Engine Damage Model

[301fsSeoyeon]

I wonder any one else is found engines absurdly weak? i not hear even a singel bullet impact when attack bombers, yet every singel time no matter what engine is die from bullets damage despite no impacts sound. Never once taken a bullet from bomber wich did not kill engine instantly it is make it impossible to attack bomber. There must be some issue this is not normal. I am unable attack any bombers due to this, even I approach high speed and out from gunner arcs but moment inside arc immediately engine is shot always. 

Edited January 2 by 301fsSeoyeon

[Volant_Eagle]

I had exactly the same experience when I first started in CloD. I do still think there might be some issues that need to be fixed but it's not nearly as bad as I initially thought. 

 

It's actually quite common in this game to not hear anything when you get hit. I'm not sure if that's intentional or a glitch but it happens a lot. You probably wouldn't hear every single hit in real life (especially if it's only one or two rifle rounds), so I've kinda gotten over this. You have a lot of ability to customize text boxes in this game so I usually have one box set to display "Vehicle Damage". That way I know immediately what was hit. A hit to the "Oil Tank", "Water Tank", or a "Water Line" usually kills the engine in very short order. Usually you loose power in seconds. In my personnel opinion this is a little too fast but what do I know. A hit to the "Water Radiator" usually gives you some time (2 to 5 mins or more).

 

Another problem is the gunners don't have exactly correct fields of fire. They are close, but not quite right. So what historically should be a safe approach angle might not necessarily be. It's not that uncommon for a Stuka or Blenheim gunner to shoot you though his own tail, or for an He 111 waist gunner to shoot you through his own wing.

 

Heinkels have a near full 360 coverage. It seems weakest though if you come in head on slightly low and to one side. Dorniers have pretty good coverage too but do have a gap at the sides. Keep in mind you need to be at almost 90 degrees to be in this gap which gives you a very difficult and brief shot. Ju 88s seem to have the least gun coverage but are fast and sometimes hard to approach from angles other than behind. BR.20s have good coverage to the rear and remember they have .50 cals, so they REALLY hurt. I have definitely by far been pilot snipped the most by BR.20s. Wellington gunners have a ridicules field of fire but there are only two. So your best bet is to either hit the pilot in a head on pass, or to snipe the tail gunner from long range (400m+) and then it's all yours. Otherwise, good luck.

 

It could also be the skill level you have the AI set to. If you're playing single player you can try adjusting this in the FMB. Obviously if you're in multiplayer you're stuck with the server settings. I usually play on the TWC server and I swear they must have all the AI gunners set to "freaking jedi".

 

I've found that by far the safest way to attack bombers is from head on. Getting any closer than 400 meters from any other angle is risky. Spending even a second within 200 meters at anything even approaching level flight is just asking for it. Swerving and coming in fast do help but not enough to make it a reliable solution in my experience. If you have cannons then try setting your convergence way out and getting really good at sniping from long range. With practice you can hit them reliably from 600 to 400 meters. If you just have .303s (which is your only option if accurately depicting the British during the BoB), then stick to head on attacks. If you do come up from behind, I suggest aiming right between the fuselage and one of the engines. That way the guns from one wing should be hitting an engine, and the guns of the other wing should be going up the fuselage and damaging tail surfaces and killing gunners.

 

I don't know how experienced you are but another problem I had starting out was killing my own engine. Make sure you are respecting all engine parameters at all times. If you have a text box displaying "Vehicle Damage" then you may be able to isolate whether an engine failure was from gunfire or not.

[301fsSeoyeon]

Thankyou for kind response yes i do got very much experiance with flight sims ww2 and others i make sure i run engines fine it is definitely from bullets happening. I play server Tobruk i think this is a server TWC. I shall consider more caution on approaches to heinkels that one is kill me this way the most by vast degree. Sometime ventral gun is not really shoot but top gun is fire down as you say, throug fuselage of heinkel X_X I am glad atleast iam not only who experianced this.

[Buzzsaw]

21 hours ago, 301fsSeoyeon said:

I wonder any one else is found engines absurdly weak? i not hear even a singel bullet impact when attack bombers, yet every singel time no matter what engine is die from bullets damage despite no impacts sound. Never once taken a bullet from bomber wich did not kill engine instantly it is make it impossible to attack bomber. There must be some issue this is not normal. I am unable attack any bombers due to this, even I approach high speed and out from gunner arcs but moment inside arc immediately engine is shot always. 

Make sure you turn the in game volume control up to maximum for sounds.

 

Adjust the volume in your headphones or speakers using the windows mixer or your sound card mixer.

 

If the volume in the game settings is not at maximum, you might not hear all the sound effects.

 

Regarding the bomber gunners... if you attack from the six o'clock position, and do not maneuver, you will be hit.

 

You should always try to attack at an angle while maneuvering so the bomber gunners are required to use deflection shooting.

 

Yes, this requires practice and skill... the fact is, in WWII air to air gunnery was by far the most difficult skill to learn.

 

If you want to see how it is done.... look up videos by Karaya showing examples of how he shoots.

