Help with shedding wings please

[ReverbDB]

Hello,

 

I really want learn how to fly the planes in FC since I believe it is an improvement over RoF. What put me off flying these aircrafts in RoF is that I remember I had trouble with wings constantly breaking whenever I made hard turns. I'm not debating if it's a true representation of the actual aircraft's performance. No, what I really want to know is how do you avoid breaking your wings during an intense dogfight when you're chasing the AI in FC? and if it's the same as RoF in that regards.

[No.23_Triggers]

This has been a little bit of a debate for a while since the new DM arrived - without getting into all of that, I'd say at the moment the best thing to do is as soon as your wings are hit, try to avoid pulling any kind of heavy Gs / overly tight turns! As it currently stands, damaged wings have greatly reduced tolerance to G-forces - and, depending on which plane you're flying, it's quite easy to pull them off by mistake once you've been hit. 

When it comes to not having any damage, you should be able to get by fairly OK so long as you're not tugging the flight stick too violently...if you're at higher speeds, you'll need to ease the stick back to turn or pull out of a dive rather than yanking it quickly back 

[40plus]

Been a long time since I've shed wings due to pulling too hard. I did shake hands with a passing Camel last night while flying a DR.1. The exchange took the portside half of my upper wing off and cracked the portside lower. I was able to complete the mission with 2.5 wings, another 25 minutes of flight, and land at base. Landing was epically bad but pilot survived.

 

If you fly "calmly" and avoid sharp bank/yank maneuvers you should do just fine. Then, once your wings are damaged, dial it back even more and head for home. Continuing the fight is a recipe for dead.

[J37_Daedallus]

S!

 

I fly the Albatros, which is infamous for losing it's wings in FC, the advice you are getting here is good. A lot comes with experience, finding out just what you can and can't do in your choice of plane with various states of damage. Planning helps, if you have damaged wings and can't get out of the fight, plan your moves (which may mean throttling back and turning gently before turning tightly to squeeze out of his gunsights).

 

Having said that, I am convinced that when you spawn, the game rolls a dice to see how sturdy your airframe is (in IL2 1946 the engines seemed better or worse at times), tonight I turned with no throttle and no damage to avoid an ai Se5 and the wings fell off, which was a complete surprise. And yet I have videos on Youtube where a collision took off my top right wing off, and I had to help a J5 squadmate in trouble so I joined the fight and downed a Bristol and survived. There's another film (Damage what damage) where I was fighting 3 Bristols and a Camel and the amount of damage the Albatros took and survived was gobsmackingly amazing.

 

So luck and experience, a bit like reality really 

[J15_Gontermann]

You can also join a virtual squadron for proper training for the machine you fly. There are a lot of them and
some differ in the tactics and sets of planes they use.

Edited March 4, 2021 by J15_Gontermann

[76SQN-FatherTed]

49 minutes ago, J5_Daedallus said:

 

So luck and experience, a bit like reality really 

This really.  As Larner pointed out above there has been "some" debate about this issue in the community. However, if you observe damage indications and modify manouevering accordingly it is reasonably straightforward  to avoid wing-shedding.

[=IRFC=Gascan]

If acceleration is the rate of change of velocity (which includes changing direction), then jerk is the rate of change of your acceleration. Avoid the jerk! Don't jerk the stick! Be gentle, and ease into turns. With fast scouts, you can often dive away at high speed to escape, and then pull out of the dive with an easy pressure on the stick. Jerking the stick tends to apply lots of G for a fraction of a second, but still long enough to crack those spars right off.

Unrelated note: the rate of change of jerk is known as snap. Accordingly, the rate of change of snap is called crackle, and the rate of change of crackle is called pop. These last few aren't really useful for anything, though.

[LukeFF]

3 hours ago, J5_Daedallus said:

Having said that, I am convinced that when you spawn, the game rolls a dice to see how sturdy your airframe is

 

Entirely untrue.

[J2_Trupobaw]

Flying Dolphin a lot with a ffb stick I've noticed that as long as I keep forces of my stick light (not to many Gs, not to hard rolls) I can keep flying with damaged wings. The moment I try to take a shortcut and force through sticks resistance, wings go off. Rudder use, OTOH, seems to be pretty harmless (probably because it does not put extra loads on either wing). So, go light on stick surfaces, initiate with rudder then follow with stick, use high yo-yos instead of tight turns, half-roll and sideslip upwards rather than pull up.

[Cynic_Al]

1 hour ago, LukeFF said:

 

Entirely untrue.

 

I'm not supporting the belief expressed by J5_Daedallus, but have you been assured by the developers that is not the case, or are you both privy to and capable of understanding the source code?

 

 

[ReverbDB]

Thank you all for your informative responses. I'll take these suggestions and ease up on the stick when I turn.

 

I think maybe part of the reason for my wings breaking off is that I fly full throttle the entire time I'm in the air. I imagine that I may have to fly just above stall speed during a dogfight??. I'm beginning to think that I'll need a lot of training to get the technique right. Once I get my tax refund, I'll definitely buy FC I and II. But in the meantime, I'll practice with RoF.

 

Cheers!

[J37_Daedallus]

1 hour ago, Cynic_Al said:

are you both privy to and capable of understanding the source code?

 

The only sauce code I understand is, tomato sauce for fish and chips, and brown sauce for meat pies. 

