Dolphin Wing Shredding

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

We have misfires but can destroy enemy gun by our bullet but it's very very rare. Propellers in this game are almost indestructible only hiting objects or ground can destroy it , no bullet or shell can.

[J2_Bidu]

7 hours ago, US93_Rummell said:

We also need balloon guns which actually set things on fire (as they were designed) rather than act as a bigger ball round. TBH, I only take them because the DVII and DIIIs are tanks and feel like a douche we I snip the gossamer wings off a DVa. When we get 1917 scenarios without DVIIs I’ll switch back to 303s

 

I need to make clear that my mention of balloon guns means no demerit to the wonderful job you do in a Spad, in fact me taking a Lewis gun in a DVa alone is even more gaming the game, let alone using it in a turn fight... we do the best with what we have.

 

Anyway, I hope for advances in the game, but take things as they are. WW1 aviators didn't choose the best plane from a shelf, nor did they choose their missions and targets, even less could they complain of the enemy's superior equipment, in an ever changing unbalance of technology.

[US103_Baer]

31 minutes ago, 1PL-Husar-1Esk said:

We have misfires but can destroy enemy gun by our bullet but it's very very rare. Propellers in this game are almost indestructible only hiting objects or ground can destroy it , no bullet or shell can.

Another hit zone they could throw an rng at. Stop giving ideas  

[ST_Catchov]

So what are you saying .... one bullet will shatter a Camel's prop but leave a D7's prop undamaged because it's cantilevered? I don't like that idea.

[J2_Trupobaw]

10 hours ago, US93_Rummell said:

We also need balloon guns which actually set things on fire (as they were designed) rather than act as a bigger ball round.

They do. Otherwise our guns would have no effects on balloons. All our ammunition magically transforms into phosphorous ammunition when used against valid targets for phosphorous ammunition.

[No.23_Triggers]

44 minutes ago, J2_Trupobaw said:

They do. Otherwise our guns would have no effects on balloons. All our ammunition magically transforms into phosphorous ammunition when used against valid targets for phosphorous ammunition.

I think that's probably more to do with how the balloons are implemented more than the bullets tbh - I mean, they also catch fire if you ram them...it would be nice to have actual incendiaries instead (although you'd have to expect the inevitable - incendiaries being fired at planes) 

...on a side note, I'd love to see balloons actually explode when they went up - they do that in WoFF and it's simultaneously awesome and terrifying when they pop. Especially when you get a bit too close...! 

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

21 hours ago, J2_Trupobaw said:

They do. Otherwise our guns would have no effects on balloons. All our ammunition magically transforms into phosphorous ammunition when used against valid targets for phosphorous ammunition.

So they don't,  it's balloon destruction animation. It has  simple healt points, no physics calculation.    When they model API round for ww2 , we probably have similar rounds modeld in FC but i doubt balloon dm physic will change at all.

Edited August 31, 2021 by 1PL-Husar-1Esk

[ZachariasX]

20 minutes ago, US93_Larner said:

...on a side note, I'd love to see balloons actually explode when they went up - they do that in WoFF and it's simultaneously awesome and terrifying when they pop. Especially when you get a bit too close...! 

Hydrogen filled balloons don‘t really explode, they burn.

 

Also, an incendardy travelling through a bag of hydrogen often does not much, as there is no oxygen in the bag as well. You needed to oerforate the balloon for hydrogen to escape and then incendaries fired through the escaping gas would ignite it. 

[HagarTheHorrible]

1 hour ago, Todt_Von_Oben said:

The Dolphin flies fine.

 

Apart from when the wings come unstuck, obviously !

