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Sep 3, 2009
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The whole "bingo fuel percent" concept puzzles me much. I just can't get my brain over it.

Few questions:
1. Why bingo fuel jumps to 100% when I order aircraft to return to base? Is it safe to redirect aircraft to another mission after I ordred him to return to base? Assuming it has much of a fuel left, of course.

2. Once I had a flight with 100% of bingo fuel going home and passing over another airfield. I thought it was good idea to land them on that airfield.
But I failed to issue that order: game said that fight didn't have enought fuel to go to that airfield! It was crazy because flight was right over that airfield and far from their home base. As far as I can see it's a clear bug. Or not? :wacko:

3. Does game under the hood model actual liters of fuel, or "bingo percentage" is true value modelled by game?

Feature request: instead of "bingo percentage" I would like to seed "bingo time".
 
The whole bingo fuel problem is confusing but maybe I can help. It seems to me that the game does give each fighter a certain amount of fuel which is burned as you fly. The bingo percent is calculated using your distance from the planes home base and how much fuel you have left,except when you hit return to base then it jumps to 100%. You can order a plane to fly on a different mission after RTB and it will do it just fine. You just need to watch the plane range circle to make sure you can make it to base or a fuelling plane. Sometimes I will send planes on a oneway trip knowing they will crash after meeting their objectives. Since the range is calculated by distance to base after you refuel at a tanker it won't say 0% but will read some other number. When in doubt check the planes range by turning on the range circles by using the button in the movement planner thing.

It seems like it would be better to let the bingo percent just stay at its normal level and not jump up to one hundred percent when you are RTB. This plus having someway to know how much fuel is in the tankers would go along way toward making fuel management easier on the players. I'm sure the Devs can explain it better than me and will be adjusting the fuel mechanisms in the future.
 
The whole "bingo fuel percent" concept puzzles me much. I just can't get my brain over it.

Few questions:
1. Why bingo fuel jumps to 100% when I order aircraft to return to base? Is it safe to redirect aircraft to another mission after I ordred him to return to base? Assuming it has much of a fuel left, of course.

2. Once I had a flight with 100% of bingo fuel going home and passing over another airfield. I thought it was good idea to land them on that airfield.
But I failed to issue that order: game said that fight didn't have enought fuel to go to that airfield! It was crazy because flight was right over that airfield and far from their home base. As far as I can see it's a clear bug. Or not? :wacko:

3. Does game under the hood model actual liters of fuel, or "bingo percentage" is true value modelled by game?

Feature request: instead of "bingo percentage" I would like to seed "bingo time".

1. Because it was designed that way. JanH has hinted that this might get changed to something more sensible at some point.

2. See #1; once you order a return they get 'locked in'. The workaround to this is to make sure you order them to manually land by flying them towards the base and then right clicking it only when close. This way you can alter your decisions as needed.

3. It models 'kilometers of range' (meters actually), which are consumed as things fly around (at increased rates in speeds higher than cruise, dependant on engine type). This is why tankers dont work quite as well as they should.
 
For question 2, it seems planes dump any excess fuel the second you tell them to RTB. So they end up having just enough fuel to fly home. Any evasions or extra missions must just result in them crashing.

Hopefully this is changed because even if military planes do drop excess fuel before landing for multiple safety reasons, a seriously doubt they do this procedure so far away from their base. I would expect they do this shortly before landing. From what I've read the devs are aware of this. There also are uber busy with all sorts of things so we'll se when this gets changed. JanH still manages to answer us very quickly here in the forums and that's admirable.
 
And for the bingo fuel troubles list there is the one for the flying tanker.... if you hit return to base... no hope they will be able to refuel other planes anymore. Even if they haven't refueled one... they will just spam that they don't have enough fuel to refuel another plane...
 
The bingo% display is useless for human beings for several reasons. The way it's subexponential rather than linear, for instance. (Leave it flying in a small area so it's not changing distance to home a lot; 1-10% will take about the same time as 40-100%. Numbers are illustrative.)

Seriously, switch it to a fuelrange/homerange display; that way it'll make enough sense that we can begin determining if the many weird cases are actually bugs or not.

Also when selecting multiple units, average bingo% is again the worst possible metric; show the range/home instance with the worst case ratio.

If you want to keep the bingo% around, make it cycle when that part of the panel is clicked.
 
+1 for this.

Bingo fuel has the best of intentions (nobody wants to play around with lbs of fuel calculations in the heat of battle) but I'm afraid it's trying to convey too much information in one single number. The name itself is confusing as it just means low fuel in military lingo. There's actually a brevity code for "I've got just enough fuel to RTB" but I can't remember what it was.

