Discussing the DM update!

[Avimimus]

 

So, what do you think?

 

I'm finding that bombers now often catch on fire without exploding.

 

The Flying Circus damage model is improved (easier to do things like use the Lewis gun to fire through the underside of a two-seater and kill the pilot). The situation for the Hurricane II/IIa and the I-16 is also improved as it is still hard to take down a bomber with these planes, but they are easier to damage and a bit of skill can allow one to down two bombers and damage a couple of others in a single sortie (something which was possibly historically).

 

It is still possible to fire an Sh-37 37mm high velocity AP round all the way through a bomber and hit the pilot - but it seems to be a bit harder (that yaw feature when penetrating the aircraft skin perhaps?)

 

It seems like a really significant upgrade to me. It just feels right.

[Bilbo_Baggins]

I too was looking forward to these changes.

 

-Gunners crews don't seem to survive huge barrages of hits like they did before. 

 

-MK108 30mm still doesn't seem to inflict the damage it should? According to update notes I was expecting 30mm to have more thump and fuselage/wing tearing, and less grenade spread shrapnel. They shrapnel spread has definitely been fixed though. 

 

-Fires behavior seems improved all round. 

 

-Water cooler leaks seem to last far too long?

 

-13mm HE inflict a lot less parasitic drag ?

 

Interested to see other's findings

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Bilbo_Baggins

[Feldgrun]

My FW 190 A-6 didn't instantly turn B-26s into balls of flame near La Havre. It was a bit harder to shoot them down, which I feel is more realistic and welcome.

[Hook_Echo]

I'm seeing a lot of engine fires. I'm flying a Spit IX, so 50s and 20s. 7 of the 10 109s and 190As I've shot have gone down in flames. The skin visual damage from 50s is not much, but they seem to be doing slightly more damage than previously. For example, I shot a 109 with a P-51 and there were minimal visual holes in the wing, but the wing broke off. 

[Charon]

I took a P-51B for a spin in a quick mission and downed five Fw 190s in about 5 minutes. One caught fire; the others were bail-outs or pilot kills. Some of them took a couple passes or absorbed some nibbling hits which seems perfectly reasonable. Overall .50BMG seemed to be performing appropriately when it hits at convergence. My AI wingmen seemed to struggle to get kills with it, though (shooting too far out?).

 

I need more time with it to reach final conclusions, but I liked what I read in the patch notes and am optimistic about this change overall.

[Mtnbiker1998]

I've done a little bit of testing with the circling drones in the dogfight example mission. .50s seem to do better when shooting 109s from dead six, 13mms behave much more reasonably, and the 37mm in the P-39 definitely seems to have more punch. 20mm feels a bit more... refined? Not hugely changed, still has a good punch, but feels a lot more reasonable with the reduced splash damage.

 

Some of the things I still wanna look at are if the P-47 is any more resilient, and how the Russian planes handle being shot at by the new HE rounds (if I can manage to get myself away from Normandy any time soon-Not likely)

[Imperator_TFD]

1 hour ago, Mtnbiker1998 said:

Some of the things I still wanna look at are if the P-47 is any more resilient

 

Significantly more so now.

[ACG_Bob122]

10 hours ago, Bilbo_Baggins said:

I too was looking forward to these changes.

 

-Gunners crews don't seem to survive huge barrages of hits like they did before. 

 

-MK108 30mm still doesn't seem to inflict the damage it should? According to update notes I was expecting 30mm to have more thump and fuselage/wing tearing, and less grenade spread shrapnel. They shrapnel spread has definitely been fixed though. 

 

-Fires behavior seems improved all round. 

 

-Water cooler leaks seem to last far too long?

 

-13mm HE inflict a lot less parasitic drag ?

 

Interested to see other's findings

 

 

 

 

 

I am really happy about the 13mm. They used to pretty much end the fight if you got hit by just 1 13mm HE round. I lost a lot of fights by the guy just yanking, getting a single 13mm hit and they I would not be able to fight back.

