Engines runing full blast

[moot]

Read the end of the post above yours.

I'm not making a distinction between arenas. Doesn't matter to me

IOW the facts don't matter to you.  There IS a difference between the MA and what CT's supposed to be, and it's right in the contentious area you're arguing on.

a realistic, nuanced sim or see it as "just a game"...

Physics first, extraneous micromanagement last.  Take it or leave it.  Or leave it while turning your nose up and making as big and whiney a fuss about it as you can.

What we have are planes running at their historical best to put tactical play at its best.  If you don't like that, it's your problem.  Just don't run around trying to wake everyone up to a fact they already know.. Imperial units weren't what germany or Japan used, and no, you didn't just press a button to have trim work itself out.  We know all that already.

Unless you can come up with an actual argument, I'm done.  All you're looking for here is making a big stink about AH not being designed like you would have it.  And you want to spoil everyone else's fun because you can't have it.  That's the real objective of your argument.. Unless you actually believe that some thing happening on a computer screen could be "realistic", or that arguing people's taste isn't a fool's errand.

[The Fugitive]

Read the end of the post above yours.IOW the facts don't matter to you.  There IS a difference between the MA and what CT's supposed to be, and it's right in the contentious area you're arguing on. Physics first, extraneous micromanagement last.  Take it or leave it.  Or leave it while turning your nose up and making as big and whiney a fuss about it as you can.

What we have are planes running at their historical best to put tactical play at its best.  If you don't like that, it's your problem.  Just don't run around trying to wake everyone up to a fact they already know.. Imperial units weren't what germany or Japan used, and no, you didn't just press a button to have trim work itself out.  We know all that already.

and to finish that thought..... but we are playing a game, they were not!

[Saxman]

My point (which you quoted) is right there in front of you. Some planes were easier to pilot than others from a controls standpoint, but you'll find no evidence of it in AHII. Poor simulation, again.

As opposed to what? Il-2 where EVERY aircraft flies exactly the same?

Here's the simple fact, Stig: If you have such a problem with the game and it's not what you want, THEN SHOVE THE FRELL OFF. No one's strapping you into the chair to play it. Go find some other community to spam with what you think their game should be.

And so far all your posts are in this one thread. You're either a troll, or have far too much time on your hands.

[Baumer]

Stiglr I can't understate how much I disagree with your assessment of Dale or the rest of HTC. I had the opportunity to speak with both Dale and Doug at length, during the last convention and they were ALWAYS willing to openly discuss any topic. That includes some of the very issues you are complaining about. I found their answers to be forthright and we had a very good discussion about engine management and pilot workload.

It is very clear to me that Aces High is NOT a simulation, it's a game. HTC has created an interesting game that is much more enjoyable, and with more customers, than any other online WW2 air combat game than I have found. If there is a better game, with the customer support, and following that HTC have created, by all means show it to me and I'd be glad to play. However, until that time, no amount of complaining by anyone is going to convince me that there's a better community or better game.

[Stoney]

I find that very revealing about Mr. Addink...The same way that a plane that actually was pretty much fully automatic (the FW190) gets shafted because the Spits and Hurris it is flying against have much easier pilot workload than they should.

[sniff]...[sniff]...Kurfurst?  Another of our infamous old Luftwhiners?  You'd have been better off merely trying to extol the virtues of your favorite game, err sim, rather than come in here and bad-mouth HTC.

[Widewing]

I may be wrong (it happens ) But I think what he is saying, is he would like to see engine management implemented....

I agree  I to would to see it, but it is was done, the crying would never stop!.

Here's the problem... 90% of the playing population can't fly worth a crap as it is... Concentrate on what's important; flying, fighting and having fun.


My regards,

Widewing

[FYB]

So far this thread just seems like a huge argument on whether his facts are true or false. But it much rather resembles a creation of an idea.

Engine Maintainance? Very realistic, not happening. The failures that have occurred in real life did not have a reset, meaning you could not get ticked off from it happening again, again, and again. Here in AH, there is a Reset.

You can go and fight without needing to check your engine or wings, or anything of that sort. Why? Because adding maintenance failures would come to make it so realistic failures would occur 30% or more of the time. Then what good is the point of playing if you're going to have a failure 1/3 of the time?

