I want a cookie with chocolate on it.

Or course not! Bullets beyond 600 yards would still have some chance of hitting something, but by that point the cone of dispersion is such that they have a very low chance of doing so.

You're right that there should be some randomness built into the point where gunners start to shoot, but one of the big lessons that gunners got (at least later war US gunners) was target ranging.

It was pretty easy to "guesstimate" a target's approximate range using the gun's sight, and shoot only when the target got into the correct range.

But range estimation was the least of the gunner's problems. The bigger problems were estimating speed (both of the gunner's plane and the target plane), estimating proper lead for deflection shots, estimating bullet drop (especially for shots above and below 0 degrees of angle) and coping with all the "random factors" which made guns less accurate.

So, I've got absolutely no problem if rookie gunners start shooting at 1,500 yards distance (a common rookie mistake was to start shooting way too soon), but their shots shouldn't be at all accurate until the enemy gets much closer.

On the other hand, ace US gunners should only start shooting within, say +/-10% of 600 yards (or 1,000 yards prior to late 1943) and should generally have better fire discipline (e.g., shorter bursts, less risk of hitting friendly planes).

Actually, this is one of the issues we're complaining about. Human gunners should be about as accurate as AI gunners, and human gunners (and possibly some AI gunners) are too accurate in the game.

Actually, it's pretty difficult to set up mutually supporting flights in the FMB, too.

I never suggested that 2% accuracy is the perfect percentage for gunner accuracy in all conditions.

I mentioned it as a historically documented (by a WW2 veteran gunner and by the son of a veteran based on his dad's service books) acceptable standard for rookie gunners shooting at target drogues in order to graduate from USAAF/RCAF flexible gunnery school.

That means that 2% is a "ballpark figure" for what rookie AI should be able to against a maneuvering target under more or less ideal conditions.

In any case, the 2% figure wasn't meant as a challenge, it was meant as a suggestion for a starting point for calibrating AI gunnery skill.

If you were to take that 2% figure, rework AI gunners flying from a plane flying straight and level in Clear weather, so that they got about 2% hits on average against fighters maneuvering in the plane's 4-8 o'clock arc within 600 yards, flying at about 200-250 mph (about the speed of most target towing planes), I'd be a very happy man.

And, if that 2% average included higher hit percentages for shots directly to 6 o'clock, and a lower percentage of hits as the target fighters got out to 600 (or 1,000) yards, I'd be ecstatic.

From there, it would be easy to calibrate accuracy upwards or downwards for skill, poor visibility, turbulence, etc.

Again, the test missions are only used as a way of generating statistics on AI air gunner performance (and AI fighter behavior) to compare against historical averages. They're not meant to refute actual historical statistical outliers. I can also accept outliers within the game, as long as on average the game mirrors historical performance.

Yeah, agreed, but the outliers have to be included in the cases that generate the average, which should mean that the mode goes down relative to the mean when the outliers get horrendously better than the mean. When that doesn't happen, you get a broken sim, as this one is in this aspect.

I believe that the fighters score a lot better than they ought to, and the bombers do too, the bomber gunners are more obviously wrong but both need fixing. A lot more hits ought to do insignificant damage on both sides, pilot kills at 500 metres ought to be a rare event, not one flight in twenty. A machine gun is effectively a very large bore slow acting shotgun, it's not like a rifle at all, even if it fires rifle calibre bullets, but the AI bomber gunners get results snipers would be proud of.

You can't handle a cookie with chocolate on it!

cheers

horseback

Right, a lot has been said about what should limit the AI gunners in bombers, but our gunnery is not limited by whatever real fighter pilots faced.

That's an entirely different can of worms.

But, you're right. The game doesn't take things like airframe vibration and turbulence (especially "wake turbulence" from heavy aircraft) into account for fixed gunnery.

Additionally, there is no way to boresight different pairs of guns so that they converge at different distances. It was not uncommon for fighters armed with multiple MG to have each pair of guns set at a different convergence point.

As a mud mover my armaments have been messed with enough over the past few years changing the game to a confusing unreliable experience, so lets leave the bombers alone please.

Flying to a target for an hour to have your weapons not detonate or fail to run in the water (toprs) is not amusing especially when they used to work perfectly well in the past.

The fighters still enjoy
no freezing
no overheating
no prop-wash
no vibrations
no g-force effect

Their cannons & Mg's are as accurate and effective with nothing to affect them, except the poor execution of the pilot,
probably the most unrealistic part of the game that's not been addressed yet.



:)





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P-47 does.

+1

Also, the original game was designed with Sturmoviks as their main goal, freaky american planes with lots of wing guns were an aberration! :P

And il2 happen to get all the adjustments needed. All other planes, specially the american ones, (with the exception of their only world class product, the P39) are late commers, and must abide to the il2 needs! :rolleyes:

Now seriously, that coding is pretty old, and may imply a major overhaul. It is really something we don't need.

no freezing TRUE
no overheating TRUE
no prop-wash TRUE
no vibrations FALSE
no g-force effect TRUE

Vibrations may be a bit over dampened, but they are there. G-force effects were advertised by TD, but still not implemented.
About the freezing, I wish it will be firstly implemented on engines!