[Tuninfogliato]

Buongiorno
Volevo chiedere come mai il Mosquito pur essendo un bimotore e quindi non avendo coppia di torsione, durante il decollo se ne và a dx e sx, è normale?
buona giornata

 

Translation:

 

Good morning
I wanted to ask why the Mosquito despite being a twin-engine and therefore not having torsion torque, during take-off it goes to the right and left, is it normal?
Have a nice day

 

Please post in English in the English Forum and also post in the correct sub-forums. I'll let it remain as it was answered below.

 

Smith

[the_emperor]

Overall the new DM feels very well rounded.

Good job!

[357th_KW]

This DM update is a huge step forward.  Random long range spray is generally ineffective, while concentrated hits at close range are generally decisive.  Radiator damage is critical, and the radials are clearly more durable then the water cooled engines now.  Big thumbs up from me.

[Dr_Molem]

Guys, is the Spitfire's glass tail (insta spin) fixed ? 

[Jaegermeister]

4 hours ago, Tuninfogliato said:

Buongiorno
Volevo chiedere come mai il Mosquito pur essendo un bimotore e quindi non avendo coppia di torsione, durante il decollo se ne và a dx e sx, è normale?
buona giornata

 

Google translate... Good morning I wanted to ask why the Mosquito despite being a twin-engine and therefore having no torque, during take-off it goes to the right and left, is this normal? have a good day

 

The mosquito does not have counter-rotating props, but that has nothing to do with the topic of this discussion. You are in the wrong thread, and should post a translation or post in the Italian forum.

 

Google translate says... La zanzara non ha puntelli controrotanti, ma questo non ha nulla a che fare con l'argomento di questa discussione. Sei nel thread sbagliato e dovresti postare una traduzione o postare nel forum italiano.

 

 

[EAF19_Marsh]

But the DH Hornet did. Likely a bit more time at RR with the 100 series and having a nice cup of tea.

[RNAS10_Mitchell]

In FC, skin damage is more physically visible, but have not noticed  (yet) significant changes in wing strength.  ( Edited based on limited personal stress Testing, ie..not much time online against human opponents.

 

Rough landings appear to be more survivable.

Edited September 10, 2022 by RNAS10_Mitchell

[354thFG_Panda_]

4 hours ago, 357th_KW said:

This DM update is a huge step forward.  Random long range spray is generally ineffective, while concentrated hits at close range are generally decisive.  Radiator damage is critical, and the radials are clearly more durable then the water cooled engines now.  Big thumbs up from me.

Fully agree, these changes may be small but have a huge impact on gameplay and realism. The Devs did an awesome job. 

[Avimimus]

8 hours ago, RNAS10_Mitchell said:

In FC, skin damage is more physically visible, but no improvement in wing strength. ☹️

 

Rough landings appear to be more survivable.

 

I suspect that getting a proper representation of structural failures (e.g. rare, but still a distinct possibility) would require actually modelling the joints and wires in the damage model. I recall that there was a prototype back in the Rise of Flight days for a more detailed damage model but I believe it was considered too computationally expensive back then.

 

I always ask myself - would I like a very detailed rework of the wing damage models  - or would I like fixes to other areas (better low-speed/WWI AI, more detailed artillery spotting, having separate controls for rotating the gunner ring and elevating the bar, having engine variants or a slower ~130 km/h two seater for each side)... My personal answer has so far been that those would be a greater priority for me... not that we'll necessarily see any of it.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think they'd need a more extensive rework - to build completely new, more detailed, damage models for the wings of all twenty existing aircraft... in order to give us what we ask for.

[RNAS10_Mitchell]

3 hours ago, Avimimus said:

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think they'd need a more extensive rework - to build completely new, more detailed, damage models for the wings of all twenty existing aircraft... in order to give us what we ask for.

