Several posts lately about bomber performance, the perennial HE 111 requests, and Furball's "ANY early war bomber" thread prompted the idea.
Kick it around (or just kick it if you like
).
Though I don't think restricting drone power would fly in the LWA, a setting for other arenas would probably be welcomed by many.
So, how 'bout adding a parameter in Arena Settings?
Every bomber with drones (except the Arado) lists three E6B power recommendations:
Military Power
Normal Cruise
Maximum Cruise
So I suggest adding a Max_Drone_Power parameter to set the maximum possible power setting that drones can achieve in the arena. I suggest using a range of values from 0 to 1 (like other parameters). The settings could vary as follows:
1 = Military Power
.5 = Normal Cruise
0 = Maximum Cruise
If the Max_Drone_Power parameter is set to
.6 for example, then a bomber pilot who goes to Military Power starts pulling away from the drones. You have to throttle back to maintain formation.
For MA's the parameter can be set at or near to 1 to help with bomber survivability in that mad, non-historical environment.
But for FSO, AvA, and all scenarios, the parameter could be set somewhere a little above Normal Cruise. Setting the parameter value lower than Normal Cruise could also make the KI 67 (and JU 88?) more useful for early war scenarios.
The parameter setting has no effect on the performance of the pilot's bomber, i.e. it would not prevent him/her from pouring on the coals to get out of Dodge, but the drones would be sacrificed in the process.
Another thought is to give the drones 5 minutes of "Violent Evasive Maneuver" (VEM) that would let them attain max power, even when the Max_Drone_Power setting is lower, such as for Normal Cruise (
.5). VEM would operate like WEP for fighters. Once you use up the 5 minute VEM capability you start pulling away from your drones. This capability could also be controlled by a VEM parameter in the Arena Settings to enable or disable per arena. (That could prevent KI 67s from suddenly disappearing on F4Fs and P-40Bs
)
Best!
