Description

COMBAT BOX by Red Flight is focused on late-war, historically-inspired scenarios including BoBP plane sets. Each map has been meticulously hand-crafted including realistic airfields, challenging targets, spectacular effects and strategic mechanics such as radar zones.

Available planes and maps will evolve over time.

Server Rules

• Be nice. A little bit of smack talk is expected in online gaming, but don't get nasty. All chat is logged. Leave politics and religion to other servers. Racist, sexist, homophobic or religion-based slurs will result in temporary bans from the server.
• Play fair. If you find something unbalanced or broken, please let the server admins know so we can fix it. Exploiters will be warned, then banned.
• Attacking players near a 'protected' airfield is not allowed. See the "no vulching" rules below for full details -- not every field is protected.
• Disconnecting shortly after being damaged awards a kill to your opponent and ends your streak. While network connections can be flaky and the game can crash, 'convenient' disconnects can be very tempting for pilots, so we discourage them.
• Bailing out of an undamaged plane incurs a stats penalty. Some players "hit the silk" as soon as they lose an advantage. This is an online multiplayer game -- bailing out to deny an opponent a kill is unsporting. While bailing out is not against the rules, it will hurt your statistics. Command takes a dim view of pilots who fail to get their bird home, especially a pristine aircraft!
• Default Player-12345 usernames are not allowed.. There are just too many gunner trolls with that kind of username. Pilots need to use the Profile feature on the IL2 website to change their name. If it's a Steam copy of the game, use the "link accounts" feature to link through to the IL2 website and then change the pilot name.
• These rules are not comprehensive. Admins reserve the right to use their own judgement rather than a big rulebook. Don't be a dick, and we'll all get along fine.

Thanks to the game developers and Ciribob, pilots can now enjoy realistic radio communications integrated into their IL2 experience. For full details and installation instructions, please read the guide on the forums. Once you have installed IL2-SRS and have it running, your SRS radio client should automatically connect when you join the Combat Box server. You'll initially be placed in the neutral 'intercom' channel, then channel 1 for your coalition once you spawn a plane.

On Combat Box, pilots should use SRS channels 1 through 10 for the following purposes:

• Channel 1: Command / Coordination. Monitor channel 1 for important messages from Allied or German command, and to coordinate with other pilots.
• Channel 2: Airfield Operations / Tower. Ensure you switch to, or monitor, channel 2 when operating near an airfield.
• Channels 3-10: Operation-specific communications. At pilot's discretion, use these channels for specific operations such as CAP, ground strike, or intra-flight comms.

SRS now supports two radios per aircraft. We encourage pilots to use both radios. For example, you could use the leave the first radio set to channel 1 at all times and use your second radio for task-specific comms.

Rules around airfield "vulching"

The admins take a dim view of vulching; we think it is anti-fun and unrealistic; airfields historically would have had upwards of 300 flak guns protecting them. There's no perfect answer to the vulching situation, here is our approach.

• Most player airfields on Combat Box are 'protected' airfields. This is an area of heavy flak and AA guns that, in real life, would have been lethal to attackers. Not all airfields are protected -- capturable, landing-only, or frontline airfields do not have this protection. Check the map for each mission to see details. As an example, the two fields Heesch and Volkel (to the right) are protected airfields.
• Attacking players within 8km of a protected, friendly field is not allowed. This is a simple 8km limit, no altitude or "time since takeoff" constraints. If you are defending against a vulcher, feel free to shoot them down, that's ok.
• These rules will be enforced automatically by robot. The bot will kick players who break the no vulching distance limit. We hope that an automatic kick will be enough, but we may upgrade this to an automatic ban in future.
• All protected airfields feature respawning "puffy" flak. If you have chased a bandit back towards their airfield and think you're maybe too close, look for puffy flak. If you see sustained heavy flak, you are likely within the 8km limit.
• Non-protected fields have no rules. If you choose to spawn at a non-protected frontline field, with a bandit on the radar and AA guns firing, you are taking a risk. As an attacker, if you want to gain air superiority over such a field and shut it down, that's within the rules.
• Outside the 8km limit pilots are not safe. Away from the protection of an airfield, you are on your own. Check six often!

Examples of how these rules apply:

• Chasing a bandit back towards a protected field and shooting them down further than 10km away - ALLOWED
• Chasing a bandit back to base and shooting them down over a protected field before they land - NOT ALLOWED
• Patrolling airspace between an enemy field and mission objectives, and attacking players while they are in their initial climb out - ALLOWED, as long as you are more than 8km from a protected field
• Attacking players who are landed or ditched at a protected airfield, strafing, bombing, rockets, whatever - NOT ALLOWED

Pilots are advised to check the map to see which airfields are protected. 'Standard' rear airfields are generally always protected. Front-line, capturable, or "landing only" airfields are generally not protected. Pilots operating any airfield should always check the map for nearby enemies, listen for heavy flak firing, and watch for a red warning flare from the tower.

How to get support

Our Discord server includes a #support channel. Please use that to get support, report bugs, and access our reports bot. If there's a server problem, post there and tag @admin to let us know.

You can create a "support ticket" to report player behavior that contravenes the Combat Box rules. For example, attacking other players while they are on the ground, tail gunner griefing, deliberate team kills, repeated egregious friendly fire, or use of racist, sexist, homophobic, religious or other slurs in chat. Creating a ticket makes a new private channel for you to report the problem, you don't need to call someone out in public if you prefer not to.

Network issues

Our server is located in New York, in a commercial datacentre. We have thousands of pilots each month playing, including pilots from Australia, Brazil and Europe. If you are getting ping kicked, the problem is most likely your internet connection, not the server. Try using a wired connection instead of home wifi. You can ping combatbox.net to see your current ping. Our maximum average ping over one minute is 350ms round-trip. We will not increase our ping limit; we already have some players warping around with jittery ping, and increasing ping limit makes the experience worse for all the other players.

If your ping is good but you sometimes lose connection, you might need to optimize your MTU to reduce packet fragmentation. Yes, that probably sounds like gibberish. Here's a guide to doing it.

Server Team

Administrators: Alonzo, Haluter, Mordrac, Psyrion, Talon
Mission designers: Alonzo, Bjorn, Hawkmoon, Talon, The Nines, Psyrion and our Patreons.
Massive thanks to: Red Flight for all their help testing, especially Col. Ninny and Haluter for in-depth airfield testing and feedback.

Combat Box has been migrated to new server hardware! Thank you to all who generously donated to the cause. In alphabetical order: Alonzo, Atomic_359, Blake, Haluter, HE187, IngegnerTommy, Jakerthesnak, Jim, Jon, Jorge HFJ, JG1/Vonrd, Mewt, Mordrac, Nabuli0, Siggi, Strat, Talon, The Nines, Tim and VA_SDRiEMLiNE. Thank you also to our Patreon donors who allow us to continue to operate! See the Supporters page for more info.

Join our Discord to get help, report problems, or give feedback: discord.combatbox.net