This is a very humorous thread to read...
The responses are to be expected, too.
Here's some facts for you to consider:
Operating manuals for ALL aircraft contain instructions on the marshalling of engines. Certainly there's some "margin of safety" built in, but you can bet that the militaries of combatant nations did NOT take steps to make sure their pilots went in to combat "babying" their engines just for the hell of it. But, neither did they want them to burn the engines out. There IS a need for proper care, feeding and use of engines.
Most of these aircraft had mixture controls, cooling flaps/gills and if not automatic, prop governors or RPM controls. These weren't placed into aircraft for grins and giggles either. The proper use or misuse of these systems could make the difference between a pilot coming home or not (and often did). These systems weren't there for political correctness. They represented the technology of the times, and were vital to the operation of the aircraft. Anything they could make "set and forget" they DID. Other stuff, well, you didn't have to
like it, but you did have to deal with it.
Now, all of you who are saying that engine management is "much ado about nothing" are simply ignoring these facts because you're
used to being able to roar around at full throttle with absolutely no consequences.
That's pure gamer entitlement mentality. There's no other explanation for it.
A detailed, realistic flight sim simply WILL have detailed engine management. It's not that hard to implement, really. A few more commands to remember. But the key is: it isn't about how "hard" it is to do (how hard is it for a pilot to reach over and adjust a control or two? The same relative effort as it takes a sim pilot to type a command or manipulate a button on his gear); it's all about the fact that you
must remember to do these things, or you get some very bad results. Like:
Heat. That's #1. You go roaring about at 100%, and your engine WILL overheat. Fail to do something about that, and it'll start to sputter and act up just when you need full power the most. Now, you people who want to pull out your Pratt & Whitney test bed data go ahead: I'll just mention that an engine up on blocks without even the metal fairing around it, let alone in real combat conditions will likely purr along a lot better for a lot longer than it would in the field. And, not all engines were as reliable and rugged as P&Ws.
Cooling gills: these can be opened to dissipate heat... but they're a double edged sword. They also create DRAG, and can make a plane more likely to spin, especially on the knife-edges of combat. So, the wise pilot will want to have the gills open during transit periods or "reset" times, and will prefer to close them during the thick of combat.
Those are just a few considerations.
Then, I recall someone whined about the indignity of perhaps having to travel at lower throttle to get from point a to point b. It could take
a whole 5 minutes longer to reach a destination (even on a map with 1/3 vertical scale). Oh, boo hoo! FACT: Pilots who had to travel hundreds of miles over ocean often had to "lean out" and cruise at half throttle. Even those vaunted P-51s with drop tanks that could get to Berlin. The reason they could, and still have fuel to mix it up once they got there... was that they used slow cruises and drop tanks. They didn't go 400 mph+ the whole way there and the whole way back.
Here's some other things you might be missing...
1) Did you ever consider that, if everyone can fly at "full level speed" all sortie, it might be harder to catch them or keep contact, unless you have a head-on merge situation? This all-the-time-full-speed flying completely skews every combat situation.
2) Ever wonder how the real pilots could get surprised and bounced, when you know they only had one life to live and you know that THEY KNEW it? Yet, history tells us that they did get bounced all the time. One explanation is that some of them were "head in office" checking engine heat, adjusting mixture, or checking the fuel gauge and not watching outside all the time. This is a VERY important tactical consideration. Without any form of engine management in your sim, you're getting a very artificial advantage (perhaps even more artificial than the head lean allowing you to basically put your head out of the cockpit and get completely ridiculous "Linda Blair" views
)
Finally, as to the "realism ruins the fun" argument... that's bollocks. I fly a sim that has engine management (and it's somewhat simplified, yet still much more involved than most sims), and I can report that the extra detail makes it MORE fun, not less. I have developed a routine for keeping my engine cool(er), and at times, it can make the difference in a fight: like when I come across some other guy who doesn't marshall his engine and then wonders why he starts smoking and coughing during the fight. I also can remember to my embarassment where I forgot to change from lean to rich while I was "cleaning up" for a fight, and my engine STILL overheated after a few minutes of maneuvering. Lean makes the engine run hotter... so going full throttle on LEAN is just not a good idea. User error: and I paid the price. I also learned something, and gained even more appreciation for what the real pilots had to go through to stay alive.
Just a few thoughts for those of you who are resistant to more realism in your sim.
