Engine damage modelling.....

[Swoop]

Well first of all let me say that currently it's crap.  Bloody awful in fact.

Why can we fly at full throttle all day long with no overheat?  When on WEP, why does it automatically shut off when the engine temp gets high?......that's absolute bollocks.  'Scuse the language.    Anybody ever heard of 'power fade due to overheat'?  Happens in racing motorbikes lots.....overheat the engine, experience a loss of power....overheat the engine even more, it starts rattling, maybe some smoke (time for a service).....overheat the engine *even* more, experience engine seizure or blown engine. BANG in fact.  

This flying on WEP til it switches itself off is just silly.  What about some engine management HTC?

And secondly, damage.........presently the engine doesnt really take damage, it's either undamaged or it's stopped.  Yeah, ok, you can  lose oil pressure / the radiator, but even then the damage model sucks.  Oil line gets hit.....oil pressure drops and drops until the engine suddenly stops.....yup, ok, pretty accurate.  Radiator gets hit, engine gets hotter and hotter until it suddenly stops.  Balls say I.  (see above, engine overheat....)

Now I've read pilots reports and seen film of planes flying home with seriously damaged, smoking engines.......it doesnt happen here cos and engine is either running or not.  Even with damage to the oil line/radiator an engine wont run for long in this game.  What I'd like to see is engines gettin damaged and starting to smoke with power loss....but keeping going.  It wouldnt take anything away from gameplay.....you'll still be able to chase down that smoking con, it's just he wont be trying to land anymore.....

From the other point of view, this would mean you still have a chance of making it back to base with a damaged engine.......not just look for a place to ditch.  Imagine the nail biting tension of trying to sneak back to base from well behind enemy lines with a damaged engine.  ooer missus.

Swoop

[flakbait]

The smoking engine part I like. We've got smoke already, just thin it out a bit to reduce the FR strike. Better engine damage I'm all for. I remember watching an interview where a WW2 P-47 driver said he was hit head-on by a 20mm round. The engine "sounded like toejam, caughed, sputtered, and backfired a lot. But that bastard got me home". Same goes, to a lesser extent, for the Fw-190. I still think the way I did when we first got radiator/oil damage. They don't let you run for more than 10 minutes without oil or more than 8 with radiator damage.

In truth, you can stretch a 109 for well over 15 minutes without oil at 75% power. Pull it back to minimal cruise settings and you can double that time. Any aircraft that uses an inline engine can run like that, not just the 109.

WEP auto-cutoff is a joke. Always has been, always will be. What should happen when you leave WEP running too long is either a) WEP tank runs out orb) glycol line blows due to excessive pressure. Unless I've got the sound turned off [almost never] I can simply listed to the engine and tell when WEP is running. Another thing that keeps me from running WEP too long is the fact I only fire it when nose down. Unless the nose of my aircraft is below the horizon line, I won't hit WEP. It takes too long to accelerate past 320mph, wastes gas, and annoys me to no end because of these things.

As for engine management, I'm gonna quote a Navy Chief I used to know: "Stow it!" I have NO interest in having to baby my engine just because some hyper-reality freaks say I have to. If you want it as an option, I don't give a squat one way or the other. Force it on me and I'll be outa here so fast you'll be able to light a cigar on my trail. What you're asking for is X-Plane, Pro Pilot, MSFS 2k, and every other "realistic" flight sim.

Minor problem: in those sims you aren't in an arena with a hundred other idiots trying to blast each other to Valhalla. I've seen this put forth so many times, and I've shot it down every time. If I think something will help everyone, I'll post it. If I discover something I'd like to see, I'll keep it to myself until such time as someone posts about it. Engine management would force everyone, tin horns included to baby their engines.

Remember, HTC gets their wallets nice and fat by having an arena where guys like Gregory Green bellybutton can mix it up with Eric Hartmann.


If I seem a tad peeved about it, I am. Engine management is for flight sims NOT combat sims. In a flight sim, you fly 747s or Cessnas around swapping bad lines with a crappy AI-version of an ATC over some boring-ass city. In a combat sim you drive some of the best war machines ever made in an attempt to blast the other guy out of his recliner!




