Channel Battles Review from Fred "HeinKill" Williams on SimHq:
http://www.simhq.com/_air15/air_538a.html
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Channel Battles Review from Fred "HeinKill" Williams on SimHq:
http://www.simhq.com/_air15/air_538a.html
Why, after all this time, do elementary mistakes still get introduced and kept alive? Radar stations never ever informed pilots of anything directly. The plotting information was passed back to Group HQ where the results were analysed and the requisite orders were then passed on to the pilots. This was necessary both tactically and technically - radar stations didn't even have the equipment necessary to contact aircraft directly, let alone issue orders. Secondly, the abilities of England's Chain Home system was a military secret. RDF - radio-direction-finding - was name designed to mislead the Luftwaffe.
This might seem a minor whinge - and perhaps it is - but I think it's a pity to change historical fact when the real system is well-known and documented.
Thanks for the link.
I'm seriously thinking of getting the Desatersoft add-ons now that the game is becoming playable.
So the reviewer got cleaned up on the landing field and was the only one to score any kills? Good grief, that speaks of terrible AI!!
Even an almost 20 year old sim like European Air War I'm sure did better than that - and I KNOW EAW had "Starlight Control" rather than direct comms from the stations.
The best AI and survey stats ingame behaviour I ever came across was in sims even older than EAW - ie. in the old Aces Over Europe and Aces Over The Pacific games, graphics were extremely primitive block colour / wire frame, but the aircraft each CLEARLY demonstrated their unique traits and AI was bloody convincing! In those games, using bomber escort missions as an example: you COULD break up AI fighter attacks on bombers by shooting at them from a distance or just by getting within lethal range - they would immediately break / maneouver defensively and circle out to try again - generally flying very defensively with respect to cover fighters and focussing on making repeated attack runs on the bombers. Friendly AI would provide COVER - by turning to next attacking aircraft once one was forced to break off - and staying well within contact / cover range of the bomber group. The EXPERIENCE was very much more realistic in context than anything we've seen since.
Surprisingly, actual kills were relatively scarce - I flew bomber escort missions where maybe one or two bombers were lost and perhaps one or two of my squadronmates got kills but I didn't - or perhaps I was lucky enough to get one by happening to get a lucky long hit or good deflection shot at the break. I COULD get more kills by pursuing enemy fighters, but the rest of the fight would continue and it was surprisingly time consuming to engage in a dogfight and then get back to the formation - and usually more bombers would be lost for my absence - ie. I'd have let down the team!
I flew fighter sweeps in Aces Over the Pacific where I never encountered the enemy - and others where I suddenly found myself looking from external view at wire sticks floating down to the blue blob ocean or green blob ground - wondering what happened (had enemy sneak up on me because I'd slacked off with external scanning).
I've been holding my breath since that someone eventually would give us again that standard of authentic (if not entirely REALISTIC) flight sim exprerience. Along with current graphics my god how much better could it get?
Hi, 'reviewer' here!
Yes, the AI is terrible. In untweaked form, the combat AI is incompetent and the wingman AI non existant. Many older sims were/are much much better. (PS You didn't mention that pinnacle of WWII sim AI, BoB2, which many believe still holds the crown for best single player AI.)
But there are tweaks that mission builders can do to improve on the standard AI and I have documented these elsewhere. I am a little surprised Desastersoft's own tweaks don't seem to work as well, but there you go - everything else they do, they do so well!
http://bobgamehub.blogspot.dk/2012/0...-of-dover.html
I can report that with these settings, in the latest campaign I am creating together with Bolox and Gabuzomeu, the RAF AI gets many more kills than me. In a large intercept mission last night, the RAF AI scored 17 kills (including bombers), the LW AI got 8, and I got only 1 before my engine got holed and crapped out.
So, with the settings recommended above, a better play balance is possible and the AI can at least offer a player some challenge.
BTW if you want to see that latest campaign 'work in progress' it is here! It is a 'redo' of the stock RAF campaign and we are currently beta testing. Release planned for December.
http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.ph...ml#Post3654577