Beyond 414 wish list

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Sita

it's interesting and complicated moment ... i tottaly agree that is not right and will be good to make true fuel system ...

Getting truly realistic coolant, fuel, hydraulic, or oil system damage modeling would be a huge hassle. You'd essentially have to figure out tank volume and geometry for every compartment within every tank, then create real-time liquid flow models based on factors like viscosity, pressure, temperature, flow rates, gravity, and acceleration/deceleration. Then, you'd have to model things like fuel, oil, and hydraulic lines, pumps, and joints, figure out what each bit of the system does and what goes wrong if it breaks, and create suitable damage results.

I'd settle for:

(a) A system where there is the possibility of just losing part of your fuel rather than all of it. Possibly "roll the dice again" if you take another hit to the same tank or if you do something radical which might cause you to lose more fuel, like a maneuver which seriously stresses the airframe.

(b) A quasi-random system where fuel leaks only start if you change your angle of flight by some large amount from the direction you were traveling in when you were hit. For example, if you've hit in level flight, the fuel tank might only begin to leak if you go into a steep climb or dive.

(c) A button you can push to (maybe) slow or stop the fuel leak, which represents things like pumping fuel to different tanks or shutting off fuel flow to a particular tank. Just like fire extinguishers for engines don't actually model fire suppressant extinguishing the fire, you can "hand wave" this sort of damage control.

(d) Modeling hydraulic systems for aircraft that had them and where hydraulic failure had a serious effect on flight performance (hydraulic-powered or hydraulic-boosted flight controls or control surfaces) rather than just less important systems like making the landing gears go up or down. Not so much modeling pumping hydraulic fluid through pipes, just a system to model the fact that you can lose it to damage, and its loss can cause problems.

(e) Likewise, some aircraft had notably flammable hydraulic fluid. In such cases, hydraulic reservoirs should be modeled as well.