posted 01-27- 06:10 AM               

[img]freespace.virgin.net/darren.wood5/advancedengine.jpg[/img]

Advanced Engine DM explained
La-5FN 14 Cylinder aircooled

Key:

1. Central Base "Parent" engine
2. Cylinders (child engines)
3. Oil Supply to cylinders
4. Oil Cooler

(engine raised from Fuse for display)

Basic premise:

Divide overall engine power and SFC into seperate parts to allow much more accurate and realistic damage model for engines, with modeled oil and water supplies (where applicable)

OK, heres how it works, I use 1 engine as a set of 2 cylinders, so, for the 14 cylinder engine I now have 7 engines.
1 engine is a parent base engine, the other 6 are put as children of the parent engine, each engine supplies power to a single prop (although you could put power to multiple props as in the La5). Each engine has a modeled oil supply and could have a water supply modeled for water cooled engines. In the La5, each engine has a maxHP of 264,2400 and an SFC of 32, giving a total HP of 1850,2400 and SFC of 224, the correct settings for a single engine.

How the DM works:

The base engine can't take direct hits, but does recieve damage through the damage chain from the Cylinders, this means that even if you don't kill all the cylinders, enough damage will be done via the damage chain to cause catastrophic damage to the parent engine and kill it and all it's child engines.

The Cylinders can take direct hit damage, the DM is made so that at specified damage levels the maxHP is dropped and the SFC is raised for that specific engine to model power loss/greater fuel consumption due to misfires after taking hits, and then eventualy total loss of HP from that cylinder when it's destroyed, visual twin smoketrails are added from the exhaust points, grey smoke for cylinder damage, eventualy catching fire.

Each cylider has it's own oil supply, this can take direct hit damage, this wont directly affect the maxHP (other than through the damage chain activating DM effects in the cylinder it supplies), but will result in the loss of the cylinder it supplies after a certain amount of time depending on it's damage level, in effect, the cylinder siezes up, visual indicators are a thick black smoke trail and eventualy fire.

OilCooler, this is a child of the parent engine, it's placed in the area of the oil cooler and can take direct hit damage, this will result the loss of the whole engine by it siezing up and killing the parent and it's children with it, visual indiactors are a thick black smoke from the oil cooler, later catching fire.

For water cooled engines, model the same as the oil system, changine the smoke color to smkWhite, then adjust the DM affects to suit

The pluses:

Accurate engine DM with little or no need for obProb since you model the main engine parts, you just decide what would happen at a certain amount of damage, and make it happen, why have obProb when you know what should happen (ofcourse you can use obProb, but for example, a small oil leak is a small oil leak, why make it kill the engine before a small leak would?)

Accurate power loss due to damage, if like me you've ever blown a cylinderhead gasket in your car, then you know that it doesn't mean you can't drive the car anymore, it means it runs worse and you have less/no power from the cylinder/s where the break is, it's the same here, you can lose a cylinder and the engine keeps running, you just have less power now, which is more accurate than using obProb again becuase there's simply no need for it, lose 1 of my engines and I lose the same power that I would if 2 cylinders stopped working.

If you have a powerful engine like the La5, or F4U, and the torque roll is just over the top, you can add a second hidden prop and make it propBackwards, then add engBackwards to less than half your total engine count, and direct them to use the hidden prop, in this way you've now added an amount of negative torque reducing or even completely removing the torque roll effect while still keeping the correct power output. (this shouldn't be used to kill the torque roll fully, just to help make an aircraft flyable if you really have problems)

You can place the cylinders exactly where they should be, for example, Tailgunner added this to the Me109e4, and it's great, he placed the cylinders where they should be, low down in a V formation so that they protrude through the fuse near the exhausts, with oil and water supplies from above, and oil coolers placed in the wings, I love the 109 with this DM. You can make the engine easier or harder to hit by just moving the cylinders into or out of the fuse more, no need to tweak your obhits much.

The Minuses:

er... er... er.... takes 5 mins longer to add than a normal single engine. OK, maybe longer cause you need to sort out smoke trail origins, but hey, thats tweaking and fun lol

This DM is currently on the IL2, La5, Me109e4 and k4, and is being added to the PBY, and Tailgunner has a variation of this on his B17 and extensive testing has not shown up any problems at all in the FM or anywhere else What this also means is that aircraft have a more realistic chance of downing the enemy, the spit1a's .303's become much more effective against this type of DM because even without enough kill power in them to rip an enemy apart, they are good enough to make a real mess of an engine built this way, and lets face it, more aircraft were downed due to engine damage than because wings got blown off, or the aircraft was simply blown apart.

What I must do here is thank Condor though, I know our engine DM's look completly different, but actually they're not, my DM is based on Condors, after he added his to the IL2, I took a look at it, and simply thought "wouldn't it be nice if these effects were actualy modeled, like, do the real damage and get the real result instead of using probabilities.. Hell, I can do that" and thats where it all started. I currently have no plans to add this to more aircraft though, Tailgunner did the 109 as a test, to see how it worked out, and it's great, but we're both going to be a little to busy in the near future to add this to more than our own projects, and Condor has done the work and dropped his DM into a large number of aircraft (what a guy )

So basicaly this is to help you understand whats going on with my DM, and what I'm talking about when I mention more than one engine on a single engined aircraft when asking about things, but mostly for anyone wanting to add this to their own projects, you can see how it's working, whats going on, and how easy it is to add this, and maybe even find improvements

~Nat~

PS, anyone wanting to take a proper look at this, let me know and I'll send you the aircraft, the IL2 has an inline 10 cylinder with oil and water (needs to be put into a v though), the La5 a 14 cylinder aircooled Radial.

posted 01-27- 10:01 AM            

You're awesome, when I'd first thought about Condor's engine DM package, I kind of thought why not take it to the next step and make cylinders,and other engine parts damamageable directly. Of course it's the person who actually does it that makes the difference.

posted 01-27- 12:10 PM               

"anyone wanting to take a proper look at this, let me know and I'll send you the aircraft, the IL2 has an inline 10 cylinder with oil and water (needs to be put into a v though), the La5 a 14 cylinder aircooled Radial."

Me, me, me, me, me, me!!!!

One question, and I'm sure you did this, but you mention that the .303's have a chance now of doing some adequate damage....have you tested this online? There really is a HUGE difference beyween offline and online- although as I said, I;m sure you know this. If it has been tested online and this is true, then WOOOHOOO!!

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Brought to you by the campaign for a better Dauntless!

posted 01-27- 02:56 PM               

The main thing with this DM is testing though, before it gets released with an aircraft there should be alot of testing on the powerloss effect when cylinders take damage, if you don't drop enough power it will hardly make a difference, but too much and you might as well have killed the whole engine. Where this really comes into play even more though is with the advanced wing DM added aswell, allowing for a massive amount of progressive damage, meaning not only is your target losing power, you also damage his FM and make it harder to handle, aswell as not having enough power.

Jeeves, I've just got the FM finished off more or less on the La-5FN, I'll get it packed up and sent over to you, I'd have been asking for testers tomorrow anyway, and right now it does need alot of DM testing, I've done so much work getting it to fly right I've not done much DM testing, but I think you'll like the La5, she's alot of fun, and even though it only has cannon the rate of fire isn't bad at 800rpm, and they are 20mm and do alot of damage.

posted 01-27- 09:59 PM               

Send 'em, Send 'em now! Please. I am so glad what I started has turned into this.

Thanks for all the effort you and tg have put into this.

Condor out