One Gear Landings Now a Death Sentence?

[Shield of Ultramar]

So I stopped playing this game for a bit as I had beaten it, as well as the DLC, without losing a single crew member or aircraft in the entierty of my playtime. During this time, I had many landings with only one gear. However, as I recently started getting back into it after multiple patches have come out, I noticed that landing with one gear causes the plane to do cartwheels and kills the entire crew regardless of how of much health they had, their location in the plane, and how much fuel was in the wings.. Thankfully using Alt+F4 before the animation ends prevents it from saving and counting, but that's still the entire mission down the drain. Was this an intentional change, or is this a bug? To test it, I've let myself lose a landing gear 10 times, and upon landing it has done a cartwheel and killed the entire crew EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. This is odd to me because this isn't how it used to be, and while realistically landing with one gear down was pretty bad, it didn't always mean flipping across the damn airfield and killing everyone on board, and it it's path. I was wondering if anyone knew any way to avoid this, other than just trying not to get hit.

[Shield of Ultramar]

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

As other posters mentioned, even when performing "emergency landing", the plane usually slams belly-first into the ground at high speed and rips itself apart. Although luck plays a huge role, and people can fudge the odds in their favor, my last crash-landing was a massacre -- I was going by an older thread which recommended healing all crew members to full and having them secure themselves at their posts, which lead to tiny burning cartoon people being hurled out of the aircraft's wreckage as the only working landing gear collapsed on touchdown, which caused the remaining fuel to catastrophically explode.

My pilot survived with severe injuries, but I'm certain his cartoon-survivor's guilt and cartoon-PTSD lead to him being given a cartoon-medical discharge from the air force. :b

I was talking about normal landing (use nav points) with one gear down, in earlier versions it never kills anyone. Even if they are down (with the kill timer ticking) the stage would be over before anyone got actually killed.

That's how it used to be, but not anymore. Now your plane and all aboard it suffer a fiery and explosive demise.

[Brygun]

Im curious on any historical references. I was under the impression one gear and belly landings were possible. This with some risk but not the very high wreck rate the game was switched to.

[The Funni man]

the best fing i could tell you is before you land in england so verry close to the airfield tell every one to leaf the plane expept the piolt why ? becasue so you maybe able to save the plane and if he dies its only one crew meber

[Survii Gecko]

If the game is gonna be such a ♥♥♥♥♥ about one gear landings it should atleast give us the option to jettison all the fuel and stop any explosion killing all our crew on landing.

[Shield of Ultramar]

Originally posted by Survii Gecko:

If the game is gonna be such a ♥♥♥♥♥ about one gear landings it should atleast give us the option to jettison all the fuel and stop any explosion killing all our crew on landing.

I wish we had that option.

[Shield of Ultramar]

Originally posted by Brygun:

Im curious on any historical references. I was under the impression one gear and belly landings were possible. This with some risk but not the very high wreck rate the game was switched to.

As someone who has been studying History, Aeronautics, and is taking pilot lessons, I can confirm that it's more than possible. There were hundreds, if not thousands of cases of it in World War II alone. Sure you had some that resulted in fiery explosions of death, but for the most part, the crew and usually even the aircraft survived.

[Darkstar]

I usually just lose the wing on the side of the aircraft that has the missing gear. I've never had both gears blown off. This usually results in no fatalities, but in one case I did lose a single crewman, which felt fair to be honest. I heavily armor all my guys so maybe that's why I have less of an issue (even though realistically that shouldn't matter).

[AugustusTirion]

Originally posted by Herr Baron Von Blue:

Originally posted by Brygun:

Im curious on any historical references. I was under the impression one gear and belly landings were possible. This with some risk but not the very high wreck rate the game was switched to.

As someone who has been studying History, Aeronautics, and is taking pilot lessons, I can confirm that it's more than possible. There were hundreds, if not thousands of cases of it in World War II alone. Sure you had some that resulted in fiery explosions of death, but for the most part, the crew and usually even the aircraft survived.

A couple minutes with google confirmed what I'd already learned years ago.
In the situation of a single lost landing gear, standard procedure is to retract the remaining gear and 'belly' land. (Exception: broken nose gear. But Lanchasters and B17s don't have those.)

As far as what to do in this *game* when it happens, I'll repeat what I said earlier:
Ditch any remaining bombs.
Near the runway, bail all crew except the pilot. Remember to do this above minimum alt or chutes won't open in time.
Land with remaining gear retracted.

Also, I've seen un-verified claims that it helps to hit the Emergency Landing button once you're on final approach.

[Shield of Ultramar]

Originally posted by AugustusTirion:

Originally posted by Herr Baron Von Blue:

As someone who has been studying History, Aeronautics, and is taking pilot lessons, I can confirm that it's more than possible. There were hundreds, if not thousands of cases of it in World War II alone. Sure you had some that resulted in fiery explosions of death, but for the most part, the crew and usually even the aircraft survived.

A couple minutes with google confirmed what I'd already learned years ago.
In the situation of a single lost landing gear, standard procedure is to retract the remaining gear and 'belly' land. (Exception: broken nose gear. But Lanchasters and B17s don't have those.)

As far as what to do in this *game* when it happens, I'll repeat what I said earlier:
Ditch any remaining bombs.
Near the runway, bail all crew except the pilot. Remember to do this above minimum alt or chutes won't open in time.
Land with remaining gear retracted.

