The latest IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles update is out and it comes packaged with a new Collector Plane, new mission types, and support for 128 button controllers which are becoming increasingly common these days. Let’s have a look!

Long wings and many buttons

The big content release in Update 5.204 is of course the launch of the Ta152H Collector Plane. Like most Collector Plane releases, this one fills an interesting niche complementing the available aircraft in the series. The Ta152H is the last of the Focke Wulf fighter series and is a fan favourite around some… and it predictably has some detractors. If you are wondering what the type’s combat record was and what aircraft it shot down, I did write a piece about that a few months ago. Spoiler: No the Ta152H never fought bomber formations the way it was intended to.

The Ta152H will be available in the quick mission builder, advanced quick mission builder and in career mode. The latter two will see it only be available on the Rhineland map. In Carer mode it is available in the last stage of the campaign with missions flown with I./JG 11 from March 1st to the end of the war.

A new mission type for career mode has debuted alongside the Ta152H with a Jet Airfield Cover mission seeing you fly what the Ta152H most famously did and covered jet aircraft as they were arriving and departing – in their most vulnerable phase of flight for the slow to accelerate Me262 and Ar234. The Fw190D-9 and some Bf109 squadrons also get the mission type.

Moving on from the new aircraft, there’s also a new hardware support update supporting controllers that have 128 buttons. With modern HOTAS configurations and multi-mode selectors, its possible to have huge numbers of buttons and this new system supports that.

There’s new sounds for the MK108, a new Romanian scheme for the Bf109E-7, and a few fixes too. Check out the change log here.