Are tail-gunners bullet-proof?
 

Recently I've been watching, on external view, three AI Bf 109s engage a lone Il-2. After several passes they made a sieve out of their victim but the Sturmovik's tail-gunner, sitting waist-high and totally unprotected, kept firing at them. Which made me think - are tail gunners immortal? The guy should have been ripped to pieces.

Gunners aren't bullet proof. You can kill them, but it's quite difficult. When you've killed a gunner you will notice thet he won't bail out when the pilot does.
I don't really care about the gunners, I shoot at the weak parts of a plane and then get out of there ;)

Killing tail gunners shouldn't be difficult at all. It wasn't in real life. Perhaps this feature needs some tweaking in the future? The gunner's slumped body would immediately tell the attacker that this threat was neutralized.

If any part of the aircraft's skin is between the bullet and the gunner they cannot be hurt. So kind of, yes. :)

I remember earlier versions of the game showed the slumped bodies of dead gunners and pilots. I don't know why, but it was removed by a patch. When attacking bombers it is frustrating that you can't see if the gunners are still alive, therefore I hope DT can re-introduce this feature.

There was also a bloodtexture forthe early Heinkels.
That was a nice feature, but thedead pilot animation is helpfull.I hate to wait if Iget shot or not .. achance of 50%.. thats not fun

And the gunners onthe il2 where slaughtert

It's still possible to have dead pilots and gunners slumped over, at least for the planes from the original IL2. You just need to configure it in the conf.ini file. In some cases, there's also a blood effect visible from outside the plane.

I don't know why this feature wasn't continued for later releases, since it is realistic and it does tell you if a particular crewman is out of action on a plane you're attacking. It certainly wouldn't change the ESRB rating.

And I agree that it should be fairly easy to kill gunners if they're in an exposed and unarmored location. Many fighter pilots specifically talk about aiming to kill the rear gunner or tail gunner before moving in for the kill. The life expectancy of Sturmovik gunners, who weren't protected like the pilot, was depressingly short.

While I look forward to all the improvements to AI in the new release, it remains to be seen if gunners are still very hard to kill, and if they keep on shooting after their dead.

Of course I don't expect DT to model mutilated bodies of rear gunners with guts splashed all over the aircraft but a little more realism would be nice. Rear gunners were a serious threat - but only until they were shot dead, and that happened pretty fast, usually on the first firing pass.

Are you sure? I have just tested the the highgore=1 setting in the unmodded version of 4.101 in a Hurricane vs He-111 H2 mission. No slumped gunners or pilots could be seen although I must have killed a number of crew members that didn't bailed out when the planes went down.

As far as I know the feature was completely removed some time ago.

It happens pretty fast in the sim as well, as long as you hit them.

Try setting arcade=1 in conf.ini, that will show where and if you're actually hitting the enemy.

LE: the HighGore=1 setting results in gunner slumped over only in a couple of planes.

In the latest patch, high-gore effects was removed entirely.

The arrows in arcade mode are quite long and don't effectively show when a bullet has been stopped by armor or bounced off the skin of the aircraft. ie, the arrow may be going through the pilot's torso, but it actually went through bits of the aircraft structure and was stopped.

It's also important to note that the latest Il-2s had rear-gunner armor. It was a 3-sectioned steel plate. There is also extra armor around the top of the fuselage around the gunner. Because of the weight of this extra armor, the wings were redesigned with a backwards sweep to maintain CG balance.

Lastly, it's important to remember that in the Il-2, the gun was springloaded or balanced such that it would always point upwards when the gunner was disabled, in order to trick the enemy into thinking he was still alive, and deter attacks. It might not always be so obvious when a crewman has been hit.

Does anyone know why the high-gore effects were removed? I don't need blood in the cockpit, but slumped down pilots and gunners are a useful feature and would make the game more realistic.

Probably affected the game's ESRB rating to have gore. Developers have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get sign-offs with the ESRB. The less of that one has to go through - and still put out a game within it's intended design philosophy - the better.

The Russian version was not affected by the removal of :
Gore=1
Probably around the same time the Swastika was removed from the sim.

The bloodiest cockpit I've seen..................

