Fuel consumption

[badger45]

Can you please explain some basic rules about fuel consumption by airplanes. I know, that adding stores adds to drag and increases it, but without thorough ingame testing (with different loadouts and flight routes) I am currently unable to predict range of aircraft.

The only thing I deduced is is linear approximation between several flight heights and constant coefficient for different loadouts. But any other info would be highly appreciated.

Tied to this are following bugs/features:

1) aircraft flies toward its target. Just before the descent to attack, it has enough fuel, because it cruises high. As it descends to lower altitudes, its fuel consumption rate rises. It can happen, that it breaks the attack, because it exceeds limit for RTB. Of course if it had released the weapons (in attack or not), it could make it safely back. But as of built 570 it interrupts the attack and climbs back to cruise height for RTB. To add insult to injury it is quite probable it will crash on its route back, if it had survived enemy's defence...

2) automatic strike planner seems to be completely oblivious of added drag and happily sends planes on impossibly long missiona.

I can attach some simple example runs, but I believe in this case it is not necessary, as the problem is quite self-evident. If I am mistaken, let me know. And if possible, please give me some info about how exactly I can figure out range for loaded aircraft.

Cheers,
badger45

[Dimitris]

The loadout selection screen provides you information on the estimated combat radious of each loadout, and the profile assumptions under which it is calculated.

On issue (1) we would need a save in order to investigate it.

Issue (2) is a known current limitation of the autoplanner. We need to add a fuel-calc check so that it stops and re-plans if the route exceeds available fuel.

Thank you!

[Dimitris]

Is this still a problem in v1.06? If yes could you please post a suitable save?

Thanks!