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

Yeah maybe if you relied solely on killstealing.

Now the 80% of the whole reward goes to the person dealing the severe damage.

That person can then either break off the engagement, or finish the enemy off for remaning 20%, earning the whole 100% of the reward.

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Please check my post here:

You can also read this whole topic, if you are interested in the new severe damage mechanics details. It works completely different than most players think.

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No, in your overall track record just the guy finishing the plane gets the kill.
The kill is counted twice within the single match with an 80/20 reward split.

No, most if not all of the damage you inflicted in the old world would have resulted in a kill, the current system just robs you 20% of your previous rewards.

Just for this specific match and for daily & special tasks, not for your service record.

No, the new mechanic encourages kill stealing as instant kills are reduced to pilot snipes, cutting the tail off or killing all engines (engine kills just count as kills at the end of the match).

Which was usually an instant kill in the past, so you lose effectively 20%.

As stated above - especially in props it became harder to score instant kills of more “tanky” aircraft - the whole mechanic is an income nerf.

As stated in the linked thread - perfect marketing of gaijin. A new mechanic which provides an overall income nerf (doesn’t matter if intended or not) and reduction of mission score (=challenge relevant) is welcomed by players just as gaijin added multiple layers of complexity…

Have a good one!

Imho there are a lot of highly questionable game mechanics in Air RB which are only visible for long term players, the only difference is that everything kill related simply gets more attention (and is much easier to reproduce).

So far we see at least these negative aspects of the new mechanic:

  1. Clean kills in the past are now severe damages - you lose 20% of your reward if somebody else finishes your victim.
  2. Killing enemies saw a reduction of the mission score from ~ 650 points to now 500 points.
  3. The significant reduction of critical hits led to a loss of 150 points for crits which were in the past added to the kill score. Ofc, you won’t get SL/RP rewards for missing crits.
  4. If the game ends and your plane is severely damaged, you are declared as dead, you lose your plane, pay repair cost and you got a plane loss added to your service record, even if you are still airworthy. The player rewarded with such a kill won’t get the missing 20% of his rewards and this “kill” is not counted for his service record.

Edit: Corrected as some values were based on wrong observations.

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Destroying all engines is severe damage condition. Only tearing off the tail and pilot snipes are instant kill conditions in the new system.

PS: I wanted to PM you about this, but your profile is locked, so I couldn’t.

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Thx for info, i was not precise enough - i clarified this :-)

I’m not sure about this to be honest. As you know I normally don’t play Realistic, but about a year ago I played a few battles and I’m pretty sure I saw 600 score for a clean kill there (which fits 450 kill score + 150 critical hit score). I checked my old Air Realistic battles, but couldn’t find any battle where I opened the scoreboard after a clean kill, so I can’t confirm this.

I also found this post, from December 2023, where someone else wrote:

This confirms what I remember.

I don’t think other values are set individually, they are almost surely based on the kill score. So the devs only change one value when needed, and the rest is adjusted automatically, like that:

Assist is 2/3 of the kill score, so 450 * 2 / 3 = 300.
Critical hit is 1/3 of the kill score, so 450 / 3 = 150.

I also found a change log from 2021, where they changed Sim scores to match Realistic values (that’s my assumption):

  • Base (at zero BR difference) mission score awarded for enemy destruction has been increased: 360 → 450
  • Base (at zero BR difference) mission score awarded for assisting in enemy destruction has been increased: 240 → 300
  • Base (at zero BR difference) mission score awarded for critical enemy damage has been increased: 120 → 150

You can see the same 2/3 and 1/3 correlation here with old values. Keep in mind this specific correlation only works for Air modes.

I can’t find any other reliable sources about this, and keep in mind back in the days we didn’t have the score details. You only saw a total score (all eventual hits + critical hits + kill score added together). Before 2021 score changes, we also had proximity score and visibility score added on top of these to the total score, so it was much harder to figure everything out.

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Not true, what qualifies as a kill has stayed unchanged, the severe damages all come from what was previously critical hits

Also untrue

Complete BS.

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This was explained like a million times already in this topic:

You can also read the first official article, which explains what’s the core of the new severe damage mechanics:

If an aircraft is damaged to the extent where it would have been counted as being destroyed previously (…), this new mechanic will count it as severely damaged.