Completely agree, and honestly was under the impression when they said "reverse engineer" the current DM, that was quite possibly the intended goal/direction.    Of course it's possible, I misunderstood the devs reason for reverse engineering the current DM.  Perhaps they are just trying to understand the old code better, before attempting any significant changes?

[Avimimus]

13 minutes ago, RNAS10_Mitchell said:

Completely agree, and honestly was under the impression when they said "reverse engineer" the current DM, that was quite possibly the intended goal/direction.    Of course it's possible, I misunderstood the devs reason for reverse engineering the current DM.  Perhaps they are just trying to understand the old code better, before attempting any significant changes?

 

Or analyse how their code functions... work through each step of the calculation looking for artifacts or errors? They had a good dev update a few years back on how there were some issues in how armour penetration was calculated in TC, complete with graphs showing the artifacting and how they corrected it. So I agree that they are probably trying to understand their code better.

 

IMHO, it is very complicated code, modelling very complicated dynamical systems - so the ability to fully predict what the result will be is limited until the code is prototype, tested and refined - and it may take many cycles to do that.

 

Implementing a more detailed damage model for the externally braced wings of WWI aircraft would require prototyping it on a couple of aircraft, debugging it, rolling it out to more aircraft, then debugging those, maybe a full rewrite... it isn't a small undertaking. Look at how long it has taken the fuel system rework to come out! Still though, it would be pretty neat to have. Maybe if Flying Circus III sells well enough they'll be able to hire or dedicate more staff? Who knows? We can always hope and imagine.

[oc2209]

Referring to several things already mentioned in this thread, I tested a few observations out and recorded the results.

 

First, some P-47 target drone action. Fw-190A-3 here:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Bf-109G-6 vs P-47; only 13mm fired:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Yak-9 vs P-47; first 12.7mm was exhausted, then 20mm was fired:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Me-410 vs P-47:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Me-410 cartwheeling into a crash landing; pilot survived, gunner did not:

 

Spoiler

 

 

So, end results are that 12.7-13mm does inflict significantly less skin/aerodynamic damage. 20mm HE impacts still appear to generate significant drag.

 

The P-47 does feel tougher than it did.

 

And crashes are back to allowing miracle survival stories. Which I'm okay with, compared to the frequency of belly landing deaths before.

 

I'll test the Spitfire tail damage effects next, since someone did ask about that lately.

[Oyster_KAI]

- Now 190 is much tougher than 109, the characteristics of the different aircraft are well shown.
- Use .50cal to shoot 190, 109 and P-47, Pilot Kill is fairly easy on 190 and 109, P-47 is much safer.

In the future, the range of HE explosions may need some correction.
Then let the air-cooled/liquid-cooled engine also have a noticeable difference in durability, or possibly make the famous R-2800 particularly durable.

[BCI-Nazgul]

The .50 AP round is quite deadly now.   Plenty of wing removals.  Also, few hits with it and your opponent will generally be combat ineffective.   Every plane that I got a good burst into went down unlike before where there was a real good chance they'd just keep on fighting.   Regarding the 47, it's not any more maneuverable, but it can take much more damage and get home or even keep fighting.  It's no longer completely ineffective after just one hit by a 13mm or 20mm.

[oc2209]

Did the Spitfire now, using only 13mm.

 

This is an interesting result, though not related to tail damage:

 

Spoiler

 

 

It looks to me like the aileron controls failed.

 

Here's a proper tail hit:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Admittedly, I'm not a good enough pilot to accurately hit the IX in the tail (at least in my current level of rusty incompetence), so I switched to the XIV for an opponent, as turning inside of it is far simpler.

 

It would appear as though aerodynamic damage to the tail, at least from 13mm, is greatly reduced. The plane, even after losing the entire vertical stabilizer, didn't show the very odd behavior that it once did from far less cumulative damage delivered by HE rounds.

 

Overall, I would call it an improvement.

[oc2209]

Here's a clean 20mm HE hit on the starboard horizontal stabilizer of a Spitfire XIV:

 

Spoiler

 

 

No insane spin the moment it's hit.

