The simple answer to the question “where have they gone,” was the one I gave back on day 1. You don’t get a crit on an instakill in air any more, they took it away as part of instituting “severe damage.” See? Simple.
Was it intentional? Yes. Will they roll it back? No. Will they adjust task values because those tasks are harder now? Maybe someday. Next thread.
Instakills still carry the crit bonus in ground RB, as well, they just removed it from kills on air vehicles in that mode, same time as the AB modes… For now, anyway.
I do agree for rare exceptions like one-shot pilpt snipes - but the overwhelming majority (=99% ?) of instant kills had actually critical hit components - at least when flying props.
The exceptions i noticed were long range pilot snipes scored as gunner in my B-18B vs tailchasing SB2-Cs - thanks to their absence of bullet proof cockpit glas. Always 500 points for a pilot snipe.
This was possible until September - November 2022, then there was a stealth nerf of the 13.2 mm Akan (followed by Real Shatter), such kills (2.74 km in once case) vanished. And yes, then shells of the Akan 13.2 cannons were modeled to “stay” in the game for ~ 3.500 meters whilst most 20mm+shells “disappear” after ~ 2 km.
Edit: I scored today by spaying italian stealth 12.7mm (= AP bullet) a one-shot pilot snipe which gave me just 450 points - no additional hit/crit/whatever - so the score alone dropped to 450 points vs 500 in the old world - 10% reduction.
To be fair - sarcasm & irony is not easy to detect in written form.
Although i fully agree with your general view - this sudden increase of flat spins is imho not connected to the necessity to score a severe damage on them like mentioned in your previous post.
Maybe that’s the reason why the fellow player was confused.
A simple “hit” anywhere near a wingtip is often enough to create these spins - twin engine planes like Pe-2s are champions in the new “flat spin simulator” - at least based on my observations.
The sudden increase of these flat spins is for sure a result of gaijin playing with certain parameters in the background. And this constantly…
I’ve always wondered why, in game, a fire is not a critical hit. I mean, excluding early cloth covered planes (where a few incendiary rounds might set things on fire perhaps?), to get a metal-skinned plane on fire would require a fuel fire or an oil fire.
I can get a critical hit on fuel tanks and make them leak fuel…without a fire.
I can get a critical hit on oil and make them leak oil…without a fire.
But somehow I can set a plane on fire without it being a critical?
What’s fueling the fire?
And further, I’ll get the ding-ding-ding of multiple heavy-damage grey text of everything burning down on the plane, but yet, still no critical?
(This was before the introduction of the severe damage mechanic)
I managed a few months ago to set an A6M5 3 times on fire in the same match. All 3 fires went out due to the small sizes of the burning tanks and he ofc he used the “burning wing in the air” trick and repaired 2 times…no crit - ofc.
In AirRB (and prior to severe damage) it wasn’t an automatic crit for an instakill (or non-instakill for that matter)
In my experience, sure there were times you’d get both (a crit and a kill credit) for what appeared like an instakill when you’re blasting away at someone. But I remember quite a few times taking out some plane (e.g. rank 3 prop) with just 2 mg guns and gently tap-tap-tap to try to get crits (for a task) and boom instakill… over 3 games I had 5 air kills and no criticals. Somehow I had turned in to a super-sniper… Great for score… not so good for doing the task.
Yeah, I was simplifying. What I was describing was an “instakill crit” was the situation where the kill message came so close after the critical message (often the same second) that the crit message never shows up, because the killing damage also met the critical requirement, or the bullet just before it did, or whatever… just close enough there was no time to bring up both messages, so the kill message overrode it visually. But if you looked on your scoresheet after, you’d see you got the extra 30% score for the crit. That was the same in all modes.
Those are the crits that are missing now, affecting score and task completion. It seems impossible to get a crit anymore unless it’s a distinct time-separated event, crit and severe on top of each other no longer “stack” like crit and kill used to in that way. This possibility was deliberately removed (and they announced they would do it) prior to the severe damage mechanic being implemented.