Damage

A vital aspect of Ace Combat, Damage shows how well your plane is holding up. Your general damage is shown on the lower left part of the HUD, with an image of the plane & a percent of your total damage. The player's damage threshold is reduce on higher difficulties: on Very Easy it takes about 5 missiles to die, however on Ace it takes just one to be killed.

Stages of Damage

 * 0 - 19% (Light Green): At this stage, your plane is in pristine (if not, good) condition. You might as well take a missile & survive the impact.
 * 20/39% (Yellowish Green): In this stage, your plane has taken quite a beating. Be careful not to take additional damage.
 * 40/59% (Yellow/Brown): By this point, you've taken considerable damage. While your plane's still holding up, make sure not to rush into any major enemy concentration points.
 * 60/89% (Brown/Red): At this stage, you've suffered a great deal of damage. Any major blows ought to blow you out of the skies, to be very cautious.
 * 90/100% (Red/Flashing): At this point, you've suffered massive battle damage; one or two more hits and you're as good as dead. Fly low & fly fast; avoid any large engagements & take out only the main targets (and perhaps any major damage source, such as AA guns.)

Sources of Damage

 * Being hit by a missile;
 * Being hit by anti-air/machine gun fire;
 * Being caught within the range of a BVR weapon (e.g. the Excalibur's laser, the Scin/Hrimfaxi's ballistic missiles, the Aigaion's Nimbus missiles, etc.) - one-hit deaths every time -; and
 * Crashing (this is always a surefire death)