Quote:
Originally Posted by TinyTim
I've noticed all too often (online) that a damaged P-39, which shows no visible external damage, but starts trailing smoke due to received hits, suffers no noticeable instant performance drop, as well as no gradually increasing performance degradation with time after receiving damage.
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It works like that offline, too. Whenever I'm in the mood for a bit of target practice against easy victims, nothing compares to the P-39. At low to medium altitudes, it's my bomber killer of choice; the perfect antidote to sniper-like AI rookie gunners and their super-duper, laser-targeted, depleted uranium, high explosive, incendiary, neurotoxin-coated engine, control cable and pilot killing 0.30 caliber MG bullets.
Compared to delicate flowers like the F6F, P-47, P-51, P-40, P-38, Hurricane and Bf-109, the P-39 series is tough as nails. Not only can the engine run indefinitely with little or no performance drop after it starts smoking, and not only does the engine never die on you, the pilot is also invulnerable to hits from the front which would kill a lesser man driving flying bits of tin-foil like the P-40, F6F, F4U or P-47. Additionally, the "Iron Dog" never suffers from control hits and its guns never gets jammed.
My cynical guess is that somebody at 1C had a serious case of hero worship for the the Soviet P-39 pilots when the game was designed. My slightly less cynical guess is that there's something seriously wrong with critical hit and engine-damage modeling for the P-39!
Alternately, compared to "one hit wonders" like the Bf-109, P-40, P-51 and many other planes which are extremely vulnerable to instant engine or control cable kills maybe the P-39 is the one plane which actually models the toughness of WW2 era planes.