The rest of your post is from my pov a mixed bag as i don’t see any realism in wt Air RB - except size, shape and skins of aircraft.
I mean if i see P-51 Cs turning with 109s…the US boys had 3 hours to fly to a battle and had to carry 3 hours of fuel to get back home - you might get my point. Same as this mouse aim nonsense in Air RB…but this is a topic for another thread…
Have a good one!
PS: My most flown aircraft has around 58 minutes min fuel :-)
I do get what you mean, though at least in RB you have your airfields fairly close, so there is no need to cross such distances. No aircraft operating from frontlines like that has a need to take those additional 3h of fuel. Sure, the setup of RB is inherently unrealistic, but with that setup given, excessive fuel loads become unrealistic in those battles.
But then again this really does seem more like an RB issue than anything else. In SB the range can be quite a bit more useful with longer lasting fights on larger maps, so I doubt many would go the more excessively low fuel loads anyways.
I rarely see myself selecting anything under 25min to maybe 20min at times anyways even if it’s available in RB, more often than not taking a bit more, so I don’t really need the change myself, but it is still nice to have the option available and maybe use it for testing aircraft in customs.
Having an option to set minimum selectable percentage down in customs would already be enough for me, while in actual battles anything lower than the limit can just be automatically set to whatever limit is chosen for balance if necessary.
You too, always nice to have respectful disagreements! Those are too rare these days
Whatever the minimum fuel load it should be the same for that class of aircraft across all nations. As of now, many Russian fighters can take a much lower amount of fuel than other countries fighters like USA and germany.
Its arbitrary decision making like this that begs to question how the gameplay mechanics decisions are actually made at gaijin.
@percussionCap, I edited my above post to better explain how the “fuel slider” is a bit of a placebo. Its better than the arbitrary amounts they had before but the fuel effect from weight is still the exact same in abrupt sudden drop offs instead of a granular / gradual decrease in weight on the aircraft. I hope that makes sense.
It’s like no weight reduction from 30 -15 minutes but at 14:59 you get the accumulated effect all at once from that fuel weight being used
Proof of the sudden accumulated effect all at once? I’m not sure what classifies as proof, but here is some data so you can decide if that’s “proof”. One of the said aircraft that has an accumulated effect all at once is the F6F-5. As I stated above, take a 30 min fuel load and test your turn speed in a flat turn where contrails appear. You will notice contrails appear at 330kph ias all the way from 30min - 15min.
At exactly 14:59min of fuel remaining your airspeed where contrails appear drops to 320kph ias. Within the time frame of 1 second the F6F-5, at this fuel level, becomes much more maneuverable.
Another different example of how the fuel slider isn’t really as granular in action as it seems is the acceleration/climb rate. Let’s look at the bf 109 F-4 for this example and climb rate at 100% throttle on berlin map to 1000m, realistic controls and AEC.
You can see below it has the same sudden jump in climb performance at a specific fuel amount just like the F6F-5 did in flight performance.
Fuel - Time to 1000m
20-25min - 1:13
30-35min - 1:14
40-45min - 1:16
50-55min - 1:18
In the particular case of bf 109 F-4, fuel loads of 30-15min had the same airspeed where contrails appeared at 370kph ias indicating there is minimal, if any, turning ability improvement like the F6F-5.
This makes taking a fuel load lower than 25min questionable at best since there is no visible benefit.
FYI, gaijin screwed around with the contrails in the game to where they appear approx 40kph sooner than they did before for all aircraft
So, let me know your findings. I’ve seen variations of the scenarios above and almost every single plane falls into a combination of F6F-5 and bf109 f-4 characteristics outlined above. Let me know if you have any questions or if something is unclear.
I was thinking of seeing how high I could get an aircraft up to. That’s a metric that is VERY affected by weight. Climb rate is affected too, but there’s a lot more ways to induce variables.
How high you can get an aircraft up to? I wouldn’t say that fuel is the metric but the instead the Altitude where Horse power drops off is the single biggest factor. Climbing past that number by 500M severely affects just about every plane in the game more than anything in that regard. here is an example of some common aircraft and that effect.
That’s true, however if you want to reach a plane’s max altitude you’re gonna have to burn off some fuel (and weight) before reaching it. If there is no difference between the altitude I can achieve at say 30:00m and 15:01m, then I’ll know this is verifiable.
If I do this in test flight I know 100% that fuel weight is linear because localhost tells me such, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Also something that ocurred to me - maybe that is only a factor on much older planes, and ones introduced more recently into the game aren’t affected.
Is there a reason why you want to operate at max altitude? Your plane will be operating like garbage regardless of fuel load.
I can’t say how the planes will behave at max altitude with specific fuel loads since I never tested it. But the effects I stated above are tested and verified.
at any rate I wish you luck in your tests and in their purpose
I’m aware of this, but the altitude a given aircraft can reach is very dependent on its weight. So the weight loss of nearly 15 minutes of fuel should have some effect and increase the max altitude reachable (if I’m right).
Ah, I see now. You’re looking for confirmation through a second data point. fyi, you may or may not find an effect at high altitude. It won’t mean there isn’t an effect where I previously mentioned in climb/turning ability examples.
the flight models in this game have a long history of having broken elements. Don’t be surprised that fuel load weight doesn’t affect max altitude or if it does. Just go into the test looking for any and all variations. You’d be surprised how many times I discovered game mechanics that I wasn’t even looking for because I was testing something else.
Btw, air temperature does not change with altitude. Here is a link to the game mechanics that I know of:
I know it does because I’ve experienced it before while seeing how high I could get an aircraft - for example, the Ki-43-1 goes well past its statcard max altitude of 9000m, but I had to get rid of almost all its fuel for that. So I know fuel affects weight.
The statcards don’t mean anything and are notoriously wrong. Also, what affects one plane might not affect another. How long have you been playing the game, if you don’t mind me asking?
be careful with altitude, mixture might be factor. its really simple to rule out by doing an adjustment to it, the plane will either change in sound and performance or wont, its very binary. its not very common. Also check your prop pitch, sometimes the AEC will leave it at a less desirable, usually lower prop pitch % than would be ideal at higher altitudes, a lot of spit fires do this. also check your radiator settings, they can be open more than they should be, many radiators are set incorrectly
