Ack-Ack,
They have 4 kinds of visual damage in WWII Online. White smoke, yellow smoke, black smoke, and fire. These are always modeled as full blown leak, or fire. No matter what the severity is.
Hardcase2,
I want you to understand I wish WWII Online the best, and hope one day it results in a product worthy of playing for me. In the mean time I want to throw out the facts on WWII Online's flight model as current.
1) No Parasitic drag. Gear down, cockpit open, no performance loss at all.
2) Aircraft fly faster inverted.
3) No Structural Damage at all. You have to hit the pilot, engine, fuel tanks, or control surfaces to bring it down. Nothing else matters.
4) No structrural limits at all. No matter how much damage that is done to your aircraft.
5) Netcode seems to loose half your Rounds. Proven to be majorly improved with the beta netcode that never went live. The bandwidth was too expensive.
6) High Speed compression of control surfaces modeled on some aircraft, not on others.
7) 64 Object biasing totally hosed. You can see 64 Objects at one time, and unfortunately the first ones dropped seem to be the Enemy Aircraft your chasing.
8) I'll think of a few things later. I haven't played since 1 Feb, but they haven't patched since then either. So all of the above still applies.
This is just the FM. Don't get me started on the Infantry model, Mystical Ordinance Server(Impossible to High Alt Bomb.), or Strategy layer. I've read numerous times from people that if it wasn't for the squad they would be gone. I've seen squads totally decimated, and Hardly any old timers are left in that game.
If Aces high would decide to model a full ground war in AH2. No matter how cheesy it was done. I believe WWII Online would be finished. Of all the people out there complaining on WWII Online forums. I wonder how many even read the AH manual?
A couple of features that are in AH, that are not in WWII Online.
1) The ability to bail out.
2) The ability to control multiple engine's individually.
3) The ability to rearm without respawning
4) Visible supply convoys, barges, and Trains
5) Damage to bases actually affect supplies, and Vehicles spawned.
6) A Navy! And it can even be controlled.
7) The ability to jump into gunner positions of A/c in flight.
8) Bombers gunners that converge firing as one.
9) Adjustable Fuel, and ammo loadouts.
10) Adjustable Convergence
11) Weekly Senerios
12) Offline Drones to practice on
13) The Combat Theater for longer senerios
14) The Main arena when you just want to blow off some steam.
15) There's more, but I'll stop there.
I played WWII Online since it has been out. I hold 2 inactive accounts to it currently. I believe if all the half finished stuff in WWII Online was finished it would be great. Unfortunately that will probably take them another 2 years or more. Probably about the same time AH3 will be out.
If you love WWII Online great, but please stop trying to pass it off as something better then AH. That's like trying to tell me your half finished kit car Cobra with no body, and no interior. Is better then my fully functional firebird.
Good Luck on WWII Online
S!