Hello everyone!
Today's Dev Blog is dedicated to the development progress of the Defense and Liberation module, which will be the main innovation of 2025 for IL2 Great Battles. It will be the biggest we have ever created for the project, because if everything goes according to plan, it will include not one, but two maps (Odessa and Gulf of Finland), 4 pilot careers (1941 and 1944 on each of the two maps), and 8 aircraft.
The map of Odessa is already in a high state of completion (here you can see its topographic map, but please note that clicking on this map image would download a big 24Mb file). The development of the Gulf of Finland map, which is being worked on by a team of Finnish enthusiasts called KarttaKomppania, is also well advanced. Pre-production work on the pilot career mode for both maps began last year, and development will be in full swing this year.
Three of the eight aircraft are now complete, both visually and physically, and the others are in some stage of completion. The current plan is to launch pre-order and early access in late spring 2025, with a full release at the end of the year - we will only open pre-orders when we are fully confident that everything is going according to plan. In any case, we can show you the screenshots of the finished aircraft today.
Due to the fact that German aircraft are well represented in Great Battles (of course, there are much more of them than Soviet or Allied aircraft since they are included in every module), the emphasis in this Eastern Front module will be on Soviet aircraft. However, there will also be new modifications of the German aircraft - the Messerschmitt Bf 109 E-4 fighter (for the 1941 timeframe) and the Ju 87 D-5 dive bomber (for 1944). The Soviet aircraft are I-153 "Chaika", LaGG-3 series 4, Yak-1 series 23 for 1941 and Il-2 mod. 1944 with swept wing and the legendary Yak-3 series 9 and La-7 series 1 for the late stage of the war.
We also want to show you a picture of a part of Odessa, which has a whole story behind it - the location of a concealed airfield at the Chubaevsky lot (it is 5th Fontanskaya Station at modern times), which the Odessa residents prepared themselves and which the Romanian forces never discovered before they conquered the city. In mid-September 1941 the ring around Odessa was narrowed to a critical size, the regimental airfield was under constant fire, and Soviet pilots suffered many losses. A new airfield was created at the intersection of Fontanskaya Street and Admiralsky Avenue - a runway for fighter planes was built on the avenue. Women and teenagers performed a huge amount of work in just one week. The airfield was covered with camouflage nets so that the planes would not be visible to the enemy from the air and 69th IAP, which later participated in the Battle of Stalingrad, was stationed there. You can spot this airfield on the right of this screenshot.
Please follow our Dev Blog - we will continue to report on the progress of work on the new module.
We would like to remind you that second round of the duel online tournament will take place tomorrow, Saturday 22nd. Tournament table: https://tinyurl.com/562v5afc As in the first round, the coordination of flights at the tournament will be done on the official IL-2 TeamSpeak server (address: 65.108.206.8 password: il2series). If you're participating in the second round, please check your email and confirm the time slot if you haven't done so already!
In addition, we're collecting questions for the next video Dev Brief about the Korea. Il2 Series. If you have questions about the IL-10 ground attack plane, please submit them here: https://forms.gle/YqEeM3BmEipCN2v5A