Ok, haven't been monitoring this forum as much as I should have, so I have a question or two maybe someone can answer (I've searched and read some pieces, but maybe not caught it all).
1) is damage really reflected in performance changes now? I know graphically I can see oil on the windscreen, holes in the wings, etc, but what is the impact to my aircraft different than in AH1? Can my safe flight envelope be impacted by damage I receive (ie, tear the wing off because it's damaged and I overstress it)? In AH1 when I lost a wingtip the difference was pretty extreme, you could baby the aircraft back, does AH2 have more graduated effect, the same, more, less...
2) the fuel multiplier thing, long threads abound and Pyro/Ht have set the porkability lower (thank god). What is the impact though and where does the balance think it'll end up? In my view, modeling short range is not a problem, but what is considered short? I'd expect short-ranged to include a flight to, fight, and back from an average field range (maybe 1.5 sectors), not less. That would include a reasonable climb (maybe 15K), 5-10 min of combat, and a climb/rtb phase to be fair. You shouldn't be forced to conserve fuel (ie, if all the big fuel tankers can travel at military power that range so should you) on that profile of flight. If you want more out of a short ranged fighter (which in AH the minimum was about 27-28 minutes, so that class of aircraft I guess @ 100% internal) then fuel management techniques are required.. that's where the longer ranged aircraft would start to show some real advantage, also when it came to loiter times, the ability to disengage/re-engage multiple times, etc. Drop tanks with 100% only on any aircraft but once loaded you can burn tanks however you'd like (which can be an advantage if you predict your combat correctly).
3) has there been any consideration to lowering the average aircraft bar in AH2? right now it's set pretty high (P-51/La7/190D9/109G10/etc). I know Festers latest map had it knocked back a bit at one point on the main island and hblair had run a CT scenario some time ago that lightly perked some rides. This has been beaten to absolute death in AH1 but is there some consideration of lowering the "Average" bar a bit, making those planes just slightly more rare. This is not TOD, that's for historical matchup in my mind, this is just to get more of the aircraft in use (some have such great character but as so seldomly seen outside a vulch).
-Soda
