Yet Another Landing Gear Thread

[justmeman117]

First off, I just want to say, I'm glad the USAAF DLC is out, I'm happy they've added another bomber and campaign to the game, and hope they add more in the future. I think this is an example of DLC done right.

That being said, I'm in much the same boat as everybody else about the landing gear issues.

First off, I almost feel that save scumming in this game is a must (exiting out before the mission is over, and starting over). If you lose your plane or your crew, the consequences are disasterous, and you never fully recover, even when the game makes an effort to give you replacement crew and equipment that aren't fully stock.

I do it often, because I would rather replay a mission than lose my bomber or crew. It takes forever to build up the resources to outfit your bomber, and it takes forever to gain crew experience.

In my campaign currently, I have only lost one aircraft, and one KIA... Not bad in a game this difficult, but considering that BOTH were the result of landing gear issues, I'm inordinately frustrated with that system.

The first, I lost my aircraft early game... Which sucks, because I've spent the rest of the campaign grinding missions in a desparate attempt to get to where I WOULD'VE been had I not lost that first aircraft.

I had lost one landing gear. I had heard somewhere that they'd upped the danger involved with single gear landings, and decided to make a gear up landing instead... Except the pilot is retarded and does nothing but make go-arounds when you attempt to land on the runway with your gear up.

So, I decided to line up for a normal landing, then hit emergency landing, so a belly landing could be made on the runway... Except when you do this, the pilot stops bothering to aim for the runway. The plane drifted left, and the pilot put it down just a couple feet off the side of the runway. The aircraft disintigrated because it wasn't holding together very well (entire aircraft red). All aircrew survived but bomber unrepairable... Fantastic.

Now, I'm halfway through the campaign, and ran into the same situation. This time around, I'm thinking "well, last freaking time trying to emergency land didn't go over so well, so I guess I'll just make a 1 gear landing". Unfortunately, a lot of my crew were injured, and with a couple minutes of fuel left, I didn't really have much time to go around and heal them all first. But I figured "I mean, even if they get knocked out on landing, so long as they are recovered, they'll be fine anyway". This time the pilot actually landed on the runway, didn't know doing that was so difficult, but apparently it is, and even with a pretty strong airframe this time, the plane spontaneously flew apart like a uranium atom bombarded by neutrons. Look, obviously a good pilot would more than likely choose to make a gear up landing over a 1 gear landing, but even in cases of 1 gear landing, the pilot can usually do a lot to mitigate the damage. Honestly, I feel the way the lancaster would land on one gear before this update was a more accurate representation of 1 gear landings. I've done it in flight sims before, you'd have to mess up pretty bad to destroy a plane that bad landing on 1 gear.

Hit the end results screens, expecting to have lost another aircraft... No actually, the aircraft is fully recovered and repaired... But now my bombardier is dead?... WHAT?

Ok, so if the plane can be repaired after disintigrating on the runway, then why did I lose that first plane?... Unless... Unless making an emergency landing literally 2 feet to the side of the runway doesn't count as recoverable?... Could you imagine that, some damaged bomber skids off to the side of the runway NOOOOPE, we're not repairing that, total write off.... Meanwhile some plane falls apart ON the runway, and they can duct tape it back together no matter how many pieces it's in. And now I've lost a bombadier, when I probably could've saved the entire crew if I'd only decided to try ANOTHER emergency landing, and just pray the pilot doesn't miss the freaking runway like last time. And of course, both this and the lost plane were basically unavoidable, because two seconds later you're in debrief, too late to save scum.

To add insult to injury, I had to rebuy all the crew gear for the new bombadier, even though I recovered the old bombadier died on the tarmac. I know it's morbid saying "why can't he wear the dead dude's cloths", but at the same time, you don't have to constantly buy the crew new gear everytime they get shot up.

My point is, trying to come up with the right decision in this game is really difficult because the rules that govern it are wildly arbitrary, and counter to logic that would work in real life.

I'm not saying I want the game to be "easy", I've often seen that be used as a cop out counter argument to people who point out issues like this. What I'm saying is that I want this game to be logical. If a pilot is told to make an emergency landing on final approach, then ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, he should very well know to aim for the runway whether he has landing gear down or not. Pilots make belly up landings on runways all the time, I fail to see how the devs have failed to implement more realistic emergency landing techniques for so long. This is ESPESCIALLY something that should've been thought about and implemented BEFORE the recent DLC specifically to balance the suddenly more dangerous damaged gear landings.

