Has the DM been changed?

[Todt_Von_Oben]

Got the Hot Fix: 

 

Flew the D7F in 15 more individual duels against helpless novice bots in SPAD 13's; striving to maintain a distance of about 50 meters in a turn while shooting from either aft quarter; aiming for the fuel tanks and having no problem putting rounds on target.

 

They stream green fuel now from both tanks.  Not one flamer, though; and that ain't natural.

 

Only had two of 'em steam.  That, too, seems off.  My feeling is that SPADS have always been prone to steaming when shot.  Not now.

 

Only saw two engines puff black smoke and one quit after being hit.  Only killed two pilots.  As close as I was and based on where it looked like my rounds were hitting: I think it should have been more.

 

(But that was happening before the HotFix, too.  Today I checked the VR of my last low altitude mudball at Flugpark; up high was one of the US93 in a SPAD working on a Pfalz.  He accurately blasted the cockpit from above in a vertical dive twice; then turned for a while and scored more hits.  That German pilot was immortal and that Pfalz was bullet-proof. )

 

Admittedly, my flammability test is a planned turkey shoot to see how flammable the SPADS are; it's set up so I can stay in close and hit the target: top wing tank, engine, fuselage tank, and pilot.

 

But even though I'm hitting mostly center mass: the wings keep coming off a large percentage of the time and I find myself thinking that it doesn't seem like that should be happening since my rounds were mostly into the fuselage.

 

And one of them passed me and flew right into the deck without me firing a shot.  Heart attack, maybe.

 

I'm going to keep looking into it tomorrow but at the end of the day today I'm not convinced the Hot Fix has solved the problem.

 

 

 

 

[No.23_Triggers]

26 minutes ago, Todt_Von_Oben said:

They stream green fuel now from both tanks.  Not one flamer, though; and that ain't natural.

It's not easy to get anything to flame by hitting its fuel tank - the engine lights up much easier. You can tell the difference by the smoke trail...engine fires start out wispy and grow, fuel tank fires are much more severe-looking.

I did some quick QMB testing as well just to see how everything was. The video I posted all felt weird (especially the Halb just disintegrating like that, even with Balloon Guns, and the wings staying on in that dive despite being so badly shot up).

Also shot up some SPADs and D7Fs. Spad wings still generally tend to go pretty quickly, and D7s are still tanks. I put three good bursts of 11mm into the left wings of a D7F - my aim was a bit too far to the right on the 3rd burst and I accidentally put a round through the pilot's head...the wings stayed on for the entire death spiral. 

Weirdly, the SPAD wings seemed to hold up pretty well to 11mms in the next test I did (just for fun), which was doubly odd considering the 7mms were tearing them to pieces...

Edited December 30, 2020 by US93_Larner

[unreasonable]

Given that there were no mentions of DM changes in the last update notes, and the bug seems to have been, in effect,  a large part of the DM having been accidentally turned off, it is most probable that what we have post hot-fix is exactly as it was before the update. In which case any apparent changes, given the natural variability of results,  are just our typical human behaviour of over-fitting data into patterns.  

 

I do think that if the team had made any changes to spar strengths etc (at least deliberately ) that they would have told us.  

[No.23_Triggers]

3 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

Given that there were no mentions of DM changes in the last update notes, and the bug seems to have been, in effect,  a large part of the DM having been accidentally turned off, it is most probable that what we have post hot-fix is exactly as it was before the update. In which case any apparent changes, given the natural variability of results,  are just our typical human behaviour of over-fitting data into patterns.  

 

I do think that if the team had made any changes to spar strengths etc (at least deliberately ) that they would have told us.  

Agree - was surprised to see some "Un-DM-like" things going on in the first couple tests though! Almost thought there just might have been some tinkering under the hood for a second...

[unreasonable]

Understandable: I suspect that incidents like this prime us to notice "oddities". Like when you read in the papers that a tiger has escaped from a nearby zoo; you may keep noticing strange noises, smells and tufts of orange and black fur even after you have been told the tiger has been recaptured.

[J2_Bidu]

5 hours ago, unreasonable said:

Like when you read in the papers that a tiger has escaped from a nearby zoo; you may keep noticing strange noises, smells and tufts of orange and black fur even after you have been told the tiger has been recaptured.

 

Ha - right! Just like when Larner connects!

[ST_Catchov]

Well, you can't believe everything you're told. I reckon that tiger's still out there. 

[BMA_Hellbender]

 

'n Zoom.

[ST_Nooney]

16 hours ago, ST_Catchov said:

Can you play this thing without installing the hotfix?

Cheating killing machine  

12 hours ago, unreasonable said:

Given that there were no mentions of DM changes in the last update notes, and the bug seems to have been, in effect,  a large part of the DM having been accidentally turned off, it is most probable that what we have post hot-fix is exactly as it was before the update. In which case any apparent changes, given the natural variability of results,  are just our typical human behaviour of over-fitting data into patterns.  

 

I do think that if the team had made any changes to spar strengths etc (at least deliberately ) that they would have told us.  

I think this is probably the most logical theory. better than my theory which is they couldn't fix the mess they had made to the DM in previous patches, so they twiddled on the quiet to see if anyone would notice then go SLAP, ha in your face, we fixed it and you are still moaning, but the yts kid went home early and forgot to switch the Camel wings fall off switch on, after that it all went tits up   The other theory is Nooney's been banging on about the crap DM for near on 2 years, and because they value my opinion, and I am so highly thought of by 1c-777 they put it back to my liking rather than lose me in the abyss of flight sims   

[No.23_Gaylion]

7 hours ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

Ha - right! Just like when Larner connects!

 

His head is already big enough, don't encourage it or we might end up paying taxes on tea again.....

