Thoughts on Damage Model

[Hap]

machine guns could inflict fatal damage just by shredding an airfoil beyond its ability to sustain lift, or by severing control line, fuel lines, and various other internal parts.

Sax, that's what I see during pony sorties.  I no longer keep on a con to put him down.  Usually, a well aimed burst will get me the kill after other guys have put him down.

[guncrasher]

Nemisis you have any idea of what the odds are of any given bullet penetrating a bomb casing?

First, you have a curved surface, so unless it hits exactly 90 degrees chances are its going to bounce off.

Second if it did punch a hole through, that will not necessarily set off the explosive.
Granted, you might start it on fire, but there is a big difference between a fire and a explosion.

A bomb cooking off would be in effect a really wicked blow torch for a few seconds.
But only in 1 direction, like a jet, and only for seconds.

Most military explosives are actually have fairly high tolerances for pressure.
Unlike say an old stick of TNT which a rifle bullet could set off.

in ww2 the germans used  (now I dont remember exactly) either 262's or 163, i know it was a jet plane to fire rockets at the moment that the bay doors would open.  bombs would explode, blow up the buff and several other buffs around it.  one of the jet planes that got shot down, had just fired its rockets into a b17.  in total he got 8 buffs with one salvo of rockets.  it is also known that flak blew up several buffs by hitting its bombs.  guess u call that one in a million.

also a bomb that blows like a torch, would make the bomb itself a rocket, for only a few seconds but it aint gonna stay in place, and guess what's next to a bomb, another bomb?  remember a rocket is nothing but a bomb with a hole at the end of it.

semp

[Ghosth]

Guncrasher, yes, when you consider how many MILLIONS of flak rounds were fired at a bomber, yep, I consider that 1 in a million.

Nemisis, 20mm while it will do more damage to a plane, because it explodes would likely do less damage to a bomb. As it doesn't have the penitration.

Guys please remember, these are not some jury rigged sticks of dynamite.
Bombs are carefully designed with safety systems to only go off under certain circumstances.
They had to fall for a certain distance to arm the system. Then and only then would a contact fuze in the nose be able to set the bomb off if it strikes something.

And yes, perhaps a 88mm flak round could trigger a bomb to go off with a direct hit, thus causing a series of them to go off. But the odds are against it.

[Saxman]

And yes, perhaps a 88mm flak round could trigger a bomb to go off with a direct hit, thus causing a series of them to go off. But the odds are against it.

That, and an 88mm flak round would probably just blow up the bomber itself with a direct hit on its own, anyway, so it's really sort of a moot point.

[Chapel]

Something else to consider, to extrapolate on Saxmans point....

When a control surface like a wing takes an excessive amount of lead, perforating the control and lift surfaces....it becomes less stable.
I can't count the times I've unloaded MG's into an enemies wing/tail only to see them perform a high G evasive maneuver to escape my attack. If you damage a wing to a good 35-50% and someone yanks hard on the stick putting a high G strain onto the surface, physics suggest that the surface should shear/tear off. This is definitely NOT modeled into Aces High and would be absolutely awesome. Taking damage like that should put the fear of death into the pilot, and require nursing his banged up aircraft back to the hanger, not getting aggressive and continuing the fight. Of course I could shoot straighter and aim for the cockpit....another story though. 

Damaged planes taking out friendlies is a regular occurrence, when actually they shouldn't be able to put the strain/load onto the wings that they are.
I love the damage model from IL-2 and would love to see improvements made in that direction to damage modeling. I get a real kick out of IL-2 looking out the window and seeing a giant hole in my wing that I can see the ground through! It's such a beautiful thing.

[Nemisis]

Sax I would 100 percent love this as is when I am flying the all or nothingness of being hit has begun to sadden me beside some planes like spits and hurricanes that had canvas wings sometimes would simply have the cannon shells pass through harmlessly like an mg round so long as they didnt hit something stable inside the wing.

yeah but swiss cheese canvas don't do squat....

[Saxman]

Something else to consider, to extrapolate on Saxmans point....

When a control surface like a wing takes an excessive amount of lead, perforating the control and lift surfaces....it becomes less stable.
I can't count the times I've unloaded MG's into an enemies wing/tail only to see them perform a high G evasive maneuver to escape my attack. If you damage a wing to a good 35-50% and someone yanks hard on the stick putting a high G strain onto the surface, physics suggest that the surface should shear/tear off. This is definitely NOT modeled into Aces High and would be absolutely awesome. Taking damage like that should put the fear of death into the pilot, and require nursing his banged up aircraft back to the hanger, not getting aggressive and continuing the fight. Of course I could shoot straighter and aim for the cockpit....another story though. 