 

Why an earth spar size has to be the sole defining factor in wing strength is an absolute mistery to me, it might make absolute logical sence for cantilever winged WWII aircraft, but to then simply copy and paste it to WWI biplanes is bizzare, especially when they aren't real physical entities, but just a bunch of numbers. The WWI biplanes could have any value they like attached to the DM base number of spar size/strength, it absolutely doesn't need to be in direct proportion to the spar size of the real aircraft, ESPECIALLY when the hit box for the spar, chopped into sections, is essentially the entire wing.  Hell if they're going to be anal about one, supposedly, crucial aspect, they might at least make it consistently difficult to shoot at, rather than pretend that each and every shot that hits the wing is a spar shot. Is it really an impossability to confine the crucial hit boxes to the actual dimensions of the spars, if necessary just the front spar,  and limit any other hits to the wings as just sticking on hit decals, because by and large they're irrelevent.  Just because the wires aren't part of the damage model, it shouldn't mean they become an irrelevance, should they ?  It doesn't even need serious tinkering with the existing DM, it just needs a considered thought process and an adjustment of the wing spar DM base value to include how much support the wires provide.  As far as I'm aware, late war Scouts were typically built to withstand 6G, but, if you took away the wires, how many G could these aircraft tolerate before the wings fell off, 1G, 2G ?  So all the DM needs to account for is the difference between the the tolerance to G of the spars alone and that provided by the wires, say 5G (Spar 1G / wires 5G =6G ) ergo, in this instance, only every sixth bullet is a spar, or G loading, damaging shot.  Sure it's far, far, far, from perfect and even far from that, but at least it takes into account the fact that biplanes depend for the most part on wires for their strength, even if it is beyond the sim to model a wires DM.  It could even be guilded to take account of idyosyncracies of different biplane designs to provide some individuality in the DM model. It's all just numbers, adding and subtracting, and doesn't have to interfere or upset the cantilever WWII DM in any way.

 

If the present DM is VERY much more sophisicated than a simple, "bullet hits wing, wing losses strength" (with small enviromental variations) then it really doesn't appear to show it.

 

The game USED to be fun, or at least MORE fun, and I fully appreciate that there are a core group of players who still get an enormous amount of pleasure and fun form FC.  But, in the old days, FC allowed for a good old rough and tumble scrap, sure there were some aircraft better than others, but generally it was pretty evenly balanced, it certainly wasn't aided and abeted by a lob sided DM, that appears to have no bases in historical fact, either then, or in the years after, when biplanes, of all nations, almost without exception, still considered wires to be an essential design feature, rather than eshewing them for "cleaner, stronger, simpler", cantilevered designs.  When you're having fun, it is easy to forgo or forget about all the  little irritations, limitations, or obvious faults, but when a game becomes a chore it only makes all the other problems stand out in clear relief.

 

If a WWI combat flight simulator is made and limitations, in a whole host of areas, mean that the simulators outcomes don't reflect historical record, however imperfect those records might be (and historical record suggests, get in close and aim for meat or metal) then it moves even futher away from the simulation that it pretends to be, frustratingly, or so it seems, for reasons that could be ameliorated or done away with all together.

 

One last thing to try and clarify my reasoning, apart from the fact that almost all pre-WWII biplane fighters still braced their wings with wires, is that spar size might provide some logical consistency for WWII aircraft but leads to the bizzare logic, in WWI, that the FC Pflaz DIIIa has a more damage resistant wing than the one used on the Spad VII or XIII, even though the Pflaz XI discarded the D IIIa wing design to use that of the Spad VII instead.  Maybe the Pflaz design team just felt it was an unfair advantage and they needed to adopt a weaker Alied design to even things up.

5 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

Hydrogen filled balloons don‘t really explode, they burn.

 

Also, an incendardy travelling through a bag of hydrogen often does not much, as there is no oxygen in the bag as well. You needed to oerforate the balloon for hydrogen to escape and then incendaries fired through the escaping gas would ignite it. 

 

Why does anyone think that it's any more complicated than just putting X number of bullets in a bag ?  What have incendary rounds have to do with it.

 

Now, if it was possible to crack open a fuel tank, with a resultant trail of fuel, then it would be great fun to then use the 11mm balloon guns to set that aircraft on fire.  It might then make the balloon guns worth having.  A 303 to open her up and an 11mm to strike the match.

