Dev blog #132
22.09.2016
The work on Battle of Kuban is officially started - the development plan is completed and approved by all team leads. The map of Kuban and three 3D models of the aircraft are already in the works and we are making preparations for the Career mode. Today we'll tell you a bit about this new game mode.
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.
In general, Career mode will be similar to Rise of Flight career with some changes. The main difference is that the new Career will be divided into phases according to new theaters of war and each phase will contain several chapters highlighting most important events like in current campaigns. Players will be able to select a phase and a chapter where they would like to start a career. After completing a phase, the career can be continued in another theater of war that is set later historically with the same personage. Each player can have several personages for different sides and different phases.
Unlike in present campaigns, in the Career mode all missions will be tied to the calendar and time of day, happening successively. Your personage will serve in a selected squadron day by day and the outcome of previous missions will influence the next ones. In general, the tour of duty of a squadron will be close to the historical one. You can choose a squadron to serve in depending on a plane you want to fly. In addition, each aircraft and AI pilot in your squadron will be tracked. Pilots can be lost in action and new ones will join the squadron while damaged aircraft will require time to be repaired. All pilots of the squadron, both player and AI ones, will have a personal combat score and receive new ranks based on it.
We can't be 100% sure we'll have the time to implement this, but we want to allow player to begin a career as wingman and become a wing leader and eventually a squadron commander. Squadron commander can plan new missions, correcting a flight path and assigning aircraft and pilots to carry it out.
It will be possible to apply for transfer to another squadron, allowing a personage to change his aircraft and combat role (fighter, ground attack or bomber pilot) in the same career. Another significant change is that there will be historical military awards and ranks.
Please note that we don't simply copy the RoF career. It will be significantly optimized performance wise to make using it a breeze. While the main idea of the campaign comes from RoF, the mission generator will be an improved version of the current IL-2 one, resulting in much more rich environment and diverse combat situations that were possible in Rise of Flight. In addition, the current work of our engineer department on physics optimizations is aimed at increasing the number of aircraft in a mission, so the new Career will feature more intense and rich missions compared not only to RoF, but to the current IL-2 campaigns as well.
This is all we wanted to tell you about the new Career at this point, but there is another matter we'd like to share. In the previous Dev Diary we told you about landing gear modeling improvements that will be published in the next version 2.004. While working on the landing gear further, engineers were able to address a slipping friction modeling situation when a stationary or slowly rotating wheel of a landing aircraft touches the ground at a high speed, resulting in more accurate modeling of two-point landing. Tail-high landing can be performed if you touch the runway accurately, as shown in the video. In addition, an additional lateral friction is applied to a drifting wheel, making an aircraft more stable while taxiing, take off and landing, but also making it prone to roll-over during a strong skid. To summarize, taxiing, takeoff and landing will become somewhat easier and realistic in general, but a mistake during these phases will cause severe consequences. We' re hoping you'll like it.