Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant
Respectfully, I disagree. Please play the mission I've uploaded, choosing any of the Yak series as your targets, and you'll see that their engines are actually quite fragile.
Because your posts are generally spot on, you had me worried that my tests were incorrect. So, I went back and tried shooting the Yak series fighters (Yak-1, Yak-3, Yak-9) from different angles. I repeatedly got the same result as I got before - about 1 second of .50 cal MG fire was sufficient to trigger engine failure and/or fire, and to convince the AI pilot to bail out. The Yak-9 is only tougher than the other Yaks because engine fires tend to quickly self-extinguish.
The important trick is to aim for the first third of the front fuselage - just behind the propeller spinner. Hits further back on the front fuselage - just ahead of the pilot - hit the guns or parts that aren't modeled.
Additionally, there seems to be some randomness or error built into damage results, so there will be times when some parts just won't break. You have to "fly" the same mission 4 or 5 times before you can start getting a sense of where the average lies.
|
Last campaign I played I shot down a few (hundred or so) early war Yaks of all colours - and it may be my aiming, but I rarely got their engine. Pilot dead, controls shot out, structural damage leading to crash were IMHO the most common deaths, structural total failure of fuselage or wings also common.
Fuel tanks punctured and engine losing a little or some power, smoking, total kaboom, seen that happen.
Vs. P-40, engine dead is among the most common deaths, vs. Bf109&Mc202 too. Vs MiG-3 it is about the only death -though I sometimes think there must be a fuel tank behind the engine that burns like that, vs. LaGG it happens at least to be noticed.
Just form feeling, I'd say Yak has highest initial turn rate of all of these, high speed, good roll, small plane. I may be aiming for the same point I would get good hits on a P-40 - but I may end up a little too far and hit pilot/tail section, or wings (if aim not on center but off left/right). So maybe in the end it is ME that is responsible for not getting engine dead regularly on a Yak.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant
But, I'm consistently seeing results where just 5-10 .50 caliber bullets scattered across a Yak's (or Bf-109's or Spitfire's) tail surfaces or wings will trigger collapse when it's sitting on the ground. Basically, the plane falls apart because you punched half a dozen or a dozen random 1 inch/25mm-wide holes into several square yards/meters of aluminum or plywood.
Yes, realistically, those 5-10 bullets might break a part, but only if they all hit in the same place while the aircraft was pulling high-G maneuvers. Scattered across a wing or control surface, that sort of damage result makes no sense.
|
Put like that it seems weak, though from ingame performance, sitting in a Yak as well as shooting at Yaks I never percieved them as structurally especially weak except when you try to dive them.