Aircraft ruggedness

[OlWilly]

If you compare SF with other sims you may notice that planes explode way too easily. You just look at the plane funny and it's already going down in a ball of flames.

In my install I went out to fix this.

Generally, every airplane part (fuselage, inner wing, etc) has its own HP bar. Once it's depleted, it's gone. HP pool is determined by the size of the part - obviously, B-52's inner wing would have more HP than F-15's.

StructuralFactor statement is a plain multiplier for every such part. At 1.0 it does nothing, leaving HP at 100%, at 2.0 it makes it 200%, etc.

So, what I did, I gave every structural part a StructuralFactor=2.0, unless it was already higher.

This gave some ruggedness, but planes were still exploding too much.

The issue is fuel tanks. They are big, always get hit, and once hit - leakage, fire or explosion proc very easily. This allows stuff like easy kills with just 1-2 cannon hits.

I wasn't looking for an elegant solution, and as a dirty crutch just added 35mm of steel armor on every fuel tank (it has no weight so alright). This is not supposed to represent any real-world protection, just to crutch over game's engine mechanics.

And it gave good results.

Aircraft did not become indestructible, a good missile hit or aimed burst still takes it down. But aircraft (you and AI alike) now can take some non-critical damage, and you may even see damaged planes actually hit the ground. For the first time while playing, I managed to get hit and lose one engine, limping home instead of outright exploding.

 

Another issue is ground vehicles. In vanilla SF, a single 20mm shell destroys any tank from a single hit, from any projection, which is wrong.

After experimenting I found that ground vehicles have pitiful HP bars and you need to up them literally by 1000s.

For example, I gave T-55 StructuralFactor=4000.0 for hull StructuralFactor=5000.0 for a turret. You would think that this is a lot, but a single Maverick still gets it; if you use cannon, now you have to work for a kill.

 

The downside of this is that you have to apply changes manually to every vehicle you want to have it. I had a lot of available time during night shifts, but it is really a tedious process. But it makes dogfights and ground attacks more involved for sure

[+Wrench]

 

Another that I've been using is "armor as structure" added to each component section in the data ini, not just specific areas (engine, cockpit, fuel tanks, etc)

Something like this:

Quote

[Nose]
ParentComponentName=Fuselage
ModelNodeName=FuselageNose
ShowFromCockpit=FALSE
DamageRating=DESTROYED
MassFraction=0.147
HasAeroCoefficients=FALSE
MinExtentPosition=-0.79,2.75,-0.92
MaxExtentPosition=0.79,7.17,0.74
CollisionPoint[001]=-0.79,2.75,-0.92
CollisionPoint[002]=0.79,7.17,0.74
SystemName[001]=NoseGearL
SystemName[002]=NoseGearR
SystemName[003]=FuselageFuelCell2
SystemName[004]=LandingLight

HasArmor=TRUE
ArmorMaterial=Aluminum
Armor[REAR].Thickness=5
Armor[FRONT].Thickness=5
Armor

.Thickness=5
Armor

.Thickness=5

Armor[TOP].Thickness=5
Armor[BOTTOM].Thickness=5

 

[+Wrench]

stupid thing didn't format right, but you get the idea!

Like OldWilley said, upping the StructrualFactor a bit don't hurt either. 

[OlWilly]

6 hours ago, Wrench said:

 

Another that I've been using is "armor as structure" added to each component section in the data ini, not just specific areas (engine, cockpit, fuel tanks, etc)

Something like this:

I've definitely seen that in some of planes I adjusted.

Your method is superior, as it allows for finer tuning and better results, but requires matching the armor values for nearly every aircraft individually. You can do things like, for example, having a multi engine bomber and giving its engines better protection from the rear and sides, but worse from the front, encouraging frontal attacks.

StructrualFactor is just simpler, you can slap it on every component and get the durability boost