Slumped down crews shouldn't be a problem for the ESRB rating, as long as no blood is shown. Rise of Flight has slumped down pilots and gunners too and it has an ESRB rating of 10+.

I wonder if it would be possible for Daidalos Team to re-introduce the feature (without blood). This would make the game more realistic and we wouldn't have to guess any longer if a gunner is still active or not.

I hope a DT member can comment on that.

If seeing if you have killed the enemy Pilot/Gunner is important to you, it is to me, there is at least one very good high gore mod.

To find it go to the SAS forum. The Name of the moder is Wolfighter.

This only works for some planes. More valuable, Wolfighter also worked hard to get realistic blood splashes on the inside of certain planes and realistic moving oil splashes on the outside, which were also visible in external view. It's a nice bit if "eye candy" with important game effects in full-cockpit view.

@Luno: I was thinking of the field mod Sturmovik. You're right that later versions had better armor for the gunner. Even so, his head and upper body were exposed, making him vulnerable to attacks from above and behind. That was a problem for just about all gunners.

It also appears that in arcade mode, that a bullet has to hit a pilot in the center of his head in order from him to be killed. Even in unarmored planes, bullets that pass cleanly through the arms, legs and torso either don't hit or only wound, which is odd. But then, Arcade Mode only registers pilot and crew kills, not wounds.

While it's low priority, arcade mode could be reworked to record more recent changes to damage modeling - fuel leaks, oil leaks, bleeding crew, injuries to limbs. Also, the arrows could be reworked to remove the "fletching" at the trailing end. They're just a waste of polygons; there's no need for them given the length of the arrow.

I have no problem with the length of the arrow itself. Sometimes you need that length to see how a bullet passes (or might pass) through a large plane. If you know where the vital parts and armor are, you can sort of guess whether a bullet has been stopped.

"Over the top" comes to mind...

What'd they do? Blow a grenade in the cockpit?

I don't think anyone with blood that colour would pass the Luftwaffe pilot's medical...

20mm cannon shell hit?

But I agree, it is over the top. The idea is to tell you if an opponent is out of action, not to recreate the horrors of war.

Its all about violence rating and mostly for western european and american laws. We won't do anything, that might lead to a change the existing rating.

Ok, understandable, but maybe it would be possible to introduce another way to visually indicate that a gunner is no longer active, for example a destroyed machine gun, shattered cockpit glass or as an easy solution just lowering or elevating the machine gun.

or perhaps just removing the 3d model,as if he fell down the position, or some crew member removed him to try and do CPR inside the belly. COuld lead to a strange effect of disappearing gunners tough

No a single 0.50 cal ;)

Caspar, my original post in this thread was not about wanting more blood :) but more realistic rear-gunners' vulnerability to gunfire

Well... they are not invulnerable. Did you go for steady testing before requesting a change or is it because of impressions/feelings only?
I don't say, all is correct. Maybe there are really wrong values in or at least irregularities. But then its no general problem, rather one regarding single plane types.
The gunners are in many cases somewhat protected by plane parts (to more or less degree), which can reduce the calculated projectile energy or divert them.
Also the gunners can get wounded - not every hit is lethal - and be only reduced in firing abilities/accuracy (since 4.10). They even stop firing, when they are heavily wounded, but are not dead.

It's not that difficult, I get my gunners killed more often than i like; but of course when proper technics are used.... most of the times we (because we try always to fly 4 bombers in diamond) get fighters coming to us from our six.... thats almost a secure kill for our gunners, but if you try the frontal or falling over us from 2-3 or 10-9 you probably gonna hurt us badly or kill our crew members.

Now thats cool! Cooperating bomber jockeys are rare! Where can I find you flying? Online? :-P

Over the weekend I have run a number of tests to check the gunner vulnerability and I think on the whole it is ok. In my opinion most complaints by players about the invulnerability of gunners are caused by the lack of a clear visual indication when a gunner is disabled.

But there is one thing I like to know and I hope Caspar can give me an answer:
Does the game take into account the blast effect of cannon shells? In other words, is a direct cannon hit necessary to kill a gunner or will a near miss also injure or kill him.

Had to forward your question. The answer: Yes, splinters are calculated also for gunners. It is possible to kill a gunner by hitting a very different part of the plane with explosive shells.

