You couldn’t steal a kill if the target was already considered destroyed. You could only get an additional assist from such target.
Even the devs admit officially in their article, that the old system was designed to prevent kill stealing. They considered planes destroyed earlier than they wanted (based on guesses) in the previous system.
The new severe damage mechanics allows more kill steals, because planes stay alive longer.
For example, in the old system this was a destruction condition:
Spoiler
Such damage already gave you a full kill credit, with 100% of the kill score, plus 33% for an additional critical hit. If someone else decided to finish this plane, he could only get additional assist (67% of the kill score) plus an additional critical hit (33% of the kill score).
The very same situation in the new severe damage mechanics, which turned a destruction into severe damage:
Spoiler
The person who severely damaged the enemy only receive a partial kill credit (that counts for tasks and challenges) with 80% of the kill score (no additional critical hit). If someone else decide to finish this plane, he receive a full kill credit (that counts for tasks, challenges and for the service records) with 40% of the kill score (no additional critical hit). So from the stats point of view, you can actually kill steal more in the new system. And you get less score and rewards too.
The only condition that was moved from a critical hit to severe damage is engine destruction. I don’t count here horizontal stabilizers, as this condition is a bug in my opinion.
Well the new system added the “finished off” qualifier, where as before causing destruction gave full credit for the kill to whomever delivered the last hit and demoted the one who crippled it to just an assist. Which was the important point they were trying to address.
It’s always about the interpretation. Because for you “just an assist” can mean something else than for me.
What changed between the two systems is that if one person first severely damage (destroy in the old system) the plane and the other person finishes it:
From the tasks and challenges perspective:
in the new system it’s easier to get kills (kill-related tasks), as both players will be credited with a kill.
in the old system it was easier to get assists (assist-related tasks), as one player could get a kill and the other player assist.
From the service records perspective:
in the new system the person who finishes the target gets +1 kill in their service records, the person who severely damaged (caused most damage to the enemy) gets no kill credit in their service records.
in the old system the person who destroyed (severely damaged) the target got +1 kill in their service record, the person who finished it got no kill credit in their service record.
From the score perspective:
in the new system both players can get 80% for severe damage + 40% for finishing, so 120% in total.
in the old system the first player could get 100% for destruction + 33% for additional critical hit, the second player 67% for assist + 33% for additional critical hit, so 233% in total.
From the nameplate color perspective:
in the new system severely damaged plane keeps red nameplate, so sometimes it’s impossible to figure out who is severely damaged and who isn’t.
in the old system destroyed (severely damaged) plane had grey nameplate color, so it was easy to figure out who is severely damaged.
These are pretty much the most important changes between the two systems.
Why the devs changed the system? Because many players stopped shooting severely damaged planes in the old system (they considered planes with grey nameplates as “not dangerous anymore”). And these “dead” planes could still be dangerous. I never considered planes with grey nameplate as “dead” planes, so it wasn’t a problem for me. But I’m not saying the old system was perfect of course. A few times I managed to land and repair, even if I was considered “destroyed” already. It’s pretty much impossible with severe damage mechanics (you only die when you crash, when your pilot is killed or when you lose your tail, so when you have no control over your plane).
Severe damage has nothing to do with “addressing kill stealing”. If anything, it allowed players to kill steal more than in the old system.
Even in the article I quoted a few posts above yours, the devs clearly wrote:
Currently (in the old system) when an enemy aircraft gets destroyed (“Target destroyed”), they can sometimes still fly, shoot, land to repair and have no automatic bail out. The aim of this was to allow you to score a frag and at the same time prevent another player from finishing off the heavily damaged enemy aircraft and steal the frag.
And they changed this old system to a new one, that allows to “steal frags”.
In the “Responding to the Severe Damage feedback & release time” topic, they also explained why they won’t add any marker to severely damaged planes in the new system (previously severely damaged planes had different nameplate color and that was misleading to some players):
We have also read feedback that severely damaged aircraft could have a marker added to signify this to other players. We’d rather not add this because a severely damaged aircraft could still be as dangerous as a regular aircraft. Adding a marker to signify this might be misleading in some cases and we’d like to keep it simple.
They also clearly stated that severe damage mechanics can “slightly” reduce your rewards (we know now it’s exactly 20%, not counting missing critical hits):
In addition to this, if you severely damage an enemy aircraft but did not destroy them (because they flew away for example), you will not receive a destruction but instead a new reward called “Severe damage”. The amount for this reward is slightly less than the reward for a destruction.
Also, their basic summary of this mechanics:
Briefly, the severe damage mechanic simplifies the system for scoring an aircraft destruction and makes it more understandable and transparent: as long as an aircraft can theoretically continue to fight, it’ll not be considered as destroyed.
Do you see anything here about addressing “kill stealing”? They actually wrote that this mechanic was designed to keep planes alive longer. It’s just players who misunderstood the mechanics. It was never designed to fix kill stealing, what most players think (probably because most players actually didn’t read official articles about the mechanics).
If you still interested, i posted X-rays. How do you feel about it? Would you still say this is “tiss but a scratch”?
This looks like severe damage to me. If he manages to RTB somehow like this and land, alright, but i feel like i’m entitled to 80% of my reward after battering something to that extent.
