Yet another landing gear thread

[A Mongoose]

From what I've seen with the B-17, the devs do seem to take community feedback. I've also seen a MILLION other people complain about this exact problem I'm having.

Landing gear. Woah boy. You lose ONE wheel. Instant quit. You can't land without the plane and crew suffering critical existence failure and I for one aren't ready to ditch a bomber because of something I have no way of preventing. Sure, if my engines are all gone, that's some fine shooting by the enemy. My highly levelled and very valuable bomber has enough chutes for everyone, so lets skedaddle. But if I lose the bomber because of something I had no defence and no wiggle room with, it's just what the kids call 'BS'. Engine get hit, you can repair it. Catch fire, extinguish it. Lose it, hey these magic planes can fly on one, so as long as it wasn't your last, you're cool.

But the instant you lose a landing gear, just quit the mission and restart. Honestly it just breaks a good tense mission right down. One moment I'm having the time of my life, clinging on by a thread, micromanaging my guys, tagging every fighter I can and desperately ordering one guy from the front of the plane to pick up someone at the back with a medikit. I check under my plane, and that excitement just turns to stone cold frustration, since one of those holy wheels is gone.

There are two solutions I see to this. Make it so landing gear can't be damaged. However, that does take away from the feel of everything going wrong in combat IMO, so here's my favourite idea.

Make landing gear fixable, like engines, heck like practically everything else you need to land your plane. Sure, the enemy can take it out, but when you get that all-important breather, you'd need to send someout out onto the wing to fix it. That way there's still risk involved, but now you can actually do something to mitigate that risk.

If a dev reads this, thanks, and take it into consideration please. Awesome game otherwise.

[AugustusTirion]

Originally posted by X-COM SPARK:

...
But the instant you lose a landing gear, just quit the mission and restart.
...

Or you could chose to not be a kiddie that wants it all easy.

Lost landing gears are FAR from game ending.

Just bail out the crew and have the pilot emergency land near the runway and with the remaining gear retracted.

I had it happen 3 times in my B17 play through.
Lost zero crew.
Lost the plane once of the three.
No big deal. Grind the repeatable missions a bit to pay for re-upgradding the plane.

[Moop]

Originally posted by AugustusTirion:

Originally posted by X-COM SPARK:

...
But the instant you lose a landing gear, just quit the mission and restart.
...

Or you could chose to not be a kiddie that wants it all easy.

Lost landing gears are FAR from game ending.

Just bail out the crew and have the pilot emergency land near the runway and with the remaining gear retracted.

I had it happen 3 times in my B17 play through.
Lost zero crew.
Lost the plane once of the three.
No big deal. Grind the repeatable missions a bit to pay for re-upgradding the plane.

I'll try this NEAR the landing field approach! I've also found it wise to keep thousands of dollars in the bank for when I have to re-upgrade a new plane

[A Mongoose]

Originally posted by AugustusTirion:

Originally posted by X-COM SPARK:

...
But the instant you lose a landing gear, just quit the mission and restart.
...

Or you could chose to not be a kiddie that wants it all easy.

Lost landing gears are FAR from game ending.

Just bail out the crew and have the pilot emergency land near the runway and with the remaining gear retracted.

I had it happen 3 times in my B17 play through.
Lost zero crew.
Lost the plane once of the three.
No big deal. Grind the repeatable missions a bit to pay for re-upgradding the plane.

Well every time I tried to land a damaged plane, boom.

Ditched the bombs, moved the fuel, put up the gear, moved everyone to the front, bailed everyone but the pilot. Tried everything. Still boom every time, with varying numbers of deaths.

Some of us like having fun without frustration. If I wanted it easy, I wouldn't be touching the Secret Weapons missions with their rocket interceptors and autocannon spam, much less go beyond the first critical mission.

[Reebs]

How to solve this problem: do a belly landing.

