Thoughts on Damage Model

[hitech]

Motherland: Nice right-up, I agree a squared approach might be good in many areas.

I am also impressed how you actually read and thought about what I wrote in the context it was meant. You took the leap from a vision of what you see in your head to thinking about what the real out come in the arena will be.

HiTech

[boomerlu]

Little nerdy are we, Bubi?   j/k, I'm also the type to bust out formulas.

Pongo - people already spray from rather far out. I do it, especially with RCMGs. That's because RCMGs are bad enough under this damage model that they are practically useless unless you have about 8 of them ala Spit1/Hurri1.

Under the current damage model, there's no harm in wasting your RCMG rounds - they won't do anything in close in the first place, so why not use them to prod your opponent into turning?

A similar situation occurs with planes that have an overabundance of HMG rounds. With so much firing time and relatively less lethality, what harm is there in firing the rounds from farther out? It's a good prod.

I really doubt this change to the DM will affect firing tactics very much. Since the kinetic energy damage from MGs is modeled, long range fire from MGs would still produce very little damage.

[Ardy123]

int differential = PlayerADmg/PlayerBDmg;
if(differential <= .15)
{
    Blah Blah Blah;
}

Sounds like someone knows how to code in 'C' including the semi-colons at the end of each statment...

Only one suggestion, your using an intiger type and comparing it to a double number you might consider fixed point, the comparison might work then

int differential = (PlayerADmg *100 ) / PlayerBDmg;
if(differential <= 15 )
{
    Blah Blah Blah;
}

or


int differential = (PlayerADmg <<16 ) / PlayerBDmg;
if(differential <=(int)(0.15f * 65536) )
{
    Blah Blah Blah;
}

[Karnak]

Motherland,

Something to be clear should also be that a wing 25% of the way to failure is not a wing generating 75% of the lift the wing generated when it was at 100%.

For ease I will use arbitrary numbers.  Let's set the complete wing failure at 50% lift.  Meaning that just prior to the wing falling off at your 0 G point the wing would still be producing 50% of the healthy wing's lift.  Under that consideration a wing that had taken 25% of the damage to the failure point would be down 12.5% lift to 87.5%, not 25% lift to 75% lift.

I suspect the lift generated at the failure point would actually be higher, probably much higher, than 50% though.  A more realistic number might be 75%, so a 25% loss of lift from a wing would be the worst case scenario.

[boomerlu]

Motherland: Nice right-up, I agree a squared approach might be good in many areas.

I didn't initially understand what the benefit of the squared approach would have been, but now I see it.

The squared function would result in less reduction in performance relative to the amount of damage sustained. The closer a component is to being fully operational, the less relative performance loss it suffers. After all df/dx (0+delta) ~ 0 for f(x) = x^2 and delta a small number. As damage accumulates towards 100% of the total possible damage, the squared function would get steeper so each subsequent round counts more. This seems to make sense in a real life context as well.

[Pongo]

Boomerlu.
So your answer to question 3 is.
This will not make any change to in game tactics.
I think that you are incorrect. The MG planes can already take advantage of their ammo load outs to start harassing an enemy long before they can really threaten them. This would increase that range.

I think its a good idea though, just also needs to be coupled with burn out for sustained fire and incremental maneuver damage.

[boomerlu]

Boomerlu.
So your answer to question 3 is.
This will not make any change to in game tactics.
I think that you are incorrect. The MG planes can already take advantage of their ammo load outs to start harassing an enemy long before they can really threaten them. This would increase that range.

Yes, that is what I think so far.

To respond to your refutation: as I understand the current weapons/damage model, hitting power in MGs falls off dramatically as the MG round travels a longer distance (this is due to drag reducing the kinetic energy of the MGs). With a squared damage system, the reduction in performance from small damage will be MUCH less than the damage number itself. So, couple these two things together, and I think long range pings from MGs will remain just as inconsequential as before. Psychologically, this may not be the case because not everybody will know the details of the damage model, but the well informed player will know that long range pings won't degrade his performance significantly.

[Nemisis]

Motherland: Nice right-up, I agree a squared approach might be good in many areas.

I am also impressed how you actually read and thought about what I wrote in the context it was meant. You took the leap from a vision of what you see in your head to thinking about what the real out come in the arena will be.

HiTech

Does that mean we get a new damage modle in the MA's  ?

[Motherland]

Little nerdy are we, Bubi?  

I needed something to do when I was supposed to be learning about graphing polynomials... I hate math
Well that's not so much true I just can't stand doing problem after problem of a concept I can't apply to anything.

Motherland: Nice right-up, I agree a squared approach might be good in many areas.

I am also impressed how you actually read and thought about what I wrote in the context it was meant. You took the leap from a vision of what you see in your head to thinking about what the real out come in the arena will be.

HiTech

Thank you very much.... it's very easy to say 'I think xyz would be cool' and not think about what the actual repercussions would be... it's fun, too though
I really think that a damage system that depends on a formula as opposed to meeting thresholds would improve the game experience, at least for me, so I decided to put some thought into it.