 

Hope to see you on Jasta 5's Flugpark soon ReverbDB, lots of ppl on there and other servers too, who will help you out

 

cheers

[Luftschiff]

6 hours ago, ReverbDB said:

Thank you all for your informative responses. I'll take these suggestions and ease up on the stick when I turn.

 

I think maybe part of the reason for my wings breaking off is that I fly full throttle the entire time I'm in the air. I imagine that I may have to fly just above stall speed during a dogfight??. I'm beginning to think that I'll need a lot of training to get the technique right. Once I get my tax refund, I'll definitely buy FC I and II. But in the meantime, I'll practice with RoF.

 

Cheers!

 

No you definitely don't want to be around stall speed in a dogfight. Maximum possible power is generally what you want, it's just a matter of moving the stick less when you want to turn. If you fly with instruments on you can check the G-meter in the lower left, it's deceptively easy to pull high G without realising it so if you're constantly going for tightest-possible-turn that's likely your culprit.

[BMA_Hellbender]

7 hours ago, Cynic_Al said:

I'm not supporting the belief expressed by J5_Daedallus, but have you been assured by the developers that is not the case, or are you both privy to and capable of understanding the source code?

 

While Luke's reply could be considered laconic if not curt, I think it's safe to say that he has more knowledge about the inner workings of the sim than most — including other testers (which I am not). I think you also know that.

 

There's absolutely nothing that indicates that this sim contains any element of randomness before the wing takes damage. Beyond that it seems somewhat arbitrary whether a hit to a particular hitbox is considered critical or not. Even so I've never seen a plane suffer catastrophic failure on an unloaded wing from exactly one bullet, something that did happen in real life. For all intents and purposes, I think the wing DM is fine. What I highly doubt, is that the undamaged Pfalz D.IIIa wing was indeed able to withstand a 10g pullout. But I may be underestimating Palatinate engineering prowess.

 

Then there's the whole issue of control cables, but let's no go there here, we don't want to scare newcomers away.

 

 

@ReverbDB: Welcome! You can't go wrong by joining one of the many Jastas (Central/German squadrons). If you'd rather fly Entente (British, French, American, Belgian*), consider your 20-minute average time of survival. But you'll have fun regardless!

 

 

(*) Yes I know Belgium isn't technically Entente, go away.

Edited March 5, 2021 by =IRFC=Hbender

[US103_Baer]

Or, just flying the Pfalz or D7(f) and you'll be doing bloody well to pull the wings off even after damage. 

[Cynic_Al]

1 hour ago, =IRFC=Hbender said:

While Luke's reply could be considered laconic if not curt, I think it's safe to say that he has more knowledge about the inner workings of the sim than most — including other testers (which I am not). I think you also know that.

 

My first thought was to say "If I want your opinion..." but that would be to propose a hypothesis that could never be realised in fact.  Back in the real world, the only thing it is safe for me to say about Luke, is that at some time in the past he requested and was granted the privilege of providing a free service to a for-profit company;  I know of no reason to infer that he knows anything about the inner workings of the software, but I do know that he would not be allowed to discuss such matters.

[BMA_Hellbender]

14 minutes ago, Cynic_Al said:

My first thought was to say "If I want your opinion..." but that would be to propose a hypothesis that could never be realised in fact.  Back in the real world, the only thing it is safe for me to say about Luke, is that at some time in the past he requested and was granted the privilege of providing a free service to a for-profit company;  I know of no reason to infer that he knows anything about the inner workings of the software, but I do know that he would not be allowed to discuss such matters.

 

Typically I respectfully disagree with you in some way or another, but in this case you're absolutely right, especially about the part where he would not be allowed to discuss matters that could be in breach of an NDA. As for opinions from other users on a forum meant for users to share their opinions on, well...

 

Seriously, though, you can and should contact the developers directly if you have issues with the software that can't be addressed here.

[Cynic_Al]

3 hours ago, =IRFC=Hbender said:

Seriously, though, you can and should contact the developers directly if you have issues with the software that can't be addressed here.

 

There can be only one answer to that.

[BMA_Hellbender]

42 minutes ago, Cynic_Al said:

There can be only one answer to that.

 

Spoiler

 

[Cynic_Al]

11 minutes ago, =IRFC=Hbender said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

The trouble is you forgot to include the necessary screenshots, without which the person receiving those reports ( no matter how clear and unambiguous they may be ),  has been programmed to reject them.

[LukeFF]

3 hours ago, =IRFC=Hbender said:

 

  Hide contents

 

 

That has to be one of the better animated GIFs I've seen recently. ???

[Angry_Kitten]

On 3/4/2021 at 6:11 PM, gascan said:

If acceleration is the rate of change of velocity (which includes changing direction), then jerk is the rate of change of your acceleration. Avoid the jerk! Don't jerk the stick! Be gentle, and ease into turns. With fast scouts, you can often dive away at high speed to escape, and then pull out of the dive with an easy pressure on the stick. Jerking the stick tends to apply lots of G for a fraction of a second, but still long enough to crack those spars right off.

Unrelated note: the rate of change of jerk is known as snap. Accordingly, the rate of change of snap is called crackle, and the rate of change of crackle is called pop. These last few aren't really useful for anything, though.

 

Gascan, the unrelated notes, actually coincide PERFECTLY with the movements of the joy stick while under load and speed.  The POP is the sound of the shed wing landed next to the lawn dart