Damage Model issue?
 

I guess this belongs in this section but it may have already been brought up.

I've been flying offline almost exclusively since buying CloD, but recently I started flying online (not using new beta patch). With practice I finally started to win dogfights, (spit flying against 109s). after about a dozen or so kills over the last week I have noticed a very odd bug.

almost every time I manage to get a good deflection shot on a 109, I'm able to make it 'explode' with a great fireball, however EVERY time it happens online, the 109 continues to dogfight seemingly without any mechanical damage being sustained. the first couple times its happened I would disengage thinking the plane was destroyed, but now I follow the 109 and continue to attack it completely ignoring the meaningless 'fireworks show'....
:(

Offline when i manage to get a 109 to 'brew up' the AI pilot immediately goes into bail-out mode, or causes a pilot kill, or complete of loses control.

Again this happens to me only online and against AI pilots as well as human.

is anyone else experiencing this bug?

the whole thing is completely off anyway, this giant fireball should be accompanied by some kind of fuselage structural failure... not just a ball of flame... its a very confusing damage animation and needs an overhaul from the devs.

I noticed this a few weeks ago

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=31650

I assume the AI 109 pilots realise they shouldn't stay with their aircraft after it explodes.

well it doesnt seem to be just a AI issue as the online AI reacts differently than offline.

it seems when online the fireball means nothing in terms of damage. there also seems to be two types of fireballs... ones that just expand from the middle of the plane then dissipate immediately leaving no visible damage to the plane... the other seems to be a fireball that creates a flame trail coming from the engine cowling that lasts for a few seconds then goes away. Offline, these animations seem to have no effect on the planes performance.

has anyone else noticed this from other planes? I have only seen it happen to 109s

Online if you blow up a 109's fuel tank, they will run out of fuel within a minute or less and the engine will stop. In a few cases, I have seen where the fire spreads to the cockpit area and the pilot is forced to bail or die.

I have seen the same thing occur with Hurricane wing tanks. Large explosion, plane continues on.

It's a bug. The fuel tank "explodes" but doesn't damage the aircraft.

well at least its been noted...

its funny now, but i was absolutely crushed and shocked after the first time it happened.. I was so thrilled at my apparent 'skilled' deflection shot, only to be completely dumbfounded to see the 109 wheeling back around to get on my six after I banked away :shock:

The first time it happened to me I saw "Fuel tank: exploded" come up on the HUD and fire everywhere, so I bailed out ASAP.

From external view I could see my 109 keep flying away, relatively unscathed.

A previous poster was correct though, when he said that the 109 will run out of fuel in very short order. Over England, I'd bet against him getting back to France, even with a full tank.

I think either the fireball is wrongly depicted because tank did not explode but just was damaged. Or the damage model is not right. If it explodes it should make a big hole or even ripp of large chunks of the plane.

BTW: Are there by chance planes that do not explode at all?

If the 109 tank is indeed exploding as the animation would suggest it should result in death or severe burns since the pilot is sitting on the tank. Maybe the seat armor redirects some of the blast outwards but the pilot would surely feel the need to exit immediately.

It is laughable how often the wing tanks on any of the blue bombers explode and rip the wing off at the engine. That has to be the most common method of bomber destruction when I fly red. However, it is few and far between that an engine catches fire, seems it should be the other way around.

The flight and damage models are just borked in a general sense.

I was saying in another thread that it's trivially easy to de-wing a Blenheim. No cannon required.

Well, it seems that the damage from a exploding fuel tank is only missing in the single engined planes.
It is also easy to dewing a 110.

It is a well known Bf109 bug.

The rear tank explodes too easily (it had armored plating AFAIK) and when it does, it makes nice fireball but no damage.
The only thing it does is to make the plane lose most of its fuel (as pilot, you see the sudden drop in available fuel). If you were flying low on fuel, after the explosion, your engine will stop, out of fuel...).

~S~

The damage models are porked in this game particularly in the sense Notafinger mentioned.

Wings coming off every time when a fuel tank ignites? This is the most common method of bomber destruction and it's quite silly. A bombers wing does would not come off like that and I've never read a combat report citing disintegration of any of the 3 bomber aircraft. This needs to be fixed... but I'm guessing nothing will happen until we have to cash out more hard earned $ on BOM.

It would be very interesting to know the source of your knowledge regarding the stability of burning bomber wings.

I know for sure that high temperatures, and a fuel fire in a 220 mph slipstream is hot, will destroy the structural integrity of duraluminium really fast.

I have to concur that the process of loosing the wing should look different, like folding back at the weakened point and then ripping off i.e.

It is a fact however that aircrews did leave their planes in a hurry, if a fire wasn't extinguished really fast.

Usually a fighter pilot didn't have the time to watch the end of his target longer than a few seconds.

i think that in itself is a bug. fuel tank explosions are EXTREMELY rare. Because certain conditions must exist for explosive combustion inside a tank. Generally With a tank full, It will not happen. Sure, It will Burn like heck but it won't go boom, because fuel in itself does not explode, but the VAPOR does. Hence why if there is little to no vapor it will not burn. Gasoline, for example in it's purely liquid state does not burn, however the Fumes evaporating do, and burn very well they do. But burning does not equal an explosion. Even when an incendiary bullet or heat source enters the tank, there is a very small and fleeting window (trust me NASA didn't even know for sure when they researched if for the TWA flight 800 explosion) where the tank has the proper vapor pressure, volume, heat and fuel to air mixture to detonate.

As far as I can tell for their reports this combination of events must happen:
-Tank must be nearly empty
-Tank must be heated
-Tank must have proper Fuel/Air Ratio
-Tank must have the proper pressure
-Tank must be exposed to a properly powerful ignition source

All these add up to a pretty specific and rare event.

gimpy: I agree!

Exploding aircraft may not have been something impossible but it surely was a rare event.

As gimpy explained the window for explosion has to be met and this window is considerably smaller than the window for explosion.

Please don't believe Hollywood.

^THIS....

that is something i was also thinking, tho mostly because the fuel tank explosion happens pretty frequently and 'early' in the plane's progression of damage... usually i get coolant punctures with the first couple seconds worth of bullet strikes... its in the next seconds worth that usually triggers the explosion...

unless im fairly accurate at hitting the cockpit area of the fuselage (which im most likely not :rolleyes:) then the total destruction of the fuel tank is definitely too easy to damage.

One other thing... If the tank does explode wouldnt the force of the explosion sever some if not all control cables? Im pretty certain that it would cut the cables goin back into the tail section (rudder and elevators). because right now other thank looking pretty, it has no secondary consequence

No it wouldn't. A fuel tank being set alight would just burn. This is well documented. Seldom would there be the right conditions for an explosion to cause the aircraft to disintegrate instantly. Disintegration would happen after a period of time. An aircraft will burn for a surprisingly long time before it falls apart, especially a big bomber flying level and straight, not under the huge stress from evasive maneuvers that fighters might be under. As 41sqdrn mentioned, a very rare event.

The damage model is completely porked right now in regards to bomber fuel tanks, especially on the he111, ju88 and blenheim. The do17z seems very believable though, but having said that the do17z was the strongest wing design of the bombers.

The Do17s are very easy to down so I also have some doubts about this DM.

They are easy to down but I believe that problem is to do with the AI. They seem to abort the aircraft very early. However, the do17z does not have the silly hollywood explosions.

Has anyone added this important issue to the bugtracker please?

I totally agree, fuel tank fires that spread and cause wing failure after a few minutes should be the most common damage effect. From the accounts I've read, explosions did happen but usually after a period of flying along with a burning wing. Bombers exploding immediately were more likely to be caused by a hit on the bomb load.