 

The Spit only begins to spin long after its pilot maintains a tight-ish turn, after the stabilizer totally breaks off; and the plane's suffered multiple 20mm hits elsewhere.

 

Spinning in those conditions is totally different (and feels more appropriate) than the previous tail damage behavior.

 

Above and beyond all that, the XIV is spin-happy anyway. If I could accurately nail a Spit V or IX in the tail, and it didn't fully break off a chunk of stabilizer, I'm betting it wouldn't spin at all. At least, during 'normal' maneuvering.

[oc2209]

Oh, by the way, the Russian 12.7mm is no longer the God-gun it once was. Which I'm fine with. It was rather absurd that the 12.7mm was my primary kill scorer, while the 20mm was the afterthought I used when my preferred 12.7mm ran dry.

 

Now, the 12.7 performs exactly as well as you'd expect a single .50 cal equivalent should perform. It's a supplementary gun to the 20mm, as nature intended. Nothing more, nothing less. Still fine for getting maybe 1 kill per sortie, but nothing like before, where it was not uncommon to get 3 kills with only the 12.7.

 

Here's it versus a 109F-4:

 

Spoiler

 

 

And here it is versus a Typhoon, just for the hell of it:

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Charon]

9 minutes ago, oc2209 said:

Oh, by the way, the Russian 12.7mm is no longer the God-gun it once was. Which I'm fine with. It was rather absurd that the 12.7mm was my primary kill scorer, while the 20mm was the afterthought I used when my preferred 12.7mm ran dry.

 

As someone who's been flying a MiG-3 co-op campaign this last month... I'm scared.

 

(But also, the UB was over-performing, and this sounds appropriate).

[the_emperor]

1 hour ago, oc2209 said:

Oh, by the way, the Russian 12.7mm is no longer the God-gun it once was. Which I'm fine with. It was rather absurd that the 12.7mm was my primary kill scorer, while the 20mm was the afterthought I used when my preferred 12.7mm ran dry.

 

I like that very much. you are now really incentivized to bring all your guns at your disposal on your target and not safe some for later.

[slug_yuugen]

Shot down three aircraft with the 9T on Finnish all single 37mm hits, all appropriately meaty results when before it'd have been 50/50. Great stuff making these bigger rounds more consistent.

[Avimimus]

5 hours ago, Charon said:

 

As someone who's been flying a MiG-3 co-op campaign this last month... I'm scared.

 

(But also, the UB was over-performing, and this sounds appropriate).

 

Yeah, as a Mig-3 pilot - I agree with both of your sentiments!

[LVA_Picard]

Flying Circus damage model is improved they say ??? arghhhhhh after 10 bullet's you shoot the wing of ore the plane catching fire, keep in mind that must bullets hit the canvas and not the steel cables , I am not sure if this is realistic. 

 

especially in VR you can aim very good and in 5 minutes I shot down 3 bombers and 2 fighters ....no I think this is not what we want . I am sorry. 

 

Robin 

[oc2209]

11 hours ago, Charon said:

 

As someone who's been flying a MiG-3 co-op campaign this last month... I'm scared.

 

(But also, the UB was over-performing, and this sounds appropriate).

 

I should clarify, it's not that the AP element has lost much efficacy; it's just that now, because the HE has been (rightfully) severely reduced in damage potential--chiefly aerodynamic/skin damage--you can no longer effectively cripple a plane by hitting it 2-4 times in the wing with 12.7mm.

 

Thus, the Russian 12.7mm (and German 13mm) are now quite similar to their Anglo/American counterparts, in that they only do damage if they hit something important. Inaccurate peppering of a target will no longer have the same effect that the old 12.7mm HE had.

[oc2209]

Observe the similarities in the following two examples of a 12.7mm pilot kill:

 

Yak-7:

 

Spoiler

 

 

MiG-3:

 

Spoiler

 

 

In both instances, I killed the pilot in a point-blank attack. With better accuracy, I wouldn't need to be point-blank, naturally.

