Quote:
Originally Posted by Vendigo
Yes, that's what I mean, as soon as the player's plane is destroyed, kills are not credited though the player is still alive (bailed out). Can it be fixed by attributing points to the "pilot" not his plane? Thanks a lot!
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I've proposed these ideas before, but they bear repeating:
There's an even simpler and better way to credit kills. In the arcade mode, when a plane takes fatal damage, it issues a "Pilot Killed" or "Bailing out" message to the AI.
I've never understood why those messages shouldn't also instantly trigger credit for a kill. It seems like an incredibly simple bit of coding.
This fix would also solve the annoyance of not getting credit for a kill when an enemy plane crash lands. After all, the act of crashing automatically triggers a "Bailing out" message, since all the plane's engines are rendered inoperable.
If you wanted to get slightly more detailed about kill claims, you could also automatically credit the player with a "probable" kill after an AI plane takes enough damage to generate a "Return to Base" message, and a "damaged" claim after the player scores any damage on an enemy.
Allowing credit for probable and damaged planes then opens the way for realistic kill claiming based on nationality.
Japanese pilots could get full credit for "kills" which any other air force would consider to be "probables," or even for "damaged" planes.
Germans and most other air forces would get no credit for shoot-downs behind enemy lines unless there was another friendly plane close enough to observe a crash (the "confirmed kill" message in the game).
Planes equipped with gun cameras would get credit for enemy planes which break up in air or where the crew bails out while the player is shooting at it.
Allowing credit for damaged or probable kills would also allow simulation of the rather complex German kill credit system described here:
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...ocedure-Forums
In game terms:
Single-engined fighter - no partial kill, 1 "kill" for a Asschuss (shoot down).
2-engined bomber - 2 "kills" for a shoot-down, 1 "kill" for a Herausschuss (Separation = Damage severe enough for a RTB message), 1/2 kill for a Endgueltige Vernichtung (Final damage = kill on plane which already had enough damage to generate a "RTB" message). Auschuss supersedes points for Herausschuss or Endgueltige Vernictung.
4-engined bomber - 3 "kills" for a shoot-down, 2 for a herasschuss, 1 for a Endgueltige Vernictung. Auschuss supersedes points for Herausschuss or Endgueltige Vernictung.
For units where pilots didn't get individual credit for their kills (like many US Navy units), you just tally up the number of kills/probables/damaged planes the player's formation racked up and divide by the number of planes in the formation.
Finally, while it would require more book keeping in campaign mode, and favors realism in favor of fun, you could also have "delayed kills".
Most air forces didn't award credit for kills immediately. Instead, credit was only awarded after intelligence officers got sufficient proof to credit the pilot with a kill. Until then, the pilot would have to settle for a "probable" kill.
This meant that, unless there was a crash site on friendly territory that civilians or ground forces could easily inspect, credit for a kill might be delayed for months or even years. (In a few cases, pilots only got credit decades after the fact, once investigators finally discovered the crash site, or historians finally corroborated one side's loss records for a particular time and location to kill claims made for the same time and place by the other side.)
In game terms, this might mean that you only get credit for kills scored on a previous mission after a later mission, or you might never get credit for a kill.
On the other hand, you might also get credit for a kill that was actually just a "RTB" result. Even in the best run air forces, fighter pilots typically overclaimed by a 2:1 ratio, and gunners might overclaim by a ratio of up to 10:1.