Bliss,
I understand your points, no need to keep going over them. You feel the immersion is in the flying, fair enough. I and many others think it is the entire package that counts. you also keep mentioning how great the FMB is and the number of objects it contains. In my opinion this is pointless without decent gameplay mechanics to go with them. Right now Cliffs of Dover has limited gameplay elements and many missing or broken features that seriously reduce its ability to shine as an SP experience. Also the most popular and long lasting (active) sim of all time would be the MS Flight sim series, not one ounce of combat yet the userbase and popularity makes IL2 pale in comparison. Now if you meant combat sim then I agree but that doesn't mean IL2 was/is without major faults.
I flew with a few different squads in many online wars using IL2, they were great fun but time constraints no longer allows this. I do not want nor demand the ability to replicate this experience in SP, I just want some decent SP and CoD doesn't deliver in its current state. Ironically I found some of the dumbest things ever done was done by humans online, AI by contrast were rocket scientists
In response to Soaringbirds question, the best AI I have ever seen in any game or sim, is the AI in the latest patch for BoB2 WoV. Not once do they make me think WTF, that is not possible, there are plently of sweaty palm moments and they give a very good account of themselves without defying physics and reality. I still play BoB2 WoV on occassion but I would like to have the same experience in a sim with a better damage model and 2011 graphics. I was hoping CoD would come close, it doesn't. Only time will tell if Cliffs of Dover ever meets that criteria.
Bliss and Soaringbird, it is obvious that you are mostly (or even exclusively) online only types. That is your call, but constantly telling us SP only types to "go online to get a good experience", or "make it yourself using the FMB" is missing the point entirely. Some do not have the time, nor the inclination to do so, we should not be asked to fix the devs mistakes. Right now the Cliffs of Dover campaigns are a very shallow experience (leaving IL2 asside). They
may be fixed by 3rd parties but that does not excuse the poor effort the developers put in to meeting our needs. Please, please, please don't say "but the FMB has loads of stuff to do it yourself", that is not the point. We bought Cliffs of Dover to fly, you know that part you claim is the most important part. We did not purchase it to learn a complicated FMB, just to make missions that we know exactly what will happen next.
