he-177 a-5 german bomber

[Karnak]

There were almost 1,200 HE-177s made...

It's not a matter of if...

No, it is a question of how to model it so that something of its historical flaws come through and it doesn't simply dominate the historically successful B-17, B-24 and Lancaster.

My suggestion would be to make the engines relatively flammable when damaged and to make it significantly less durable, particularly the fuselage, than the other heavies.

[tunnelrat]

No, it is a question of how to model it so that something of its historical flaws come through and it doesn't simply dominate the historically successful B-17, B-24 and Lancaster.

My suggestion would be to make the engines relatively flammable when damaged and to make it significantly less durable, particularly the fuselage, than the other heavies.

Oh, I agree completely...

And I am not trying to be a jerk here, but there are already tons of notoriously unreliable vehicles in the game, are any of those modeled as such?

I think your idea on making the engines achilles heels is a good idea, and I certainly don't think that the max bombload should be anything approaching the theoretical... if not, then the plane should be heavily perked simply for balance reasons... the ME-262 doesn't start suffer engine fires, the 163 doesn't randomly explode, and every other Koenigstiger isn't sitting with a dead engine or stuck in the mud... but they are all perked... I don't think the HE-177 should be different unless concessions are made as you stated above.
 

On the other hand, I think it SHOULD be what it was... and that is a late war heavy bomber in every sense of the word... just because it spent most of its time on the Eastern Front and out of the limelight doesn't mean it should be a turd.

[Karnak]

and that is a late war heavy bomber in every sense of the word.

I don't think that is true.  I think it was a problematic Frakenstein that they were not able to get working at anything like a satisfactory rate until late in the war that was a contemporary of the Lancaster and B-24.

[tunnelrat]

I don't think that is true.  I think it was a problematic Frakenstein that they were not able to get working at anything like a satisfactory rate until late in the war that was a contemporary of the Lancaster and B-24.

I agree wholeheartedly that they did not get it "right" until late in the war, and soon after it was mainly grounded.  But, the He-177-A5 (being the definitive model of which 800+ were made) was not the problematic Frankenstein that the previous models were.

The heavily perked B-29 had more than it's fair share of troubles for some time.

[Karnak]

The heavily perked B-29 had more than it's fair share of troubles for some time.

It did, but not nearly to the point that the He177 did.  The B-29 was never suffering a 1/3rd mission abort rate due to mechanical failures.

The Avro Manchester was pretty dang horrible though, but the Brits allowed Avro to fix it the most expedient way, go to four proven engines.  Heinkel wanted to do that with the He177 but the RLM forbade it.

[Rino]

Oh, I agree completely...

And I am not trying to be a jerk here, but there are already tons of notoriously unreliable vehicles in the game, are any of those modeled as such?

I think your idea on making the engines achilles heels is a good idea, and I certainly don't think that the max bombload should be anything approaching the theoretical... if not, then the plane should be heavily perked simply for balance reasons... the ME-262 doesn't start suffer engine fires, the 163 doesn't randomly explode, and every other Koenigstiger isn't sitting with a dead engine or stuck in the mud... but they are all perked... I don't think the HE-177 should be different unless concessions are made as you stated above.
 

On the other hand, I think it SHOULD be what it was... and that is a late war heavy bomber in every sense of the word... just because it spent most of its time on the Eastern Front and out of the limelight doesn't mean it should be a turd.

      One of the reasons all those vehicles are perked is that they don't possess the historical weaknesses they actually possessed.  Same with the
B-29...no spontaneous engine fires that I've noticed.

[Tank-Ace]

If the HE-177 was generally fragile.... Sure, make the plane itself kinda fragile.


If you just want to model engine unreliability, give it weak engines.

[Karnak]

      One of the reasons all those vehicles are perked is that they don't possess the historical weaknesses they actually possessed.  Same with the
B-29...no spontaneous engine fires that I've noticed.

No, that is not the reason they are perked.

Also, the B-29's engine fires that get brought up as an excuse for the He177 in every He177 thread never approached anything like the He177's rate of failure.  I can name numerous units in AH that had far worse reliability than the B-29.