[No.23_Triggers]

Yeah, I think there's always going to be some inherent flaws with a shared WW1 / WW2 DM once the DM starts getting complex. It's a shame - everyone seemed to be overall pretty happy with the older DM on both sides. 

EDIT: Re, flying wires...I'm currently going through "Flying Fury" and seeing what McCudden had to say about wings being shot / torn off in combat (he's a lot more descriptive than most memoirs and mentions wing-offs a lot more often), and there was one very interesting bit where he talked about a fellow pilot cleanly snapping the spars on 3 out of 4 of his S.E.5a's wings (spars snapped towards the wingtips) in an overzealous power-dive...the S.E. pilot then fell into a spin, recovered, and flew home 
 

6 hours ago, HagarTheHorrible said:

Now, if it was possible to crack open a fuel tank, with a resultant trail of fuel, then it would be great fun to then use the 11mm balloon guns to set that aircraft on fire.  It might then make the balloon guns worth having.  A 303 to open her up and an 11mm to strike the match.

Don't let Trupo hear that ?

Edited August 30, 2021 by US93_Larner

[No.23_Starling]

On 8/30/2021 at 10:44 AM, J2_Trupobaw said:

They do. Otherwise our guns would have no effects on balloons. All our ammunition magically transforms into phosphorous ammunition when used against valid targets for phosphorous ammunition.

Yeah, I get that all ammo will burn a balloon, it’s more that the BG 11mm rounds don’t seem to be any better at torching balloons than the standard 303s. They shouldn’t really be called balloon guns if they aren’t better at killing balloons or setting things on fire in general. Just call them 11mm Vickers or something.

 

In RoF they burned balloons much faster making busting much safer and easier. IIRC you could fit one to the Hanriot too

[Cynic_Al]

Should I infer that some people think the Dolphin has relatively weak wings?

[J2_Trupobaw]

10 hours ago, US93_Rummell said:

hey shouldn’t really be called balloon guns if they aren’t better at killing balloons or setting things on fire in general. Just call them 11mm Vickers or something.

 

In RoF they burned balloons much faster making busting much safer and easier. IIRC you could fit one to the Hanriot too

They were called ballon guns because .it was safe to use phosphorous ammo with them - 303 Buckingham ammo tended to cook off in overheated Vickers chambers, and were usually used with Lewis. The problem isn't with the balloon gun, but with .303 Vickers we have being able to damage the balloons at all. Making balloons immune to Vickers would be more accurate (and justify having the Lewis stuck on Dolphin, SE and Bristols), but I suppose it would be also much less fun.

[J2_Bidu]

10 hours ago, Cynic_Al said:

Should I infer that some people think the Dolphin has relatively weak wings?

 

Not relatively to the Camel.

[No.23_Triggers]

2 hours ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

Not relatively to the Camel.

Both Sopwiths are pretty terrible tbh 

[ST_Catchov]

5 hours ago, US93_Larner said:

Both Sopwiths are pretty terrible tbh 

 

Yeah, Herbert Smith needs to revisit the Sopwith wire bracing and strengthen it to counter the weak spars. Or the devs could do it?

[Feathered_IV]

8 hours ago, ST_Catchov said:

 

Yeah, Herbert Smith needs to revisit the Sopwith wire bracing and strengthen it to counter the weak spars. Or the devs could do it?

More chance of Herbert doing it I suspect.  Possibly more chance of him commenting on it too. 

[J2_Trupobaw]

4 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

More chance of Herbert doing it I suspect.  Possibly more chance of him commenting on it too. 

Who knows? Maybe in couple of years and updates later we'll be sitting here cursing the Sopwith pilots ramming people off the sky with their indestructible wings held by titanium wires?

[SCG_Faerber]

Do we even have FC players on their beta testing branches? If yes, then surely they are giving all this info on the damage model right? I'm tired of hoping but that's all I can do. 

