What else do you expect from a Pontiac?

Ilanin

Captain
There's been a fair amount of complaints about the wingman AI around here recently, and these are met with a resigned shrug of the shoulders and a comment to the effect that it's hardcoded and couldn't be altered. In, then, the spirit of whining about things we can't change, I propose a communal gripe about wingmen. Maniac would be proud of me.

To start us off, here's the most sensible ejection ever:


(Maybe her ALS and ejector wires got crossed somewhere?)

Any idea what happened here? Enough damge to trigger an eject before the last enemy fighter was destroyed, but then delayed because she couldn't play her eject comm while the Leyte Gulf was talking?
 
Yes, the comm queue in Standoff gets overwhelmed by the large number of comm traffic. Certain messages have higher priorities and are thus played before other comms. It can produce interesting results like what you've seen here.
 
It's actually not that crazy. It was relatively common in WWII for badly damaged bombers to ditch in the channel rather than trying to land on land...better odds of survival for the crew. Likewise badly damaged carrier aircraft...they would ditch near their carrier and get picked up by a PBY rather than try to bring down a barely-flyable, difficult to control, fuel-fume filled (and sometimes with still unexploded ordinance on their wings) fighter onto a pitching carrier deck filled with other flammable fighters and munitions.

Anyone need only watch the end scene of the movie Midway, or for that matter Rosie's fate in the Wing Commander movie, to realize that even if there are no hostile fighters around, sometimes ejecting is a better idea than trying to land, especially if there are friendly ships around to immediately pick you up.

There's a bunch of reasons why she might eject even with no hostiles around. Maybe her ALS was shot out and her flight control hardware was damaged so her ship was handling too erattically to risk trying to land. Maybe she had a malfunctioning missile that had gotten armed and then stuck on a pylon and was in danger of exploding. Maybe her reactor was slowly going critical and radiating like crazy, and so she stayed in her ship while there were still fighters around to help out heroically, but as soon as the hostile fighter threat was gone, she got the hell out of Dodge and away from the reactor that was slowly poisoning her. Or maybe something snapped due to the damage she'd taken (a fuel line broke, etc) and she had to pull the stick.

Yes, Dundradal's explanation is probably correct. But mine are more in-game realistic. :)
 
It's actually not that crazy. It was relatively common in WWII for badly damaged bombers to ditch in the channel rather than trying to land on land...better odds of survival for the crew. Likewise badly damaged carrier aircraft...they would ditch near their carrier and get picked up by a PBY rather than try to bring down a barely-flyable, difficult to control, fuel-fume filled (and sometimes with still unexploded ordinance on their wings) fighter onto a pitching carrier deck filled with other flammable fighters and munitions.

Anyone need only watch the end scene of the movie Midway, or for that matter Rosie's fate in the Wing Commander movie, to realize that even if there are no hostile fighters around, sometimes ejecting is a better idea than trying to land, especially if there are friendly ships around to immediately pick you up.

There's a bunch of reasons why she might eject even with no hostiles around. Maybe her ALS was shot out and her flight control hardware was damaged so her ship was handling too erattically to risk trying to land. Maybe she had a malfunctioning missile that had gotten armed and then stuck on a pylon and was in danger of exploding. Maybe her reactor was slowly going critical and radiating like crazy, and so she stayed in her ship while there were still fighters around to help out heroically, but as soon as the hostile fighter threat was gone, she got the hell out of Dodge and away from the reactor that was slowly poisoning her. Or maybe something snapped due to the damage she'd taken (a fuel line broke, etc) and she had to pull the stick.

This is actually a VERY valid point - how many times do we see flight decks shut down in WC because the flight deck was damaged?

(Also, love the Midway Movie!)
 
Yeah, ejecting near your carrier is not in the least bit crazy - it could potentially make perfect sense. That having been said, Dundradal is right - it's all about the comm queue.
 
It's actually not that crazy. It was relatively common in WWII for badly damaged bombers to ditch in the channel rather than trying to land on land...better odds of survival for the crew. Likewise badly damaged carrier aircraft...they would ditch near their carrier and get picked up by a PBY rather than try to bring down a barely-flyable, difficult to control, fuel-fume filled (and sometimes with still unexploded ordinance on their wings) fighter onto a pitching carrier deck filled with other flammable fighters and munitions.

PBYs wouldn't pick up downed airmen within a Task Force. The "Plane Guard" Destroyer that trailed the carrier had the primary task of rescue. DDs used to compete at times for downed airmen because the reward for returning a pilot to his carrier was 20 gallons of "Gedunk" AKA ice cream.

You'd see PBYs and other float planes rescuing pilots away from the task force. There was also the "Lifeguard League" of US submarines that starting in 1943 were stationed off the cost of a target and pilots were told their locations so they could ditch near them to aid in rescues. A lifeguard sub is who rescued President George H.W. Bush off of Chichi Jima in 1944.
 
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