Smoke effects for engine failure?

[tn_prvteye]

Is there anyway to make the aircraft smoke with the engine is hit? Most of my "kills" are when I hit the engine. I can see the prop stop turning, and I'd like to add the smoke effect to it.

 

As it is, the prop stops, and the enemy plane just floats to the ground. Anyway to make it more dramatic?

[+Tailspin]

I've often wondered the same. I think the only two effects I ever see are the Fuel Fire Effect and the Aircraft Smoke Effect. I have also tried to implement a DamagedEngineSound effect with no luck. To make kills a little more exciting I have implemented Bortdafarm's idea of adding Armor values to the engines of all the planes in FE. This makes it less likely that you will simply stop the engine for a kill and it lessens the instances of the AI doing those "dead stick" landings and surviving the fight. Here's what I use. You can try different numbers to suit yourself. I know it doesn't solve the effects problem. It just reduces the chance that a few rounds will stop the engine making it more likely that you will start a fuel fire or shoot a wing off instead.

 

Just cut and paste into the Engine section in the XXX_DATA.INI

 

HasArmor=TRUE

ArmorMaterial=STEEL

ArmorRIGHT.Thickness=5

ArmorLEFT.Thickness=5

ArmorREAR.Thickness=10

ArmorBOTTOM.Thickness=5

 

Wellll BS. The board won't let me use the brackets...you'll have to add BRACKETS to RIGHT, LEFT, REAR, and BOTTOM.

[tn_prvteye]

Yeah, I do that already. :)

 

I actually just use a value of 6 all around.

 

I also add it to the pilot section. I'm trying to find a good balance. It seems the only way to kill an a/c is to take out the pilot or the engine. Of course in real-life either one was a killer, but it seems way to easy for me to do it in the game. I also noticed that the AI keeps on flying even after all their control surfaces are gone.

 

I've been messing with everything from the ammo weight to that VolumeStructurePoint entry. Still have yet to get that "magic" spot.

 

I've also been experimenting with changing the hitbox size of the pilot and engine to make it harder to hit. Anyone have a good set of values to use?

[+Tailspin]

Have you tried upping the armor values to 20 and up?

 

BTW...I've been experimenting with the various effects in the AircraftObject.ini commenting out each one till I can't get a fire going, etc. I'm not sure anything works beside the ObjectFireEffect=AircraftFireEffect in the [GameObjectEffect] section and the AircraftSmokeEffect. Regardless it looks like the emitter is located in the same place for all the fire effects...right behind the cockpit. I used to think this was the FuelFireEffect because thats where most tanks are but now I'm not so sure.

[tn_prvteye]

I haven't tried 20. I thought maybe 20 might be too much for Steel. I did modify the min and max extent for the pilot and engine to something ridiculously small...something like .05, .05, .05. That seemed to work well. I also bumped up the volume structure point to 500000. I was getting alot more flammers but still got on occasional dead engine. I think that making it so small takes some of the cover away from the fuel tank.

 

I'm still experimenting. I was hoping to find an easy way instead of having to modify every aircraft's ini file. I wish we could damage enough of the aircraft so the AI would give up and turn tail. They keep on fighting even with a dead engine.

[+Tailspin]

The thing with the armor values is they have no weight so you can make them as thick as you want to get the results you want without affecting anything else. 20 may be too much for FE. I plan on increasing mine to see what they do. I'll try and post something on that later.