This seems obvious to me

[Guppy35]

But that's what I'm saying. Just complexity for complexity's sake isn't going to make the game better.  More extensive damage model is good, but following a lot of engine startup procedures that end up taking just 1 second once you've learned them isn't. You don't gain anything from that, it doesn't add to the depth of possible air combat tactics. It just increases the workload and so substracts from how much actual air combat you get to do.
edit - see above...

I'd disagree.. We do lots of things real pilots didn't do because they weren't immortal like we are in the game. Just the same way I'd argue we ought to have some weather (just one or two storm fronts like we had a while back) for the sake of variety.  Did WWII missions never run into unexpected weather?  I think night time is the same, but probably a lot more difficult to implement.

We had weather in DGS, and I remember one frame a Bomb Division had to divert to a secondary only to find that could covered too.  For scenarios I think it's a great idea.  I don't know that it would benefit the MA much.

[Anaxogoras]

Just want to thank you HT for putting in your response, very informative. It's always refreshing to hear what the developers think, and all too often we don't hear anything from that perspective (can't remember the last time there was that much information in a developer's post). I hope, HT, that you can find time to contribute more often on these forums, because in my opinion it really is good for the community to learn more about the game we enjoy <S>.

Well said trotter.  I'd also like to thank HT for the exhaustive reply.  Some of us seem to want all the buttons regardless, but I think it's good to know what HT thinks.

[Karnak]

I can't improve on this reply, except to say that the cooling systems that AH lacks have an impact on the flight envelope as well.

Il-2 engine management combined with AH's flight model would be fantastic.

I don't think a lot of people got this, but what HiTech was saying is that Il-2's engine management is completely fake.  It bears no resemblance to reality. They make you think it is realistic by having you do things, but those things are completely made up.   The engine management in Aces High is just as good as in Il-2 and they both serve the same purpose, to stop the player from abusing the fact that it is a computer game and they don't have to worry about their crew chief maintainance schedule being screwed by using WEP constantly.

There are many documented cases of these engines being run at emergency power for much longer than the limits say are allow with no ill affects.  And I mean in the aircraft, in flight, not test beds like was claimed in another recent thread.  A Spitfire ran at WEP for 30 minutes because the pilot got scared or distracted and the mechanics could find nothing wrong with the engine afterwards.  His engine didn't overheat, let alone seize.

[Kweassa]

A few things that I just cannot agree on.

   * Ammunition counters
We have a game  where it is best for people to be able to fly many planes. In the real world pilots put in many hours learning the speciefices of each plane. They knew before they flew how man secs of ammo there plane had. In the world of AH we do not require pilots to have 10 hours of instructions before put into combat in a new plane. Do you really wish the same amout of instructions before you are allowed to fly any given plane type? Or are you once again only taughting makeing somthing more difficult than it was in the real world in the name of BS realism.

In the real world pilots had only a limited amount of time to train and stay in service to fly, HT. However, in AH even the lowest grade of players would probably have obtained more than 10 times the amount of flight time than a real world pilot, in every single possible aircraft/vehicle that can be accessed in the game.

"Learning the specifics" is hardly such a difficult matter and obviously you grossly underestimate the resilience and adaptability of the average player. I am loathe to mention "that other game", but such experiences do tell us that players absolutely have no problems at all in adjusting to planes without ammunition counters. As a matter of fact, in "that other game" roughly 3/4ths of the entire plane set are devoid of ammunition counters, and yet everyone filling up the hundreds of multiplayer session rooms seem to be fine. Not to mention the old classic we've all enjoyed - European Air War (Microprose, 1998) - also had no ammunition counters for the US planes. Did that in any way trouble the player?

Certainly you wouldn't think of implementing an artificial crutch to a Bf109 because it has twitchy handling at stall speeds and massive torque. These individual characteristics can only be learned from extended experience in flying the particular plane, and none of us are trained for hours and hours in flying 109s for that matter. So why should ammunition counters be any different?

What you're missing out, is the fact that people grow on to accept the absence of ammunition counters as yet another individual characteristic of each of the planes. I don't know what percentage each types of players make up in the MA, nor do I know if there's some sort of a trend in the "old vets" (including yourself, HT) of aircombat simulation games that makes them flinch at the idea of having to guesswork how much ammunition they have left in their guns. Maybe the ACM/duel oriented folks think that running out on ammunition during a fight is something akin to a random malfunction that only hinders his game experience. I don't know.

