4.12.2 de-bugging

[Pursuivant]

I finally got a chance to abuse the P-38, specifically the P-38H.

Thanks to TD's recent rework of this plane, it DM actually isn't that bad, although it is still far too vulnerable to control and machine gun hits.

There are no gaps between the armor glass and the armor plate - if a .303 bullet hits the armor glass, it gets stopped. If it hits armor plate, it gets stopped.

Fuel tank hits by single rifle caliber bullets actually seal after 30-60 seconds. Hits by multiple rifle caliber bullets in the same place will quickly cause a fire, but that's not unreasonable if one of the bullets is explosive or incendiary.

The engine damage model looks good - a bullet that hits the oil cooler or radiator will cause a leak, bullets that come close but miss don't. Once a leak starts, you get several minutes of flying time before overheat, and about 5 minutes of flying time before the engine starts to really suffer. You lose some power due to engine hits, but not much. It seems like it takes a LOT of damage to make an engine stop cold.

If anything, engine durability is a bit too generous; more along the lines of the P-39 than the P-40. But, at least you can lose power and actually damage the engine due to overheating, unlike the P-39.


But, here are the problems.

Control hits - like many planes in the game they are too easy to achieve, and can occur even when bullets don't hit anyplace close to control runs.

The only way I can explain it is that the game doesn't take the presence of full fuel tanks into account when determining bullet trajectories. That is, it counts fuel tanks as "empty space" rather than being filled with liquid which will slow or stop a bullet.

Likewise, the game doesn't take into account that there are layers of aluminum between a hit to the leading edge of the wing and the trailing edge, which might slow a small caliber bullet or a bit of shrapnel, or make it shatter.

Machine Gun Hits - At face value, it seems like good damage modeling to have any hit to the P-38's guns cause a jam. There's a lot of guns and ammo packed into the P-38's nose, and no armor plate in front of them or to the side, so any bullet hitting that area is likely to cause some sort of problem.

But, most of that space is taken up with ammunition. That means that there's a fair chance you'll get just one or two rounds of ammunition that are damaged by the passing bullet. This might cause an immediate jam the bullet deforms the feed chutes or ammo containers sufficiently that the bullets can't advance, but it's more likely to just create a dud bullet which will cause a jam at some time in the future.

So, for just about any hit to ammo runs by shrapnel and small caliber bullets, there should be the possibility of a) immediate stoppage/dead gun, b) unfixable stoppage after X amount of the gun's remaining ammo is fired, c) fixable stoppage after X amount of gun's remaining ammo is fired.

Hits by big bullets, explosions, and large pieces of shrapnel should create a very high chance of immediate unfixable stoppage, but with a tiny chance of the other two possibilities.

Edit: There's also two more options:

d) No effective damage. That is, the bullet hits some part of the bullet feed mechanisms or magazines which aren't currently occupied by ammunition, or otherwise manages to pass through the vital area without doing any serious damage. For example, if you shoot 50% of your ammo, and then you get a machine gun hit, the game currently treats it identically to a hit on the ammunition before you fired a shot, even though there's a 50% chance that the bullet actually just hit empty space.

e) Bang! Some sort of ammo explosion. This is extremely unlikely, even for cannon shells, but it could happen. To complicate fuel fires for tanks close to ammunition magazines, there's also the possibility of a fire causing bullets or shells to "cook off" - exploding due to heat.

A final problem which appears to be unique to the P-38 is that you can get machine gun hits for guns which have already been knocked out. That is, if both your starboard MG get hit, and you get a third bullet into a starboard machine gun, the DM counts it as a hit to a port-side machine gun!

Supercharger Hits - IL2 doesn't model supercharger damage. The P-38's turbocharger is mounted on top of the engine, with a very vulnerable flywheel protected by just an aluminum deflector and a tiny bit of armor plate on the inner side of the engines - mostly designed to keep flywheel blades from hitting the pilot. I got a few hits which realistically would have really wrecked the supercharger.

Engine Control Hits: The P-38, like other multi-engined planes had cable runs to the engine, which control things like radiator louvers, prop pitch and throttle. They're right behind the reserve fuel tanks in the inboard wing and are ripe targets for damage to the wing. But, IL2 doesn't model such things.

Here are pictures of the carnage:

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1404087241

The obligatory picture of long-range sniper shots by the Ace Wellington III gunners. Two hits, two machine guns down. Typically, flying the P-38 as an interceptor results in your losing half your guns in the first few attack runs!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1404087241

Same flight a few seconds later. Notice a bit of engine damage to the port engine, but also another couple of bullets in the nose that took out another machine gun. The problem is, none of those bullets could have taken out the remaining two starboard machine guns, or their ammo reservoirs!

So, still 300 m out on my first attack run and I've lost 3/4 of my machine guns!

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1404087241

Same attack run, closer in. Crummy screenshot due to a pilot kill. Unless you go straight in at an enemy bomber the P-38 is a flying coffin because the gunners not unreasonably aim directly at the plane's center of mass; which is the cockpit.

Mind you, I'm not complaining about the PK, which I think was fair. I chose this one because I think it illustrates how easy it is to get control hits. None of the bullets came anyplace close to hitting the control runs. (Damage to the nose would have had to penetrate 1/4 to 3/8 inch - 6-10 mm - of armor plate to hit the rudder pedals or rudder pedals in the cockpit.) Furthermore, the P-38 has twin rudders, and virtually all of the damage is to plane's port side.

Realistically, assuming that just one cable run was severed, you'd get just the port side rudder fluttering or jammed, but the starboard rudder might still work. It would have to be remarkable luck or skill for less than a dozen .303 bullets to completely disable the plane's rudder control!