I knew from developer updates that IL-2 Series was going to evolve the career mode from the previous generation but I didn’t really have a good sense of how it would work in practice. Now we can try it for ourselves and I’m really excited to be flying missions in the new career commander mode. But it does have a big problem to overcome. Let’s discuss!

Let’s look at the new commander mode

IL-2 Series evolves the entire approach to career mode. There are many similarities starting out with selecting a plane, a squadron and base, and then flying generated missions. But this time you’re also in command of the squadron which gives us a kind of mini game where you’re part manager of your squadron as well as pilot within it.

You may not want to manage the squadron and there is no way to not be the commander. Fortunately, there’s a fair bit of automation built in and you can do very minimal management if you want.

For me, all of this management of the squadron is actually quite a bit of fun. Pop up instructions give you a sense of what the career experience is like and teaches you the interface to manage your missions. It’s no more complicated than your average board game and once you’ve got it, it’s remarkably simple to plan out a mission.

You have slots for three missions a day maximum and you weigh sending aircraft and pilots out versus keeping reserve strength for defeating unexpected enemy attacks or saving fuel and ammunition for a larger upcoming mission. Pilot and aircraft availability, fuel, ammunition, and combat effectiveness (which translate into some basic pilot stats) all factor in. I love this because what happens in the mission has long term effects on your squadron and what happens in the mission planning impacts your next mission directly.

You won’t always be flying the flights so when you’re not, you get this mission readout that gives you a sense of how the mission went minute to minute. You hope your pilots did well and that they return home to base safe – but they don’t always.

Most of the time you have a selection of missions to choose from ranging from strike and patrol missions to the occasional escort mission. Or at least that was what was presented when I started with the unit I’ve flown so far. Notably, historical events often take over your average scenario and cluster you into a specific area for a historical offensive/counter offensive.

I’m five missions into my first career now and, thanks to some miss-management on my part, had forgotten to replenish my fuel stocks and so suddenly we don’t have enough fuel for a full flight of aircraft or the ability to contribute to a long distance escort mission. Whoops! So, we flew a shorter range patrol mission while we wait a day or two (in the career) to get a resupply with fewer aircraft. That ended up being a bit of a problem because the IL-10s that we intercepted on the patrol mission were able to get through and bomb their targets because we didn’t have enough F-80Cs to effectively combat both the MiG-15 escort and intercept the IL-10s at the same time.

I ended up in a serious dogfight that lasted over 10 minutes. I walked away with one MiG-15 kill but two of my wingmates were shot down and the IL-10s got away. The mission was technically a success but really a bit of a failure. It’ll take days to get new planes and pilots back into my unit.

My squadron experiences so far

I’ve been interested in flying the F-80C quite a bit recently so I’ve made that my first aircraft for my first career experience. So, I’d like to introduce you to the randomly generated Cleveland Dougherty! Cleveland has a birth date, a biography (one of several to choose from), and an AI generated photo. Cleveland is the commander of the 35th Fighter-Bomber Squadron in the USAF. All of this is pretty standard fare from Rise of Flight and Great Battles but I still think its a fun way to build a connection with your in-sim virtual pilot.

As a fighter-bomber squadron, the 35th gets assigned a mix of mission types including a lot of close air support, artillery strike, as well as fighter-sweeps. The F-80C is not able to stand toe to toe with the MiG-15bis but it can do pretty well against Yak-9s and IL-10s that show up in the early part of the campaign.

My first mission was a close air support mission against an artillery battery near the frontline. A rocket assisted takeoff and fully loaded F-80C is quite a beast in the air but you can make some pretty big effects on the ground.

In my second mission we performed a sweep in strength against IL-10 attackers while fending off a small number of MiG-15s.

The third saw a strike against another artillery position while the fourth ended up being a desperate outnumbered and outperformed mission dealing with the MiG-15 escort and being utterly unable to intercept the IL-10s. The sixth…

I’ve made some mistakes like pulling too much while still having the fuel tanks attached (I was trying to preserve fuel if I could). I ended up ripping the wing off at the tip and having a very unpleasant flight back to Kimpo airfield. I did the same thing again on the third mission before I finally recognized that I really needed to drop those tanks!

Another feature that I’ve enjoyed is the dynamic kill markings showing off my victories as I collected them on the side of my F-80C. A feature I remember reading about but one that is made much cooler once you’ve actually earned them for yourself.

A couple of problems

I’ve run into two big problems with Career mode as it is right now.

The first one is going to be a familiar one: artificial intelligence! IL-2 Series suffers from the same AI issues that Great Battles and Rise of Flight suffered from before it. Weak wingman/leader logic and a propensity to get entirely confused by the situation around them and just fly around aimlessly.

The dogfight AI is not quite as bad as some make it out (its just boring and uninspired) but some of the other aspects of the AI like the ability to conduct a ground strike are very problematic.

The best way to deal with it is to just let them do their own thing. Issuing orders seems to make it worse. Even when they are doing their own thing, I find that their ability to find the target, pick a target, and conduct a successful ground strike is extremely limited.

Its the same problems I’ve seen for years in Great Battles so its nothing new but it really hurts Career mode where the outcome matters not just in the binary mission accomplished or not but also in what resources are available to manage in subsequent missions.

Now the second problem is one that I just ran into and I’m not quite sure what to make of it yet. The scenario is this. I had been flying a bunch of missions and I had not been managing the supplies as well as I could. But I had lots of requisition points so I sent off for a resupply of fuel, ammo, and maintenance and got them assigned. They were meant to come in the following days, however, an air raid that we couldn’t stop (due to lack of fuel), destroyed the supplies.

With no further supply points nor an update of supplies from HQ, we ended up with no ability to conduct further missions. It feels like a bit of a miss. Either some sort of gradual replenishment of points needs to happen so that you aren’t stuck in a chicken and egg predicament of no fuel so no mission so no fuel. Alternatively, it needs to tell you that its over and your command is at an end.

Great almost!

Career mode is really quite a step forward for the series. It provides the kind of structure needed while giving you some agency to manage your own unit while also preserving the overall beats of history and sticking to the broader structure of how the war really went.

The problem is with the new mode not entirely the fault of the career mode itself. Instead, what this does is brings the AI’s shortcomings into greater focus and clarity because what your AI wingmates get up to really does matter. Their presence, their capability to engage with the mission, and their survival are critical and significant in ways that didn’t really matter as much in Great Battles. For this to really succeed, its going to need to solve that critical problem.

Now, apparently AI work is underway and a key part of some of the follow-on updates. Let’s hope that this is the case because if they can develop an AI that is more fluid, more interesting, and more generally competent then we have a very compelling single player experience here.

Even more interesting? They intend to add some degree of persistence to the map later in early access. That means that a damaged bridge stays damaged for a period of time before being repaired. We’re leaning into dynamic campaign territory with that sort of thing and if IL-2 Series Korea can pull that off… well, I think the future will be quite bright!