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Flakbait
Delta 6's Flight School
"My art is the wings of an aircraft through the skies, my music the deep hum of a prop as it slices the air, my thrill the thunder of guns tearing asunder an enemy plane."
Flakbait
19 September 2000

[rust]

You keep the engine at 80% until in combat where you switch to 100%.  You know you've got about 15 minutes before you start to overheat.  When you start to overheat you throttle back.  Is that babying the engine?

We baby the ammunition.  It runs out, just like real life and we must keep our eye on it to make sure we have enough.

We baby our flight envelope.  We stall and black out just like real life and must make sure we keep inside the envelope.

I don't get the distinction between "Combat" and "Flight" sims.  These "best war machines ever made" had limits.  Why do we only choose to model a few of them?

I wonder how many of us there are who want as much realism as possible?  I want to deal with all the intricacies the real pilots had to deal with until they become a burden on fun (don't want to fly 3 hours to target, don't want 100 encounters to result in 1 dogfight, etc.)  I realize this "burden on fun" is subjective but managing the separate systems of the plane is part of the fun for me.  But are there enough of us out there to make an online sim profitable?  That's the question.

Rust
 
The Free French Air Force

[This message has been edited by rust (edited 11-12-2000).]

[StSanta]

In truth, you can stretch a 109 for well over 15 minutes without oil at 75% power. Pull it back to minimal cruise settings and you can double that time. Any aircraft that uses an inline engine can run like that, not just the 109.

Dude, you must be flying different 109s than I do.

I watch the oil pressure meter, and the second it reaches zero, the engines cuts out. It reaches zero in about 5-8 seconds for me.

Other than that, excellent points. For starters it'd be enough to simmply say "if engine overheat on wep, BLOW engine"  .

Muahaha. LW wep is superior, you allied pigs.




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StSanta
9./JG 54 "Grünherz"
while(!bishRookQueue.isEmpty() && loggedOn()){
30mmDeathDIEDIEDIE(bishRookQueue.removeFront());
System.out.println("LW pilots are superior");
myPlane.performVictoryRoll();
}

[Rickenbacker]

Flak, i agree with you that it should probably be optional, or have some kind of "auto engine management" for those who don't want to bother, in the same vein as combat trim. It would be nice to see some more realistic engine damage, though, instead of the current "all or nothing" approach. Of course, this also applies to wind and compression effects, which currently work the same way  .

Oh, and none of the sims you mentioned have any real engine management to speak of. I with they did though  .
 

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        Rickenbacker (Ricken)

                -ISAF-
the Independent Swedish Air Force

[flakbait]

Santa, I was refering to a real 109, not our 109. Our 109's engine dies within 15 seconds of getting either a radiator or oil hit. PITA; Pain In The A^^!

 

Originally posted by rust:

I want to deal with all the intricacies the real pilots had to deal with until they become a burden on fun

I don't. I'd like to see more varied engine damage, prolonged engine run time with oil or radiator damage too. I don't want to sit there figuring out mixture settings for cruise or watching the 109 engine temp like a hawk. Right now the cruise settings for aircraft aren't known entirely. This is due to HTC not having completed pages for each aircraft.

As I posted above:

 

Originally posted by flakbait:
If I seem a tad peeved about it, I am. Engine management is for flight sims NOT combat sims. In a flight sim, you fly 747s or Cessnas around swapping bad lines with a crappy AI-version of an ATC over some boring-ass city. In a combat sim you drive some of the best war machines ever made in an attempt to blast the other guy out of his recliner!

What's the difference between a flight sim and a combat sim? I stated that above. In a combat sim the details of the game are geared more towards killing the target than things which could get in the way. You also have to consider the Tin Horns, new to the game. AH already has a sharp learning curve, and you want more complex things to deal with? Forget it.



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Flakbait
Delta 6's Flight School
Whattaya mean I can't kill 'em? Why the hell not?!

[Hans]

What I am interested in is better "special effects" for engine damage.

Right now, if you are shot in the engine and it starts smoking, it runs fine, then dies.  Even shutting it down will not save your engine (multi-engine bomber like the B-17).  Its not overheated so it should run latter (and begin to overheat).

Also, there is nothing about loosing individual cylanders.

Warbirds used to have the engine shutdown trick.  You couldn't fly forever though.  The heat built up faster than it cooled.

I would like to see what Swoop posted about engine overheating too.  I've seized the engine on my old car.  Thats exactly what happens.  It slows down on its own, then just stops dead.

Hans.