IL-2 needs community managers to improve communication with the playerbase, specially Flying Circus since nothing gets even publicly acknowledged.

[J2_Bidu]

21 minutes ago, SCG_Faerber said:

Do we even have FC players on their beta testing branches? If yes, then surely they are giving all this info on the damage model right? I'm tired of hoping but that's all I can do. 

IL-2 needs community managers to improve communication with the playerbase, specially Flying Circus since nothing gets even publicly acknowledged.

 

There are FC players amongst the testers. Jason has made several public statements on the DM, it is acknowledged that it is something to be addressed. We'll have to wait for the appropriate moment.

[SCG_Faerber]

17 minutes ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

There are FC players amongst the testers. Jason has made several public statements on the DM, it is acknowledged that it is something to be addressed. We'll have to wait for the appropriate moment.

Can you link me this response? 

[J2_Bidu]

9 minutes ago, SCG_Faerber said:

Can you link me this response? 

 

Well, I don't keep track of them, but just googling took me to this example:

https://stormbirds.blog/2020/12/17/thoughts-on-the-future-of-flying-circus-in-the-il-2-great-battles-series/

[SCG_Faerber]

24 minutes ago, J2_Bidu said:

 

Well, I don't keep track of them, but just googling took me to this example:

https://stormbirds.blog/2020/12/17/thoughts-on-the-future-of-flying-circus-in-the-il-2-great-battles-series/

This one is from a while ago, I thought you meant something more recent. But I guess old problems, old answers.

[No.23_Triggers]

22 minutes ago, SCG_Faerber said:

This one is from a while ago, I thought you meant something more recent. But I guess old problems, old answers.

Jason said something vaguely similar on another DM-related thread that, ahem, got locked, more recently. 

 

Quote

We will make changes to the damage model when we have the time and resources to do it. 

...as always, though, I'll believe it when I see it and put up with the DM (or not) until then and treat any informal mentions of DM fixes as hearsay. 

Edited September 2, 2021 by US93_Larner

[JG1_Butzzell]

Hi,

 

F C   DM  is not fixed. They continue to produce new dlc for a sim that is broken and people buy it. Fixing the DM  does not make money so why waste the expense. This is a strange situation.  FC is more of a curiosity than a sim.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

We need to have patience, finally we got what we are asking for , hopefully it will not make matters worse ?

[HartneyUS27]

Please fly both sides of FC and let me know how the DM is.

 

-Regards 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Kaiserboo

[US41_Winslow]

Unless they’ve changed the description in the store, it never actually said we’d get a  realistic damage model, so we should all stop complaining.  “Detailed damage model to simulate damage to planes made of lighter materials.”  It’s too much to expect a simulator to have a DM that simulates reality, right?

[US103_Baer]

23 hours ago, SCG_Faerber said:

Do we even have FC players on their beta testing branches? If yes, then surely they are giving all this info on the damage model right? I'm tired of hoping but that's all I can do. 
 

When I suggested this I was helpfully reminded that beta testers are only there to find bugs.  Nothing else. 

Which I can understand from a product dev standpoint,  and there are 'channels' for commenting on fm, dm, complaints and suggestions.  But there's no feedback afaics so they feel more like channels designed to divert troublemakers away.

 

@US93_Larner

 @1PL-Husar-1Esk

 

There's a subtle difference in Jason's 2 statements. It gives me some hope, though as always, the actual execution is key. 

 

In the older statement from Stormbirds he still comes across unconvinced there is a legit problem, leaving room to do nothing.

 

I see this as a long-term project to somehow change only WWI damage modeling. Even so, there are mixed opinions on this issue. Just because there are some vocal critics out there, does not make the loudest voice correct. As usual, we would need to study the issue further before any more c hanges are made.

 

However the latest statement is straight up,  yes we will make changes when there's time. No room for status quo in that and it suggests they have decided the complaints are valid and should be addressed. 

