Critical Kill Components

Vehicle kills in WWIIOL-Battleground Europe do not always represent kills of the player crewing the vehicle you killed, just as in the real war a kill is determined by either the kill of the crew in the vehicle or a kill of the vehicles ability to continue to function in the pursuit of it's basic mission objective.

For example, a tank needs to be able to drive around and shoot other tanks, primarily ... or support infantry with it's gun ... so if you remove it's ability to drive around and shoot, or either of those functions, you have scored a kill. The player crewing the vehicle could well still be alive and not have a kill scored against him at the same time as you get a kill for killing his vehicle. Crew RTB status is based on being alive. Vehicle kill status is based on whether or not the vehicle sustained critical damage or not.

Critical Kill components for vehicles are:

Tanks and Scout Cars

1. Engine out (immobile)
2. Main Gun out (primary offensive capability unarmed)
3. Driver dead (immobile)
4. Gunner dead (primary offensive capability unarmed)
5. Vehicle tracked (immobile)

Aircraft

1. Engine out (immobilized after landing)
2. Guns out (primary offensive capability unarmed)
3. Pilot dead (immobilized)
4. Wing damaged catastrophically (and no longer attached to aircraft)
5. Rear fuselage damaged catastophically (and no longer attached to the aircraft)
6. Rear stabilizers (vertical and horizontal) damaged catastrophically (and no longer attached to the aircraft)
7. Propeller heavily damaged (immobilized or soon will be after you crash it)

Boats

1. Engine out (immobilized)
2. Main guns out (primary offensive capability unarmed) this means all guns actually except port and starboard LMGs on Fairmiles
3. Boat sinks (flotation damage catastrophic)

Trucks/Halftracks

1. Engine out (immobilized)
2. Tracks or wheels destroyed (all of them) - immobilized
3. Gunner (if applicable) dead

AT/AA Guns

1. Both crew members dead (obvious)
2. Gun out (primary offensive capability unarmed)

Known bugs

You will encounter an old scoring bug from time to time, we hope to get rid of this year. This is how it likes to annoy us.

If you set a vehicle on fire, or blow it up, by striking the fuel tanks or ammunition storage WITHOUT hitting a critical kill component with your bullets or ammunition at the same time, or during the same attack but after setting it on fire, or blowing it up, the kill code will trace the crew death back to the fire/explosion as the cause of death, but cannot step back the second stage and find YOU as the cause of why the thing caught fire or blew up in the first place.

It's a bug, we hate it as much as you do and we'll fix it when we can. If however, you set a vehicle on fire, or blow it up, and your ammunition DID destroy a critical kill component before it blew up or caught fire, the kill code will appear to award you for the fire or the explosion, but really it rewarded you for the critical kill component you destroyed. The fact that you see the fire or explosion as the reason you got a kill is not what really happened.

LATE UPDATE (v1.28 live release)

Jan.27th 2008 - we fixed the critical kill fire bug. If you flame a vehicle you will be awarded the kill on it. We're not absolutely certain about exploding ammunition yet, that might still be suffering the same bug fires were.