Pilot Death

[Ecliptik]

Have we evolved beyond the gamey plane-explodes-when-pilot-dies thing?  If your head gets blown off in combat, I'd like it a lot more if your screen snaps to black with a "Pilot Killed" message, after which external view is enabled to allow you to watch your plane go down.  Il-2 and FB do it this way.  I'm quite sure it wouldn't cause any excess strain on netcode or graphics.  It would be like the difference between having 20 people in a furball and 25 people in the same furball.  Not much.

It would also add another dimension to combat.  You could play headgames with your opponent.  If he rakes you with fire and sees your aircraft going down in a seemingly uncontrolled spin, he has to wonder if the pilot is dead or if he's just playing dead to get away.

[Kweassa]

I'd love seeing that implemented.

[SunKing]

Originally posted by Ecliptik
 I'm quite sure it wouldn't cause any excess strain on netcode or graphics.  It would be like the difference between having 20 people in a furball and 25 people in the same furball.  Not much.

 

Hitech must love these comments.

[hinter]

sounds great

[vorticon]

sure the wow factor will be their for the first 10 times you see it but after that it becomes a meaningless animation slowing down the server and generally distracting people who should be fighting

[GScholz]

Originally posted by vorticon
sure the wow factor will be their for the first 10 times you see it but after that it becomes a meaningless animation slowing down the server and generally distracting people who should be fighting

Sure, but the same goes for a missing wing or tail. Perhaps we should just dispense with this whole "immersion" thing, and go back to flying red and green triangles.

[Ecliptik]

Explain to me how it would slow down the server.  To slow down the server you would need this effect to increase the number of aircraft in the air throughout the arena.  If this was implemented, there would in fact be zero additional aircraft up at any time, since players wouldn't be able to take off again until their plane is destroyed.

There are exceptional cases to consider.  A well trimmed plane in level flight will just continue on until the fuel is exhausted, so a reasonable time limit before respawn after pilot death would be fine, in case the aircraft takes too long to crash.  30 seconds or something, after which the plane dissappears/explodes and you go back to tower.

[DipStick]

Originally posted by GScholz
Sure, but the same goes for a missing wing or tail. Perhaps we should just dispense with this whole "immersion" thing, and go back to flying red and green triangles.

Hehehe...

[GODO]

Pilot dead = no more inputs allowed, except view keys (you cant bailout), and no more blackout effect.

Bad luck if your pilot die while in autoclimb and no more damage is taken by your plane ...

[TrueKill]

make it like IL-2 where when ur pilot gets killed its like his body sloumps over in the stick and u got into a dive.

[Ecliptik]

GODO, read what I said in my last post.

[GODO]

if you die, any kind of autotrim may be deactivated and then apply some soft "auto" setting to the inputs to ensure an early crash. For example, 25% throttle, and 50% left + 25% down joy input until the crash.

[ergRTC]

A simple way to do this (i think), is to have the pilot and his plane 'dissappear' as far as the server is concerned, but have a client side script or whatever, show the plane going into a crash and burn dive routine.  The routine could be just a simple thing that says you see a plane crashing towards and into the earth on whatever trajectory the original was at, but each person may see something a little different as the accuracy of its location and all of that no longer matters.  You could probably even have it with collisions off at that point if it is easier.

The pilot would be bounced back to the tower just like normal.  They would not be a part of the crash routine.

[Eagler]

that would get old

what if you were at 10, 15, 20K and got killed? you have to wait until you hit the ground before you re-up? How many times until you come back asking that feature to be removed..

I must die alot more than some of you but I'd rather be rolling down the runway than watching my flaming corpse plummet to earth

[ergRTC]

no no no no no,

the pilot, as stated above, would just go straight back to the tower as soon as his plane was considered 'destroyed'.  That would be no different than now.  You could reup while your plane was still plummeting as it is not 'you' it is just some AI plane on the computer of other people.