"Severe damage" still need reworks

Game Discussion General Discussion
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As a result of last year’s Steam review bombing, “severe damage” was implemented in the game to fix the longstanding problem of “kill stealing".

Before it was implemented, if you put your enemy in a death spiral (burning + flat spinning and something else) or destroyed the tail control and he let falling to the ground, but your greedy teammate finnished him before crashing, it would never count as a kill for you. So if you stole someones kill, your teammates would often complain or in some cases teamkilled you.

The “severe damage” is literally designed so that if you damage an enemy in a way that makes it hard for him to continue flying, you get a near full kill reward and if that enemy crashed to the ground, you get the full reward. However, if your teammate finished him before the enemy crashed to the ground, you won’t gets full rewards and your teammates earns small rewards.

The implementation of this in itself is not bad and actually works as a means of fixing a longstanding problem. However, currently, it still need some reworkds because, you must do such damage to the enemy in order to get a full kill reward without getting “severe damage”.

  • Pilot kill
  • Ripping fuselage
  • Plane explosion by fuel tank damages or hit to bombs
  • Lost tail control + horizontal stabilizer (but it works pretty inconsistent for somehow)

That’s mean, there are often you do damage to the enemy that would obviously result in a full kill, but the game counted as “severe damage” or just “critical hit” and your teammates finished him before enemy bailed out, so you don’t get the full reward. Also, in some cases, it is even counted as a “critical hit” when it should be severe damage.

  1. Engine fire + lost horizontal stabilizers but doesn’t count as full kill
    https://youtu.be/-xNGX2I3WZ4

  2. Engine fire + lost tail sections but, doesn’t count as full kill
    https://youtu.be/oxoqgc4aMkk?si=5XdyQ2qUjm4WZz_e

  3. Ripped both wings + engine fire but, doesn’t count as full kill and, enemy team finished him as TK
    https://youtu.be/zITHt0CArmw?si=tkHS9aHyMDEDe0h7

  4. Engine fire + lost tail control and something else but, doesn’t count as severe damage
    https://youtu.be/ryBpaFjkIlw?si=qOcbKyqXPQ7Xb8jh

The main point is that even though they are indeed suffering “severe damage”, does he really still pose a threat and deserve to be rewarded if your teammates finished him? Even with the complete loss of one wing of an aircraft, it is almost impossible to do RTB, except for aircraft with insane damage models like the F-86, and in most cases, if it were a complete loss, they should fall to the ground.

In other words, at least in the above example, they should not be counted as “severe damage”, they should all be counted as full kills.

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If you don’t want to see this wall text, this video explains it far better than I could.

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This is the key word. One cannot program absolute values for “obviously”.

Regardless, a kill is finishing off a target, that’s the gold standard definition across video games for decades. Severe Damage is effectively Battlefield’s excellent “Assist Counts As Kill” system, to ensure you get a large-but-not-full reward for doing “most of the work”.

Remember, “almost” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

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IMO, all assists should be counted as a kill regardless, that will solve the problem.

Severe damage also removes the kill count in player stats for both damage dealer and finisher, this often pisses me off.

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T-tails (MiG-15/MiG-17, F9F, F-104, etc.) should count as full kills when they lose their tail section, as they are literally impossible to control except roll but, it doesn’t count in the game.

Also, an Aircraft that has completely or half lost its wings should be counted as killed, but for somehow this is not the case in the game.

They need to rework the critical hit/severe damage/kill count at this point.

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IMO that’s questionable because there are several damages that cannot be counted as kills such as black fuselage, black half of tail etc.

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That sounds like a bug/oversight, as complete destruction of the elevator(s) (and/or its control cables) is supposed to count as Critical Damage. Probably worth reporting these where encountered.

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Understand that any lucid player knows what you’re talking about and we know it’s true, but Gaijin doesn’t want to do anything we ask because they make money selling the problem. I’ve lost hope of communicating with Gaijin about any issue. I know that year after year the game gets worse, and whenever we think something is bad, Gaijin always manages to make a worse decision. So, I’m enjoying the game while it’s still alive. I know its expiration date is getting closer every day. Play with what you like, play with who you like, and don’t spend more money because that’s all Gaijin cares about. They want you to be frustrated, irritated, and then they want you to buy something thinking it will solve your problem. But do you know what happens in the end? You’re never happy because it always gets worse.

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At least, that is not a problem with the MiG-15/MiG-17, but the F9F and F-104 seem to have that problem.

I know that’s old clip but, That should not have been changed yet.

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The severe damage mechanics wasn’t implemented to “fix kill stealing”. It was introduced because in the previous system destroyed planes could still be dangerous and many players complained about this. So the devs decided to delay the destruction of planes with the 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. No destruction or death will be credited until the severely damaged aircraft is further finished off.
[RoadMap][Development] Following the Roadmap: We’d like to hear your feedback on our proposed Aircraft Destruction Mechanics & Night Battles design - News - War Thunder

If you want to learn more about the severe damage mechanics, read this topic:

I know it’s huge, over 400 posts, but you will find everything you want to know about the severe damage mechanics in this topic.

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That could be fixed by bringing the fuel tank explosion back to the same level as in 2017-2019 or rework severe damage again.
It is quite weird that the fuel tanks doesn’t explode despite the 23mm/37mm FI-T and HE rounds hitting them directly.

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…and nuclear bombs?