What level of AI was responsible? In what situation? Could it have been the AI gunner was modelling target fixation?

Hey, maybe you guys could turn you generalised derogatory comments into something meaningful by making missions with known parameters to highlight the issue, or maybe you can't! ;)

Cannot fully agree with you.

What you say is complete true, when the fighter pilot's that engage those bombers know how to do their job (Like the real pilot's did ^^), that is just pass by, deflection shots, etc, but not reducing speed and stick on the bomber's 6 at close range (at least till they know the gunners where out of action).
While they keep maneuverability, speed and pass by, the defensive fire is completely ineffective, deflection shot's are a hard task.

The idea of the defensive fire was not to get in combat and shot the enemy fighters down, but keep them away and avoid being a sitting duck as possible.
If you engage a plane with no rear gunner's, you just sit on the six of the plane, get close to it, make good shot's, save ammo and kill your enemy is certain.

However if it have rear gunners, you cannot just slow down and get on his six, even if you have , much better fire power, better protection (like your engine) and the rear gunner with no experience is peeing in his pants, the fighter and the bomber, both are sitting ducks for each other. If the rear gunner press the trigger he can get your engine, or with a lot of lucky hit the pilot. Anyways with no engine you are over, and you don't want that.
So the fighter pilot's had to make defensive engagement, wasting more ammo, hitting less, but staying much more safe, and still get is kill, but wasting much more bullets.

The point is the game doesn't have different accuracy's for the different situations:
- At lower skills:
--The rear gunner miss everything even if the guy is 5 meters away from the tail, flying along with the bomber (WRONG),
--The rear gunner miss everything when the pilot is doing correct engagement (RIGHT!).
- At high skills:
--The rear gunner hit's everything if the guy is in close range from the tail, flying along with the bomber (RIGHT),
--The rear gunner hit's the fighter even 1 km away from the tail, making inconstant flight to the bomber (WRONG)
--The rear gunner hits when the pilot is doing correct engagement (WRONG).

I can across this problem in spades when I was building a night hunter mission - 6 defiants (height 950) attacking 9 He111 (height 1000).

I had them fly under the bombers;

With Defiant gunner skill = novice, average and veteran, very little damage to He111s, they all kept flying to their bombing point. kick up the gunner skill to Ace and bombers were falling out of sky like flys! To get a happy medium, i had the first 2 Deffy's gunner with Ace skill ,1 Vet, 1 novice and the rest average. kinda seemed realistic ??

A related problem seems to be the fact the AI gunner won't target the closest enemy aircraf! :confused:

.

Maybe the developers can fix their own
game so we don't have to.

Yes this is exactly the problem.