AI aircraft not affected by damage?

[Jamesp1]

I've seen several posts about the performance of a AI FW190 not being affected by damage until it's destroyed.

 

Is this still true and if so does this apply to all AI aircraft (including flyable aircraft such as another P-51D)?

Edited October 30, 2014 by Jamesp1
clarification

[chris455]

Hi James,

This may-or may not- answer your question.

The visual damage model of the Fw-190 barely represents actual damage. It may look like swiss chees and still fly as though undamaged. This, coupled with how diificult it can be to score hits on him, may be the reason for the "dinosaur tough" reputation it has in the sim.

I have found that setting up your K14 sight is paramount to obtaining critical hits.

Use a 34' wingspan setting for the Fw. Set your range to 1000" on the range dial. (This is the distance your guns on the P-51 are harmonized at). Fire when his wingtips touch the circle.

By doing this, I can usually bring him down easily with between 60-100 hits (shown by the hit counter displayed at the end of the mission). I have also hit him hard eneough not to down him, but damage him (smoke, Prestone visibly trailing) and it definitely tones down his perormance.

So, to answer your question (I think) the 190s reputation for "not being affected by damage" is, IMHO, false, although I realize it may be hard to believe at times.

Hope this helped-

[OutOnTheOP]

OP is correct; damage appears to have no impact whatsoever on the performance of the COMPUTER CONTROLLED P-51D/ FW190D9.

 

However, once you do a certain amount of damage, they do "give up", cut engine power drastically, and head for the nearest airfield. You can tell when this happens, because they will turn on their lights. That said, it's rare to see this, because the amount of damage they have to take before giving up is very, very close to outright dead- so it's rare that you do barely enough to make them give up, without killing them entirely.

[John C Flett]

This has been something that has driven me nuts for years in sims.

Going back to the early days of EAW and PAW, the graphics etc. were so basic there was no way to tell what damage you'd done so you had nothing to judge until an enemy plane blew up or went down.

 

With Sturmovik I became very much aware that the AI aircraft were not flying by the same rules I was. I can easily understand why it would be so hard to both track all the damage options and have the AI compensate for them. Some games hide it better than others but I think its a problem common to all sims and I think it has always been part of DCS, its just that the increased lethality of modern weapon systems left AI aircraft less likely to survive a hit. I have still seen enemy bombers happily fly home streaming flames more times than I can count.

 

Sadly, as we see more aircraft with quite basic weapons, these and other shortcomings of the AI become more apparent as our fights get closer and more prolonged.

 

It doesn't spoil most of these games for me but if we could see more complex AI and damage models in future DCS updates it would be very welcome, especially if we are going to see more early aircraft.

[Chief1942]

ED is aware.

 

Hi James,

This may-or may not- answer your question.

The visual damage model of the Fw-190 barely represents actual damage. It may look like swiss chees and still fly as though undamaged. This, coupled with how diificult it can be to score hits on him, may be the reason for the "dinosaur tough" reputation it has in the sim.

I have found that setting up your K14 sight is paramount to obtaining critical hits.

Use a 34' wingspan setting for the Fw. Set your range to 1000" on the range dial. (This is the distance your guns on the P-51 are harmonized at). Fire when his wingtips touch the circle.

By doing this, I can usually bring him down easily with between 60-100 hits (shown by the hit counter displayed at the end of the mission). I have also hit him hard eneough not to down him, but damage him (smoke, Prestone visibly trailing) and it definitely tones down his perormance.

So, to answer your question (I think) the 190s reputation for "not being affected by damage" is, IMHO, false, although I realize it may be hard to believe at times.

Hope this helped-

 

 

"I can usually bring him down easily with between 60-100 hits ..." In my military career I was an airframes mechanic and I would tell you that .50 cal AP/API rounds are VERY destructive when passing through an airframe:cry:. In reality it should not take more than half the rounds it takes you to significantly affect the operation and handling of an airframe such as the FW or the Mustang. It's not as if they are hollow everywhere but the cockpit and engine areas and therefore such a round could pass through without striking anything of significance. I know this issue has been beat to death on the forums :music_whistling:so I suspect ED will address it when they are not swamped working on issues more important to the larger user segments:thumbup:.

[kontiuka]

It just seems to be a hit point system with different parts of the aircraft having their own damage boxes. There doesn't seem to be any real system failures modelled like loss of flight control, loss of engine, loss of oil, loss of hydraulics, or even loss of fuel. I'm just guessing here and could be completely wrong.

 

But if these things could be marginally modelled in the AI aircraft, it would go a long way to enhancing the single player experience.

 

Of course, the trade-off would be a performance hit since your computer would have to do more calculations per AI.

Edited November 4, 2014 by kontiuka