It’s been a few weeks since the last developer update from 1CGS but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t hard at work on the future of the series. Today we get some confirmation on a subject that I’ve been speculating on for several weeks now: The scale and scope of the IL-2: Battle of Bodenplatte project and specifically the boundaries of the new map.
Not just January 1st
Although I’ve worked to dispel this myth for a while, many players remain focused on January 1, 1945 and the Bodenplatte operation as being the only point in time for this series. The scope is, in reality, much larger, and we had our first hint of that back a few weeks ago when we saw our first images of the Bodenplatte map development.
Four seasons are definitely going to be part of this map and with them, the associated campaigns.
As with previous Career and Campaign releases for the series, Bodenplatte’s release will include five chapters with some distinct mission types and phases. Here are all five:
Chapter 1: Fighting in Holland (September 17 – October 1, 1944)
Chapter 2: Autumn Offensive (October 2 – December 15, 1944)
Chapter 3: Battle of the Bulge (December 16 – 25, 1944)
Chapter 4: Allied Counter-Offensive (December 26, 1944 – February 7, 1945)
Chapter 5: Battle of the Rhine (February 8 – March 28, 1945)
From September to March, this battle will seriously recreate a series of key operations that brought the war in west to a close. The developers have quite a wide time frame as talked about here:
Some might think that we’ll model only 1-2 days of the actual Bodenplatte operation when the Luftwaffe made the all-out attack on the Allied airfields near Brussels and Antwerp. However, our “Battle of” series is much more than that! The Career mode for this new theatre of war will last from September 17th, 1944 to March 28th, 1945 – 188 days of war in total.
This is a great exploration of the last days of the war and encompass nearly all of the major air battles save for the strategic bombing campaign. It opens the door (or props it wide open) to other aircraft types being filled in later via Collector Plane releases. Aircraft such as the A-20G, A-26, Typhoon, Mosquito, Spitfire XIV, Ar234, B-25 flyable, and potentially others.
Map scope
The new map is going to be larger than anything that the team has done before. To give some comparisons:
- Bodenplatte’s flyable area will be 401 x 324 km
- Moscow’s flyable area is 270 x 290 km
- Stalingrad’s flyable area is 385 x 230km
The map will also encompass Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Bonn, Frankfurt and many other smaller cities and towns. This may pose a problem as the map density will be higher than any of the others meaning a potentially longer time in development placing buildings and building landmarks as well as the potential for increased memoru utilization.
The series does handle this fairly well already as scenario/mission builders can elect to remove some or all of the buildings in a mission to improve performance. Denser urban areas already exist with Stalingrad but this map may push that to new levels.
For a while there, I was concerned that the map would be a little less dramatic than Kuban’s absolutely jaw dropping map. While this may not have major mountains, this wider scope will include quite a bit of everything else and that’s pretty exciting to me.
Stormbirds 
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