But what I do know is that there are a lot of players out there who have no trouble at all without ammunition counters, and running out of ammunition during combat is nothing but another factor in an aerial combat simulation game they learn to embrace as a given situation - just as being hit by enemy fire, or running out of fuel.

   * No mixture controls
Mixture control has one purpose in life, to conserve fuel. When it is time to engage it is not even thought about to shove 3 levers ahead at the same time. Exactly how many people have 3 levers all  beside each other like most real planes have? How easy is it to tak your right hand and push all head to max performance like most fighters were capable of?
    * No supercharger controls
This one could be debated, but the real fact is do you really want to have to learn each planes critical altitudes just so you can do nothing more complicated than pushing one button? Because that is all you are asking for. Push 1 key when your altitude reaches one point. This sounds great fun to me, I tell you what since you believe it is so necessary to a good flight sim, I will write it, and you can come to my office and do nothing but watch the altitidude and press that so important button at the correct time.
    * No radiator/cowl flap controls for engine cooling
Once again, these really have very little to do with dog fights, they have much more to do with engine life.

Frankly, I myself do not view the so-called "CEM" as an absolute necessity for AH. Nor do I consider that CEM is really "complex" in anyway, as the name 'Complex Engine Management' might suggest. CEM is basically a clever mock-up which briefly mimics the in-flight management duties a pilot must undertake. Thus, in this sense I agree with your basic assessment.

However, once again you underestimate the so the very little things that make up realism and dismiss it as 'having nothing to do with dogfights'.

You're right - they have nothing to do with dogfights. At least, not directly.

In functionality, it's nothing but pushing 2~3 more buttons to do something which you can do in AH with only one button. But what's the whole point of 'dogfighting' in the first place anyway? You could always have given these fighters some other name, and make it look like a fantasy/SF plane and called it "Fantasy Planes High", but you didn't. It's the aura of WW2 vintage planes which attracts us, and anything that can enhance the realistic feel to it can only make the game feel more fun. Someone may come up with a game that is exactly identical to AH, but just change the theme and give it a SF feel - and would anyone play it? Heck, they might even have cheaper prices than AH, and people still wouldn't play it. People play AH not because they like "aerial combat", but because they like "WW2 themed aerial combat". Enhancing the immersion through introducing such tedious, small, meaningless stuff, can still strengthen what AH has to offer.

But like said, I do not view CEM as an absolute necessity, unlike the ammo counter issue, so it'd be safe to say people would settle for an option like combat trim. They can use it, or just turn it off.

The fact is , AH is meant to simulate air combat.Learning this task alone is a never ending task. It is not meant to simulate all the boring pieces of flying that any one who has spent 20 hours of real life flying wishes they did not have to deal with.

Nobody's asking for 'all' of the boring pieces. Nobody wants a 15-stage button flicking just to start up an engine.

However, people are just asking for 'some' of the boring pieces which might enhance the air combat experience as a whole - since the thrill of combat is much more than using just the throttle, stick, and the trigger to point and shoot.

..



ps) Did I mention people around 15~20 years than us thrive on the thought of 'realism'? Many of these younger folks actually do enjoy 15 stage button clicks just to start up the engine... and while not everyone may be that extreme, it seems quite undeniable that as a whole, they seem to be a lot more patient than us old sticks in having to push more buttons to micro manage the planes.

So nobody would want to see AH turning into MS Flight Simulator, but some of the features such as ammunition counters, do deserve a second look.


[edit] Frickin' phonetic English.. the curse of the non-native tongue..

[moot]

Kweassa gadgets that do nothing for the tactical unfolding of a fight are just distractions.  Finite WEP fluids, engine damage, etc, are worth having. Gradual damage too, it sucks putting a 30mm or a ton of .50/.303's on a plane and watching it fly on because the fuselage or wing is only 99.9% damaged.  But clicking a bunch of stuff like magnetos and whatnot isn't worth having unless they have some tactical value.  Anything else detracts from the actual air combat.  In scenarios it might be interesting, but even then, it mostly deminishes the real substance of the fight.

