Lodestone

Hi power5, As a guy who spent years running one of the most successful servers in IL-2, I feel you are quite wrong on a few counts: There are several excellent mission goal oriented servers out there. They are classified as "dogfight" servers, but that is just what IL-2 calls all non-coop servers. I ran Skies Of Valor for years, and it was always a point of pride for me to design fun MP missions designed around historical mission goals. Aerial combat is not real if it doesn't revolve around moving mud and/or protecting said mud-movers. Of course there is plenty of airquake in IL-2, but that is due to the fact that IL-2 is an extremely rare kind of sim which caters to the desires of both air-quakers and historical simmers. You just need to choose where to play, and if there is no place to play which fits your needs, then start a server and make it into your kind of place. That's what I did ;) Saying IL-2 is about kills rather than method just cuz it has no pre-flight procedures is as silly as saying there is no method to flying the Hokum since it has an auto-pilot. Il-2, and WWI/II aviation in general, requires a lot of skill and practice, as I am sure you know. It is just a different skill-set. Finding your enemy in a big blue sky with no sensors but for the Mk.I Eyeball is not exactly easy. And then once you have found him downing him is no small task either; especially if he has friends. To succeed in SOV and servers like it you must know your aircraft intimately, and you must know your enemy. You must be practiced and patient, and above all you must not fly alone. It is kinda the opposite of air-quake, imo. At least that's what I tried to imbue SOV with. Also, I can fly a P-40 through a hangar building at 500 km/h in truck and trailer formation with my wingman. Upside down. There is a method to that :P I love the detail of the real start procedures; I really enjoy learning all the intricacies of the machine. But I fully agree with Oleg when he says that spending resources making accurate startup procedures for a sim with over 100 planes is wasteful and stupid. People don't want to wait for a fight. There is offline and coop for that. Study sims are where we go for the insane deatils, but by their very nature we ought not be surprised when not a whole lot of people want to play a study sim. They are an immense time investment, and (contrary to how we all feel) not everyone derives pleasure from learning intricate procedures. One kind of sim is not more valu able than the other, they simply fill two different needs. I for one enjoy both kinds of sim immensely, if they are well done. So if what you mean is the only good sims are study sims, then I guess we just see things differently. If you still think there is no method in IL-2 then I shall smack you across the face with my glove, and challenge you to a duel, good sir! :) ------------- So for what it is worth, my two cents on the DCS issue at hand is as follows: I think the whole idea of fusing Lomac with DCS is contrary to the very essence of DCS. I thought DCS was supposed to be a series of study sims which plugged into one another. Lomac is fun, but it is not a study sim. It, like IL-2, is a sim built around human v human online or LAN play. I think attempting to make a study simulator which plugs into an existing online-geared combat simulator is like trying to play water polo with a horse, just cuz it has the word "polo" in the title. Study sims are on their side of the ballroom staring suspiciously at the "dogfight" sims on the other side of the hall. Both are fun, but they just do not wanna dance together yet. Maybe someday the tech will be good enough and the market will have grown enough for us to have a study sim which can play like a PvP online game too. Until then we have to get used to them being two separate things. Of course I don't mean study sims should not be played online, just that study simmers should be playing with other study simmers. So my vote is forget about FC2 compatibility and focus on more DCS modules which work well together. Ideally we will at some pouint have a rotary wing, a fixed wing CAS, and an air superiority fighter for each side. Then we can all hang out without these "airquakers" who seem to make some folks so frustrated. Sorry for the huge. I talk like a GAU. ~S~

It just finished at 247 MB :) Every install has its problem, hopefully this was my 1 problem for this install. Thanks again for all the help!

Thank you for fixing the USA mirror, as the Russian mirror had a very slow download speed nd kept stalling. First try iot got to 53 MB and quit. Tried again and it got to 12 MB and quit. Currently I am at 190MB from the fixed American Mirror. Thanks for the quick response today..(I guess my messages all came after bedtime last night) Thanks to everyone who helped me and to the ED team for fixing the problem now. ~S~I am off to Flame some Cliffs?

have downloaded it 3 times..then I thought to try the Russian mirror. Turns out the American mirror for the download was the problem. Thanks for your help timbob. The site admin ought to fix the link or remove it. So frustrating that the links provided for a PAID FOR PRODUCT do not work. If it were freeware I could understand, but there is really no excuse for selling someone a product on a mirror that isn;t actually there. Poor show ED. Thanks again for your help timbob. Your post told me that the file was not supposed to be 16KB, and prompted me to try the other mirror. These companies charge money for stuff that only sometimes works, and then it is up to conscientious community members such as yourself to clean up their mess (10 hours have passed..still no response from customer support). Happens too often in the PC gaming world.

So, I purchased flaming cliffs from the website, and got a file called "LO_1.1b_Flaming_Cliffs_Setup.exe" It is a tiny little 16 KB file, so I imagine it is supposed to install the downloader to get the whole 250MB Flaming Cliffs. When I open it, however, I get one of two warnings: Either a) or b) I have put in a request for help from the support staff, but I am impatient and so am hoping someone here knows what I am doing wrong. thanks for any help anyone can offer. ~S~ Lodestone