I'm also not saying I want this game to be "easy" because there's also plenty of areas in this game where certain things are GENUINELY EASY to the point that it's unrealistic, and I wouldn't mind if THESE things were made harder in a reasonable manner. For example, being able to fly on one engine. What they should do is up engine power of all the different engines, but then if a player overloads their plane with equipment without upgrading them, then they have no wiggle room if they lose an engine. If you have 4000 units of weight on a plane that only has 4000 units of engine power, then you should start losing altitude if you lose an engine, or be forced to dump the bomb load and fuel. Players should be made to decide on how much redundancy they want. They should weigh how much EXTRA engine power they want, in order to handle engine failures. I'd also like to see them add random engine failures (just as other components randomly fail).

This places far more value on repairing engines in flight, and saving them from fires. As it stands now, I just outfit my plane with 2-3 lightweight engines (just to up my weight capacity), and 1-2 armored engine (so I always have 1 to get me home). Super simple tactic, and I don't even BOTHER with fire extinguishers, or putting out engine fires. It's a way to abuse and cheese the engine game mechanic. There's a lot more gameplay that could be had here if they implemented greater (and more realistic) consequences for losing an engine.

But of course it'd have to be done reasonably. I already made a post a year ago about the one time I actually managed to lose all 4 engines, and told my pilot to make an emergency landing... And when he did, he crashed the plane, because in this game, unpowered planes fall out of the sky like a rock, RATHER than glide like they do in real life. I've made dead stick landings in flight sims, even in larger planes, THEY DON'T FALL OUT OF THE SKY LIKE THAT... Which circles back to how borked and illogical the emergency landing system is, and always has been. I don't think I've EVER used emergency landing without some nonsense killing all my crew, or completely destroying my plane. I wouldn't mind if those kinds of things happened occasionally, but in this game, if I need to use emergency landing, then I might as well exit out and restart the mission, because it has never ended well for me.

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Anyway, I just wanted to add my 2 cents to the pot of constructive criticism on this topic. Nobody's asking that the devs make the game stupid easy, just that they should make it hard in all the RIGHT places, and not in places where it makes no logical sense. I often hear as a counter argument "it's not realistic for gameplay reasons" but in a lot of these game mechanics, making them more realistic would actually serve gameplay, not detract from it.

[grandnovice]

Armored Engines over the landing gear helps a lot. Emergency land at base with gear up (and belly gunner at a different station and drop bombs). I only lost one bomber so far.

[Koekiegast]

i've had that too sometimes, i lose one gear on my fully armored plane, no further damage except one damaged engine above the gear and a fully healed crew. I land, the wing touches the runway and everything is going well and a milisecond later boom my entire plane is flying trough the air in pieces for no reason whatshowever, every crew dead except the pilot.

[justmeman117]

Originally posted by grandnovice:

Armored Engines over the landing gear helps a lot. Emergency land at base with gear up (and belly gunner at a different station and drop bombs). I only lost one bomber so far.

Except that's essentially what I did when I lost my plane. No bombs, because it was a bombing mission, I always put my armored engines over landing gear, and told the pilot to belly land on the runway. The problem was, telling him to emergency land period, and he starts ignoring the runway. The plane would up landing off of it.

All you can do is hope that you have it lined up well enough that he, BY CHANCE, belly lands it on the tarmac where you want it... otherwise, from my experience, the plane's a write off.

That's the sort of thing that I'm criticizing. Why isn't the pilot aiming for the runway when making an emergency landing on final approach?.

[justmeman117]

Originally posted by Koekiegast:

i've had that too sometimes, i lose one gear on my fully armored plane, no further damage except one damaged engine above the gear and a fully healed crew. I land, the wing touches the runway and everything is going well and a milisecond later boom my entire plane is flying trough the air in pieces for no reason whatshowever, every crew dead except the pilot.

Exactly. Sometimes playing battle of stalingrad, if my plane's beaten up and for whatever reason I decide to make a 1 gear landing over a belly landing, I MIGHT snap a wing, or break the other wheel, or something. But nothing THAT lethal. Watching the new 1 gear landings in this update is like... Well... It's about as overdramatic as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c6lsMHiJbQ

.... Or the first 36 seconds of this:

https://youtu.be/Acx4iRj95IQ?t=17

[grandnovice]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1557020105
You can survive, you just need to play it safe and plan out what to do.

