving back to base. there arent many available, i think because of the difficulty of creating them, and maybe the lack of an appropriate map for long missions in a b-17 from the uk to germany and back (maybe im wrong on this). so you would be doing a great service to il-2 to create a realistic bomber campaign, we would be very grateful!
Just like highlander_262 says, it depends on the mood I'm in.
In flight simulator a lot of people make long haul flights. I think the more advanced pilot will love it.
flying on full realism / navigating and watching for enemies on unexpecting moments keeps it exiciting.
Grtz, Jeroen
Good replies coming in here, I'd like to thank you all for your contributions thus far.
I anticipated that the MS Flight-Sim peeps might get turned on by this kind of thing. After all, that is basically you, a plane and two runways seperated by 2000 miles of water. At least bomber campaigns have some fighter intercepts and a target to pulp.
I guess its partly a selfish thing as well. Since I'm building the missions, I need to fly them a few times to tweak, test and make sure that the intercepts are timed right, that they do actually spot the bombers and that everything else ticks over as it should.
I'm not sure I could cope with having to commit so much time to the testing aspect. I'm not going to use this as an excuse to give up. I've started, and clearly there is some demand for it, even if only to the hardcore flyer.
Perhaps I'll work on a smaller scale to begin with, gain a bit of experience and maybe then I won;t need to test so much. We'll see...
Cheers,
Rob.
I didn't know Tibbets flew the 17's. I did however hear the Morgan of Memphis Belle fame moved to the pacific theater.
That wasn't the what-if bit I was working on. I'm mirroring things kind of how they were happening as close as I can for the start but then I was planning on skewing off into the alternative reality about half-way through the tour, culminating in the big finale.
History has never been one of my strong points but as a writer I can create fictional stories quite nicely. This is an interesting format to write in and it's working nicely so far. It'll be interesting to see where I can take it with other campaigns as well.
Let's remember the B-29 hi-alt raids on Japan were largely ineffective due to Japan's decentralization of war industry. That's why Lemay switched to the British model of Saturation bombing with incendiaries. The problem is I don't think the B-29 weapons loadout in-game includes incendiaries. I've played the B-24 Med campaign which is rather long, but think of how long a Ploesti campaign mission might be as well. I love that this game is finally getting flyable 4-engine bombers and there is a possibility of seeing more realistic B-17. B-24 or B-29 campaigns or even a combo. Start flying 24s in the Med, switch to 17s over Germany then 24s or 29s in the Pacific. The Slot map and New guinea both afford historical instances of 17 and 24 operations as well.
any progress on your heavy bomber campaign StarGazer?
Slow but sure.
Thanks for the enquiry. Make me feel like it's worth pressing on. I've plotted my new time-line, I've got all the writing done, I have a rough plan on what happens in each of the missions and how things should change for each one.
I have the first segment pretty much nailed now with just a couple of tiny wrinkles to iron out and then i get started on the main bit.
I apologise to those of you who are keen to see something like this released and know that it needn't take this long, but I'm still new to FMB and fine-tuning it to work just right is taking a little time. I can;t say when I will finish it off, just that I will continue and will try and do the best job I can.
What really sucks is only having 8x time compression because the test flying is whats taking up a majority of the time right now. I'd give up my favourite (even vital) sections of my anatomy if it meant having 16, 32 and 64x time compression.
Anyways... Watch this space. I'll post a progress report in a few weeks if I have any revelations.
Many thanks,
Rob.
take your time stargazer, it takes time to get used to something new. but keep it up, im sure there are many people (including me) who would love your campaign as i could only find one or two allied heavy bomber campaign on AAA and mission4today, none for B-17 or B-29. I have just started using the B-17 and find it great to fly, bu what is lacking is a good campaign. i can understand the need for higher levels of time compression with long bomber missions whilst testing
