Injured Enemy Planes

[Striker22]

When enemy planes are smoking both wings black smoke. How are they flying no issue. I have seen planes flying without horizontal stabilizers and they are still doing circles no issue (BF 109 G2) currently what I am engaging. Is this broken or something else?? 

[Cardolan]

On 6/28/2025 at 5:33 AM, Striker22 said:

When enemy planes are smoking both wings black smoke. How are they flying no issue. I have seen planes flying without horizontal stabilizers and they are still doing circles no issue (BF 109 G2) currently what I am engaging. Is this broken or something else?? 

 

I experience the same, yes. Quite odd stuff...

[Striker22]

Think there will be a fix? I love me some IL-2 don't get me wrong..... They just seem to not update as much stuff as I think the community would like to see. One of the big reasons I play IL-2 over DCS WW2 is because of the career mode. I just wish certain things would get fixed this being one of them 

[[CPT]Crunch]

Why there's a all new updated game being built, it may and will correct and improve a lot of areas, no sim has ever perfected everything, probably not possible in my lifetime.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 6/28/2025 at 6:33 AM, Striker22 said:

When enemy planes are smoking both wings black smoke. How are they flying no issue. I have seen planes flying without horizontal stabilizers and they are still doing circles no issue (BF 109 G2) currently what I am engaging. Is this broken or something else?? 

A lot depends on how the missions are configured. There's this "RTB on critical damage" setting, which makes the AI head for the nearest friendly airfield if it's damaged "critically". How much (and which) damage count as critical, I don't know, but it generally works fine. Note that in this case AI will still (of course) try to evade enemies if they're on their tail so it doesn't mean the AI won't maneuver at all - just not offensively anymore.

 

But, this only works for missions that are configured correctly for this. First, all aircraft that should exhibit this behaviour need to have the relevant setting switched on. Secondly, there needs to be at least one active airfield of the same country as the AI (and possibly within a certain range, not sure). This is not always the case.

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

Sometimes whole enemy AI group ( 8 AI vs player ,qmb, FC) do not engage at all and set course to nearest friendly aerodrome.

[MDzmitry]

8 минут назад, 1PL-Husar-1Esk сказал:

Sometimes whole enemy AI group ( 8 AI vs player ,qmb, FC) do not engage at all and set course to nearest friendly aerodrome.

You must have one hell of a reputation as a menace to their air force then

[Sky_Wolf]

This has been a known issue for years and it still isn’t fixed so I think the chances of it being fixed are close to zero. The enemy aircraft will be billowing smoke yet it stays fighting instead of evading and RTB. 
 

Hopefully the Korea AI does not have all these issues but the devs haven’t said anything about that yet.

[IckyATLAS]

There has been cases where you would make a plane say the flight leader indestructible, which you can do with the editor. This is useful sometimes. It can be by a combination of parameters that you may have visual damage but the plane in fact will continue flying. The reason to do that is that when you build a mission you may have a lot of things depending on a plane for the proper working of the mission, and if it get destroyed then de facto all links and whatever is linked to it would be canceled.

So you may shoot down some planes and you may be get one you cannot shoot down. It is not often but that may happen.

[BigC208]

On 6/30/2025 at 2:58 AM, 1PL-Husar-1Esk said:

Sometimes whole enemy AI group ( 8 AI vs player ,qmb, FC) do not engage at all and set course to nearest friendly aerodrome.

They modeled the French Airforce? 😎

[BlitzPig_EL]

I think you better have a closer look at the record of the Armee de l'Air during the Battle of France before disparaging them.

Considering the massive underfunding that was forced on them by their government during the inter war years, they did pretty well, took down far more Luftwaffe aircraft than most in today's world know, much to the advantage of the RAF during the Battle of Britain, and they did it with a fairly obsolescent fighter force to boot.

[BigC208]

31 minutes ago, BlitzPig_EL said:

I think you better have a closer look at the record of the Armee de l'Air during the Battle of France before disparaging them.

Considering the massive underfunding that was forced on them by their government during the inter war years, they did pretty well, took down far more Luftwaffe aircraft than most in today's world know, much to the advantage of the RAF during the Battle of Britain, and they did it with a fairly obsolescent fighter force to boot.

It was more aimed at Vichy. The Free French did a great job.

[ST_Catchov]

Nice save. There are a lot of things we can thank the French for. The aileron for example and innovative designs. Planes with wheels, not skids. The list goes on ....

 

 

[JG7_X-Man]

I just had the same and posted it - Ace Spit VB just riddled with holes kept trying to engage me - it was so pitiful! That bailout logic needs some tweaking.

[BlitzPig_EL]

I suspect some of these occurrences are caused by the disparity between visual damage, and what is actually recorded by the program.  On Saturday I was playing testing a mission I've been working on, and I shot the entire left horizontal stabilizer off a Bf109 F4. It continued maneuvering as if nothing happened, and was able to pull effortless high G pull outs.

 

The damage modeling, and godlike AI certainly make for interesting incidents.

Edited July 13 by BlitzPig_EL