BE.2c Engines

I am on my third Career in a BE2 and i have notced it's dangerous engine. Alittle TOO dangerous i should think. In almost half sorties someone in the flight aborts or burns to death and my first 2 careers ended in engine fires. Comparing this with historical data it feels way too deadly in WOFF. I agree engine fires were there, but not this much. If so, the plae would have been removed from service immediately.

So i wonder, is there any mod that reduces (not removing) engine failure risk or atleast the engine fire risk? Is there anyway to survive a spontaneous engine fire by any means? I cannot kill the engine, just set it to idle. As of now, there is really no point of flying BE2 careers, since the life expency is max 20 sorties not counting enemy AA or planes..

3 careers, 2 kia due to engine fires, 3rd alive but after 5 missions i have made 2 emergency landings with engine failure and systems failure.

Is there a datasheet with percentage values per planes of engine fail risks?

If you reduce the mixture to minimum the engine dies. That won't help much, I suppose, if the fire reaches any wood or canvas before that.

I recommend making a copy of the stock simulation.xml file available in the main WOFF OBD folder - and then tweaking the following section of a "modded" simulation.xml file that you will only use when flying Be.2 careers ----->

<Failure weight="1.0" masterdisable="n">
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="90" damageAmount_pct="31" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="120" damageAmount_pct="70" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="160" damageAmount_pct="5" frequency_secs="111" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="200" damageAmount_pct="9" frequency_secs="35" dump="y"/>

Possibly increase average hrs. between random failures, and also reduce the damage pts., something like ----->

<Failure weight="1.0" masterdisable="n">
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="150" damageAmount_pct="21" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="190" damageAmount_pct="55" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="220" damageAmount_pct="3" frequency_secs="80" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="270" damageAmount_pct="6" frequency_secs="25" dump="y"/>

Hope that helps and let us know the results if possible.

Von S

Exellent! Thank you very much! I will report back any results!

EDIT:

A quick summary after some tests. Using above suggested settings, i am now suffering even worse from engine malfunctions. Of 5 missions, i have force landed 4 times. AI flight members have force landed 2 times. So in 5 missions with 2 machines in every flight, it is in total 6 engine breakdowns, on the other hand, there has been no fires as of yet.

I wonder what value did increase the risks though.

It should be noted that all testing has been under AI control (exept final approaches on forced landings)

Dawnpatrol, I suspect you might have suffered mainly from bad luck. Engine fires in the BE2 are certainly a possibility, but I haven't encountered them with the frequency you report. WOFF does model unreliability reasonably well. For example, if you fly the SE5 with the 150 hp Hispano Suiza engine, you are going to suffer fairly frequent breakdowns and the possibility of an engine fire. I found, however, that the frequency of problem dropped considerably if you avoid cruising at full throttle, reserving full power for combat situations. This same applies to the Spad 7.

I'm tempted to suggest flying the BE2 the same way, although 80% power in a Quirk is pretty much dead stop.

Thank you for the feedback - I recommend one more semi-controlled test therefore, so that we can see how manipulation of the numbers, in the simulation.xml file, operates exactly in WOFFue/pe.

For example, since we are getting more engine damage but less fire, on average, with the larger values in the previous modification, I suggest, when you find time, to try out these smaller values ----->

<Failure weight="1.0" masterdisable="n">
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="50" damageAmount_pct="21" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="80" damageAmount_pct="55" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="120" damageAmount_pct="3" frequency_secs="170" dump="y"/>
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="160" damageAmount_pct="6" frequency_secs="65" dump="y"/>

In the above example, I've left the "damage amount pct" numbers smaller as in the previous modification, since this seems to refer to damage amount points and/or percentages, but I've increased the "frequency secs." numbers since this may refer to frequency between problems showing up, rather than frequency of duration of problem.

The only thing that seems illogical is that I've reduced the no. of hrs. for the "average hrs." settings - since initially I had assumed that it referred to hrs. between damage showing up - although, there is the off chance that it refers to ave. hrs. out of commission, after engine damage. Feel free to report back with results of this second experiment, if you like, and it might help us to narrow down what is controlling general damage vs. engine fires.

(Although we should also keep in mind that manipulation of these numbers still hinges on the law of averages/probabilities already hard-coded, most likely, into WOFF - so there will always, to some extent, be cases of "bad luck" and "good luck" when flying the Be.2, as other posts have indicated here.)

Von S

Let me throw my own two cents in, if I may, although i haven't fiddled with these numbers since WOFF 3 or 4. Some things may have changed or been added since then. For example, I'm not sure what "Failure weight" refers to. My guess is that it modifies the base random system damage chances for all aircraft, so maybe changing that value might have an impact on the number of failures. Try reducing this value to .25 or increasing it to a large number such as 50 to see if it has an effect.

My comments about the other values:

average_hrs: I think VonS is correct that this number refers to the number, on average, that the given system will experience a failure. My suspicion is that at the beginning of a campaign, each aircraft is assigned a random number of hours it has been "in service," based on aircraft type and date of the campaign. Therefore, "older" aircraft are more likely to break down than "newer" ones.

damageAmount_pct=x: The percent of damage the system suffers.

frequency_secs=x: This value modifies the damageAmount_pct, if present. For example, the following line:
<FailureRule SystemID="engine_one" average_hrs="160" damageAmount_pct="6" frequency_secs="65" dump="y"/>
means that when engine one experiences a random failure, it will immediately lose 6% of its function. Every 65 seconds, the engine will lose another 6% of its function. When it reaches 100% it will cease function all together, if it hasn't caught fire already.

dump I'm not sure, but I think if this is set to "y", it means the system is set to break entirely, or in the case of an engine, catch fire, etc.

Hope this helps. I could be totally wrong, so take all of the above with a grain of salt!

And my 2 cents here: modifying simulation.xml file has impact on all WOFF planes, so I recommend you to make your changes to failure rate into the respective aircraft folders only. In your case just add "Failure..." paragraph to "RAF_BE2C_sqd.xdp" file.

Basically with those weightings there is a random element too as they are "average". However for some people you will see many failures, some never see any and complain those settings are not enough and others see a few - unfortunately it's how random can work out

I can't remember the last time I saw a BE2c engine failure.

As with all changes like that you have to run many dozens of repeating tests with each and every one of those lines one by one, as it's random. You could for example see 10 engine failures in 10 flights then see none for a year

After a mess-up with too many mods mixed, i had to reinstall the game clean. I restarted new Be2 career and this one did go very well on default unmodified settings. I saw no engine fires, engine died out a few times but i managed some 35 missions before getting mauled by an EIII that ended that career. So my aftermath conclusion is that my first above careers got some sort of game-engine hookup of sorts? I felt that is was not entirely randomness tbh, way too much fires for that. OR it could have been linked with the specific type of Squadron?

Now i am flying an Strutter career in May 1916 and my allocated machine has worked flawlessly during my first 20 missions, YET squadron has suffered 6 casualties so far of burned out engines.

Thanks all for the insight though, i always prefer default game settings as i feel it is the way games are intended to be played, and if it works, i shall stick by it!

Thanks for the follow-up. Each run should be independent of the previous run as the dll unloads from memory each mission. But anyway glad you are having a decent run now
(amidst the zillion other things our dll does it also calcs the random events).