17.04.2010, 23:47
LuckyOne, I was talking about Il-2 blue pilots (in the game!), not historical Luftwaffe pilots. 
In reality German aircraft WERE very good. Whether they had as much opportunity to display those properties as they should have for the reasons I mentioned earlier from late '44 onward is another matter. As for balance, Oleg has always said that he is not interested in balance, and neither am I. I'm just not interested in fighting against or using aircraft that are modeled to be in a less than ideal state of production, repair or suffering from equipment shortage. Are the Russian aircraft modeled to represent the poor standard of Soviet aircraft production (structural failure, shockingly poor quality canopies, etc.)? Certainly not. I haven't perceived any blue bias in this game other than that the aircraft *are* represented in an ideal condition, as are ALL aircraft in the game! There are occasional anomalies given that it seems that the majority of data that Oleg uses comes from Russian sources, and flight testing of captured aircraft is by necessity a tricky business. I seem to remember hearing that the Russians have the quickest time to 20k ft. for one of the 109G model aircraft, simply because of the alterations they made to the aircraft to make it serviceable from the condition in which it was captured - whether the aircraft responded well to such alterations in the long term is another matter - captured aircraft had an alarming tendency to fall out of the sky after any kind of extensive testing by any of the air forces during that time period.
Besides, it's possible that the comparison that ACE has made is invalid anyway - and it certainly wouldn't be his fault if it was. Perhaps the aircraft in the game is simply too light to begin with? 7110lbs is about 200lbs/90kg below what I'd expect - looking at the T/O weights for a number of Spit IX flight tests I haven't seen a single one below that 7234lb figure during any of the 1944 tests, and the majority higher than 7300.
Anyway, I can see from your previous posts that you are quite unlikely to listen to any of this given that you've spent the majority of your time on the forum hyping up the Spitfire and the .303 round as some kind of miracle-weapon and slamming this game for having an Axis bias. I confess to no particular bias, being British, and appreciating British and German aircraft pretty much equally. I spend most of my time flying Spit IXs, 109Gs and P-51Bs. Not in my interest for either side to have an advantage to be honest. I have national pride and I love the Spitfire as an aircraft, but I'm not about to be fanatical about it.
Fireskull, I appreciate your input about the sheer breadth of the family of aircraft that come under the name Spitfire IX and the difficulties of representing this in a game and indeed in representing the variability of both historical production quality and the effects of damage and aging on an airframe. This is exactly why I think it is unreasonable to expect aircraft to be treated by developers as in anything less than factory-fresh initial states when they're spawned into the game. In SoW we may see aging on the skin of the aircraft, but I wonder how deep this effect will go? I doubt it will be much more than a visual effect (although I may be surprised ) Conditions are ideal in the sense of a simulation that demonstrates the different potentials of particular airframes in top-quality factory-fresh condition, that's all I mean. I'm not talking about ideal as a perfect historical simulation - even with all time and money in the world there is simply too much information that has been lost since the end of the war (particularly about German aircraft) that would make this impossible - how does one model the fit of a FW-190D being better because it was from a different factory in a way that makes sense and is quantifiable?
As a Second World War air-combat simulation pitting aircraft types in perfect condition against each other, this game is excellent. What we can't expect is that it will be an excellent war simulation as well. Developers can't model production quality deficiencies if they only have information about an aircraft that WAS considered acceptable enough to test.
For campaign-makers and offline players the situation might present a few more difficulties in terms of achieving the ideal representation of the last couple of years of the war - but the factory quality of German aircraft was never so bad that they failed to be potent aircraft. The most important factor of all was in falling pilot skill. This CAN be represented by a developer with much less difficulty.
In reality German aircraft WERE very good. Whether they had as much opportunity to display those properties as they should have for the reasons I mentioned earlier from late '44 onward is another matter. As for balance, Oleg has always said that he is not interested in balance, and neither am I. I'm just not interested in fighting against or using aircraft that are modeled to be in a less than ideal state of production, repair or suffering from equipment shortage. Are the Russian aircraft modeled to represent the poor standard of Soviet aircraft production (structural failure, shockingly poor quality canopies, etc.)? Certainly not. I haven't perceived any blue bias in this game other than that the aircraft *are* represented in an ideal condition, as are ALL aircraft in the game! There are occasional anomalies given that it seems that the majority of data that Oleg uses comes from Russian sources, and flight testing of captured aircraft is by necessity a tricky business. I seem to remember hearing that the Russians have the quickest time to 20k ft. for one of the 109G model aircraft, simply because of the alterations they made to the aircraft to make it serviceable from the condition in which it was captured - whether the aircraft responded well to such alterations in the long term is another matter - captured aircraft had an alarming tendency to fall out of the sky after any kind of extensive testing by any of the air forces during that time period.Besides, it's possible that the comparison that ACE has made is invalid anyway - and it certainly wouldn't be his fault if it was. Perhaps the aircraft in the game is simply too light to begin with? 7110lbs is about 200lbs/90kg below what I'd expect - looking at the T/O weights for a number of Spit IX flight tests I haven't seen a single one below that 7234lb figure during any of the 1944 tests, and the majority higher than 7300.
Anyway, I can see from your previous posts that you are quite unlikely to listen to any of this given that you've spent the majority of your time on the forum hyping up the Spitfire and the .303 round as some kind of miracle-weapon and slamming this game for having an Axis bias. I confess to no particular bias, being British, and appreciating British and German aircraft pretty much equally. I spend most of my time flying Spit IXs, 109Gs and P-51Bs. Not in my interest for either side to have an advantage to be honest. I have national pride and I love the Spitfire as an aircraft, but I'm not about to be fanatical about it.
Fireskull, I appreciate your input about the sheer breadth of the family of aircraft that come under the name Spitfire IX and the difficulties of representing this in a game and indeed in representing the variability of both historical production quality and the effects of damage and aging on an airframe. This is exactly why I think it is unreasonable to expect aircraft to be treated by developers as in anything less than factory-fresh initial states when they're spawned into the game. In SoW we may see aging on the skin of the aircraft, but I wonder how deep this effect will go? I doubt it will be much more than a visual effect (although I may be surprised
) Conditions are ideal in the sense of a simulation that demonstrates the different potentials of particular airframes in top-quality factory-fresh condition, that's all I mean. I'm not talking about ideal as a perfect historical simulation - even with all time and money in the world there is simply too much information that has been lost since the end of the war (particularly about German aircraft) that would make this impossible - how does one model the fit of a FW-190D being better because it was from a different factory in a way that makes sense and is quantifiable?As a Second World War air-combat simulation pitting aircraft types in perfect condition against each other, this game is excellent. What we can't expect is that it will be an excellent war simulation as well. Developers can't model production quality deficiencies if they only have information about an aircraft that WAS considered acceptable enough to test.
For campaign-makers and offline players the situation might present a few more difficulties in terms of achieving the ideal representation of the last couple of years of the war - but the factory quality of German aircraft was never so bad that they failed to be potent aircraft. The most important factor of all was in falling pilot skill. This CAN be represented by a developer with much less difficulty.