Motherland,

Something to be clear should also be that a wing 25% of the way to failure is not a wing generating 75% of the lift the wing generated when it was at 100%.

For ease I will use arbitrary numbers.  Let's set the complete wing failure at 50% lift.  Meaning that just prior to the wing falling off at your 0 G point the wing would still be producing 50% of the healthy wing's lift.  Under that consideration a wing that had taken 25% of the damage to the failure point would be down 12.5% lift to 87.5%, not 25% lift to 75% lift.

I suspect the lift generated at the failure point would actually be higher, probably much higher, than 50% though.  A more realistic number might be 75%, so a 25% loss of lift from a wing would be the worst case scenario.

I never intended for the calculation of lift and the structural integrity of the wing to be based on the same function. I'll try to make it more clear...


OK so now I'm going to try to verbalize some more of this. The graphs will help but even with that I'm very bad at explaining or comprehending any kind of mathematical jargon especially through text (and especially through the terrible format in which you have to write stuff...) so bare with me.


I'm going to use these formulas. (just examples but they should give you a better idea of what I mean, and I can use them to give better situational exmples)

First I'm going to try to explain how the graphs are set up and my thought process.
The graph goes from 0 to 1 on both the y and x axis. The values of the x axis represent the percentage of total damage points before the wing fails at 0G's. So 0 is no damage points, .25 is 25% of the possible damage points, .7354 is 73.54% of possible damage points, etc. The y axis represents whatever you're trying to get, structural integrity of the wing, drag produced, lift produced. This is also expressed in % from the decimal although the meaning of the % will vary.
In examples the x axis representing percentage of the total damage points before the wing fails at 0G's will simply be called damage.

Structural Integrity- y represents the the percentage of G's the wing can withstand compared with a fresh wing.
y=x^2


Example Values
5% damage means 99.75% structural integrity.
10% damage means 99% structural integrity.
25% damage means 93.75% structural integrity.
50% damage means 75% structural integrity.
75% damage means 43.75% structural integrity.
80% damage means 36% structural integrity.
90% damage means 19% structural integrity.
95% damage means 9.75% structural integrity.

As you can see small amounts of damage don't really do much, however once you pass 50% damage you really start to hurt, and hurt quick. This IMO would reflect the real world where, once something is already weakened, you need less and less additional force to break it.

Drag could probably be defined in a similar way if it were factored in- y represents the percentage of the wings drag that would be added to the normal 'clean' wings drag.
y=x^2


5% damage means 100.0025% drag.
10% damage means 101% drag.
25% damage means 106.25% drag
50% damage means 125% drag.
75% damage means 156.25% drag.
80% damage means 164% drag.
90% damage means 181% drag.
95% damage means 191.25% drag.

Again starts out small and then gets very disruptive. I think this is especially intuitive for drag. It also shows that how many G's you can sustain will be only part of your worries. This may need to be throttled back a bit like lift though.

Lift uses a different formula in my example. Still essentially the same but with another part, so that the wing always produces lift while attached to the airplane. Lift is like structural integrity where y is subtracted from the amount of lift a healthy wing puts out. Structural integrity function is included for perspective.
y=(9/10)x^2


This time I'll start at 25% and include SI figures for perspective.
25% damage means 94.3% lift and 93.75% structural integrity.
50% damage means  77.75% lift and 75% structural integrity.
75% damage means 49.375% lift and 43.75% structural integrity.
80% damage means 42.4% lift and 36% structural integrity.
90% damage means 27.1% lift and 19% structural integrity.
(practical breaking point is somewhere in here)
95% damage means 18.775% lift and 9.75% structural integrity.


I have work to do so I'll explain how I see this affecting gameplay and 'real world' situations later.

[guncrasher]

how would the plane be affected when the pilot gets wounded? how would this impact the performance of the plane? 

semp

[boomerlu]

Bubi, the short answer to why you don't have anything to apply your math to is this:
Algebra is easier to teach than physics. Plug in numbers into formulas and voila you have a graph. High school math is just about learning a set of rules and following them. Coming up with the right formula (which is what physicists do)... now that is something else entirely.

[mensa180]

More proof Bubi is the smartest kid on these bulletin boards.  His ideas make good sense and are well presented. 

[Kazaa]

I find motherland’s sober thought rather refreshing on these boards.

[Flipperk]

Motherland 

[Flipperk]

how would the plane be affected when the pilot gets wounded? how would this impact the performance of the plane? 

semp

In WW2OL, if the pilot gets hit in the arms the stick of the plane would loose some of its ability. IE: Rolling and pitching of the plane would be decreased due to the wounded arms. Same with the legs, the rudders would be effected by the wounded legs.

On paper this sounds like a great idea to add to a combat sim, but however it is a great headache to the person wounded.

It takes alot of the fun out of flying when this happens, while yes it does make it more realistic but however your flight can be really short and frusterating because of this.

The way AHII has it setup now is a great balance, you do get effected by the wound, but it does not take you out of the fight.



I would like to have the option to turn this on or off just like the auto combat trim though.