Hello,

I've been an avid IL-2 player for several years now, but I'm just now getting interested in playing around with mods (I know, I'm late to the game! But I've had a lot of fun playing just the "stock" game and only very recently acquired the necessary hardware to make it worth even researching mods).

I've purchased IL-2 from GOG (obviously) and have downloaded it probably a half dozen times over the years (installed it on a couple different machines in my house, gone through various system re-images), but I have not done a good job of keeping archives of those installs. If I download IL-2 from GOG today, I will get version 4.10...which was wonderfully convenient when I was interested in stock, but is somewhat limiting when it comes to mod compatibility.

My question is this - is my best (only?) option to buy a copy off of IL-2 1946 off of Amazon (or wherever)? I have no problems doing this - I have probably gotten 10 or even 20 times the amount of value out of this game than my original GOG purchase price of $10, but if there was an easier/different way, I would be interested in hearing it. Thanks!

Excellent - thank you, my good man! I'm clearly a noob when it comes to mods, the help/clarity is much appreciated. Will get this monster downloading...

You're welcome. :)
By the way, when I said all mods, that isn't true, the package contains Ultrapack and DBW.
Individual campaigns and missions must still be downloaded separately.
The package contains a selector (IL-2 Selector.exe) with which you can change the mods, so you don't need a new IL-2 install for each mod.
Further I recommend to check the Mission4Today forums, as the people over there are able to answer just about everything related to IL-2.

Thanks for the add'l info!

I'm pretty excited right now - I had always assumed mods were mostly directed at online players, but I'm seeing now how much offline content there is - a pleasant surprise!

I'm a member over at M4T, so I can definitely head over there for questions, but one more for you if I may:

So I'm running Win 7 - my IL-2 is installed in the default GOG location (Program Files x86), but to get the mods working properly I had to copy everything over to C:\IL2. To save on disk space, would it work for me just to uninstall everything & then re-install just to C:\IL2 so I don't have to maintain 2 copies?

Thank you again!

Yes, you can, use the selector to switch between mods and the stock game.
I never install games in the programfiles folders to avoid these problems

Thanks again - I've reinstalled (single copy in C:\IL2) and have gotten Ultra Pack and DBW both running successfully. Time to explore some campaigns now! :)

Any suggestions? I've downloaded Checkertails (I've always had a soft spot for the MTO, for some reason!), but I'm open to suggestions.

Sorry no, I haven't tried anything beyond the stock campaigns yet.
Best is to try the stuff that interest you the most.