The percentage seems to be interpreted in reverse as usually more is better in fuel. Perhaps showing the little fuel barrel icon in green when between 0 and 40%, yellow until 70% and red for the rest will convey the idea better for newcomers.

Maybe adding extra info like remaining lbs of fuel, cruise speed flight to base time and remaining flight time at current speed as tooltips when cursor is over bingo fuel indicator?

That said, I suspect quire a few fuel misunderstandings will be reduced once planes stop dropping all their fuel on the spot the minute RTB is clicked. I've grown to understand the bingo fuel indicator but oddly the learning curve was steeper for me than how radars work and how to launch aircraft.
 
Bingo Fuel is the brevity code for just enough to get back to base. Joker fuel is the one before it, which is generally when RTB begins, and it includes some reserves.

I personally like the bingo indicator, though I agree an actual fuel % indicator would help. Being able to bring up the range circles outside of the movement planner with a hotkey like shift or tab for selected units would also help a lot.
 
Yes I struggled to realise what this meant when I first played, I assumed 50% was the 'true' bingo level and returned planes at 50% just to make sure they had enough fuel to get home, working on the assumption that 100% meant they were out of fuel. I eventually figured it out when planes were flashing 100% at me and not crashing.

I think having both values of true fuel and bingo fuel would help those snappy decisions where you decide, is it worth this risk of downing one more enemy aircraft or should I just send this plane home? Especially me who is very OCD about having very low causalities.
 
On this general subject and since tankers were mentionned, how do you know how much fuel a tanker has left for refuelling other planes with? My tanker says its only 7% of the way to bingo, yet it doesn't have enough fuel left to refuel a Gripen? (It did already refuel a few planes, but is there an indicator of some type that I missed?)
 
The message says it doesn't have enough fuel. No mention of how much it's short. And you're only told that when you need that fuel...
(I really believe I would have noticed if there was anything.)

My tanker says its only 7% of the way to bingo, yet it doesn't have enough fuel left to refuel a Gripen?
Indeed. The exact bingo% value at which it can't refuel a fighter depends on:
- How much fuel it has left
- How much fuel the fighter needs (including after traveling to the tanker)
- How far the tanker is from base

Now, you could make a spreadsheet for this, but should be plenty unnecessary, given that a proper readout will give us a far better idea. (Heck, measuring how far out it is will be hard.)


If the tanker is right next to the base, it can be at 2% and still be "out of fuel" for purposes of refueling other planes. In general, when operating far out there, 50% is the point where it will have run out completely; at 40% I just send it home. Keep in mind that if it's flying in the same spot all the time, 1-10% will take about the same time as 40-100%. Depending on just how far from base that is; it could be that 40-100 happens in 30 seconds if it's close enough to home. That's how sk(r)ewed the bingo% is as a measure.

I want
fuel_range/distance_home
now! (esp since this is basically the values it's using to calculate it.)

Trying to compress that information into one value (bingo%) forces the user to reverse that combination to do anything useful. With estimated ranges since you can't clearly read or measure that. I assume the value is 1-(1/(fuel_range/range_home)) or so. Math geeks ftw - but no self-respecting military commander would put up with it. (See conversation first/second nato campaign mission)

I've switched to purely looking at the range oval (...why does that oval rotate, btw?) - movement panel, button to activate it - ignoring the useless bingo% indicator completely.

Oh and, did I mention how useless the bingo% measure is yet?

It would be somewhat interesting how TT actually decided to use the bingo% indicator. In the same way thedailywtf.com stories can be interesting.
Except if I'm guessing right that it was simply something done in a hurry, by someone too stressed to think about what it actually meant, and that noone had the time to take a second look at.


</vent>
Ok, your turn.
 
Here is a question... Do tankers use their big tank for fly off of or do they have separate "run" tanks?

Some ideas for the solution.

1. List fuel as a % of full and show "bingo" in terms of the closest refueling asset. Show fuel next to the plane when it becomes... something like 25% of "bingo" to the nearest refueling entity.
2. Always show the fuel / weapons / sensor range when selecting a unit.
3. The unit automatically goes "bingo" when it needs fuel to reach the nearest refueling entity.
4. Some sort of priority should be placed on in air tankers. Maybe the player can assign those as "home" and the aircraft ignores the ground base unless no tanker is near.
5. Some way to tell patrolling aircraft to go get fuel when they hit a certain % of their total fuel. You don't want your aircraft waiting until bingo to refuel... sucks when a target shows up.