[J2_Bidu]

1 hour ago, US213_Talbot said:

His head is already big enough [...]

 

Not until I can pilot kill him at least once.

[NO.20_Krispy_Duck]

The component damage seems fixed. The long-term DM issues remain, but it's about what one would expect. Lost controls on my Bristol each sortie last night, engine damage to Camel on that sortie, SE5a was better in terms of damage taking. Alb, Pfalz, and D.VIIs all took loads of damage from my plane, gunners, etc. and kept flying. So the bug fix worked, but we are where we are still, so to speak.

Edited December 30, 2020 by NO.20_Krispy_Duck

[NO.20_W_M_Thomson]

14 minutes ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

Not until I can pilot kill him at least once.

With a head like his how can you miss. 

8 minutes ago, NO.20_Krispy_Duck said:

The component damage seems fixed. The long-term DM issues remain, but it's about what one would expect. Lost controls on my Bristol each sortie last night, engine damage to Camel on that sortie, SE5a was better in terms of damage taking. Alb, Pfalz, and D.VIIs all took loads of damage from my plane, gunners, etc. and kept flying. So the bug fix worked, but we are where we are still, so to speak.

We still need some more sorties to test it but I think we were able to kill the pilot in the D7 more than usual. But that might be because our gunners are really picking it up in the killing department. 

[No.23_Triggers]

8 hours ago, NO.20_W_M_Thomson said:

With a head like his how can you miss. 

Even I'm beginning to wonder at this point...

[NO.20_W_M_Thomson]

1 minute ago, US93_Larner said:

Even I'm beginning to wonder at this point...

We're all just jealous bud. ? 

[ST_Catchov]

Just for one moment I thought just maybe .... but turns out the D7 is still tankish and flamers are not more prevalent. I think that night my shooting was unusually exceptional. I was actually aiming for pilot and engine only AND hitting the mark with short bursts!

 

This is a phenomenon that is unlikely to reoccur. And hasn't since.

[NO.20_Krispy_Duck]

12 hours ago, ST_Catchov said:

Just for one moment I thought just maybe .... but turns out the D7 is still tankish and flamers are not more prevalent. I think that night my shooting was unusually exceptional. I was actually aiming for pilot and engine only AND hitting the mark with short bursts!

 

This is a phenomenon that is unlikely to reoccur. And hasn't since.

 

They're pretty tough. I had a gunner with me in MP one night just pouring rounds into several German planes up close, and they took quite a beating but kept flying. One thing about ROF I miss is having a good gunner with the dual Lewis turret in the FE2b, where you could see the fighters seriously did not want to get caught by the gunner. Good times.

Edited December 31, 2020 by NO.20_Krispy_Duck

[ST_Catchov]

6 hours ago, NO.20_Krispy_Duck said:

They're pretty tough. I had a gunner with me in MP one night just pouring rounds into several German planes up close, and they took quite a beating but kept flying

 

Yeah but often (well, sometimes) they're more seriously damaged than they look and will go down later. Whereas the Camel always looks seriously damaged.  But I shall not question this .....

[Todt_Von_Oben]

Flew my SPAD flammability test in 4.505c: one single-plane duel and two sorties with three duels per: total of seven dogfights.  Novice bots, this time at 1500 meters altitude, head-on; getting into position at 0.05 KM / between 4 and 8 o:clock relative; firing short bursts striving for the vital zone.

 

Or, at least that has always been my intent.  This time, that SPAD flew like Erich Hartmann in a Gustav: big, fast, and all over the sky.  In all fights, I had to work more than usual to get into position.  Not saying there's been a change or not; just describing what I'm experiencing while flying these same basic parameters for the past few months. 

 

But since that's a Novice, I am looking forward to seeing what an Ace can do.  Good bot dogfights!  Very aggressive, accurate, and aerobatic.

 

1. Got him streaming fuel with the first on-target burst from a distance; lucky.  But I had to chase him and he came back around shooting more than once.  It took a long time.  I was in his close-four taking clear shots; be began to slowly roll right and then his wings came off.  Could be.  Lots of my rounds hit the center section and that's where it broke.

 

2. Streaming fuel; pilot killed.

 

3. Streaming fuel from both tanks; flamed; exploded mid-air.

 

4. Wasn't visible when 3 went down; appeared unexpectedly, followed me back to base, and attacked when I was descending to land.  We turned.  Pilot killed.

 

5. Streaming fuel; wings came off.

 

6. I fired a long shot as we closed; he kept on going, slowly rolled to his right, and went down.  Haven't checked the FR to see why yet.*

 

7. Streaming from the main tank; wings eventually came off after considerable hits to the top wing tank / center-section area.

 

It wasn't easy but it didn't take forever, either.  I haven't actually done the math for all three sorties but think I might have been averaging about 100 bullets per plane: some more, some less.   And my shooting tonight wasn't as accurate as it could have been.  So that number doesn't seem unrealistic to me, all things considered.

 

So far, 4.505c seems okay, for the most part.  Flies nicely.

 

*ADDIT: Checked the FR from that 6th kill's perspective.  As we passed and I fired, on his end I heard one (1) "thump" of a bullet hitting something; no idea what.  That's all it was and he went down.  Not saying the "Golden BB" isn't possible; just I have no idea why that one crashed.  The pilot was sitting up all the way.

  

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2021 by Todt_Von_Oben
spelling and grammar

[DakkaDakkaDakka]

On 12/29/2020 at 7:46 PM, unreasonable said:

Given that there were no mentions of DM changes in the last update notes, and the bug seems to have been, in effect,  a large part of the DM having been accidentally turned off, it is most probable that what we have post hot-fix is exactly as it was before the update.  

 

Well, I give them points for trying. Usually turning it off and then turning back on can fix a lot of things.