 

Another thing to consider... if you are overheating or over revving your engine, you will also damage it and cause it to fail.

[301fsSeoyeon]

My attacks usualy very simlar to how others doing it but still moment iam shot always it is instant takeout oil or water never any thing else of plane i do not see even bullet holes much only couple of small hole on wings. Engine is not be over rev or too much manifold pressure i am good with engine managing. I use volume max already but never hear any bullet impacts only see them. If i could make tracks i would put examples but tracks do not record for me.

Edited January 3 by 301fsSeoyeon

[Volant_Eagle]

3 hours ago, 301fsSeoyeon said:

My attacks usualy very simlar to how others doing it but still moment iam shot always it is instant takeout oil or water never any thing else of plane i do not see even bullet holes much only couple of small hole on wings.

This is just logical speculation on my part since I have no idea how the damage mechanics are actually coded, but I think the issue has more to do with how the AI gunnery works as well as how hitboxes function. I think it has less to do with how much damage is done once the game determines a particular component has been hit.

 

With most single engine fighters the majority of critical components are all grouped together right in the center front of the aircraft. Engine, propeller, prop governor, oil tank, oil radiator, oil lines, water tank, water radiator, water lines, fuel tanks, fuel lines, and the pilot are roughly all in the same spot in center of the aircraft. This is therefore where anyone shooting at the plane should be trying to shoot. The center of something is also naturally where anyone will aim at something. The very center point of an object's location is also the simplest way to code an AI to aim for. The problem is a computer will hit that exact point every single time. Unless addition coding is included to add randomness. A real gunner or fighter pilot may very well be intending to aim at the very center of any plane he shoots at, but his bullets will very seldom hit that exact spot. Given how many critical components are in that very center location the AI is aiming at, even very slight simplifications of the AI gunnery will cause drastically different results from those achieved by a human gunner.

 

I find it odd that the first handful of 8mm rounds hitting you end up damaging components that are both small and usually shielded behind other larger components. By a huge margin it is usually things like water lines and oil reservoirs that get hit first rather than the engine itself. Typically these components are located somewhere between the engine and the pilot and are much smaller that either of these. MG bullets should not be passing through the engine block of a V12, and if they did, you'd have bigger problems to worry about at that point. These components can be hit on their own, but due to their size one would expect this far less often than other components.

 

Is it a component hitbox size problem? I don't think so. I think individual components are pretty well modeled in this sim.

 

Is it a projectile size problem? If projectiles have an unrealistically large size that would be just as bad as modelling components multiple times larger than they should be. I doubt this is the problem though. I imagine the projectiles are just points in space. That would be the easiest on computing power and still be realistic.

 

Is it a shielding problem and bullets are passing through objects they shouldn't? Maybe. I doubt this too though. I think CloD uses material properties and physics to calculate these interactions so this shouldn't be the problem. Something could have gotten missed though.

 

Only someone on TFS with intimate knowledge of damage model coding could answer these questions. I'm definitely not that person.

 

 

4 hours ago, 301fsSeoyeon said:

I use volume max already but never hear any bullet impacts only see them.

Is this the same in single and multiplayer? It could be related to server lag.

 

4 hours ago, 301fsSeoyeon said:

If i could make tracks i would put examples but tracks do not record for me.

Interesting. Are you not seeing any recorded tracks after trying? Or are you just not able to view them correctly? If you're recording from an online server the realism settings get baked into the track preventing you from using other views. You can fix this my running the track through a program that strips out those settings.

 

Anyway, the sim is definitely playable as is. There's just a steep learning curve at first. And even after playing it for years you'll still be getting your engine shot out on a regular basis. It's just that you'll figure out how to score kills in-between those occurrences. I was on the TWC server last night and had my engine shot out three times. (all when I got lazy and approached from behind). I was able to shoot down 20+ bombers is the process though. On the bright side this game will make you really good at dead-stick and off-field landings!

[Hiuuz]

Missing sounds happens in multiplayer, I can confirm that. In single player I never noticed the lack of hitting sounds, and belive me I was shooted down tons of times
If you fly towards a bomber your nose is pointed in that direction, so you have a good chance to got hit in the engine, water radiator, or pilot.

[Lorena_Scout]

5 hours ago, Hiuuz said:

Missing sounds happens in multiplayer, I can confirm that. In single player I never noticed the lack of hitting sounds, and belive me I was shooted down tons of times
If you fly towards a bomber your nose is pointed in that direction, so you have a good chance to got hit in the engine, water radiator, or pilot.

 

same here, sometimes I am flying, out of nowhere my plane is filled with damage reports.

once check my 3 and 6, all my wings are filled with bullets but no sound at all related to hits

 

ps: i have a very good sound card  creative ae-5 and this game is the only that this happens.

if i do like buzz tell me with 100% volume i will be bleeding from my ears xD

Edited January 4 by Lorena_Scout

[Volant_Eagle]

5 hours ago, Lorena_Scout said:

if i do like buzz tell me with 100% volume i will be bleeding from my ears xD

He just means leave the in game volume settings to 100%. You can still lower the volume on your PC or at the speakers/headset. 

