Damaged aircraft losses

[Classic_EAF19]

Hi guys, I have suggestio. I already starte to talk the idea over with Chap, Petr, Devill and Cmirko and as far as I can tell I think its a good idea but I dont know if its possible.

The idea concerns damaged a/c which make it back to base for a safe landing and of course a/c which make it back to base but get damaged in a landing accident. I think in the current SEOW software there is no way that these damaged a/c are tracked and I am wondering if a system could be put into place that tracked damaged a/c.

My idea would be this.... I think when players receive the 'enemy aircraft destroyed' message when an enemy a/c that has been damaged lands back at base the player gets that message because in the logfile a 'damaged' event is recorded. Also I think when an aircraft is damaged in landing a 'damaged' event is also recorded. My proposal is that these a/c are counted as temporary losses, or damaged aircraft.

A system would need to be put in place that when a 'damaged' event is detected for an a/c which lands safely the parser needs to decide whether its repairable or a write off. I guess we could go as far as breaking it down even further to stages of damage such as minor (local repair), major (field maintenance unit repair) and catastrophic (return to factory) or finally a chance that the a/c is a complete write off and counts a loss without any chance of the a/c being fixed. Each stage of repair could have a fixed amount of time for the repair to take place and this is where I see there being difficulties in implementing this as a new feature.

The only way I can see this being possible is that any 'damaged' aircraft are to a certain extent counted as losses and are deleted from the flight in the database. This leaves the rest of the flight to rearm and refuel as per the usual re-arm delays. Meanwhile the damaged a/c enter into a damaged pool whereby they are held there until repairs are carried out, only after repairs are carried out can the a/c be returned to flying duties. The return to flying duties could also be carried out in a few ways, obviously we have the usual route of the a/c entering a supply point as reinforcements to be flown 'onto' the map in mission time. But I think a much better way of doing things is that the a/c enter a special repaired a/c point and from this point the commander can simply decide which flight to 'top up' with his newly repaired a/c. This 'repaired a/c top up' would be best taking place solely in the MP/database so that in mission time a full strength flight can be launched. This way would be an accurate representation of the auxillary airforce delivering repaired aircraft all the time and not relying on operational duties to supply replacement/repaired aircraft to a squadron.

The logical next step from this if it could be implemented is to start giving pilots not just for 'kills' but also for 'damaged' and 'probables' I believe that it these things could be implemented into new features of SEOW it would add a new element to our campaigning and would certainly be interesting for pilots to see not just confirmed kills but also damaged aircraft.

Apologies for the rather long post but I felt it was worthwhile and I am keen to hear feedback on the ideas.

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Hi Classic,

The current support for damaged aircraft renders them unavailable for a mission or two, before they (virtually) rejoin their flights. This is not well displayed in the statistics, but it is displayed in the campaign notices tooltip inside the MP after each mission. Any damaged aircraft is delayed from re-entering service, in the same way that aircraft that land at the wrong base are delayed. Have you seen this feature in action yet?

It is not easy to determine the amount of damage sustained by any particular airframe, using the current eventlog format. Basically the eventlog says "damaged". Occasionally a particular airframe might log several damage events in one mission. I'll have a look at whether we can track who damaged an airframe in combat and then display that in the stats.

The delay (or penalty) timing logic is very simple. It would take more work to establish a more sophisticated timing system for individual airframes.

Cheers,
4S

[Classic_EAF19]

Thanks for the reply 4Shades, no I haven't seen this feature yet. I might just have to get my a/c damged and RTB just to see it in action

I had heard about the landing at the wrong airbase feature but nothing about damaged airframes having a longer than the usual rearm/refuel delays if they land safely but damaged.

Does the feature have any kind of random chance of how severe the damage is and subsequently how long the delay before return to service is? It wasn't uncommon for an a/c to return to base and land safely but then be written off and scrapped/salvaged for parts.

Is it a feature that can be turned on/off in the campaign settings?

Cheers

Classic

[PA-Dore]

Very useful campaign notices tooltip, we have at least 6 different report types. Many thanks to Shades:

[102nd-HR-cmirko]

I totally missed these events in campaigns notices...., when was this introduced ?

as always, excellent work 4Shades

cheers

[Classic_EAF19]

Where can I find those tooltips within the MP interface?

[102nd-HR-cmirko]

in the commanders view of battlefield mate, although I don't think we have this option enabled for our Normandy campaign....

(same place were you've seen those engineer problems with faulty explosives and propaganda drops)

[Classic_EAF19]

I see, thanks Cmirko.

[IV/JG7_4Shades]

Hi guys,

The airframe delay feature is enabled/disabled in the DCS. There is no randomization of the severity of the delay - this would require a significant amount of coding and DB structural changes.

Also, a month or two ago (for DCS v3.1.2 I think) I altered the way that successful recon events are reported. Now, if a single recon photo spots 20 unidentified units, then a single notice will be issued saying that 20 unidentified units were spotted. I call this "aggregation of recon events", and it can significantly shorten the campaign notice list.

Cheers,
4Shades