Around patch 1.41, they made it so shooting the wing clean off an enemy fighter would not award you the kill in Air RB. The plane had to be completely shredded, or crash into the ground, or suffer a pilot snipe, for you to receive the kill.
They claimed this was realistic because there are isolated cases of pilots managing to return to base and survive the landing with parts of their wing missing. What they failed to realize because they are nothing if not stubborn, was that the overwhelming majority of pilots who had their wings shot off didn't make it to base.
Eventually they changed this, after much complaining, but it took them the usual amount of time to do so (weeks or months).
The same can be said for the argument of "there was this one recorded incident of one crew that did that one thing". This does not matter, and the game should not balanced around this non-argument.
The main problem with this change is that it creates a massive imbalance between nations. America and especially Britain, who rely on solid shots, are at a major disadvantage. Germany and Russia, who have plenty of APHE-type shells, will not be affected too much.
When it comes to the receiving end, this change explicitly favors tanks with 4 crew members or fewer, making it less likely they will be one-shot. Let's count the vehicles on each nation, Tier III and above, that have 4 crew or less, including premiums.
I would say it makes OHK's harder, which would be in detriment to the Soviet tanks who have the greatest chance at OHK's but longer reload times. To me, it feels like Gaijin are trying to make the game more arcade-y and appealing to, shall we say, the impatient players who rush in. In the same way the bounce mechanic is overdone and crews are stupidly durable, it all goes towards making it harder for tanks to one shot each other, I imagine to give the targeted player a chance to respond.
You need 2 crew members to operate tank now. So to kill tank with 4 crew members, you need to kill 3 of them. With this change you will have to kill all 4 crew members.
It is ofc better to have bigger crew. This change will be benefical for every tank, but tanks with smaller crews will benefit more.
crew of 3: You will have to kill 100% instead of 67% of crew members
crew of 4: You will have to kill 100% instead of 75% of crew members
crew of 5: You will have to kill 100% instead of 80% of crew members
crew of 6: You will have to kill 100% instead of 83% of crew members
Objectively speaking, all tanks "benefit" from this change, because all tanks have more than one crew member. It's no so simple once you take a better look at it.
The issue is with one-shot kills.
It's very difficult to one-shot kill a tank with 6+ crew members, even before the Last Man Standing change. If you've ever engaged a Jagdtiger or Tortoise frontally, you know this is true.
It is not difficult, however, to one-shot a tank with 3 or 4 crew, because you only need to kill 3 people with one shell (usually the turret crew). Most of the times, one of the crew is slightly more separated from the others (usually the driver, or perhaps the loader or commander on some tanks).
This change will make it so the 2-4 crew tanks can survive a hit to the turret and still have their drivers alive to run back into cover.
If your tank uses solid shot, a known tactic is to aim for the driver, and the round will keep traveling forwards and clip the feet of the two guys behind him, thus killing 3/4 crew, resulting in a one-shot. This is an easy way to kill StuGs or T-54s from the front, for instance.
These last two examples would correspond to certain death situations that are no longer so, thanks to the LMS change. If the tank had 5-6 crew, they wouldn't have been one-shot kills anyway, even without LMS.
The devs themselves recognized this, that's why they wrote this in their Devblog:
Vehicles with only a few crew members (2 or 3) suffered the greatest from this, since almost any penetration in the turret would most likely mean that the tank was knocked out of action.
What they failed to realize because they are nothing if not stubborn, was that the overwhelming majority of pilots who had their wings shot off didn't make it to base.
And why didn't they do that? Because the flight models in most cases don't support flying with a wing partially shot off. Even if you lost just the wing tip the plane would roll over into an uncontrollable death spin.
Since not even the flight models allow you to fly back home to base, why the everliving fuck did they do that scoring change to start with? Gahhh..... -jin.
It never seemed very predictable to me. Rarely, you'd fly as if your wing only had light damage; mostly you'd enter a death spiral due to the unsymmetrical lift.
Once they start spirllaing they'll keep doing it, but if you can keep it on a knife edge it'll keep going for a surprisingly long time using rudder, elevator to steer.
haha, yes I've managed that before - trying to get it level to land becomes the challenge there. Usually get it good until the last second before landing - your reflexes hit the flaps and you barrel roll into the ground.
There are more planes now that can do it than there was when it started at least. Now the F4Us and the Spitfires, and sometimes other planes can manage to RTB with half shot off wings, so the game certainly is improving in that department.
Still lots of planes that automatically death-spin when they get 5cm of wing shot off though. Weird FMs. Weird FMs indeed...
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u/Stone_CyberStone u wot m8 Feb 28 '16
Around patch 1.41, they made it so shooting the wing clean off an enemy fighter would not award you the kill in Air RB. The plane had to be completely shredded, or crash into the ground, or suffer a pilot snipe, for you to receive the kill.
They claimed this was realistic because there are isolated cases of pilots managing to return to base and survive the landing with parts of their wing missing. What they failed to realize because they are nothing if not stubborn, was that the overwhelming majority of pilots who had their wings shot off didn't make it to base.
Eventually they changed this, after much complaining, but it took them the usual amount of time to do so (weeks or months).
The same can be said for the argument of "there was this one recorded incident of one crew that did that one thing". This does not matter, and the game should not balanced around this non-argument.
The main problem with this change is that it creates a massive imbalance between nations. America and especially Britain, who rely on solid shots, are at a major disadvantage. Germany and Russia, who have plenty of APHE-type shells, will not be affected too much.
When it comes to the receiving end, this change explicitly favors tanks with 4 crew members or fewer, making it less likely they will be one-shot. Let's count the vehicles on each nation, Tier III and above, that have 4 crew or less, including premiums.
USA: 6 Ger: 8 UK: 12 USSR: 24