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[Vampire_pilot]

Newbie Guide : What is B.A.T. ?






B.A.T. or BAT stands for “Battlefield – Airborne – Tactical” and is the most complete modpack, covering everything that IL-2 modding and SAS has to offer: From the flimsy canvas crates of 1910, through WW1, the Interwar years, the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam until the turn of the 2000s. It is based on stock game version 4.12 but has by now developed a great deal.

Everything is coming in one package, sorted in 4 so called “Era modules” and one open SAS-Modact module; each can be launched independently through a selector.

Dawn of Flight (DOF)       - everything before 1919
The Golden Age (TGA)      - the interwar years  (Spanish civil war, early Sino Japanese War)
World at War (WAW)      - 1938 through 1946 (and all the “Luft ‘46” fantasy material)
The Jet Age / Jetwar (JTW)   - 1946 until today
SAS Modact         - Stock + new flyables. This is an open playing field for personal modding...

All BAT maps are available in all era modules in FMB!


Aircraft slots per BAT module (v4.1.3):

BAT WAW: 1342
BAT JTW: 529
BAT TGA: 399
BAT DOF: 227

some overlap of course exists, so we count 2100 unique aircraft slots in total in BAT.
One or two handfuls are AI only.



Why are there era modules?

Why is not everything in one module?
IL-2 has capacity limits due to how it is coded. Also, Vehicles and plane sets of course can be grouped so it makes sense for certain times or conflicts. Some overlap exists of course.


What if I am only interested in WW II content?  [new]

Since BAT v4.0 you have the choice!

BAT v4.0 RED CORE only contains the WAW module as a basic installation.

BAT v4.1 BLUE EDGE contains all the other era modules (DOF, TGA, JTW) as expansion content. You do not have to download or isntall this if you are not interested in the eras. It can save you space on your hard drive. It is completely up to you.

Future updates will be available and compatible for your BAT, no matter if you installed 4.1 BLUE EDGE or not.


History

BAT has been introduced in 2017 and is constantly serviced and updated. It is the latest incarnation of a line of Modpacks that began with Dark Blue World (DBW)
After that came C.U.P. modpack, the first to use the era module concept, based on v4.12.
This evolved into B.A.T., developed by the same team around Monty27. It is highly integrated, which means, all files are packed into game-native SFS files so save space. The engine is developed in a way that now can handle thousands of aircraft in one single era module without performance loss. New aircraft and other mods, such as GUI updates are constantly integrated, sometimes built to spec for B.A.T. or in the case of most aircraft mods, specifically reworked to fit the java engine in B.A.T. for best performance.

Who uses BAT?

~ Man many people. BAT downloads have reached five digits.

~ BAT is for everyone who is a collector and wants as much content as possible with as little compatibility hassle as possible. 

~BAT is for mission- and campaign builders who want a serviced and reliable platform to make the most diverse missions and share them with a  wide community, knowing that everyone will be able to play there missions without having to download and install everything and the neighbors cat.
You have thousands of aircraft, over 400 maps and 7000 objects at your disposal.

~BAT is mostly oriented towards offline players, but it is mostly online capable. While it is not specially serviced for online play, the most difficulties are with the JTW era material due to the java nature of these mods. WAW and others should be fine and there are online BAT users here on SAS!

Who should not use BAT?

~ Players who have very limited hard drive capacity or very limited download capacity. It is big!
~ Players who only want to have one or two specific mods.
~ Dedicated online players. (BAT is online capable mostly but may be excessive in size if you only want WW2 online play. UP or HSFX are better suited for that)


What are the advantages of BAT?

~ It is constantly serviced and expanded. In fact, many fixes and features may be more developed in BAT than in their stand-alone form or not even be available stand alone.
~ It is the most comprehensive IL-2 modpack in terms of planes, maps, objects and vehicles there is. (WAW module has > 1200 individual planes alone)
~ No more hassle with contingency packs like EngineMod versions, common utils, weapons packs and the like. It is all integrated and kept up to date with the content.
~ It is 100% SFS packed. It is not even a Modact, it is a serious expansion of stock.
~ It has a very large player base. Whatever mission you publish for BAT, will be accessible to thousands of players without a problem.
~ It has very high performance rates (FPS) while holding massive loads of content. This would not be reproducible if you simple stacked stand-alone mods as they come.
~ It gives you all the possible content and all eras in one single install
~ It offers the possibility to have multiple eras that can be launched individually. You can fully personalize and setup your own Mod section inside the available SAS-Modact module.
~ It is moddable. You can add maps, new planes, objects… But chances are good that new mods will be introduced into official expansions anyway at one point.
~ There is active SAS Forum Tech Help available, if you adhere the a few very simple rules.
~ It is the pack SAS officially recommends if you want to play from Fokker Triplanes to Supersonic Jets.



What are the disadvantages of BAT?

~ In comparison - Size. It needs roughly 100GB without skins, but the SFS packaging makes it possible to get amounts of content simply impossible otherwise.
~ If you have very limited download speed, you may find the amount of initial download volume problematic.
~ Due to its integrated and SFS-packed nature it may not be 100% modder friendly, as the contents are not accessible "in the open"  - But you can add new planes, maps, objects just like you are used to!



"How do I get BAT?"

Step 1: Basic install for B.A.T. v4.0
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,65026.0.html

Step 2: B.A.T. v4.1 era expansion (optional!)
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,65027.0.html

Step 3: B.A.T. v4.2
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,67426.0.html

Step 4: BAT v4.2.1 update
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,68071.0.html

Step 5: BAT v4.2.2 update
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,69807.0.html

Step 6: BAT v4.2.3 update
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,72671.0.html