Step 1: Drop all your explosive payload if you still have any

Step 2: Move the ball turret away from their position, preferably move them to the tail

Step 3: Approach the runway. Wait until you're almost touching down.

Step 4: Click on "Emergency Landing". DO NOT SET YOUR GEAR DOWN. Your remaining gear will just make things way harder.

Step 5: Activate lean and hope for the best.

Just like an actual emergency landing, your crew will crash land, some with injuries and maybe some deaths, but as long as the plane doesn't break apart, you will get to keep your plane and crew if they make it out alive.

[Moop]

Originally posted by Ribs:

How to solve this problem: do a belly landing.

Step 1: Drop all your explosive payload if you still have any

Step 2: Move the ball turret away from their position, preferably move them to the tail

Step 3: Approach the runway. Wait until you're almost touching down.

Step 4: Click on "Emergency Landing". DO NOT SET YOUR GEAR DOWN. Your remaining gear will just make things way harder.

Step 5: Activate lean and hope for the best.

Just like an actual emergency landing, your crew will crash land, some with injuries and maybe some deaths, but as long as the plane doesn't break apart, you will get to keep your plane and crew if they make it out alive.

I will try it, but so far it has resulted in plane destruction every time. Thanks for the tip about no gear and lean.

[Reebs]

I've done it[gfycat.com], full landing and results here.

[ElGatuno 🌺]

Originally posted by Ribs:

I've done it[gfycat.com], full landing and results here.

The Madman

[Jonnydodger]

Originally posted by Ribs:

I've done it[gfycat.com], full landing and results here.

Can confirm, does work, provided you don’t have bombs still in the aircraft.

[Moop]

I'm thinking it's a RNG, and a low probability-to-survive one at that

[DeviousDave]

Originally posted by Moop:

I'm thinking it's a RNG, and a low probability-to-survive one at that

This... Doesn't help that the B17's landing gear seems to:

A) be using the same toughness values as the lancs landing gear (but is exposed without door covers to protect it so takes more damage)

and

B) Seems to fall off even when not fully destroyed - I've had multiple instances now where the damage indicator is yellow [moderate damage] for a wheel that got hit but the whole thing just fell off as though it had been destroyed [black indicator] )

I get the feeling there is something up with how the game is calculating landing gear damage in the B-17 DLC.

[A Mongoose]

Originally posted by Moop:

I'm thinking it's a RNG, and a low probability-to-survive one at that

I'm fine with it being RNG. I'm not fine with having no way to work around it, especially since it's kind of important to be able to land.

[Sveny]

plane was in excellent nick expect landing missing 1 landing gear.

Dumped bombs, healed crew to full health, and moved them all to the front, came in on with lean on.

Pumped all fuled to the side with landing gear.

result all dead bar 2 plane lost game over.

[Jonnydodger]

Originally posted by Sveny:

plane was in excellent nick expect landing missing 1 landing gear.

Dumped bombs, healed crew to full health, and moved them all to the front, came in on with lean on.

Pumped all fuled to the side with landing gear.

result all dead bar 2 plane lost game over.

Originally posted by Ribs:

How to solve this problem: do a belly landing.

Step 1: Drop all your explosive payload if you still have any

Step 2: Move the ball turret away from their position, preferably move them to the tail

Step 3: Approach the runway. Wait until you're almost touching down.

Step 4: Click on "Emergency Landing". DO NOT SET YOUR GEAR DOWN. Your remaining gear will just make things way harder.

Step 5: Activate lean and hope for the best.

Just like an actual emergency landing, your crew will crash land, some with injuries and maybe some deaths, but as long as the plane doesn't break apart, you will get to keep your plane and crew if they make it out alive.

[Sveny]

I have also read, that armoured engines on the landing gear spots helps a lot. ...

[The Roofus]

Bail out all crew except pilot and engineer, don't deploy landing gear, activate lean, emergency land on tarmac - problem solved. Literally not lost a single man or bomber to wheel-outs since I started doing this.