[Kweassa]

Kweassa gadgets that do nothing for the tactical unfolding of a fight are just distractions.  Finite WEP fluids, engine damage, etc, are worth having. Gradual damage too, it sucks putting a 30mm or a ton of .50/.303's on a plane and watching it fly on because the fuselage or wing is only 99.9% damaged.  But clicking a bunch of stuff like magnetos and whatnot isn't worth having unless they have some tactical value.  Anything else detracts from the actual air combat.  In scenarios it might be interesting, but even then, it mostly deminishes the real substance of the fight.

You're right, moot. They serve no real purpose at all.

But technically, having a MK108 round display a nice, pretty HE detonation burst doesn't have any real function in game either. At best, it's a sequence of animated sprites which we didn't have much trouble living without, when in the old days 30mm bursts were also depicted by the bland, 'white glob' hit sprite. It's "eye-candy". In that sense, consider some of the tedious little tid-bits as "finger-candy", and it'd start making sense.

Like, having an early-war plane which could open the cockpit in flight.. so you can press a key and open the canopy, and peer over the side of the plane as you taxi it. What functionality does this serve in actual 'dogfight' - nothing. But the very fact that you can do this meaningless thing, in fact holds some meaning in that you are replicating some of the little, tedious, obscure, maybe even redundant task a real pilot might have done during his day.. and this produces the feel of immersion. It adds to the feel of the game, just as the MK108 HE burst adds to the feel of the game.

The CEM thingy is exactly that. Like HT and Karnak mentioned, it's neither realistic nor even 'complex' for that matter. Just as many pilots of AH simply remember which altitudes their plane performs best at, or if their 109 climbs better than a La7, or how their Spitfire turns better than a 190 but worse than a Zero, people just memorize at which altitude they press one extra button and shift the supercharger stages. Functionally, it offers nothing more than the current auto-shifting in AH. It's just one more tedious key stroke. But the very fact that you have to do this, just as the real pilots have done, makes many people feel like they're really doing something with their planes, even outside of combat.

It's somewhat akin to people opening the E6B and setting their engines to the listed cruise settings. Does one really have to set it that way? Do people really feel the listed cruise settings for the engines are optimal? Probably not, but they do it anyway. Why? Because the listed WW2 engine setting data says so - many people enjoy those little moments.


So while I do not view CEM as really necessary in AH, if it is implanted as an option which can be turned ON/OFF as preference, then I'm willing to bet it will make a lot of people respect AH more. Many players will be voluntarily leaving it on, even if it means having to remember more stuff. This little stuff is what many sucky pilots like me enjoy, since they don't get to enjoy the thrill of victory so often they might as well find joy in pretending that they're in a real WW2 plane.

[moot]

No... Of course a fat hit sprite is good for the game.  It doesn't substract from time spent playing tactical combat against the other guy in another plane. It's actually adding to it, it's the equivalent of gibbing the other guy across the map with a railgun. The fight's over and you get a nice reward in the shape of a mess of flame and plane guts.  So it is a useful function in the game.

Opening a canopy is too, it's not just buttons pushed for no effect.  You can put your head out the cockpit and look, you get the wind noise and maybe some extra drag the same way gears are used (it's gamey crutch but it does have a tactical value).  On the other hand you get nothing for keeping track of mixture and magnetos and the like.  The same way you get no usefulness from fiddling with historical radio gizmos. 

if it is implanted as an option which can be turned ON/OFF as preference, then I'm willing to bet it will make a lot of people respect AH more.

I wouldn't expect that. People would see it as a fake superfluity. The only way it will make it in the MA is if it's of tactical use.
And I'm ready to bet that the E6B settings are in fact optimal in the game as in reality.

Now, for scenarios it's another story.  I'll take all the bizarre radio gizmodronics and rube goldberg controls the planes had. But that'd take forever to implement, since the depth of details' authenticity would have to be standard across the planeset.  That's a pretty huge demand in research.... When the game is about air combat first and foremost.  I don't know if you've played any racing sims, but if you've tried Live for Speed, you'd see what I mean.  The game is AH's analog in racing.  It has nothing but the pure substance of realistic racing.  Everything else is pruned off.. It's all about the pure mechanics and physics of racing machines, no eye candy or big licensed brands. It doesn't matter that there's a Porsche replica; what matters is that an RR sports car has a specific character that's inarguably a staple of motorsports and as such an essential part of the car set.
It's just the machines and the pilots and the tracks.  Just like AH, IMO, is just the planes and the pilots and the terrain.  That's what's so damn great about it.  Even with the teeming masses of unapreciative players.

