I’ve been watching a lot of WW2 aircraft documentaries to try and fall asleep at night (not working). The day I posted this I’d just watched one where the German fighters were making passes at a B-17 and clipped one of its wings off. That reminded me of how thrilling B-17 Flying Fortress 2 was all modded up from many years ago. Hearing your gunner mates crying out in pain from wounds was crazy.
I bought a physical copy of the game so I could read the manuals. They’re great manuals.
I have the boxed copy somewhere. And yes, like most of the older games, the manuals are works of art. I miss them.
So those guys back in WW2 thought “let’s make a Flying fortress” and they did --machine guns everywhere and cannons etc. And we still lost so many crews.
I know I can play a game with almost any mechanic, and I can kill orcs or whateves, but it still hurts my heart thinking how many B-17 crews were lost in the daylight bombings in '43 an '44. 8th Air force with 378 losses during that time.
oh sry to be a downer. I will go back to slaughtering orcs.
Yeah its tragic. Look up Dresden, Stalingrad or the Tokyo firestorm.
Ah yes, the last of the Great Microprose games. While the “silent hunter in the skies” thing was cool, I ended up flying fighters in that game. It also ran like shit on my rig back then.
Anyway, in DCS you can do fighter escort of B-17’s. Heck if you want you can do it in a motherlovin’ F-14 :D
I think it would be cool to have that kind of simulation in a different context. My problem with the B-17 games is that it’s ostensibly a flight sim, but actually flying the B-17 is boring. Instead, you manage the crew and handle the bomb sights, man the guns and such. So it really isn’t a flight sim at all.
I think if you take this same context into a space sim, you could make things much more interesting and dramatic. Like managing one of the big empire ships in Star Wars as the rebels attack you, or managing the Battlestar Galactica as you’re surrounding by Cylons.
It wasn’t boring. You setup autopilot then fast forwarded time until you were attacked by fighters. Then you hopped between stations to do whatever you wanted and AI took control of stations you didn’t run. Then of course you manually handled the bomb drop. I can see where you don’t call it a flight sim per-say since a big boat like that is kinda like driving a car until a hole is blown in the fuselage or wing.
I like your idea if only because you wouldn’t have to be perpetrating war crimes in order to play the game.
Off to try for the fifteen hundreth time to try and blow up the las vegas trump tower in DCS. (The building is invulnerable. )
;)
I like the idea of simulating larger craft where crew management plays a role. The silent hunters, the bomber crews. But i dont think a historical B-17 setting would be fun. Too much a cog in the machine.
Hunting uboats in a b-24 on the other hand…
A b17 game could make use of co-op multiplayer. I think Star Citizen is going to have this feature! (LOL)
I probably spoke out of line. I would love to see a great B-17 game… just hurts my heart to think of it. But ok I am in.
There were some great mechanics if you could get into the 8th AF head, and figuring out what to bomb vs opposition vs quality targets. Ball bearings, Did that work?
I would probably argue this in the grognards thread but… well they know more than me they say.
I saw a bomber fly over the beach in Oregon. Not sure if it was a B-17. It had four engines, but was painted dark blue. I didn’t have a camera ready. This was in the early 2000s.
I’ve flown in that B-17… As part of the press tour for B-17: The Mighty 8th, which is $6 on GoG. Man, you could just pretty much take that game and support modern graphics and control setups and I’d be happy.
https://www.gog.com/game/b_17_flying_fortress_the_mighty_8th
You know what? All this time I’ve been talking about B-17 the Mighty 8th game, not Microprose B-17 v2. Oops!
What would be awesome would be a large-scaled WW2 flight sim where you could fly escort in a P-51, bomber in a B-17, chase buzz-bombs in a Mosquito, etc.
My great uncle died flying a Vicker’s Wellington for the RCAF in Egypt. I can recreate the flight in P3D, but it’d amazing to be able to fly his missions in a combat sim and try to get an idea what it must have felt like.
It was probably pretty painful.
Battle of Britain 2 lets you fly fighters, dive bombers, and even the gun stations on German medium bombers. Or you can not fly at all, and just plan out the missions in real time.