[Debrody]

Its pretty pointless, both sides are just repeating their reasons over and over.
Would like to hear some reasons why a He-177 should be added instead of the ju-188.
Here are my reasons for the junkers: faster, 3000kg bombload (more than a B17!), still an acceptable defensive arnament, could be used much more on events as it was used widely in the war, would be competitive in the main arena, was (would be) a multirole aircraft, had several variations what means one 3D model could be used on more different aircrafts including the heavy fighter, and, is just a better looking aircraft : )

Also to say He-177 was a complete garbage, just dont make any sense, just like the "cuz the bigger is better" ones. Plz bring up valid reasons why you would or wouldnt like that aircraft.

[jag88]

Out of 3.000+ B-29s, 119 were destroyed in the US in accidents.

87 in accidents in theater.

105 sent to 2nd line due accidents, malfunctions and damage.

That is not very far from the 414 actually lost in combat.

Btw, picking a single He-177 early mission as indicative of the performance and reliability of a later model of the aircraft is highly misleading!  And also ignores the fact that in the eastern front the plane did quite well, that is until it was sent in suicide, low-level, anti-tank runs.

For what I have read, people seem to be concerned about other aircraft losing its place to a new one... but how many times has this happened in AH before and why should we care?

Oh, and regarding its strength, this crate was designed to and did withstand shallow dives so it structure was quite strong, the engines however should catch fire easily and take away half its power and eventually causing a wing collapse.  Just like happened in the B-29.

The Ju-188 is a beauty, sadly it offer little improvement over the Ju-88A4.  Its slightly faster and has better guns, but that is pretty much it.  The plane was a stop-gap measure until the stillborn Ju-288 could enter service.  The He-177 in the other hand brings a whole different dimension capability-wise, its reasonably fast, it has a bomb load second only to the Lancaster and its armament is good, but not as good as that of the US heavies (the 20mm tail gun has very limited firing arcs and the 13mm is not as good as the .50, and lacks a belly turret).

[Charge]

You really think it would be feasible to make a structurally heavy plane which was made even dive capable "structurally weak". That's absurd.

Just make it perked.

-C+

[Karnak]

You really think it would be feasible to make a structurally heavy plane which was made even dive capable "structurally weak". That's absurd.

Yup, one of the reasons it was a failure.

Just make it perked.

-C+

Having to perk something that was terrible in reality would pretty firmly indicate fundamental problems with the game.

[tunnelrat]

Having to perk something that was terrible in reality would pretty firmly indicate fundamental problems with the game.

Are we talking about the ME-163B now?

[Butcher]

Yup, one of the reasons it was a failure.
Having to perk something that was terrible in reality would pretty firmly indicate fundamental problems with the game.

One thing I noticed Hitech does is put it at specifications, Look at the Tiger 2 for example - during the war it was plagued by poor welding, terrible construction - most were sabotaged during construction.
We have a perfect Tiger II with no flaws what so ever, however not all Tiger 2's were "defective". Me-163 and He-177 follow the same suite, even the Panther and Tiger tanks.
The B-29 is a primary allied comparison, early stages its engines were a complete disaster, yet ours flies without any trouble what so ever.

If we started introducing "problems" like engine fires people would simply quit the game, imagine climbing to 25k in B-29s then suddenly your engines caught fire due to over heating?
Or spending 50 perks to watch a Me-163 blow up on the runway without even moving?

Sure its realistic, but this is a video game - we have to balance Arcade with Realism, thus is why we have icons and everything else to improve "arcade quality" game play.

[Krusty]

Icons are not arcade.

If you've flown WB on RR you know what arcade is more likely to be. AH doesn't do arcade (debates about the new GV system aside).


Because they don't want to add pointless frustrations -- they leave it up to pilot skill to determine victory, not random punitive features -- such planes as were horrid in reality don't really have much of a place here.

The B-29 is being thrown around here as an example, albeit I think not a very good one. Its engines overheated. The 177's caught fire even at normal power. They actually leaked and spewed liquids that ignited. This wasn't a mere overheat. They really were atrocious engines.

IMO given how HTC isn't in the market of adding annoyances for no good reason, I think when we have a WW2 plane that would suddenly become a wonder-plane without those annoyances shouldn't be added to the game. I'm honestly not even sold that the 177 falls under that category, despite all the gushing in this forum over the many years, but it would benefit more than any other plane (me163 included) from the lack of spontaneous mission-ending failures.