Is it true that I severe damage an aircraft and it won't count as a kill?

I am worried about people stealing my kill, ok?
I usually fly Soviet props so I don’t have adequate ammo to finish severe damage aircraft, as long as I still want to score 4 kills in one single flight

now this sucks. How the fxxk do I severe damage someone but not get the kill counted in my service record? Fxxk gaijin

yeah. simply to waste all my ammo to kill the pilot or tear the tail off. I would be so glad to confirm the kill, even though I have only 240 rounds in my Yak-3U.
U R talking BS. Do you really play ARB prop fighters?

Fire doesn’t guarantee you severe damage in the new system. They actually didn’t change how fire works in both systems.

In one of my old battles (old system), I hit the engine of the enemy and caused a fire (that instantly “destroyed” the enemy plane):

Spoiler

That fire “destroyed” the plane, but you can still see that plane is overall “fine” (I mean the pilot is alive, he can still steer and destroy me):

Spoiler

In the new system this “destruction” would be turned into “severe damage” and that guy would still have red nameplate.

But not every fire works this way. Sometimes fires don’t cause any real damage, so they aren’t counted as severe damage or destruction. Fires are pretty much random.

And this is exactly why they changed systems. In the above example, that guy who is already “destroyed”, can still fly and even kill other players. Most players just refused to accept that planes with grey nameplates can still be dangerous. So the devs changed the system to keep the red nameplate for longer (so players can’t complain that “dead” plane killed them).

For me it would make more sense to just change grey nameplate to e.g. orange nameplate, to indicate this plane is still dangerous. But I guess it wouldn’t change much, as people would still complain that the plane with orange nameplate just killed them.

From this perspective, the new system fixed the “problem” of dead planes, that aren’t really dead yet.

EDIT: I completely forgot about Ground Realistic. I don’t play there, but from what I understand, planes in this game mode don’t have nameplates at all. It surely was confusing to see “Aircraft destroyed” message (most players probably stopped firing after this message), but sometimes that aircraft wasn’t fully destroyed yet. Ground Realistic is probably the main reason why the devs introduced the new system and kept planes alive for longer.

1 Like

fair. But now when i make an engine fire, I feel like i can freely engage other aircraft without having to worry about only getting an assist from half my team swarming a clearly dead aircraft. They still swarm it but now i get more score.

They could have the nameplate removed from dead planes and have the grey be the severely damaged ones.

It started from helis. They would get hit in the engine or something to cause a “death” but they still had a good 10ish seconds before they would spin out of control. Players would get the “kill” then ignore the heli which then proceeded to kill a tank or 2 before actually dying.

2 Likes

This is a bit more complex situation, and your feeling is correct. But that’s not because of the fire itself, but because of the engine damage.

When the devs presented the severe damage system for the first time in late 2023, on our forum players mostly didn’t understand how the system will work (which is probably because of English-speaking content creators, who didn’t understand the new system, but still made videos about it), so almost everyone here was very happy about the new system (apart from a few people, who actually read the article).

But the situation was completely different on the Russian forum. People there actually understood the new system and complained about it quite a lot. Mostly because they realised you will need more ammo and time to finish a plane that would already be “dead” before.

Because of this, the devs moved direct engine damage from previous critical hit condition to severe damage condition. I don’t want to get into details too much about this, because everything is already explained in the severe damage official topic on this forum (it was linked a few times in this topic already).

So to calm players a bit, the devs moved direct engine damage to severe damage mechanics. It’s in fact possible that previous assist from direct engine damage in the new system will give you severe damage instead, so you can call it an upgrade.

This hugely depends how you play the game though. If you do many head-ons and use mostly AP bullets in your belt, this can help you to get more severe damage than before.

I actually analyzed one of my old battles to figure out if I would gain or lose with this system, and the results are pretty interesting:

I would potentially lose much more in this new system. But this whole change doesn’t sound that bad yet (especially most severe damage turns into destruction not long later anyway).

The main problem is, the devs are always weird, and at the same time they removed critical hits from severe damage system. They never mentioned this anywhere, we still don’t have any official info about this situation.

In the old system the critical hit was attached to the destruction. So for example, if you destroyed most of the enemy wing, you received a critical hit (for wing destruction) and a plane destruction. In most situations the number of critical hits in the battle was equal (or very similar) to number of kills + assists.

Critical hit is worth 33% of the kill score. So in the old system destroying the wing was worth 133% (100% + 33%) of the kill score.

In the new system all these additional critical hits are gone. So destruction (100%) was turned into severe damage (80%), and additional critical hit (33%) was removed completely. Finishing the target also don’t give you that additional critical hit. In the new system every severe damage or direct kill makes you lose that 33%. This is the real reason why the global score was reduced quite significantly in the new system. That’s the main thing I don’t like about the new system. I would love to see these critical hits back, but I doubt they will return.