[grizz441]

it sucks putting a 30mm or a ton of .50/.303's on a plane and watching it fly on because the fuselage or wing is only 99.9% damaged.

IIRC, in Air Warrior/AW3 there was no specific damage model.  It would take X amount of hits on a plane to destroy the plane.  If the plane was 90% dead, it still flew like it had no damage.  Sort of like a nintendo video game where your hero only has a couple hit points left yet is still battling away at full strength.

I like the damage model how it is now.  You could get more specific with it, but the new micro elements of the damage model would have the same type of hit points that the bigger elements (like sections of wing) have now.  I guess I'm spoiled with how specific the damage model is in Aces High when I grew up on Air Warrior.

[moot]

I'm thinking of something like Il2's damage model.  That's probably canned too, the game probably doesn't actually calculate anything to make the wings behave like they do when they're peppered with holes.  But you do have one more increment in damage, so that fights would be pretty different. The first glancing hits on a plane would reduce its chances to fight successfully a lot more than now. Hell.. Maybe it's not that great for AH.  It could make people even more timid.  

[Ack-Ack]

IIRC, in Air Warrior/AW3 there was no specific damage model.  It would take X amount of hits on a plane to destroy the plane.  If the plane was 90% dead, it still flew like it had no damage.  Sort of like a nintendo video game where your hero only has a couple hit points left yet is still battling away at full strength.

I like the damage model how it is now.  You could get more specific with it, but the new micro elements of the damage model would have the same type of hit points that the bigger elements (like sections of wing) have now.  I guess I'm spoiled with how specific the damage model is in Aces High when I grew up on Air Warrior.

It wasn't all or nothing, you could receive damage to vital components like elevators, ailerons, hydraulic/oil system, fuel but I think those were due to the randomizer and not really the damage model.  There were a few times that I had to land my plane without elevators or ailerons and quite a few times with a messed up engine because the maintenance hangers were damaged.


ack-ack

[crims]

see you could be one of the "automatic settings guys"  your playing a game having fun, you know its not real.. not high fidelity flight simulator.. but fun none the less..
 

then there are us folks who fall out of our chairs and make simulated bullet holes in the drywall behind the monitor every time we get shot down..  we want.. more 

See you could be  " Wrong " My Guess is you don't fly 38's to much.    How many Joysticks and Keyboards do you think you would need to get your REAL PLANE FLIGHT. My guess would be you would be one of the people complaining that there where to many controls to use and couldn't get a shot. 


Crims

[Kweassa]

I wouldn't expect that. People would see it as a fake superfluity. The only way it will make it in the MA is if it's of tactical use.

That's where the "that other game" experience comes in handy.

I don't believe people who enjoy "TOG" are fundamentally different from people who enjoy AH. As a matter of fact a lot of people play both - including myself (at least, when I used to have enough time to fly). Once getting used to (which took about one or two sessions and a quick read through the manuals or tip posts) fiddling with the CEM wasn't any more difficult than the regular AH flight. Frankly, fiddling with the flaps during combat is probably 100 times more difficult to use correctly - which, the "TOG" and/or AH player doesn't seem to mind at all.

However, despite being almost non-issue in the 'difficulty' sense, many TOG players up to date still maintain the illusion that TOG with its CEM, offers a realistic interpretation of internal management of warplanes. Ofcourse, they are wrong. It's just a clever illusion. But the point is, it doesn't really matter if they are correct or incorrect - the only thing important is that as long as they are under that illusion, they believe in it. It gives them of feeling of reality. I'd wager that about 80% of the average TOG player probably does not know how to handle it to its most optimum level, and in one way or another it would actually make their plane perform slightly worse in most cases - but still, people are happy to be in the illusion/aura of the "WW2 feel".

Some things just can't be measured in the performance sense.

And I'm ready to bet that the E6B settings are in fact optimal in the game as in reality.