If you play in arcade mode you can see this. Explosive shells and explosions create a "starburst" of secondary projectiles.

Regarding ESRB ratings, my U.S. version of IL2:1946 has a rating of "T" for "Teen"

Per the ESRB web site (http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp):

"Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language."

Other Ubisoft titles with Teen ratings are the Tom Clancy FPS series and Red Steel, all of which get a lot more "up close and personal" with the violence than the IL2 series.

The fact that IL2 is a combat sim automatically throws it into the Teen category. So, just showing slumped bodies isn't going to change the ESRB rating. All you need to do is remove, or minimize, the blood.

Thats dangerous thinking. Everything, that happen after such a step would be out of our control. And BTW: its not only U.S. to care about
There will be no change, period.

Alright, but what about other ways to show disabled gunners that will not affect age ratings (see my earlier post)?

Well... it wouldn't be less unrealistic. IMHO the best solution is still, like it is now... because in RL, you probably won't be able to really see dead enemy gunners or pilots so often and so clearly, that you can tell, if he is really dead. So in most cases pilots in WW2 didn't realize, when they killed a man (except on chrashes without chutes), and then they often felt guilty anyway.

So what purpose would it have to be eager to display death in a noticable way?
Thats not, what we are onto: killing. Hm?

I personally had no problem with slump over gunner bodies... in the end, they just could be hiding. :D

That's definitely not the reason for my suggestions and as you can see I haven't demanded any effects that show that a gunner is actually killed, just some kind of visual indication that a gun position is no longer active.
It would he a big help for players when attacking bombers. At the moment it is impossible to tell if a gun position still poses a threat or if it is safe to attack a bomber from this direction - at least for me this annoying.

I think the basic idea is worth considering and I hope it is some food for thought for you DT guys. ;)

There is a small indicator - some small star-like yellow flash. I'm not 100% sure, but I think, it shows a hit to a pilot/gunner. Its not a sign of inactivity though.

Do you think, this would be a realistic feature? To me it sounds arcade.

At the moment I am unable to look in my books and I can't give you any quotes, but I remember reading combat reports were fighter pilots were clearly able to see when a gunner had been killed or a gun position was no longer occupied, so I wouldn't call it unrealistic.

It would be necessary to have diffent effects for different gun positions. Some examples:
For the gun positions on the fuselage sides of the He-111 or B-17, were the gunners were standing behind the guns, it would be enough to remove the gunners. For the gun positions on the upper side a shattered glass effect could be used. On planes like the Po-2, Sturmovik or Swordfish a destroyed machine gun could be shown or the guns barrels could just be lowered to one side.
Like in reality a player would have to be close to his target to see if a gun position is still active so these effects would be very realistic and not in any way arcade.

.... wow we use to fly together the wednesday, we use to fly at Spitsvs109 but not always, the easiest way look for our tags "E69".

If the gunner doesn't fire, he's dead. I've been using this indication for a long time and it fairly accurate.

Yes I have been killed by flak burst as a gunner in He111 and Ju88, the Ju88 is particularly fragile nose section regarding pilot deaths and gunners.


Also if they run outta ammo.

That doesn't work very well in the game, because the gunners fire in salvos and will often pause for some time and then start again, that's what makes identifying dead gunners so difficult.

hitbox for gunners is pretty small, iirc from using arcade=1. as in rifle calibre bullets have to hit their heads. fragments from explosive shells can kill them as well.

there was/is a quirk with the ju88 for example, where getting a rear gunner kill also takes out the pilot.

ju87 and bf110 gunners appear to have a secondary role of armour for the pilot, they die that often.

and the canny human gunner will hold fire, so you slip closer for the killshot thihnking you're in the clear, then *slap* headshot.

I still think I can make out dead gunners with greater reliability and from further out then someone looking for dead bodies through a small piece of glass.

Perhaps with a well-protected gunner station like the tail guns of a B-17 or B-25, but a dead crewman in a "greenhouse" gun station like the tail gunner of a G4M or nose gunner of the He-111 should be more obvious. Even then, the LoD structure of the game makes it impossible to pick out dead crew until you're within realistic ranges.