Damaged planes taking out friendlies is a regular occurrence, when actually they shouldn't be able to put the strain/load onto the wings that they are.
I love the damage model from IL-2 and would love to see improvements made in that direction to damage modeling. I get a real kick out of IL-2 looking out the window and seeing a giant hole in my wing that I can see the ground through! It's such a beautiful thing.

The problem is how do you introduce the potential for stress breakage from damage without getting into random behavior?

I suppose you could use the percentage of damage to the airfoil as a baseline. Say, if your wing is 25% damaged, you lose 25% of your max G-load before failure under stress (IE, if your wing can normally tolerate 12G, 25% damage means you can only handle 9G before it snaps off). This would also allow the addition of the main spar to the damage listing to directly control wing breakage, while the wing itself determines lift generation (so you can shred the wing's surface all day, but if you don't break the main spar the wing won't come off).

This then leads us to the question of how to implement such a damage model without adding to the processing load.

[Anaxogoras]

I love the damage model from IL-2 and would love to see improvements made in that direction to damage modeling. I get a real kick out of IL-2 looking out the window and seeing a giant hole in my wing that I can see the ground through! It's such a beautiful thing.

Right, but what's important is that when a surface takes damage, its efficiency decreases.  HTC could implement a similar feature in the next update if it were a priority.

[Saxman]

Ok, so let's see the damage model expanded as follows:

• Left Wing Tip - % damage = % lift lost of left wingtip.
• Left Wing - % damage = % lift lost of left wing.
• Right Wing Tip - % damage = % lift lost of right wingtip.
• Right Wing - % damage = % lift lost of right wing.
• Left Main Spar Outer = % damage until left wing tip breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Left Main Spar Inner = % damage until left wing breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Right Main Spar Outer = % damage until right wing tip breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Right Main Spar Inner = % damage until right wing breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Left Aileron - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Aileron blown off at 100% damage.
• Right Aileron - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Aileron blown off at 100% damage.
• Flap - % damage = % effectiveness reduction (done per flap. So the F4U with its complex flap 3-part assembly would have one flap listed for each of the six components [three left/three right]). Flap is blown off at 100% damage.
• Left Horizontal Stabilizer - % damage = % lift loss of left stabilizer. Stabilizer blown off at 100% damage.
• Right Horizontal Stabilizer - % damage = % lift loss of right stabilizer. Stabilizer blown off at 100% damage.
• Left Elevator - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Elevator blown off at 100% damage.
• Right Elevator - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Elevator blown off at 100% damage.
• Vertical Stabilizer - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Stabilizer blown off at 100% damage
• Rudder - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Rudder blown off at 100% damage

[Chapel]

Sax they'd just have to modify the current stress/speed relationship with an introduced damage variable.
I know that if you dive in some planes, and attempt a high G turn to pull out of the dive, the wings rip off. Zeke is a great example of that.
They'd just have to tweak it to include the damage variable.

[Boozeman]

However as a result of the "all or nothing" model, there's a bias favoring cannon-armed planes to a degree beyond historical performance.

Could you please explain this part in more detail? Frankly, I do not see any bias favoring cannon over machine guns at all. From strictly damage point of view, a cannon round does more damage in AH, but so it did in RL.
      

[Nemisis]

Ok, so let's see the damage model expanded as follows:

• Left Wing Tip - % damage = % lift lost of left wingtip.
• Left Wing - % damage = % lift lost of left wing.
• Right Wing Tip - % damage = % lift lost of right wingtip.
• Right Wing - % damage = % lift lost of right wing.
• Left Main Spar Outer = % damage until left wing tip breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Left Main Spar Inner = % damage until left wing breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Right Main Spar Outer = % damage until right wing tip breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Right Main Spar Inner = % damage until right wing breaks off / % G-load reduction until stress failure.
• Left Aileron - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Aileron blown off at 100% damage.
• Right Aileron - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Aileron blown off at 100% damage.
• Flap - % damage = % effectiveness reduction (done per flap. So the F4U with its complex flap 3-part assembly would have one flap listed for each of the six components [three left/three right]). Flap is blown off at 100% damage.
• Left Horizontal Stabilizer - % damage = % lift loss of left stabilizer. Stabilizer blown off at 100% damage.
• Right Horizontal Stabilizer - % damage = % lift loss of right stabilizer. Stabilizer blown off at 100% damage.
• Left Elevator - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Elevator blown off at 100% damage.
• Right Elevator - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Elevator blown off at 100% damage.
• Vertical Stabilizer - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Stabilizer blown off at 100% damage
• Rudder - % damage = % effectiveness reduction. Rudder blown off at 100% damage