 

At any rate, the AP qualities of single or double 12.7mm are still useful.

 

It also appears to me that .50s in general (their equivalents) knock pieces of planes off more easily than before. This 410 gets shredded by a P-47:

 

Spoiler

 

 

[danielprates]

I dont know if this falls within the scope of this discussion, but crash landings are way, way more fatal than they used to be. Good thing too, earlier you could belly land at 300kph and the pilot would survive unscathed.

[Charon]

On 9/9/2022 at 8:28 PM, oc2209 said:

And crashes are back to allowing miracle survival stories. Which I'm okay with, compared to the frequency of belly landing deaths before.

Yeah, miracle survival stories happened IRL; I've posted accounts of several of them elsewhere on the forum. The important thing seems to be that rough crashes aren't consistently fatal or consistently survivable, and that soft landings seem consistently safe. This seems to match real life pretty well.

 

The other thing I notice is that it's now possible to stop engines dead with gunfire. Sheriff has a clip of this in his DM video, and I managed it earlier tonight in an eight-gun Hurricane shooting at a 109E-7. I suspect these would have been engine fires previously.

 

I am so happy about this patch.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Charon

[oc2209]

On 9/8/2022 at 2:22 PM, Bilbo_Baggins said:

-MK108 30mm still doesn't seem to inflict the damage it should? According to update notes I was expecting 30mm to have more thump and fuselage/wing tearing, and less grenade spread shrapnel. They shrapnel spread has definitely been fixed though.

 

 

I agree with you on several points, but not this one.

 

Before the latest patch, it was relatively easy for me to produce a recording of a P-51, Typhoon, whatever, taking 3+ 30mm hits and surviving.

 

After the patch, the odds of repeating the same are much lower. 30mm lethality seems increased overall.

 

Here's a few examples:

 

Bf-109 vs Typhoon, single engine strike and one wing hit:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Me-262 vs B-26s:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Me-410 with Mk 103s, vs B-26s:

 

Spoiler

 

 

Now, this last one is a little suspect. It's a 109 vs a Mosquito, and the rudder appears to break off from the initial 30mm strike on the starboard wing behind the engine:

 

Spoiler

 

 

The airframe fragility of all planes seems to have increased, which explains the greater lethality of .50 AP; but it also might require that the explosive force in a 30mm HE needs to be reduced, to prevent things like a rudder coming off during a wing hit.

 

In other words: I'm very much in favor of keeping the current level of airframe destructibility, just with a slight reduction in cannon HE radius. Their lethality will still be extreme even after a reduction.

Edited September 11, 2022 by oc2209

[Noisemaker]

4 hours ago, Charon said:

The other thing I notice is that it's now possible to stop engines dead with gunfire. Sheriff has a clip of this in his DM video, and I managed it earlier tonight in an eight-gun Hurricane shooting at a 109E-7. I suspect these would have been engine fires previously.

 

That's been around for a while.  I mentioned it in one of the (many) threads on .50 cals, months ago (I think after they adjusted the velocity issue).  Really cool when you see it happen.

[CountZero]

11 hours ago, danielprates said:

I dont know if this falls within the scope of this discussion, but crash landings are way, way more fatal than they used to be. Good thing too, earlier you could belly land at 300kph and the pilot would survive unscathed.

that got changed more then 2 updates ago i think.

[danielprates]

7 hours ago, CountZero said:

that got changed more then 2 updates ago i think.

 

Ah yeah. I am right now reconfiguring all my inputs and have been crashing a lot, maybe I only noticed now.

[357th_Esco]

Pilots die too easily now ?. Here is how much damage a pilot should take and keep going.

 

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by 357th_Esco

[sevenless]

Yeah, should survive at least 4 direct 30mm hits to the torso...?

 

I´ve seen what a 20mm training round (without HE filler) can do to a human gluteus maximus. That film is complete bollox.