I open this little Topic to talk about the severe damage mechanic, no I will not call it the worst invention of mankind because it isn’t. This scenario happened to me and probably you:
You set on fire an enemy, both of you are at low alt so it’s probably doomed to have it’s wings snap off since it couldn’t possibly kill the fire, you decide to disengage to both conserve ammo and search for another rival.
Bad news
your ally decided to engage the burning future wreck, Surely the game must recognize that it’s only finishing it off and still credit you a kill?, instead the game gives full credit to your ally and you get stuck with an assist.
Why?
setting fire a plane only counts as a crit; same with vertical stabilizers, you know, the control surface that basically lets you aim decently accurately?.
I’ve decided to make a little poll about what should count as “severe damage”, feel free to vote.
Severe damage should include: wing roots, engines, …
Elevators: Very difficult to compensate for, almost guaranteed death. Include elevator cables in this. Some planes can survive with help of flaps and power adjustments but… that’s a excellent demonstration of skill.
Horizontal Stabs: If REMOVED/DESTROYED. If just blackened, no severe. This is important as if it’s just blackened it’s very easy to keep flying the plane even without instructor or autotrim, it just weakens turn performance.
Veritcal Stabs: Same as horizontal, altho severe damage even without removal can lead to an irrecoverable death without instructor (adverse yaw gets out of hand and you slip/skid roll while in a turn).
Rudder: Can be survived if you’re flying level and straight. Shooting rudder off is guaranteed death while maneuvering due to slip/skid and consequent stall and the necessity of rudder to recover from spins.
Wing tips: Can be survived, but it will put you into a spin. You MIGHT recover with high competency, but so can you from a dead engine. Fighting with wing tip gone is not gonna happen without instructor & autotrim.
Engines, wing roots: as currently, no need to justify.
Fuel fires/gunners/cooling: I wouldn’t give these severe. A fire I’d make “priority” for kill credit (if you shoot a plane on fire, and it’s not your fire - credit it as if Severe damage but only if they die. Basically, soft severe damage without leaderboard changes.) Cooling is easily survivable if you ditch the fight and manage your RPM properly with how close runways are so doesnt deserve severe imo. Gunners dont deserve it at all.
Pilot Injury: I’d rather pilot injury lead to significantly reduced G tolerance and stamina than partial credit.
Ailerons: Quite easy to compensate even if you lose both using proverse roll from the rudder and engine torque. Does disable combat capability, but does not require significant skill to survive even without instructor and autotrim. Does not qualify as severe damage imo - comparable to “blackened” horizontal stabilizer. Not needed to offset spin either, so it won’t doom you if you do get into a spin.
I think we need more modules and new damage models, especially for modern jets. tanking a missile shouldn’t be possible.
Older props I think elevators are fair, but I believe it’s already implemented that way.
This was a thing, and it was almost universally hated.
Imagine your pilot takes a papercut, is marked very slightly yellow by the game and suddenly a 5.5 ton invisible elephant is sitting on your control surfaces. That’s literally how it would go.
It’d only get worse as damage increased. If your pilot was somehow made orange? You just outright lost total control of the aircraft. It was basically the same as getting pilot sniped, except the game would let you watch your plane crash from the cockpit instead of kicking you back to hangar.
Sounds rough but… maybe it’s a balancing thing. Though I doubt it would matter much. Yellow pilots might still be 80% capable, so it’s only a minor inconvenience, but orange pilots are more like 60% capable. Orange seems like heavy damage to pilots (shot and bleeding, extreme pain maybe) and I rarely see it. Either sniped or wing taken apart by cannons mostly.
This could work very well but quite niche. (Not as niche as naval) I agree, it needs to be re-calibrated if it is going to work well, but judging from my expectations above… It’s either a minor inconvenience or something that rarely happens. That might make it annoying and not worth implementing.