 

When I do this the engine sound is far too loud relative to comms to hear anyone. This is easy to fix in the Microsoft Windows sound mixer though.

[Hiuuz]

6 hours ago, Lorena_Scout said:

 

same here, sometimes I am flying, out of nowhere my plane is filled with damage reports.

once check my 3 and 6, all my wings are filled with bullets but no sound at all related to hits

 

ps: i have a very good sound card  creative ae-5 and this game is the only that this happens.

if i do like buzz tell me with 100% volume i will be bleeding from my ears xD

[No.54_Reddog]

It seems ludicrous that this bug still exists and that the advice to combat it continues to be the same. I can think of no other game or software I need to set a different volume for in windows.

[301fsSeoyeon]

I try an other intercept today i have still this issue. I see sometime no bullet hole on plane due to so few bullets hit me but even when seem no bullets hit radiator or near systems, engine usualy fail so quickly instantly shaking and after only seconds cease. Very bizzar 

[BENKOE]

Happy New Year to all,

I suggest that you test at an altitude of around 2000 metres, better 1000 metres and then again at 5000 metres.

Do you notice anything different at these heights? If so, please let us/me know.

Just a thought, but maybe I should say a hypothesis...

 

[301fsSeoyeon]

i already without intended did varios altitudes sometime i attack heinkels only 300m or less from ground, sometimes 3000m nothing is different  regard the damage. If i use supercharger plane i shift correctly it but mostly i do not use planes with supercharger.

[batmacumba]

36 minutes ago, 301fsSeoyeon said:

i already without intended did varios altitudes sometime i attack heinkels only 300m or less from ground, sometimes 3000m nothing is different  regard the damage. If i use supercharger plane i shift correctly it but mostly i do not use planes with supercharger.

Can you confirm the game version you're on? Also, does raising the volume to 100% solve the issue? Thanks

[301fsSeoyeon]

volume i already keep maximum and turndown with windows volume mix, i am using newest game verison as i play in steam.

 

[Buzzsaw]

23 hours ago, Lorena_Scout said:

 

same here, sometimes I am flying, out of nowhere my plane is filled with damage reports.

once check my 3 and 6, all my wings are filled with bullets but no sound at all related to hits

 

ps: i have a very good sound card  creative ae-5 and this game is the only that this happens.

if i do like buzz tell me with 100% volume i will be bleeding from my ears xD

Turn up the volume in the game to 100%.  (not the music)

 

Adjust the volume for your ears in the Windows mixer on desktop.  (there will be a separate volume control for the game which will appear in the Windows Mixer)

5 hours ago, 301fsSeoyeon said:

i already without intended did varios altitudes sometime i attack heinkels only 300m or less from ground, sometimes 3000m nothing is different  regard the damage. If i use supercharger plane i shift correctly it but mostly i do not use planes with supercharger.

There are two types of Heinkels... P models with Daimler Benz which is single stage fluid drive, and H models with two stage Jumo.  (with auto shift)  If you don't have the H versions set to auto, they will not shift.

[301fsSeoyeon]

oh no meaning i fire at heinkels i think we have not flyable heinkel any 

[Buzzsaw]

1 hour ago, 301fsSeoyeon said:

oh no meaning i fire at heinkels i think we have not flyable heinkel any 

The following Heinkels are flyable:

 

He-111P-2

He-111H-2

He-111H-6

 

[Hiuuz]

15 hours ago, Buzzsaw said:

The following Heinkels are flyable:

 

He-111P-2

He-111H-2

He-111H-6

 

Hi!

 

If you mentioned He-111s here, I noticed the current He-111 models are not like as describen in the flashcards coming with the game.

 

The P2 is working as described, only a minor thing, is that the supercharger handles has the text over them, but not affect any game mechanics.

https://youtu.be/tCUMmhBhEHs?si=gSK5XeCrE_TVRQi0

In the H2 and H6 the Supercharger working only in automatic mode, no matter how I set the handles. Additionally the H2 cockpit changed it should looks as the P2 cockpit.
H2 should have only manual supercharger gear shift:

 

In the Flashcards the H2 described as it should work, the supercharger controls are over the prop pitch handles. Here is the video how it is now:

https://youtu.be/cbMyKAjJaFI?si=Nbk_Bmz-aRlYYyeQ

 

The H6 looks good, but the supercharger controls are not over the handles and it is in automatic no matter how I set it with key commands.

https://youtu.be/CDatYGoMaFU?si=lz5VDthzhHLyglb0

 

So at a point this changes was made but I don't know what was the concept behind these changes. I know from He-111 it's hard to find any good reference, but I like more how it is described in the flashcards. 

Edited January 5 by Hiuuz

[Hiuuz]

MAN, I found I had a similar question about two years ago, and I missed the partial answer two weeks later. Or I forgot about it, two years is a long time

 

 

[LLv34_Flanker]

S!

 

The engine DM is a bit wonky at times. I get a ruptured coolant hose and the plane starts to shake like crazy. I bet it would take some time to get catastrophic damage causing excessive vibrations, but now almost all damage messages to engine cause severe shake immediately.