Post by 1javasjonnie on Jul 2, 2012 7:14:29 GMT -5
Lille surrendered at the end of our campaign - and what a campaign it has been!
Now that hostilities have ended I'd like to take the opportunity to say a few words about it.
This campaign is the best IL-2 experience I have ever had! It has been so immersive that at times it was hard not to get stressed out by it, as if it concerned real life.
With the amount of time required to set it up and keep it going, maybe that was not as much of a surprise.
The first thing I remember is Badger's detailed research and his thouroughness in setting things up for us all. Badger made 1.JaVA rise to the occasion for the first time in years, which is an achievement in itself.
Badger did a fantastic job and can be proud of this campaign which broke every record in the book! No less than 7 players flew 100 or more missions out of a total of 172 missions. This will stand for a long time.
Then came the campaign start. We were all quite exited as things got under way and initially, the allied side had to take some severe beatings and within 20 missions, blue had shot down twice as many aircraft as red.
We obviously had to up our game to stay in it and to give blue some better opposition.
This came with a learning curve for all of us, not in the least for myself as a planner.
Some of my co- commanders got demotivated after a while; this may have to do with the fact that when you fight a defensive battle, there are no clear- cut targets to go for and no direction to fight in, you can oly react to what the enemy does and opportunities to seize the initiative are very rare. All we ever seemed to do was CAPs. Added to that, I think my own fanaticism (I can't stand losing anyway) made the heat in the kitchen quite intense at times.
I still think they did a good job; guys like WH_Wolfhnd, Tiger, and JoJo were all busy planning at some point. Thanks guys!
Also, I pushed the functionality available in SEOW to a point where I came close to spoiling the whole thing. Fortunately there was sufficient patience and maturity on the blue side to put that behind us.
Maybe I was just being my fanatical self and trying everything to win; I even tried to spy! I did not succeed, though.
The campaign itself developed according to plan from our point of view. Rotterdam and Lille were to be the only strongholds with no more than token resistance in most other places. Our strategy was "scorched earth" (hmmmm, rings a bell...) and this meant we had to wait for very long until the red airbases were closer to the front line than blue bases but when they were, we somehow managed to close the aircraft losses gap. We tried to make sure the enemy had to bring his own fuel everywhere, although in some places this didn't work because the enemy was too quick to gain terrain.
Most attempts at limited counteroffensives midway through the campaign faltered due to lack of planning experience. Only at the end were we able to stage some limited tank attacks which - even if they were effective - reminded me of the battle of the bulge a bit too much (surprising, initially successful, but not decisive and doomed for lack of air cover).
Some blue pilots are so damned effective and so good at what they do, they gave us a real headache. Hayzee could have won this campaign for blue single- handedly had his commanders not told him to let up on the factories a bit. Hawk_5 would have taken out every last AAA gun had he found the last ones at St. Omer. He always had Nuke and Scannon with him to raze a ton of equipment to the ground. He would have subg overhead to cover with his m8s. And we would be looking for subg as well, especially on our 6 o'clock because many times he announced himself with a killing opening burst from that place.
In fact, all the blue pilots we met or failed to meet deserve our respect for their skill and their community attitude.
In the end, there was no stopping the blue offensive and we were crushed by sheer numbers.
We as reds are proud to have held on for as long as we did, even if blue let up on the strategic bombing offensive in the end.
As for 1. JaVA, I think this campaign did a lot to improve our tactical skill and discipline. We owe that to our counterparts and to a number of people who were instumental in setting up and/ or maintaining the campaign & the diplomacy and also for building and hosting missions. For that I would like to sincerely thank
4Shades, Badger, Scannon, Hawk_5, Luny, Hayzee, Sandhog and everyone else that I may have forgotten here.
Cheers,
Sjonnie (a.k.a. WWI relic Maurice Gamelin).
Now that hostilities have ended I'd like to take the opportunity to say a few words about it.
This campaign is the best IL-2 experience I have ever had! It has been so immersive that at times it was hard not to get stressed out by it, as if it concerned real life.
With the amount of time required to set it up and keep it going, maybe that was not as much of a surprise.
The first thing I remember is Badger's detailed research and his thouroughness in setting things up for us all. Badger made 1.JaVA rise to the occasion for the first time in years, which is an achievement in itself.
Badger did a fantastic job and can be proud of this campaign which broke every record in the book! No less than 7 players flew 100 or more missions out of a total of 172 missions. This will stand for a long time.
Then came the campaign start. We were all quite exited as things got under way and initially, the allied side had to take some severe beatings and within 20 missions, blue had shot down twice as many aircraft as red.
We obviously had to up our game to stay in it and to give blue some better opposition.
This came with a learning curve for all of us, not in the least for myself as a planner.
Some of my co- commanders got demotivated after a while; this may have to do with the fact that when you fight a defensive battle, there are no clear- cut targets to go for and no direction to fight in, you can oly react to what the enemy does and opportunities to seize the initiative are very rare. All we ever seemed to do was CAPs. Added to that, I think my own fanaticism (I can't stand losing anyway) made the heat in the kitchen quite intense at times.
I still think they did a good job; guys like WH_Wolfhnd, Tiger, and JoJo were all busy planning at some point. Thanks guys!
Also, I pushed the functionality available in SEOW to a point where I came close to spoiling the whole thing. Fortunately there was sufficient patience and maturity on the blue side to put that behind us.
Maybe I was just being my fanatical self and trying everything to win; I even tried to spy! I did not succeed, though.
The campaign itself developed according to plan from our point of view. Rotterdam and Lille were to be the only strongholds with no more than token resistance in most other places. Our strategy was "scorched earth" (hmmmm, rings a bell...) and this meant we had to wait for very long until the red airbases were closer to the front line than blue bases but when they were, we somehow managed to close the aircraft losses gap. We tried to make sure the enemy had to bring his own fuel everywhere, although in some places this didn't work because the enemy was too quick to gain terrain.
Most attempts at limited counteroffensives midway through the campaign faltered due to lack of planning experience. Only at the end were we able to stage some limited tank attacks which - even if they were effective - reminded me of the battle of the bulge a bit too much (surprising, initially successful, but not decisive and doomed for lack of air cover).
Some blue pilots are so damned effective and so good at what they do, they gave us a real headache. Hayzee could have won this campaign for blue single- handedly had his commanders not told him to let up on the factories a bit. Hawk_5 would have taken out every last AAA gun had he found the last ones at St. Omer. He always had Nuke and Scannon with him to raze a ton of equipment to the ground. He would have subg overhead to cover with his m8s. And we would be looking for subg as well, especially on our 6 o'clock because many times he announced himself with a killing opening burst from that place.
In fact, all the blue pilots we met or failed to meet deserve our respect for their skill and their community attitude.
In the end, there was no stopping the blue offensive and we were crushed by sheer numbers.
We as reds are proud to have held on for as long as we did, even if blue let up on the strategic bombing offensive in the end.
As for 1. JaVA, I think this campaign did a lot to improve our tactical skill and discipline. We owe that to our counterparts and to a number of people who were instumental in setting up and/ or maintaining the campaign & the diplomacy and also for building and hosting missions. For that I would like to sincerely thank
4Shades, Badger, Scannon, Hawk_5, Luny, Hayzee, Sandhog and everyone else that I may have forgotten here.
Cheers,
Sjonnie (a.k.a. WWI relic Maurice Gamelin).