1) When you know the landing strip icon should appear soon start to climb to high alt, and be at medium.

2) Get lock on runway and make sure your pilot is locked into the seat, and have at least 8 parachutes.

3) As soon as you get the lock on the runway start the crew bailing.

4) Tilt the camera angle so you are looking down from above. Do not lower landing gear, and as soon as the end of the runway is approaching the plane's nose do an emergency landing. If you wait the plane will get waved off. However, you can belly-flop in the terran near the base, but if you go too far you won't get the return bonus.

[Team Triss]

Are you pumping all your fuel out of the wing that's missing gear? If the wing had fuel in it and it hits the ground, it explodes.

[justmeman117]

Originally posted by LoR Team Triss:

Are you pumping all your fuel out of the wing that's missing gear? If the wing had fuel in it and it hits the ground, it explodes.

I don't think it exploded. I saw no explosions or fire, the plane didn't have much fuel left (maybe 2 minutes if I weren't leaning when it happened). It's why I didn't take the time to heal my crew completely before attempting a landing. It did fall apart though once the wing hit, and I think that's what killed the bombadier. He was already low health, like many in the crew, and he was the furthest forwards. I could understand the plane falling apart if it were heavily damaged, but the aircraft was heavily armored, and mostly blue, save for that one wheel.

[justmeman117]

I realize you guys developed gameplay methods of combatting the issue, I'm just saying there's still some issues with the emergency landing system (such as the pilot being incapable of aiming for the runway when told to make an emergency landing in its vicinity), and the one wheel landings are very extreme compared to many real life examples of one wheel landings.

Planes don't typically spontaneously explode the second a wing touches the ground, regardless of whether or not those wing tanks have fuel in them. In fact, having less fuel in a fuel tank makes it MORE likely to explode (rather than just catch fire and burn at worst when a leak occurs) because the fumes cause the fuel/air mixture to be closer to what's required for combustion. A good example, I work on the KC-135 aircraft as a jet engine mechanic, and our tech data specifically states that we cannot run APUs when the NO. 2 main fuel tank (the one that feeds the APUs) has less than 2,000 LBS of fuel in it, because the less fuel it has, the more likely the fuel/air mixture inside the tank will be ripe for ignition, and explosion... It's happened before, it's why we have a caution in the tech data.

The only case in which a ton of fuel in a wing tank would cause an explosion is if the tank is torn open so violently that it sprays fuel everywhere, atomizing it... And I reiterate, planes don't typically fly apart when they make 1 wheel landings. It's circular logic to say the plane exploded because of fuel, when in reality, the plane would basically have to come apart to begin with to atomize the fuel to the point of exploding in the first place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajAg6eXKhvc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jma0KLT2e8A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxvJ1j6_xyc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0cFosl7Wc

... Note none of these aircraft fell apart or exploded when making 1 wheel landings, 2 of which were even B-17s. Like I said, you'd have to be a pretty bad pilot to make a partial gear landing that ended in death or disintigration.

[justmeman117]

Furthermore, while I understand the defence of "we took liberties in realism for the sake of gameplay", I think that defence of a gameplay mechanic only works on a case by case basis. In this case, I think it makes one wheel landings unrealistically difficult, over something you have little control over (can't exactly upgrade wheels like you can every other component).

And if you really do want to make the game more difficult, or require greater skill to manage the aircraft, like I stated in my OP, there are several areas of the game which are actually unrealistically EASY in comparison that could be patched to be simultaneously more difficult, require greater skill and decision making abilities on the part of the player, increase player interaction and gameplay, AND make the game more realistic, all at the same time... Such as patching out the ability to fly on one engine, and implementing a more realistic weight management system, one that makes the player choose between overloading the plane with more advanced systems, or having excess horsepower to cope with engine failures. This is a perfect example of a game mechanic that could be made more difficult, more interactive, AND more realistic all at the same time. You likely wouldn't have as many people being opposed to a change like that, because it ticks all the right boxes without sacrificing really anything.

[醉仙望月]

Originally posted by justmeman117:

Except that's essentially what I did when I lost my plane. No bombs, because it was a bombing mission, I always put my armored engines over landing gear, and told the pilot to belly land on the runway. The problem was, telling him to emergency land period, and he starts ignoring the runway. The plane would up landing off of it.

All you can do is hope that you have it lined up well enough that he, BY CHANCE, belly lands it on the tarmac where you want it... otherwise, from my experience, the plane's a write off.