Link to the full article (I really recommend you to read the severe damage part in this article carefully):

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I checked an old recorded replay. For me it looks like following:

  1. I killed in this recorded replay 3 XP-50s in a row (by turnfighting them with my SM 92). I scored 625 points for the fist kill, 675 points for the second and 675 points for the last kill. That was a mission score of 1.975 points for just 3 kills = ~ 650 points on average.

  2. All kills had a crit in it with a score of 175 points. My last kill crashed and i scored actually 450 for this kill after several hits and a crit.

  3. So it looks like you are right regarding the unchanged base score of 450 points for a kill and 150 points for a crit and my observations were incorrect as my 2 center mounted 20 mm cannons managed to hit my enemies always at the same time. So i got always an additional score simultaneously leading to incorrect conclusions.

At the end of the day I have to admit i was wrong about the actual score.

I change my posts asap - but at the end of the day the result (=reduction of mission score) remains unchanged - so when i now have on average a mission score of ~ 500 points and in the past ~ 650 points we have a rather strong reduction.

Thx for pointing this out!

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I’m surprised not that many Realistic players noticed reduction of the score (which comes from missing critical hits). I mean, 150 score less is quite a lot, even in Air Realistic. But somehow it’s mostly Air Arcade players who noticed this reduction (even if a kill in this mode is only worth 180 score, assist 120 and critical hit 60).

When I read your post, I had that impression you forgot about regular hits. Because it wasn’t that easy to get a clean kill (which means just a critical hit + instant kill). It was usually at least one hit + critical hit + instant kill, which made the score higher. Especially in times, when we couldn’t check the score details.

No problem. I actually wanted to PM you about this as well, but I can’t ;).

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I’m pretty sure that the old system would count a bf109g6 whose both wings were gone as a dead bf109. yet the new system decided that he is “severe damage”. This happened today

what? I mean if I severe damage an enemy and someone else finished him, and the system give him the kill, that would be devastating.

If I severe damage an enemy and break off, then some brainless toxic decide to shoot all his rounds at that already dead aircraft— and I lose that kill— what could possibly be worse?

does the kill count in my service record?

Simply continue to engage the enemy if his name is still red and you want to confirm your kill.

Under the scenario you described, ie. you break off but the enemy is still flying, albeit massively crippled, and someone rushes in to steal your kill, you would get only assist. which would be worth less RP and SL.

This system upgrades your rewards overall.

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Flat wrong #1- as soon you score a severe damage you get rewarded with 80% of the SL/RP - and a mission score of 360. If this kill gets stolen, you get 1 kill for this match (but not for your service record).

The thief gets 40% of the SL/RP reward, a kill for this match and a kill for his service record. Assists come only after hits and critical hits.

Flat wrong #2 - if a severe damage today was a clean kill in the past and someone else finishes this guy, you lost 20% of your rewards and the kill for the service record.

Reading might help:

https://forum.warthunder.com/t/severe-damage-did-nothing-to-fix-kill-stealing/84776

No idea why you feel the need to spread fact-free opinions.

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Cool beans.

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No, you can read this - or test it by yourself:

https://forum.warthunder.com/t/severe-damage-did-nothing-to-fix-kill-stealing/84776/36

Reading is a difficult skill nowadays. Most people just ignore messages longer than one or two sentences.

If you destroyed more than half of the enemy wing:

  • In the old system you got a full kill credit with 100% score and rewards. If someone else decided to finish this plane, he would receive an assist (that counts for tasks and challenges) with additional 67% of the kill score, but no kill credit.

  • In the new system you get severe damage with 80% of the score and rewards and partial kill credit (that is visible on the scoreboard, post-battle screen and counts for tasks, challenges and camo progress). If someone else decide to finish this plane, he gets 40% of the kill score and rewards with full kill credit (that also counts for service records).

If you care about your service records and the remaining 20% of the score and rewards, in the new system you have to waste more time and ammo to finish the target (that would already be dead in the old system). If you won’t do that, then you can lose service record kill and 20% of score and rewards, if someone else decide to finish this target.
But there are only two ways to finish the target in the new system, tearing off the tail and sniping the pilot. Any other damage won’t finish the plane. So you can literally waste all your ammo and that guy can still be alive!

I personally don’t shoot at severely damaged planes, in my opinion it’s just a waste of time and ammo (even if I can lose that remaining 20%, I don’t really care that much about service records).

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