Example:

You're in a 109 chasing a quite outrageous Spitfire, when you suddenly get a gun point so precise that the pilot would scream "Ya damn Hacker!" believing you hacked because it was so precise of aim. Unfortunately, your engine failed, the upward force jammed your guns and the fuel line was so used it broke. Imagine this happening 33.33% (1/3) of the time?

[Widewing]

Secondly, information overload is a HUGE part of situational awareness, the same way you can get lost among 20 planes, when it's so much easier to just watch and defeat one guy in a duel. It's yet another FACT that some planes were a lot harder to fly in than others simply BECAUSE of differences in pilot workload.

You really don't know what the hell you're talking about... We fly a combat sim, not a Cessna tooling around the midwest. From the time the wheels are in the wells, you had better be ready to fight. There is no engine management in combat, you firewall it and cylinder head, coolant and oil temps be damned. Engines can be replaced, your bellybutton is the only one available. Use up an engine? That's why God made mechanics. You can build an engine in several hours, a fighter in a few days. Pilots take years to train.

Flying with your head in the cockpit is the fastest way to get dead. Everything forward, and you don't even think about engine management, unless you want to die.

Prop to full RPM, mixture to rich, throttle up, gun switch on, gunsight on... Everything listed should already have been done prior to initial contact... Thus, work load in combat is minimal.

If you want engine management, you have it. Get the respective aircraft manual and fly it by the book. Be my guest. But, I'll bet you throw away the book when you find my fighter on your six... "The heck with engine management, I gotta get the hell out of here!"

It wouldn't matter tho, I'll bet I could send you a telegram the day before and you still wouldn't be prepared for me.... 


My regards,

Widewing

[BnZs]

...And still Stiglr has not given me any estimate on how soon the engine in a P-51D should overheat from running at military power, or what setting IS safe for continuous operation, or any single bit of data about ANY plane modeled by AHII that could prove the modeling erroneous and serve as a basis for correction.

[Saxman]

...And still Stiglr has not given me any estimate on how soon the engine in a P-51D should overheat from running at military power, or what setting IS safe for continuous operation, or any single bit of data about ANY plane modeled by AHII that could prove the modeling erroneous and serve as a basis for correction.

That's probably the key point of ALL of this: He hasn't provided ONE SCRAP OF EVIDENCE that the modeling is wrong. All he can repeat ad nauseum is "Well the manuals say use these settings" and claims of what he heard talking to pilots. That is NOT anything that HTC can build complex engine management around. To change it HTC needs numbers, otherwise any change is just arbitrary. Stilgr says that running the engine should cause a loss of power. Ok, on what grounds? What hard, numerical data do you have that shows this is what would happen? How long can it run before failure? How much of a loss of power would a Merlin or an R-2800 experience if it was overworked on a sortie? The simple fact is he has been unable or unwilling to provide those numbers, so instead decides to dwell on what the manual recommends.

I'm not even saying I'm completely against engine management at all. I'd LOVE to see manual supercharger, magneto and mixture controls on aircraft that didn't have automatic ones. Hell, HTC could even set it up like Combat Trim, where newbies can put the manual systems on "auto" to keep the settings on their "by the book" levels, while allowing more experienced pilots full manual control to fine-tune to their liking.

But as Widewing said, all that goes out the window once the bullets start flying, and even with complex engine management the nature of overheats means they still HAS NO PLACE in Aces High. As I've said repeatedly and Sitglr doesn't seem to absorb, is that the only definitively realistic effect of overworking the engine in combat--more frequent and longer maintenance, and probably needing to replace the engine sooner--would NOT come into play because AH doesn't have maintenance schedules and limited supplies of aircraft, parts and engines. Any other effects--loss of power, engines seizing, or outright blowing up--is an artificial and arbitrary limitation on aircraft performance with no basis in reality that he has been able to identify.

[Stiglr]

Well, as a partial answer to this dodge, and that's what it is...

Can you folks, or the modelers at HTC (or any modeler anywhere) provide scientific level evidence of exactly how many bullets it takes to take a wing off? Of exactly how much energy a plane loses in a turn?

