Mass Airplane Suicide?

[77Scout 3]

When I run a review of a campaign mission, there are typically many many planes showing as destroyed; way more than I would expect anyway.

 

My last flight had what I estimate to be close to 100 planes that were destroyed, which is the worst I have ever seen. . The review was just... Triplane destroyed, Albatros destroyed, RE8 destroyed...one after the other in rapid succession, on and on. I'll attach a picture from the review phase that shows all the destroyed planes within about the first 15 minutes of my mission, to show what is happening.

 

Any idea what is happening here? I know some of these are AA kills, as I saw one of the destroyed planes get hit right beside me, but they can't all be AA hits can they? Must be hoards of planes just flying into ground?

 

Anyone else seeing this?

 

As a note, I have air activity on 'Heavy' which will contribute to lots of planes in the air, but just wonder why they are all being destroyed?

[Bullethead 12]

Any idea what is happening here? I know some of these are AA kills, as I saw one of the destroyed planes get hit right beside me, but they can't all be AA hits can they? Must be hoards of planes just flying into ground?

 

I've seen many similar things, but none quite that bad.

 

I'm thinking a lot it is air-to-air shots and grount-to-air shots at 400m or so, but just too far away for you to "witness" it happening, so you just see the kill messages. But some of them also appear to be planes crashing on landing. This is one reason why I turned AI firing range to "easy", to eliminate the laser-guided shots at such huge ranges. Since then, I've seen a lot fewer mass kills like this.

[+Polovski 460]

Try increasing your sliders slightly, maybe you are getting some worse AI too. Also try turning onto light or medium air activity, heavy maybe asking for a lot more craft to all fight and of course shoot each other. Also more CPU strain blah blah..

[77Scout 3]

Thanks guys.

 

Sliders are close to maxed out at 55455, with good frame rates, so unfortunately no luck there.

 

If planes are shooting each other down wouldn't this show up in the review? (this plane shot that plane at such and such range etc) Hmmm...maybe not if it happens far enough away from me?

 

Anyway, 100 planes shooting each other down in 15 minutes over such a wide area just seems very improbable to me. My gut feeling is that most are crashing, but I really don't have anything solid to back that up.

 

The campaign mission still plays well and I do still meet other aircraft (so not all planes are crashing by a long shot), so not a big deal. And yes, maybe 'heavy' is overworking something in the system, so I might try scaling back.

[Olham 164]

Scout, the info who shot down who is only given for your fight.

On a day with heavy air activity, you might well have many crates destroyed through Flak,

ground fire, and enemy fighters. I have "air activity" on "medium", and still get a lot of

action. Try it.

[Bullethead 12]

Scout, the info who shot down who is only given for your fight.

 

I think it's based on distance from your plane, which is very long. The shooter and victim don't have to be "in your fight" or flight, either. For example, when I flew along watching a large land battle one day, the replay had messages like "entrenched troops XYZ struck by artillery shell" followed immediately by "entrenched troops XYZ destroyed". But when I was further from the action, I just saw "entrenched troops XYZ destroyed".

[77Scout 3]

Thanks Olham for filling me in on the reporting. I wondered about that. Does it report bullet hits for Flight 1 too, or just my flight?

 

Yep, I do understand how switching to medium will lower the number of destoyed planes...simple mathematics. But still, there just seems to be some kind of a glitch in the system if about one-third to one-half of the the planes flying in a theatre are destroyed within 15 minutes. Didn't the allies lose no more than a couple hundred planes in a whole month even in Bloody April times? So seeing 20 plus planes destroyed most every time you fly an hour mission seems like an indicator that something unusual is causing an excessive number of deaths.

 

Anyway, Phase 3 is done and works very well so not expecting anything to be 'fixed'. Just reporting what I am seeing in case the info is of some use to the team during future development.

 

Hmmm...I suppose I could test if super-sniper-AA is killing all these planes, by doing a 'refly last mission' but selecting 'easy AA' on the refly. Think I might try that and report back.

[+Polovski 460]

Turn it down as I say. Also the more AI you have in the air the more your CPU has to cope with keeping in the air. Could be a glitch yes of course and llet us know on the flak (assuming you have 1.32f installed?) aircraft engage more at the moment and only some break off.. maybe in the future we can change that if it's possible - but it isnt there now.

[77Scout 3]

OK, just for fun and experimentation I ran one mission four times over. I didn't fly the plane but just sat on the runway for 10 minutes (so as not to affect results by my own actions) then exited and reviewed what happened. I ran it two times with 'normal' flak and two times with 'easy' flak. I stayed with 'heavy' air activity to hopefully get lots of crashing data to assess.

 

On 'normal flak' there were 15 planes and 14 planes destroyed within 10 minutes each test, while on 'easy flak' there were 11 planes and 11 planes destroyed in 10 minutes each test.

 

Some events happened exactly the same each of the four times. For example three SPADs crashed in rapid succession at 8 minutes every time. I am guessing these are takeoff or landing crashes (as Bullethead mentioned).

 

Other plane crash events were never universally repeated from mission to mission, but did show some roughly similar patterns of crashes, but varying in details of plane type or timing.

 

So...

My not-terribly scientific conclusion is that of the planes being destroyed:

about 25% are takeoff and landing crashes (a known issue)

about 25% are flak hits when using the new 'normal' flak setting versus the old 'easy' flak (maybe a tad too deadly? Up for debate), and

about 50% are some other cause like either being shot down in combat or perhaps just crashing due to some bad AI flying (like the occasional stall and fall back into the ground we sometimes see in low dogfights?).

 

Anyway, basically it shows it probably isn't any one thing, but several things all conspiring, that gives this relatively high rate of craft destroyed in the game.

 

Don't know if any of this is helpful, but hopefully it is of some use. I might try 'moderate' air activity now to see if the percentage of AI crashing is reduced with less planes in the air.

[77Scout 3]

A final report. I switched to 'moderate' air activity and ran another four 10 minute trials. Averaged 14 planes destroyed (specifically 17, 13, 10, and 15), using 'normal' flak, so it doesn't seem to make much difference from using 'heavy' air activity.

 

Oh, and the three SPADs that crash like clockwork at the 8 minute point aren't landing or taking off, they crash in German territory with no enemies around so that is some weird 'let's fly into the ground' thing, or some uncanny repeatable triple flak kill.

 

I'll leave it there. Interesting but nothing too definative.