Also, I've seen un-verified claims that it helps to hit the Emergency Landing button once you're on final approach.

I’m aware of that, and I still haven’t had any luck with that. At this point, I mainly just quit after losing a gear and restart the mission.

[Darkstar]

Originally posted by Herr Baron Von Blue:

Originally posted by AugustusTirion:

A couple minutes with google confirmed what I'd already learned years ago.
In the situation of a single lost landing gear, standard procedure is to retract the remaining gear and 'belly' land. (Exception: broken nose gear. But Lanchasters and B17s don't have those.)

As far as what to do in this *game* when it happens, I'll repeat what I said earlier:
Ditch any remaining bombs.
Near the runway, bail all crew except the pilot. Remember to do this above minimum alt or chutes won't open in time.
Land with remaining gear retracted.

Also, I've seen un-verified claims that it helps to hit the Emergency Landing button once you're on final approach.

I’m aware of that, and I still haven’t had any luck with that. At this point, I mainly just quit after losing a gear and restart the mission.

You could just take your lumps and play on. It's not as if it's absolutely game ending to have to grind a bit to get things back to where you want them. I guess I enjoy the game so much most of the time that I don't really mind.

[believor in Prawn]

i had played this for a while and had 1 gear landings and noone died sure my engines broke but that was all but i just recently finished operation nemisis i had only one gear thought sure may be hard but i will land on the second i touch the ground MY ENTIRE PLANE GETS BROKEN AND ALL MY CREW DIE ????

[Survii Gecko]

From a gameplay viewpoint this mechanic just isn't fun.
Its a single thing that can happen and if it does you are garunteed to lose most, if not all, of your crew and also your bomber.

If you had control over losing your landing gear this could be argued to be a fair mechanic, similarly to FTL for instance where if your shields system goes down that is largely your fault and you rarely feel "cheesed" when it happens. Contrast this to Bomber Crew, where enemy aircraft will shoot randomly at you, and RNG decides if they hit your landing gear, rear gunner, or whatever else. If they hit your landing gear you can't come back with the mindset of "hell yeah ill get better and not have that happen again" you have to come back with "well ♥♥♥♥ i hope next time they dont happen to hit that part of my aircraft and garuntee i lose all my ♥♥♥♥ again"

If you could prepare for this event it would also be fine, eg. if your aircraft was light hull mainly and not reinforced you will survive the landing, but at an obvious loss of armour in combat. The current only option is to bring 7 parachutes (out of 12 slots total) which is laughably dumb considering it doesn't even garuntee you survive the situation well, it's literally just damage control.

And if you could use skill or knowledge to fix the situation it would also be fair, eg. dropping any remaining bomb load, moving fuel to the "correct" fuel tank, or even jettisoning fuel and making sure everyone is full health. So far there is nothing you can really do besides cross your fingers and hope you dont lose everything. Hell, give us the option to "repair" the landing gear if it is damaged and make it much harder for it to get blown off.

You can't even land on the belly when this happens, the game forces you to deploy your none-destroyed landing gear anyway. Lol you know somethings wrong when people want MORE of their aircraft to be destroyed to increase their chances of surviving the landing.

[AugustusTirion]

Originally posted by Survii Gecko:

From a gameplay viewpoint this mechanic just isn't fun.
Its a single thing that can happen and if it does you are garunteed to lose most, if not all, of your crew and also your bomber.

Saving the crew is easy.
Bail out near the runway from mid altitude.

Originally posted by Survii Gecko:

You can't even land on the belly when this happens, the game forces you to deploy your none-destroyed landing gear anyway. Lol you know somethings wrong when people want MORE of their aircraft to be destroyed to increase their chances of surviving the landing.

Yes, you can belly land on the runway. And it gives you better chance (not great, but better) of not losing the bomber.
Been a couple months since I last played so I don't remember the exact procedure, but I remember doing it.
If game mechanics require you to deploy the gear to start the final approach, then the trick is to retract it again before you touch down.

As others have said; if you lose the plane, suck it up and take the loss.
It's not hard to run some of the low risk missions for awhile to re-buy your lost equipment.

IMO, losing crew hurts more.
But I've never had an issure recovering all crew that I bailed out near the runway.

[JonDom]

Whenever i See 1 landing wheel destroyed, it's an instant Alt-f4, and retry mission, it's just not worth all those hours of upgrading everyone for a stupid mechanic to rob so much progression.

[Ottomic]

Having just done a playthrough, I managed to survive every single 1 gear landing that presented itself, even while losing 2 planes in the process.

If, returning from a mission, I had one gear missing, I will go mid height, dump all bombs, transfer fuel to the geared wing, equip the gunners and radio operator with chutes, and bail them as soon as we got into the the British isles.

I will retain the engineer and navigator until within reach of the airfield (and the bombardier too if the pilot needs some healing), then bail them out. Finally I will land the bomber with only the pilot. Even if the plane broke down (which it did a bunch of times, sometimes rolling over and absolutely scattering everywhere) the pilot would become "downed" and rescued at the end of the mission.

It even worked on an emergency, no-gear landing where I panicked and didn't wait for the airfield. It's only a matter of making 6 parachutes a priority and after that, 1 gear landings are pretty much inconsequential. 6/7 crew will survive guaranteed, pilot will must likely survive as well, and at most you'll lose a plane and be given a replacement that's usually similarly or better geared.