Scale and Fuel Consumption

[Nicholas Bell]

Since the map scale is reduced from actual, wouldn't it make sense to reduce the fuel tank capacity to reflect this on maps where in-flight refueling wouldn't be a factor (like Europe or Israel).  Or is this already calculated in the program by increasing the fuel consumption in the engine portion of the dat file?   I've been flying F-86s over Germany a lot lately and on occasion I get bingo calls from my wingmen, but not as often as I would think.

 

Nick

[Do335]

Have thought about the same thing but fuel consumption affects range but the same time endurance. If I increase it against proportion of map scale the endurance will suffer i.e. 5 min of dogfight, what amount of fuel is used before and after? Something like this doesn't "scale" so not worth bothering. (If it's airliners that simply fly from point to point, it could suit though.) I think if you wanna be more fuel critical, better way would be increasing NormalMissionRadius and MaxMissionRadius so the mission generator gives you more targets far away --> more fuel required on ingress and return trip.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Do335

[+Wrench]

why not just lower (or whichever direciton) the TSFC numbers?

[+Fubar512]

Even with realistic fuel quantities and consumption values, it's still quite easy to run out of fuel during a mission. Try flying a bombing mission from any airfield in Thailand to Hanoi in an F-105, and see how far you get, 60% scale and all.

[Gunrunner]

A few reasons not to mess with this :

 

1)  Some maps are 1:1, messing with the planes is a recipe for disaster.

 

2) Mixing and matching planes with artificially scaled performances and planes with "real-world" performances would be a mess.

 

3) It's already easy to run out of fuel, especially for wingmen who make an unrealistic use of afterburner at time, artificially reducing range further would mean that your wingmen WILL crash out of fuel on missions that, even at the reduced scale, they should have been able to accomplish with you.

 

4) The mix of scales within the same dataset makes me grit my teeth, it's simply not done.

[+Menrva]

 

1)  Some maps are 1:1, messing with the planes is a recipe for disaster.

 

Unless we mod every terrain we have (both stock and addon) to the RL 100% (and it can be done with HeX editing, but noticeable bugs come with it, and one must edit each target and double its coordinates values), it would be a huge effort to mod each .ini of each aircraft (the contrary would be a huge effort as well, to mod each terrain).  I must admit it bothers me that we have 100% addon terrain (which look better due to their scale) and 60% scaled stock terrains. My biggest dream atm would be to be able to mod terrains to their 100% scale without creating bugs (TOD files are not scaled properly according to the new enlarged TFD, etc.). Then we might think about correcting fuel usage for planes, taking into account that we can't refuel in SF2. This could be part of a SF2 community patch, since TK left it in our hands, I'd say.

Sorry for the thread hijacking.

[tiopilotos]

 

3) It's already easy to run out of fuel, especially for wingmen who make an unrealistic use of afterburner at time, artificially reducing range further would mean that your wingmen WILL crash out of fuel on missions that, even at the reduced scale, they should have been able to accomplish with you.

 

As far as I can remember almost every aircraft (except mine) which went out of fuel actually continued to fly back to base but the fuel indicator in debug was stuck at 2.2 Lbs

Edited April 5, 2016 by tiopilotos

[Emp_Palpatine]

As long as we dont have inflight refueling, we shouldn't mess with this. 
I already think some user-made campaigns to be quite difficult without it. North Cape, for instance, as well as Iceland

[Nicholas Bell]

Well, I guess from the answers the program doesn't take this into consideration.  Thanks.

 

I noted that I wasn't thinking about this for maps where inflight refueling would be required real world (SE Asia, NA).  But on maps where bases are close like Germany and Israel, the aircraft have too much loiter time.  And while this might be offset by the AI overuse of afterburner, that doesn't apply to late 40's early 50's aircraft without burners - and this is where I am seeing the excessive loiter/combat time.  Extending the ranges so that target was farther away would only effect friendly aircraft fuel useage.  I'd like a "fair" modification.

 

Essentially I want to:

1.  Eliminate stupid mission routes defending or attacking targets on the far side of the map when there plenty of assets to defend or attack adjacent to the airbase.  This requires decreasing ranges which amplifies the excessive loiter time.

2.  Increase the sense of AI self-preservation by "encouraging" them to RTB sooner.  Hitting bingo sooner might do that.

 

Nick

[Gunrunner]

As far as I can remember almost every aircraft (except mine) which went out of fuel actually continued to fly back to base but the fuel indicator in debug was stuck at 2.2 Lbs

 

@tiopilotos, Good point, I forgot that's how TK "fixed" it, never mind 3) then.

 

@Nicholas Bell, for 1. what you want to do is mess with NormaMissionRadius and MaxMissionRadius in the planes DATA.INI (that's a much cleaner way to do it), for 2. there's little you can do AFAIR.

[Nicholas Bell]

 

for 2. there's little you can do AFAIR.

 

Yeah, you're probably correct, but I've got to explore all possibilities to satisfy my curiosity I guess.     Lately I've been focusing on this issue in FE2 and it's a lot worse.  There the AI pays no attention to fuel levels at all and will fight until they run out.  At least in single missions.  I bring this up because in campaigns, although I've not messed with fuel levels yet, the AI in FE 2 at least has some small inclination at times to break off and RTB.  In SF2 this is much more apparent, perhaps because of the additional 3 years of development introduced additional improvements.