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Thread: Back to CLoD/Tobruk After a Hiatus: Some Feedback and Comments For Team Fusion

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    Cool Back to CLoD/Tobruk After a Hiatus: Some Feedback and Comments For Team Fusion

    Team Fusion,
    I want to say thank you to Team Fusion for keeping CLoD, the spiritual successor to 1946 and best WWII combat flight sim to date, relevant. Even more so, thanks for continually improving, refining and now adding to what is proving to be a robust and detailed simulator platform/environment. There are so many thing CLoD/Tobruk does right and I am anxiously anticipating a true dynamic career/campaign experience, the new cloud, water, and weather system, and continual improvement to the AI! I must say that as a single player, CLoD is far better than Great Battles and is becoming more and more like 1946 in this regard. The AI is often good and bad, but is far better than the turn fighting one experiences in Great Battles. I must say however, I have noticed a few things that prevent the single player experience from overtaking 1946 and these are:


    -AI bomber (and BF-110) gunners are far too good. Playing the exquisite Dunkirk Operation Dynamo campaign, I have noticed that attacking bombers (even from above, in front, or with slashing diagonal attacks) usually results in me being sniped and having to bail out. I also noticed the same thing in Desert Hawks where my P-40 is seldom shot down by fighters but often snuffed out in one shot by bombers from a long range off (~500 yards). In 1946, this only happens when I am undisciplined and approach from the dead six (as it perhaps should). The P-40 (both Tomahawk and Kittyhawk) by the way, is modeled beautifully and is the best P-40 available in any flight sim so kudos for that! Thanks for allowing realistic boost settings unlike Great Battles, where the P-40 is a joke.

    -AI commands still do not work well or at all like in 1946: no explanation needed

    -AI wingman also running away from me on some missions; autopilot doesn't always work to fly into battle (i.e. my plane lags behind or flies off course; once it even returned to base for no reason at all). I am also having an issue on the Operation Dynamo campaign where my plane keeps flying into my wingman while in autopilot while crossing the Channel...kind of an immersion killer.

    -AI fighters will evade hardly (I believe they roll too well at times to evade fire) and then all of a sudden go into "go home mode" when they fly a straight course and then are easily gunned down. I think some balance is needed here (i.e. less ridiculous roll maneuvers in combat, but then more evasive action and awareness, even when attempting to disengage). Don't get me wrong: CLoD AI is good sometimes which leads to awesome and challenging dogfights, but at other times the AI just give up and die without a fight. I also very seldom get attacked by enemy fighters at all, which is a stark contrast to 1946. Digging into the AI levels, I'm wondering if this is due to the mission makers selecting relatively docile AI?

    -There is a bug when using Oden's DCG where the wingman don't want to land and just circle endlessly...I have also noticed this on the Desert Hawks and Operation Dynamo Campaigns to a lesser extent?

    -I am not sure if this one is a bug or I am wrongly informed, but I am having an issue that I have tested repeatedly where a 109-E1 or E3 easily outruns my Spitfire in level flight on the deck even when my Spit is set to boost cut out on, max throttle (110%), radiator 50%, prop rpm to 3,000+ (max). The pilot manual I found said the Spitfire IA 100 octane should be faster at sea level than the 109 E-3, no? Both planes had standard loadouts.

    -The Desert Hawks campaign is very well scripted and offers a nice balance of missions. CLoD/Tobruk has a HUGE opportunity to supplant Great Battles which is floundering and losing its community in recent months with things like poor spotting, horrid AI, and FM and DM oddities that the devs deny (i.e. underpowered .50 calibers and indestructible 109 tail section). We need a career system with kill logs, awards, etc.--in addition to the AI fixes mentioned above--in order to take the single player torch. I do jump online from time to time and find CLoD very good in terms of spotting, balance, mission design, etc., but I and many others prefer single player and the market is starving for a good single player sim. What better way to attract new players to CLoD/Tobruk than to offer a great single player experience (as well as multiplayer which is already the best)? The devs at Great Battles said 95% of their community only plays SP...what an opportunity!

    In addition:

    -Some graphical oddities and glitches still persist: I am running an RTX 2070 and i7-9750H and thus everything on ultra 1080P the game runs very smoothly (even in large battles), but even with the max SMAA setting the anti-aliasing isn't the best and there are jaggies everywhere. I find cities and textures shimmer as well and the coastlines often appear blocky. The Cliffs of Dover however, are simply breathtaking as are Dover and Canterbury. The Channel water and seas off Tobruk are breathtaking...not sure how it can be improved, but I'm not complaining!

    -The GUI: it is not as bad as some of the negative reviews state. I actually like it and find it to be adequate, but we really need something like quick mission builder that has been added to 1946. Plane loadout options also need to be both streamlined (as in easier to configure) and available for the individual mission at hand. Having to make loadouts for each plane and variant is very time consuming. This doesn't bug me, but it turns off other potential customers. The control binding menu is fine for me, but I have accidentally wiped out my profile once or twice and had to rebind them. Could this be simplified to simply "apply" like in 1946, rather than also have to save/create a separate file? While the new joystick wizard is a great workaround, most reviewers have failed to recognize it. By making the GUI more intuitive, it will help to attract more customers, and therefore will help fund future development of a great sim.


    -The engine modeling in Tobruk is phenomenal!!! It is so refreshing to be able to get the most out of my beloved P-40 for once by merely watching temps and adjusting cooling and boost pressure as needed! The flight modeling is also astoundingly detailed. The damage models are the best in the business (landing gear hydraulics failures be damned). Team Fusion really knows these planes in and out and it shows! The planes fly as they should according to pilot accounts, test reports, kill ratios, etc. This is so refreshing in the days of Great Battles, where they don't.

    -Despite how great the P-40, there is a bug going on with it's throttle/boost with my throttle axes on my Logitech 3d pro joystick, where in combat, throttle position jumps from whatever I set it to (usually between 95 and 70) to 100...while I am tangling with enemy planes, I don't always notice this and it kills my engine without taking a single shot to my plane. I've only noticed this on the Kittyhawk IA tropical, not the Tomahawk.

    -Sounds: the guns sounds are the best I've ever experienced in a sim. The engine sounds from the cockpit are also great. For some reason though, the external and flyby sounds have that Daimler Benz hiss so every plane sounds like the 109. A little tweaking here is needed, but this is not that important for gameplay so I understand focusing on other things.

    The cockpits: are still astonishingly detailed and gorgeous! The p-40 cockpits are the best I've seen in a sim.

    -Any chance we could get a Malta or Italy map since we already have all of the planes? In all seriousness, once the remaining bugs are worked out (as Team Fusion plans to do with the new weather, terrain system), all that is needed is more content (slowly is fine as the content in Tobruk is extremely high fidelity). Really, just some additional maps and later plane variants would do the trick for me and I am happy to support your project by buying additional DLC content and spreading the word (although the Pacific or CBI would be a dream of mine). If you need campaign testers/ makers, I would also be happy to contribute as primarily a single player.

    All in all, I am very happy with what Team Fusion has accomplished and look forward to the future of the sim, as it has SO much potential! I am sorry if this is in the wrong section.
    Last edited by drewm3i; Dec-06-2020 at 07:23. Reason: Forgot to mention...

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