To clarify, I don't doubt the E6B listings are optimal - if, the average player flies that long enough to notice its effects in the first place. However, a large majority of the player base never exceeds a 1.0 K/D. In usual cases, not being shot down and surviving long enough for the fuel consumption rate to matter is a very rare thing to happen for them. Again, in this sense, the amount of meaning such action holds in terms of real 'performance' is almost non-existant in the practical sense. They might as well just be flying with maximum combat power all the time - and yet, many of them still faithfully gain some alt, pull out the E6B, and set to cruise. They like doing it, because it feels "WW2-ish". The immersion is the drive.

Now, for scenarios it's another story.  I'll take all the bizarre radio gizmodronics and rube goldberg controls the planes had. But that'd take forever to implement, since the depth of details' authenticity would have to be standard across the planeset.  That's a pretty huge demand in research.... When the game is about air combat first and foremost.  I don't know if you've played any racing sims, but if you've tried Live for Speed, you'd see what I mean.  The game is AH's analog in racing.  It has nothing but the pure substance of realistic racing.  Everything else is pruned off.. It's all about the pure mechanics and physics of racing machines, no eye candy or big licensed brands. It doesn't matter that there's a Porsche replica; what matters is that an RR sports car has a specific character that's inarguably a staple of motorsports and as such an essential part of the car set.

Again, nobody is asking for all of the obscure and dinky little tid-bit to be modelled into the game. Concerning the CEM, at most I'd figure it'd be perhaps the supercharger function and radiator controls, since I view the mixture control to be redundant. Since AH doesn't have the finicky I'm willing to overheat and break engines whenever I want aspect of TOG, it simply be a matter of 1) switch supercharger gears around the alt it should be, and 2) set maybe 3 stages of radiator/cowl flaps with a single, toggle key mappd - full open (a bit of hit on max speed, but quicker engine cooling), normal (current AH levels), full closed (a bit higher max speed, but rapid engine heating).

A grand total of two more keys to press... and with this small tidbit, the realism folk can be made happy. Like I said, they love it whether or not it may simply be an illusion .

Frankly, my interest is actually not with the CEM - I wouldn't exactly lose any kind of sleep if CEM never made it to AH... but rather, my beef is with the ammo counter, since I hold the theory that it significantly effects the gunnery aspect of AH.

[moot]

I guess we'll agree to disagree. That said, here's how and why:
I just don't see the point in adding something that serves no tactical purpose.  It's simply not going to get into the game as envisioned by HTC (from everything they've said, off the top of my head).  Yourself you admit you don't really care about mixture since it's redundant. So you're just a degree removed from my pov.  I think mixture fails the "tactical value", but cowl flaps don't: you trade between drag and engine longevity, the same kind of tradeoff someone in e.g. a P47N would manage during a dogfight, weighing options for the right moments when using those few minutes of WEP is most worth it.  And to be specific, I think cowl flaps should be standardized the same way flaps are: not just three generic positions but whatever the plane historically had.
The supercharger gears also fail the criteria, the same way non-retracting flaps do as HT explained.   Dummy switches that just fool the players into thinking what they do has some effect on what's going on in the game is just wrong.   No matter how immersive they're misled to believe it is.  Genuine air combat trumps immersive illusions.

The E6B I more or less agree with, except that it's probably not that useless: if someone flies short legged planes he's not going to dick around, he'll see that the engine settings he wants is the answer to both his pragmatic needs as well as his want for WWII authentism.

Now the ammo counters, I completely agree with.  That's the sort of utilitarian genuine stuff I think we need yesterday.  Everything that the pilots at the time would ask for and have authority over.  Tracer distribution in the ammo belts, ammo loadouts (HE/AP/etc), fuel tanks when possible, removal of useless weight (e.g. the rear gunner and corresponding equipment incl rear guns in the Me410, GM1 and its plumbing in the Ta152), etc.  Now that's what I think is really immersive.  It's not about mimicking what the pilots did, it's about what you would have done yourself, if you'd been in the pilots' shoes with what they had at their disposal.

[Oldman731]

I just don't see the point in adding something that serves no tactical purpose. 

Gavagai's hypothesis was that by doing so you would sort out many of the players whose behavior is perceived to be detrimental to arena play.

- oldman

[JunkyII]

I only wish to see wind as far as these go, I dont know how it would effect flying other then you get lift flying into it but Im sure it would make for some new fun.



HT 1
gavagai 0