I know it’s not a fighter, but selling point of “Severe damage” was “a plane that get’s crippled but still hangs in air” or something worded along side that.
It’s one thing that after 1st pass he somehow still have his wingtip (like… -_- aha)
But after 2nd pass when he loses (they all black) his tail steering controls AND one engine (2 crew members), and i don’t get severe damage for this and get assist later??
Like what else there is to break? His other remaining engine + pilot + one gunner that is already red?
Hence why the tittle “severe damage system not working”
The old system was bad, but if you’re going to replace a lot of assists with severe damage they also need to adjust the daily tasks because they keep getting increased in difficulty and it’s beyond obnoxious.
Like I said, the system is working as designed. It was designed to work this way, old kill conditions became severe damage.
You can read all severe damage conditions in one of the official articles:
Severe damage to a plane is considered to be: destruction of all engines (or destroying one engine if there is only one left), destruction of all elements of the control system (or the remaining controls left), which makes impossible to control the ailerons, elevators and rudders, separation of more than half of at least one wing, and destruction of all horizontal stabilizers (or the remainder of the horizontal stab).
Horizontal stabilizers on this list seems to be a bug (destruction of this part doesn’t affect flight performance, so it’s a nonsense to have it on that list).
You basically want severe damage to work differently. You can always make a suggestion about this, but if I were you, I wouldn’t count on anything.
The severe damage mechanics is working pretty much how the devs wanted it to work.
Horizontal stabilizers most certainly do affect flight performance - they counter nose-up or nose-down moment from the lift-weight/thrust-drag formula.
These forces almost always are not operating through a single point, so have a resultant moment - the horizontal stabilizer counters this residual moment - normally for an empty weight situation.
Trim tabs then counter any additional moment from loading and loading changes (fuel use, bombs dropped, cargo/pax loadings, etc).
However without the fixed portion of the horizontal stabilizer the remaining trimmable elements may well lack sufficient authority to maintain level flight.
In the new system that is severe damage (so I would be killed at the end of the battle due to the “written off” mechanics). But this damage doesn’t change anything for me. I still managed to get 9 kills and 4 assist after that. Do you see any performance issues with how my plane behaves after this damage was done? If not, how can this even be considered severe damage in the game?
Ok, so let’s quote all severe damage conditions again:
Severe damage to a plane is considered to be: destruction of all engines (or destroying one engine if there is only one left), destruction of all elements of the control system (or the remaining controls left), which makes impossible to control the ailerons, elevators and rudders, separation of more than half of at least one wing, and destruction of all horizontal stabilizers (or the remainder of the horizontal stab).
The black part is destroyed part. This is different than separation (they talk about separation with the wing damage).
So maybe “destruction of all horizontal stabilizers” should be “separation of all horizontal stabilizers”, then it would make sense. But with how the system works right now, it simply doesn’t make sense to consider black horizontal stabilizers as severe damage. That’s why for me it’s a clear bug and it will almost surely be fixed in the future.
I can confirm the visuals do not match the actual impact. I have lost my rudder before and could still use rudder forces (to a lesser degree).
Ironically I’ve also lost my wing EXACTLY as this Israeli Chad did but could not reproduce this… even with full afterburner but it just keeps putting me into a flat spin.
Also it’s not just CAS that is “too survivable” that’s just aircraft in general. Also most people complaining of hits generally only hit the aircraft once and that’s it. So it’s not going to be a insta kill with one shot. Also gotta think about if it’s just an AP round or HE filler round or even a incendiary round. But again that’s for aircraft in general. 🙂
Fair enough - it does depend on the aircraft tho - the amount of authority conferred by hte horizontal stabilizers varies with a/c, and as KK pointed out black is not necessarily shot off - although shot off is always black!!
In that illustration I note that he elevators are undamaged, which suggests the stabilizers themselves are not shot off… or there wouldn’t be elevators either!!
:)
and are you saying that… you think they Should take more damage from shots, or… that they are good like this and… meant to take this damage and have basically no issues with their aircraft…?
Yeah, you are correct. That’s why this whole horizontal stabilizers condition doesn’t make sense and should be removed from severe damage mechanics conditions. Because destroying both elevators is already considered severe damage. And separated horizontal stabilizers automatically means destroyed elevators.
I suspect this condition is one of these bugs the devs mentioned here:
It looks like they didn’t fix all light damage issues, they forgot about destroyed (black) horizontal stabilizers. Even if there is some very small effect on the flight performance (I never noticed that, but I don’t see the game code, so I won’t argue about that), it’s so small it definitely shouldn’t be considered severe damage.
PS. It’s a shame they decided to list severe damage conditions in one sentence. I wish they used detailed list here. Because this part can be understood in a few different ways:
destruction of all elements of the control system (or the remaining controls left), which makes impossible to control the ailerons, elevators and rudders
I understand this part like three separate severe damage conditions:
destruction of all ailerons,
destruction or all elevators,
destruction of all rudders.
In my experience, it looks like the severe damage mechanics works this way in the game. It also makes sense, as all these conditions are serious damage that affects the flight performance in a huge way.
I think they wrote it this way, because you can also destroy control cables in the game. And this is also counted as severe damage (it leads to the inability to control the mentioned elements).
