Pilot getting hit in WOFF also doesn't mean the plane immediately goes down. It almost always takes more than one hit on the pilot or long bleeding before AI plane loses control. I don't have any issue with the effect of hits on the engine or the pilot but the odds of bullets reaching them through the fuselage seem to be off almost by an order of magnitude.

Currently it's easier to shoot down planes that are maneuvering than ones flying in straight line because hits on maneuvering plane come from a larger angle and don't have to work their way through the fuselage. It's shooting "easy" targets from "optimal" position where this inconsistency really surfaces.

I wonder if the "fuselage" in damage model is just a single area or if it has more detail like an actual fuselage.

If the fuselage has fairly detailed model like the one Louvert posted or it's a solid piece, then the view from directly behind the plane would indeed be almost completely "covered" by the various structure or the fuselage, maybe even in multiple layers.

Does the bullet need to "miss" a part to penetrate it or does it not penetrate even after "missing" it? If latter is the case then a Nieuport fuselage shot directly from behind would indeed be an almost impenetrable armor. If the bullet penetrates only after not "hitting" part of the fuselage to reach the pilot then that could also explain the situation. The odds of direct hit wounding the pilot after "missing" the fuselage and not "missing" the pilot would be only 25%. If the bullet can "hit" the fuselage, multiple times (all with the same 50% chance of missing) the the actual chance of pilot being wounded could be half of that.

Now I don't know how it actually works. These just seem like possible explanations for what seem like oddly bullet resistant fuselages.

edit.
miss = bullet not colliding
"miss" = bullet misses by dice roll
hit = bullet collides
"hit" = bullet deals damage by dice roll

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I love these sorts of discussions, they actually cause us to stop and think these things through far more so than we likely would on our own.

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Just to add my 2 cents don’t disregard the penetrative power of .30 caliber FMJ rounds at, essentially, point blank range. I’ll leave the rest to my betters but ,finally, I’ll go with the thought that if you’re thinking your hiding behind a couple of wood spars and a wicker seat you may be in for a surprise.

What's wrong with that?



No that's not why at all, it's down to the damage values. Wings are made up of several parts.

There is one damage box for the pilot usually it depends but the "probability" is not how likely overall that part will be hit compared to the rest of the aircraft at all. It means if I hit this box how probable is it, that I hit whatever is represented by the box. So if it's 80% it means 20% of the bullets will hit but do no damage. If it is in a shared component though then a % goes to hit something else. We also have systems we have added to CFS3 and used damage components and systems in different ways than was intended to produce the overall effect so things are not always what they seem just reading through there.
We have overall component damage combinations, we have the ability for 1 part to nock on and effect another flyable systems and so on. Much more complex than it seems. We also have code to handle how pilots are hit and bleed out etc many things like this on top of all that.


There are several boxes used to define the fuselage for example, with several gaps there as opposed to the original CFS3, we redesign it to have deliberate gaps holes from various angles, if someone is struggling to shoot aircraft down, good it wasn't easy, You could try from a slightly different offset angle further back, nearer or whatever.
You can often hit parts like engine, pilot whatever from above and below and sides and rear but sometimes bullets won't go all the way through. If we remove all the boxes there totally so you can hit the pilot we'd have lots of instant kills and people would moan about that.
The rear you can usually hit through gap or holes I have deliberately designed in so it can "pass through" to hit the engine, fuel, pilot etc.

What we have done produces a pretty good overall replication of the types of kills and number of bullets etc needed as we have heard. We don't intend to change the system.

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Agreed Duke, and "point blank range" is the operative part of your observation. Again, I have found this to be the case more often than not in OFF/WOFF: Get within 30 yards or less of your enemy and fire directly into him and odds are he is going down. The trick is still getting that close to do your work without your target taking objection to it.

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Pol, you snuck in while I was posting. Thanks for giving the dev's point of view on this topic, much appreciated, and always enlightening.

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Thanks for the reply Pol, that clears the question of fuselage hitboxes' nature a lot.

The probability of hits on pilot and engine feel pretty natural from every other angle than directly from behind (at least on the Nieuport 11 to 23 models). It's just that very specific "perfect" situation of seemingly firing raking fire all the way through the fuselage that actually produces little results which seems completely counterintuitive and very unrewarding.

You should be aiming for the actual pilot and engine, not hoping to fire through anything to get to it. Even in real life, this would require a slight offset up, right or left.
If you imagine that nieuport pic, from behind, some aircraft are tubes, some are wooden frames, but the tubes/wood frame would be converging to the rudder (which as a vertical metal bar and it's parts there too) as would the vertical and horizontal support bars at various sections on the way from the pilot to the tail so it definitely would deflect / take out some of the hits.

I'm fairly confident that my aim is on the pilot and engine, the fuselage is just in the way when the target is flying relatively level or is at very close range. I'm not actually aiming at the fuselage and hoping to hit the pilot but aiming at the pilot through the fuselage.

I don't disagree that the tail/fuselage would deflect some of the hits but the covering effect seems a bit much considering the ballistic and materials involved. It's like that flipped Ikea table or the backrest of a sofa in a typical action movie that somehow stops rifle bullets .

Oh well, it's not like this is an insurmountable issue. I guess I should just start by shooting the wing or the head of the pilot to finish an enemy instead of trying to rake the plane first. In case you ever revisit the hitboxes, it would be great if planes had a bit larger entry holes in their rears though .

I really doubt we will change it, it reproduces the roughly correct numbers of hits to down a craft and varies from a handful to many 100 just as it did. You can hit vitals from behind, and you must aim for engine and pilot anyway (not through things) but directlly. For me it's about right.

If we open up the fuselage so most bullets go straight through you will have lots of kills per mission, which is also very unrealistic, and then people will ask for it to be changed the other way, been round round this dozens of times over the now 13-15 years whatever it is since OFF Phase1 up to today WOFF PE.

If you start micro analysing everything you will never get to just enjoy the sim.

Find all the secrets and mechanics of a game rather than just play the game to win ruins it for most of us.

Truth.