Stick force and pilot fatigue

[AKSWulfe]

My thing is: The dogfights in World War 2 was not a battle of stamina or strength, but a battle of position, aircraft advantages and ability to aim.

The phrase "6 hours of boredom, 30 seconds of sheer terror" wasn't coined for no reason. It was just that, the action was few and far in between.

Here, yes a human would probably pass out in our dogfights.

They last until the last plane was shot down or you yourself get shot down. With people constantly re-upping from fields no more than 50 miles apart, and usually 20 miles from the furball this means action is quick and furious.

In this game, fatigue WOULD indeed have an impact on G tolerances.. and maybe after an extended fight, it would have an impact on your strength.

So, in the end, using WW2 and real life examples of fatigue to compare to the way dogfights happen here is pretty eroneous. Simply because there is no connection.

They are two completely different things.

It would go back to being like pre-1.03. Yes I know a lot of people liked it, but it was wrong.
-SW

[Toad]

True, SW.  There's very few accounts of extended engagments similar to what we routinely do in the MA.

There are some... Saburo Sakai's engagement with multiple Navy guys comes to mind.

[AKSWulfe]

By that point he only had one eye, right? Or was THAT the fight where he lost vision in one of his eyes?

Either way, that should be a testament to how much you can push the human body when it's life or death.
-SW

[Jekyll]

Originally posted by Toad:
True, SW.  There's very few accounts of extended engagments similar to what we routinely do in the MA.

There are some... Saburo Sakai's engagement with multiple Navy guys comes to mind.

Toad or SW, does Sakai say anything about fatigue in his account of this battle?

[GRUNHERZ]

I cant see how somebody would make a resonable fatigue program. Just way too many highly subjective variables. Its not like making a FM.

And If you think about it there is natural fatigue in AH anyway, certainly weve all been in gut-wrenching fites and come out sweaty and pretty much exhausted.

[Seeker]

Wouldn't trying to do this introduce a completly new concept into the game: The pilot model?

Is that what we want? I'd rather stick to plain physics modelling which can be proven/disproven by empiracal data rather than trying to stipulate possibly spurious physio-psycological (yes, psycological if one is to include pilot training/motivation/stress threshold) for a suitable pilot model.

What a waste of time, when there's so much more work on the the flight and plane model to be done.

Surely we're here to see how it was to fly a given plane, not how it was to be a given pilot.

When's the last time anyone used prop pitch in here, and what for?

[Daff]

"But, if you are saying that you want our pilot to suffer fatigue and begin to not be able pull as much as he could when the fight first begin, then I will care."

In a recent issue of Pilot magazine, there was a comparison between the 109 and Spitfire. The author (display pilot of both), described how he would start a 109 routine with one hand on stick and end up using both (due to fatique), but in the Spit, he could fly the same routine with one hand all the way through.

That's about 3-4 minutes flying..

Daff

[AKSWulfe]

Originally posted by Jekyll:


Toad or SW, does Sakai say anything about fatigue in his account of this battle?

I don't remember, I can tell you when I get home tonite though... It's in one of my books at home.
-SW

[AKSWulfe]

Originally posted by Daff:
[QBIn a recent issue of Pilot magazine, there was a comparison between the 109 and Spitfire. The author (display pilot of both), described how he would start a 109 routine with one hand on stick and end up using both (due to fatique), but in the Spit, he could fly the same routine with one hand all the way through.
[/QB]

How old was the pilot? Was he physically fit? Was he built like most WWII pilots?

Have you seen the arms on those guys that flew 109s?

Helmut Lipfert made his pilots, and himself, do a workout routine each day to keep themselves fit and strong. This would naturally help in combat.
-SW

[Thunder]

Good Point,

I can understand an "Allied Pilot" having fatigue. They had to fly for Hours to LW targets, hungover from night before etc. Now the LW Pilots on the other hand were in much better shape, better looking, rested in chairs, were more skilled and simply had to scramble to meet the opposition. They were in the air less time, killed all Allied aircraft and returned fresh and drank milk! Why penalize all pilots the same..this doesn't sound fair to me! Let's penalize the ALLIED pilots.. !"

Lets see how long we can keep this thread going! Blahahaha!    

   

[ 08-09-2001: Message edited by: Thunder ]

[AKSWulfe]

Actually I was thinking only P51D pilots should be penalized.

Not like they fight anyway. <G>
-SW

[Toad]

My copy of Samurai! has turned up AWOL. I hate it when I loan a book to someone without writing down who took it.

Will have to go down to the library and check one out. It's been a while since I read it. Great book.

[Pongo]

Some more good points.
But the point of sakai loosing an eye is not that he landed it. Its what would have happend if he had gotten bounced after loosing it.
People say they dont want the pilot modeled cause its too subjective. Well the FMs we have have to subjectivly assume a certain strength. Cant a subjective strength be subjectivly lessend?
SWs point about the fundimental difference between the duration of dog fights here vs RL is very accurate. The point I suppose is would the inclusion of limitations like this tend to make them more realistic?
SW votes no. Others definatly aggree. I dont know. But we have progressed beyond the nonsence of it didnt matter in ww2 to understanding a bit about how it would matter and discussing why that might not mean it would improve our game.

A note though. Doesnt the AH code still have that feature where if you black out too long you stay blacked out after the gs come off? Isnt that a simulare kind of issue? I rarly pull gs long enough to trigger the code but is it still there?

[AKSWulfe]

Yes Pongo, that bit of code is still there.

I believe it's called G-Lock by AirForce pilots, but I might be mistaken.

I'm not sure if it's supposed to be an actual portrayal of pulling too long and passing out or if it's just a gimicky feature to prevent people from staying in a black out turn for too long.

I didn't neccessarily mean to say that losing his eye gives justification to the ability for the human body to indure quite a bit, I meant that he was dogfighting 7 (I think, can't remember) Hellcats in an A6M5b (again, I think) for quite some time before he managed to get home and land.

Now, lets say we have the Combat Arena set to be more "on par" with how dogfights happened in the real war in the past... potentially this could invite justification for a "fatigue" system or something along those lines: should enough people want it.

Like you said Pongo, I do not think it's more than a concession feature.. but that alone doesn't mean you guys are wrong in what you want.
-SW

[Toad]

The engagement in which Sakai lost the vision in his right eye was in August of '42. The bullet hit his goggle but left him close to blind with the left half of his body paralyzed. After being hit, he flew an amazing 4 hours back to Rabaul and landed on fumes.

The long furball with the Hellcats was in June of '44. He had lost almost all vision in his right eye as a result of the previous wound, so he did fight the F6F's essentially with one operable eye. (He had spent a year in Japan training pilots before being sent to Iwo.)  

Two separate incidents, separated by almost 2 years.

The aircombat in WW2 was not like aircombat in AH. The number of engagements, the duration of engagments, the type of engagments were greatly dissimilar.

There are some common elements, but the overall experience was vastly different. This situation is inevitably going to lead to selectivity in the basic framework of the programming.