 

We will make changes to the damage model when we have the time and resources to do it

Edited September 3, 2021 by US28_Baer

[Feathered_IV]

58 minutes ago, US28_Baer said:

When I suggested this I was helpfully reminded that beta testers are only there to find bugs.  Nothing else

I guess it’s up to us to provide the valuable customer feedback then. 

[J2_Trupobaw]

Quote

another DM-related thread that, ahem, got locked. 

There was a guy called Gus once who believed he can force devs hand and bring a fix to MP-breaking bug in RoF by exposing it to as many people as possible . It solved the problem and worked very well to all involved.

As of Beta tests, well, current DM is not a bug. It's a design decision. It needs revising, not merely fxing.

Edited September 3, 2021 by J2_Trupobaw

[No.23_Triggers]

2 hours ago, J2_Trupobaw said:

As of Beta tests, well, current DM is not a bug. It's a design decision. It needs revising, not merely fxing.

Sure - but there are many players that would disagree and would call the DM outright broken.  And I'm sure the DM must have been tested prior to being introduced? Surely? 

Edit:  Here's my experience with the "Design Decision" last night btw hahahaha....I mean, even if you're pro-DM surely this doesn't look right at all?  The same D.VIII pilot got a Camel as well on that sortie. His parser says he scored 14 hits in total....Hmm. I wonder what happened to that Camel...

Joking aside, the DM really has just turned what I used to think was an incredible and really exciting follow-up from RoF into a boring and frustrating wing-off / control jam fest. Just when I start getting really into it, something like that happens and it's like "...oh. ok".  The same rings true for scoring kills - you could be having a tense standoff with an Albatros, where you seem to be evenly matched...then his wing just falls off the second you score a glancing burst. From my point of view it's just unrewarding from both sides...

What I really don't get is how it's only some planes that really suffer (in regards to wing-offs). I get the whole "Spar size" thing, but a Pfalz D.III for example wouldn't even blink at being hit by that many rounds. A D.XII, on the other hand, would probably suffer the same fate. I could probably land every round I spawned with directly into the wings of a D.VII and it could still be fully aerobatic...

EDIT 2: Oh, and just to stay on topic....the Dolphin's worse than the SPAD for wing-shedding. 
 

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by US93_Larner

[ST_Catchov]

So there we have it. Time and Resources. Hmm. The question is what length of time and what resources are required? A long time? A short time? A hiring spree? That needs capital. Who knows? I don't. But. If they were to divert resources from less important projects than FC, say, that tank thing, or Normandy or whatever, that may shorten the time and save on capital! It's a thought. Perhaps Jason could take that to the BBC (Board of Bean Counters) for approval. It's a win win. Sales would go through the roof. I offer this advice free of charge. It is for the greater good. That is enough reward.

[Trooper117]

1 hour ago, ST_Catchov said:

Perhaps Jason could take that to the BBC (Board of Bean Counters) for approval. It's a win win. Sales would go through the roof. I offer this advice free of charge. It is for the greater good. That is enough reward.

 

Makes sense to me old sprout!

[J2_Trupobaw]

5 hours ago, US93_Larner said:

Sure - but there are many players that would disagree and would call the DM outright broken.  And I'm sure the DM must have been tested prior to being introduced? Surely? 
 

 

 

Yep. The bug is "We wanted to write program doing X but we wrote program doing Y. We fix the problem by making program do X properly." kind of situation. If, hypothetically, you want planes in your program to always be visible but they tend to be cloaking at certain distances, it's a bug.

The design decision is "We wanted to write program doing X and we got program doing exactly X. Any problems are due to limitations of X, not bad implementation. We fix problem by designing better X+ and implementing it without the bugs." If, again hypothetically, you want your planes to base your wing strength based on spars strength while bracing wires have only small impact, implement that perfectly, and your intended behaviour of heavily braced planes ends up ahistorical, you have design problem.

Bug requires following the old design decision better. Design decision requires new better design decisions.

 

Edited September 3, 2021 by J2_Trupobaw