Give me some "holy sh... did that just happen" ideas

[Stafroty]

something with damage model-

when gettin hit on engine, it might get fire real quick or not at all, all randomly.

same with hits on fuel tanks. sometimes its only a leak, sometimes it starts to smoke. when it smokes, random change to to light up on fire on random time scale. if it gets on fire, random change for exploding after that with randon time scale as well.

same with other areas when takin damage. if wing takes hit it would be nice if pilot would not know how bad hit it is, so it might crack easily with stick movement or all by itself. or not at all.

more randomness on damage model, as now you can observe how many "hitpoints" you still got left. and you can trust that plane takes you home for sure if wing is badly damaged and no more hits are gettin in.

there is no fear in this game on that part, as you learn what plane can take after what amount of damage and so on.

randomnes and alot so no one would ever anymore know how badly his plane is hit and will it stay air or ignite on fire so that pilots no more can trust but are filled with paranoia feelings.

that for sure would bring some immersion and feelings on flying.


like hit on right wing, graphical attributes for damage seems light on the surface. but pilot doenst know how bad it is from the inside.
so its then dice rolled by cpu that how much G can wing take and on which direction, as well how much speed it can resist as well.
every time different result when takin hits, like on critical parts especially.

wings or parts of them starts to flutter, giving signal/sounds/shakin on screen(=information to pilot) that something isnt right on this speed so it makes them worry and think. sometimes no warning at all. just snap like p51 on high speed high g turn

that kind of dm with much of variation would give some good vibes.

[Blackdog_kt]

Your ideas are very nice Stafroty and i'm glad you mentioned the most important part in the mechanics you describe: feedback to the pilot.

Just like you say, we want to be unsure how long a damaged aircraft will hold, but we also want to be able to tell when something is wrong. Otherwise it would be too frustrating and not so much fun.

Imagine for example taking a single cannon hit on the right wing. If the wing vibrates/flutters too much as you go faster or pull Gs, you hear buffeting sounds and metal stressing, then you have enough information to know that it's time to RTB. If there's no information however, you'll have to assume the worst in every single case, or even worse, get killed (virtually of course) without having a chance to react.

That's why having sources of information is equally important with randomized elements in the DM, it wouldn't work without it. A lot of people have talked about how cool it would be to have small randomized variations in the DM and difficulty options for random failures, but i think i haven't seen a lot of us mention the need for a way to understand when something is wrong, until your post. Excellent observation there

[Abulafia]

For me the most boring part of the flight sessions is watching the black screen of compression or X8 unrealistic appearance.

I think during the time compression it would be great to watch our formation in different angles with some random cinematic angles ( fly pasts or zoomed up views ) and artistic camera filters. Funny & informative radio chatter between pilots or ground control will surely break the most monotonous side of the simulation.