Maybe not quite like that. I think untill 10% damage is reached, each damage % should equal .5% effectivnes lost. Once 10% damage is reached, it upps to .75% effectivnes lost untill 25% where it reaches 1% efectivness loss per each % damage done. Then once it reaches 50% it upps to 1.25% efectivness lost, then 1.5% once it hits 75% damage, and once it reaches 90% it goes up to 2%.

This would represent compounding damage: if you take 15 .50's to the wing with a fresh plane, it won't hurt you as much as 15 .50's to the wing in a plane that is already 75% damaged...

[Saxman]

Booze,

Y'know I could have sworn my original post did this already....

Scenario 1:

An F4U-1C and F4U-1A both put a half-second burst into the inner half of a target's left wing--say, a P-47--under full convergence range. Using my settings, that's at 200yds. The 1C will likely take almost any opponent's wing right off at that range. Depending the target, however, the 1A may not have caused enough damage to finish off the airfoil. Under the current model, the enemy escapes and continues to fight without problems and possibly gets a shot of its own at the Corsair before it can be finished off.

Now, let's change the damage model so that the amount of damage caused directly correlates to the amount of lift lost:

The 1A puts in his half-second burst and fails to destroy the wing, however the hit was sufficient to do 60% damage to the airfoil. The target has suddenly lost 60% of the lift produced by that part of the wing, leading to a stall of the left wing. The pilot is unable to recover, perhaps because the aircraft was already at a high angle of attack while maneuvering against the 1A, and the stalled wings snaps the aircraft into an unrecoverable spin.

Scenario 2, with Wing Spar damage added:

The 1C and 1A both put their half-second bursts into the wing, striking the main spar. The 1C's cannon destroy the spar and the wing shears off. The 1A, meanwhile, not only shreds part of the wing's surface (damage to the wing spar shouldn't take the place of damage inflicted to the airfoil itself) but seriously damages the main spar, perhaps within 60% destroyed. Although the P-47 is flyable, he can no longer press the fight as the damaged spar wouldn't be able to withstand the G-loading of hard maneuvering and threatens to snap under the stress. Compounding the situation is the shredded airfoil reducing the amount of lift the wing can generate, causing the aircraft to roll to one side. While the P-47 may still be flyable, in all probability he's out of the fight (perhaps the creak that plays under high G-loads can occur at increasingly lower airspeeds and G-loads as an audible queue of damage to the spar?)

This is why I say the effectiveness of cannon have to some degrees been exaggerated by AH's damage model. I'm not arguing that cannon wouldn't inflict more damage, my argument is that the all-or-nothing, your wing is either there or it isn't damage modeling makes machine gun fire less effective than it SHOULD be. Cannon would remain more potent, but machine guns gain an additional benefit by not needing to destroy a component entirely to have an effect.

Nemisis,

The problem there is what is the rate of increase? An equal, tit-for-tat correlation between the amount of damage inflicted and amount of lift/effectiveness lost is cleaner, easier to understand, and less arbitrary.

[Jayhawk]

I understand what you're saying there sax.  A few hits with cannon can take off a wing, thus making a kill.  A few shots with 50s will damage the wing, but the flight of the target aircraft will not be damaged.  In fact he'll fly just fine until the right number of 50s go into it.

Interesting point.

[Nemisis]

Nemisis,

The problem there is what is the rate of increase? An equal, tit-for-tat correlation between the amount of damage inflicted and amount of lift/effectiveness lost is cleaner, easier to understand, and less arbitrary.

Yes, I know, but its the best I could come up with. .25 increase for every 25% damage isn't enough, as you will only hit 1.5% loss of effectivness per % damage cause, and that is the max you can do with each damage %. I know what I've stated isn't perfect, but its better than the above.

What do you guys think of the idea as a whole?