That's the sort of thing that I'm criticizing. Why isn't the pilot aiming for the runway when making an emergency landing on final approach?.

You should lower your last landing gear first and target the runway normally.
Once your bomber almost land on the runway , hit EMERGENCY LANDING and then RAISE GEAR.
I never missed the runway by doing this when emergency landing, and never lose a bomber or a crew member.

[BloodCat]

I'm playing default (RAF) campaign now, and something has definitely changed regarding one leg or belly landings. I've done that tens of times before with the Lanc, and the crashes were rare. But after the USAAF DLC (or maybe prior to that, I haven't played since Challenge Mode patch) the Lanc just disintegrates on one leg landing; the pilot and engineer who were landing it survived though.

[Reebs]

Originally posted by BloodCat:

I'm playing default (RAF) campaign now, and something has definitely changed regarding one leg or belly landings. I've done that tens of times before with the Lanc, and the crashes were rare. But after the USAAF DLC (or maybe prior to that, I haven't played since Challenge Mode patch) the Lanc just disintegrates on one leg landing; the pilot and engineer who were landing it survived though.

Make sure you don't have any bombs or missiles still on board. They'll explode and turn your plane into scrap metal if you failed to check for it.

[BloodCat]

Originally posted by Ribs:

Originally posted by BloodCat:

I'm playing default (RAF) campaign now, and something has definitely changed regarding one leg or belly landings. I've done that tens of times before with the Lanc, and the crashes were rare. But after the USAAF DLC (or maybe prior to that, I haven't played since Challenge Mode patch) the Lanc just disintegrates on one leg landing; the pilot and engineer who were landing it survived though.

Make sure you don't have any bombs or missiles still on board. They'll explode and turn your plane into scrap metal if you failed to check for it.

Of course I took all the necessary precautions. As mentioned before, I have experience with unconventional landings in BC, and used to defend it in various threads about impossibility of those... but now something has changed with that.

[A Mongoose]

Here's a funny story from the fixthegoddamnlandinggear club. Playing the USAAF campaign.

One of my landing gear got shot out in like one second by the first lot of fighers. I'm sorry, but that is just unacceptable.

Instant quit. The B17 just seems so much more fragile than the Lancaster.

[justmeman117]

Originally posted by X-COM SPARK:

Here's a funny story from the fixthegoddamnlandinggear club. Playing the USAAF campaign.

One of my landing gear got shot out in like one second by the first lot of fighers. I'm sorry, but that is just unacceptable.

Instant quit. The B17 just seems so much more fragile than the Lancaster.

Yeah, my guess is that's down to the fact that you can't "upgrade" the landing gear, so it'll always have the same health.

Basically, every component you can upgrade (except the guns, consumables, and survival equipment, which cannot be destroyed) has an armor value. Fuselage, wing tanks, engines, and even the aircraft systems, ALL have armor values.

Coincidentally, the only component I can think of that has an armor value, and CAN'T be upgraded is the wheels.

What this means is, as enemy firepower increases through the campaign, they will destroy more and more armor in a shorter period of time. Any component that is stock will quickly fall apart when hit. I've run into this, as I often prioritize upgrading guns and fuselage armor over aircraft systems and engines... So my systems and engines tend to be stock or weak till after I've fully upgraded the hull and guns. By the end of the game, these components tend to break or catch fire if you so much as sneeze at them.

And since the wheels can't directly be upgraded, my guess is they retain a stock armor value thoughout the campaign... Meaning that by the end, when you have some serious firepower incoming, if the wheel takes even a few hits, it'll fall off.

You can mitigate this by upgrading the engine above it... or so I think. My theory is, putting an armored engine above the landing gear will help block fire coming from above where the engine is between the rounds and the wheel, but not fire coming from below. I'm not a programmer or game dev, so I can't really tell you DEFINITIVELY if upgrading inboard engines really does help the landing gear survive, but this seems to be my experience with gear and engines.

But again, it wouldn't be an issue anyway if landing on one wheel weren't as overdramatic in the game as it should be.

As for the B-17, dunno about its wheels in real life, but it did have a weak point. Just behind the bomb bay and trailing edge of the wing, that section of the fuselage was under high load. enough fire there could cut the tail off. It's starting to happen to me fairly regularly in game, even with fuselage armor, but I'd say that's pretty believable. Makes quickly killing night fighters with those upward facing guns an absolute must.