BTW: In Ground modes, direct ground kills still have critical hits attached to them. So we have this weird situation now, where two modes work differently in this aspect. Maybe the devs will remove critical hits from direct kills in Ground mode too in the future, I don’t know. I don’t like it, I don’t think removing additional score and rewards from players was a good move. Especially they did this silently and most players didn’t even notice that change.

2 Likes

I wasn’t aware of the reduced rewards due to the severely damaged system. It’s different but somewhat reminiscent of the situation in CS: Source where complaints about high ping led to developers artificially reducing the displayed ping without actual server-side improvements.

With the severe damage system, some players might experience a sense of gratification as it gives the impression of receiving kill updates that might not have been obtained otherwise. Personally, I’ve felt this false gratification too. However, your insights in this reply feel like you’ve just given me a sort of wake-up red-pill to the flaws of the current system and reduced potential reward distribution.

Hopefully, the devs continue to improve upon the system and find a way to scale the reward distribution more appropriately to the exponential increase of total RP required to reach top tier.

2 Likes

again: “sever damage” means “kill” before the rework. Every time you see “severe damage”, it means the system is awarding you 80% of the score instead of 100% as before.

People can still steal your critical damaged plane (and you need to pay even more attention because if they do a severe damage after your critical damage and then you kill your own target, you only get 20% of the score instead of the 50% of the assist) just like before and on top of that they can also steal 20% of the score “after the kill”.

So, no: you’re not getting any more score than before. You’re just loosing some of it in EVERY situation. AT MOST, you can get the same score as before. They just added the possibility to steal 20% of the score on some kills.

1 Like

Nope. An engine fire used to be a crit, not a kill. Putting an enemy into a flat spin was a crit, not a kill.

Engine fire IS NOT a severe damage even now. Poul already exaplained that to you.

IF the fire lasts long enough, then it can cause a severe damage. In the old system you were assigned a “plane burnt down” kill (for 100% of the score) instead of the severe damage. The new system actually INCREASE the chance of kill stealing.

1 Like

It has counted as severe damage every time i have done it. The old system would give a crit and then an assist once a teammate took the kill before they burnt down.

dude, it’s not an opinion: as also other people told you before, fire mechanic did not change. If it was a crit before, it is a crit now. If it was a kill before, now it is a sever damage and people can still steal you 20% of the score. Believe it or not.

All i know is that i catch a plane on fire and the “severe damage” text appears.

Even some minor damage is labeled as severe. I had a missile barely touch a plane and cause no major flight perfomance damage yet still got severe damage.

“All you know” is clearly biased then.

And for no reason at all, as you’re the one of the many pleople getting less score than before.

And? My experience has been better so why would I complain?

I usually play where I put an enemy in a “certain death” situation then disengage. This would be where I start an engine fire or death spiral. Before, this would be an assist as an ally would get the kill. Now, I get the finished off status which is better than an assist.

engine fire is not severe damage.

Well, I really don’t want to ruin your experience, but for reasons I can’t understand, you’re just ignoring the facts you don’t like and you’re happy about being penalized.

For the third time: if you now get “finished off” now, that was a direct kill before. Please, look at this table:

EVENT Pilot(s) kill or tail cut Any other completely crippling damage (eg: both wing cut) Any other crippling damage Any other damage
BEFORE Kill (no tag) (100%) Kill (dark red tag) (100%) Critical hit Hit
NOW Kill (no tag) (100%) Severe damage (normal red tag) (80%) Critical hit Hit
2 Likes

Fire works how it used to work before. It’s not the fact there is a fire that gives severe damage. But a fire can damage parts of the plane, which can cause severe damage (or destruction in the old system).

For example, the battle I had today. Just please don’t offend me for stealing that kill. I couldn’t know if this guy is severely damaged or not yet, because of the new system. In the old system I would know that thanks to the nameplate color. But in the new system the nameplate is always red, so I can’t recognize severely damaged planes:

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/SqhFbtbAkug

Check the guy on the right, the P-40E. My teammate attacked him and caused a fire. I attacked this guy later and got severe damage and he crashed some time later and gave me a full kill credit (it’s funny that my teammates kept shooting this guy, but to finish him they would have to kill his pilot or tear off his tail, and it’s not easy with bad guns, so they failed).

You can see this kind of situations often, when you play propellers. I can understand why it’s much harder to spot this in jets, when you use big guns and missiles (that cause explosion).

It’s still not severe damage condition. Nothing changed in this matter:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMX8o1V3DQQ

How it works is that if you destroy less than half of the enemy wing, you receive a critical hit (in old and new system) that will give you an assist if someone else finish this target. If you destroy more than half of the enemy wing, you receive severe damage in the new system and a destruction in the old system.

1 Like

Table is not 100% accurate. Just today, i had a missile hardly touch a plane and cause severe damage. At most, he lost landing gear or maybe a flap.

Table is 100% accurate, no matter what you believe. What is “severe damage” now, it was “kill and dark red nameplate” before. This is the very reason why they added this “severe damage” mechanic.