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Thread: 4.12.2 de-bugging

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06-30-2014, 09:34 PM

Pursuivant Pursuivant is offline

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Join Date: May 2010

Posts: 1,439

No pictures today, just a few more bug reports.

Wellington III - The nose and tail turret gunners don't pivot their turrets back into line with the plane's long axis before bailing out.

While you CAN bail out of the plane by turning the turret to the side and just going out through the turret entry doors, there's just one problem; Wellington nose and tail gunners (or any gunner in the Boulton-Paul turret) didn't wear parachutes!

For this reason, gunners were carefully cautioned to make sure the entry doors to their turrets were carefully closed!

Realistically, Wellington gunners should try to pivot their turrets back in line with the plane's fuselage, then spend several (like 10+ seconds) getting out of the turret, running for their parachutes, and buckling them on, before bailing out.

There's also the complication for just about any electrical or hydraulically powered turret that in some cases turret power depends on engine power. That means that engine damage might prevent the turret from rotating back into position.

Then, there's also the gunner's nightmare of not being able to get the turret back into position so that he can exit, or having fire or g-forces between him and his parachute. Plenty of Avenger, Defiant, Wellington, Lancaster tail gunners died that way.

Additionally, you'll sometimes get a hero/idiot who stays at his guns even after the bailout order has been given.

Finally, there's the complication that damage to the intercom system could prevent crew from knowing that the bailout order had been given. That means that the flight deck crew might bail out, but the guys in the rear of the plane never get the message.

A6M7-63 - Just a few rifle-caliber bullets will create massive fuel tank leaks which will run the plane out of fuel in just a few minutes if they don't start a fire first. Self-sealing measures seem to totally fail, and the rate of fuel loss seems to be much higher than for other planes with the same damage.

Ace bomber formations in the QMB - Just about any Ace bomber formation seems to have trouble holding its formation. Trailing planes will fall out of formation when the formation is attacked, and they often collide while maneuvering. By contrast, Rookie AI is much better, since at least the planes don't collide.

Multi-crew player-controlled planes - If the pilot of a single-pilot plane is killed, at least in some planes (specifically the A-20C, and a few others I've forgotten), the rest of the crew doesn't automatically bail out. I guess it could be possible for the player to hit Ctrl-C to switch to a new crew position and then order the bailout, but that seems a bit silly.

While it's mostly eye candy for offliners, since a dead pilot on a player-controlled plane basically means "end of mission, time to refly/respawn", AI crewmen should automatically try to bail out when the pilot is killed. I guess it might make a difference if anyone is keeping track of overall crew casualties in multi-player servers/campaigns.