Damage model in serious need of development.

[TeddyShot]

While Battle of Stalingrad has an impressive damage system, I still feel it is lacking realism in many aspects. One of these is the locations at which parts can be ripped off. They are far too repetitive and generally look boring. For example wings break off at the same section every time at a similar spot on every airplane. Same thing applies to the tail sections.

So what is my proposal? Add a more dynamic system where parts rip off depending on the point of impact or damaged area. For example if you scrape the tip of your wing on an object, a piece of the top can get ripped off.

 

Updating the damage modeling to my suggestion would greatly contribute to realism and immersion. For example if small bits of your aircraft are blown off by bullets or collisions, you will have a chance to return to base or land (unlike the current system where if you damage a wing, half of it falls off and your pretty much screwed).

[FuriousMeow]

Sounds fine and dandy, until you realise what is actually required of it - not just development, which is a lot because now there's several hundred additional damage points with breaking points that have to be modelled and the FM calculations for each of those smaller units disappearing which is a lot of work, but all of that has to be tracked at all times. What does that last part mean? minimum system requirements go up substantially, the number of objects in a mission go down substantially, basically you'll have a handful of planes in the virtual sky with a couple of tanks.

 

It's not as simple as just put it there and voila! All of those damage points have to be tracked all of the time from start to finish of a mission, and that eats up CPU cycles. Load up a mission in RoF with all two engine bombers - each flight consisting of 5 - and when a couple of them crash it causes the game to crash because there are so many pieces being tracked, calculated independently, and there's only so much even these quad core CPUs can calculate.

 

But if half your wing falls off, it's totally possible to return to base with it. It's not like the original Il-2 series where even just the wingtip being shot off caused the plane to become totally uncontrollable.

Edited February 27, 2014 by FuriousMeow

[4Shades]

 

But if half your wing falls off, it's totally possible to return to base with it

 

Agreed. But not likely. Thinking about that, it would be monumentally difficult to code a physics-based damage system that was realistic. Everything has to be a trade-off between sophistication and practicality.

[Flyingpencil]

Agreed. But not likely. Thinking about that, it would be monumentally difficult to code a physics-based damage system that was realistic. Everything has to be a trade-off between sophistication and practicality.

 

Well, I have seena few games with wings ripped off still flying (and some real airplanes too).

I think the issue is visual indication of damage vs effect on FM. 

Visually the wing is gone, but the FM is not so compromosed the player still able to control it, just.

 

 

I do agree the damage model can be imporved, but how much effort should be applied?

 

 

BTW, wings rearly break, more often tear off.

[arturott]

English is not my first lenguaje so I'll try to explain this as good as I can, I agree with the idea of improving damage model on emergency landings or crashes for example, sometimes on landings you hit the floor to hard and you don't get to see  realistic damage on the plane.

[Venturi]

I don't know that it's cut and dry, they turned down the damage model early on in BOS development due to complaints about landing difficulty and gear collapsing.

 

There probably is some degree of flexibility maintained between what the hardware can handle, what is currently possible with the software as is, and what is actually modeled.

 

Think about that one for a minute.

 

I'm all in favor of making it more realistic.