No, you can't. Too many variables. But you can make a very educated guess based on the science you do know. The ballistic effect and the evidence of gun cam film and some physical calculations on area and toughness of a wing might provide a formula so that you can figure out how much damage the part can absorb. It might be fair, it might be believable, but "scientifically provable"? No way. About the only thing you can get to that degree of accuracy *might* be aerodynamic airfoils... and even that will be sullied by all the other variables (weight of fuel on the airframe, angles of attack, the less-than-perfect performance of maneuvers during testing, etc.) Fact is, you can arrive at a number, apply it to your models, and although not 100% ironclad or "provable" it will still be fair and pass the suspension of disbelief test.

The evidence that engines will overheat is there: it's called the Pilots Manuals and, where they can be found, maintenance manuals for the aircraft. How to figure out how soon and at what rate an engine begins to lose power, smoke, overheat, or even die isn't a scientific process. It's a judgment call. But then so are a lot of things in this sim. Not sure what it is now, but the ballistics and effects of weapons was way over the top last time I flew this game. Basically, anything more than a mere snapshot and you were losing major parts, no matter what the caliber of the weapon was. And of course d10 shots were commonplace and easy to pull off... tell me how scientific that is/was?

[Saxman]

FYI: Aircraft aren't even visible as dots at D10.

And maintenance and pilots manuals say NOTHING about the effects of running the engine outside its recommended power settings. The ONLY thing they describe is what the manufacturer decided were the recommended power settings to use under controlled, every day, run of the mill flight conditions, which air-to-air combat WAS NOT.

[Stiglr]

However, I can put an end to this debate...

I apologize. I came into this with the assumption that at least some of you thought you were flying a SIM.

It's become clear that the vast majority think (and prefer) to be flying a GAME. I quote Baumer:

It is very clear to me that Aces High is NOT a simulation, it's a game.

Realism, accuracy, detail, none of those things matter in a game. You design for the most fun, not to try and create a set of historical conditions or parameters.

My fault for making that assumption.

And my parting shot is this:
How can you say things like: (Widewing)

There is no engine management in combat, you firewall it and cylinder head, coolant and oil temps be damned.

Right. See my earlier comment about deciding that it's not worth your time to gas up your car. You *will* care if you started an engagement with the engine already hot, and now your performance is diminishing instead of increasing.

Thus, work load in combat is minimal.

In some planes, true. But tell that to the Brewster pilots in Malaya who, in order to get anything like rated performance in combat had to manipulate the fuel pump while flying!!!   (Yes, that's an extreme case). Or the pilots who had to be sure to lower rpms before a dive, or their engine *would* quit... or the Spit I drivers with carbureted engines, that had to go inverted before a dive or have the engine quit from negative Gs.

And finally, all of you fail to see the gray area between needing to manage your engine while out of combat, ferrying, transiting, cruising, etc. and having to firewall it during combat. Of course you need every bit of power for the fight, yes. No argument there. But the FACT was, you didn't use it full out all the time. Because you DID have to manage your engine.

[Saxman]

or the Spit I drivers with carbureted engines, that had to go inverted before a dive or have the engine quit from negative Gs.

Take a Spit I up in the game and do a negative G pushover, then watch what happens.

For that matter, I wonder now if you ever HAVE actually flown in the game.

[Karnak]

Stiglr,

The manual for the Mosquito Mk VI (which I have) doesn't mention overheating at all.

The only book I recall a Spitfire's engine locking up (twice to the same pilot) happened due to battle damage.  The first took an oil hit over the channel and the pilot ran it until it locked up to get back over Britain and the second time he took an AA cannon round to the engine which stopped it immediately.

When Saburo Sakai was fighting alone in his A6M5 vs fifteen Hellcats he had his throttle firewalled the whole fight.  His thoughts, according to the book, were something like "Forget the engine, burn it up if need be."  and in that long fight for survival his engine did not lock up, it did not produce less power.

Never, not once, anywhere have I read of an engine actually failing like you insist would happen if you ran it past the manual's limits.


As to yur comments about damage and E loss.  Damage is subjective, something that is impossible to model perfectly.  E loss can be modeled very closely though.  There are known formulas for that.