AI gunnery
 

Ace - can shoot through the hole of holy dollar at 5 miles
Veteran - retarded, not sure what planet it's on
Normal - Blind & retarded
Novice - dead

Well that's the impression i'm getting anyway .. on the above scale, i must be "super veteran" - retarded but still able to get a few shells on the target.

Anyone else get this impression?

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Well for what I played this game, when I get on dornier's six with a hurri, I can just sit there and shoot all along (I cannot tell you the difficulty of the AI's because I was playing the campaign).
However I just sit there, shot down around 5 enemy dornier's, get out of ammo and return home. I did the same mission something like 5 times and all the times I destroyed around 5 planes.
On all of those sorties I was sitting on the dorniers six at close range, with no deflection or anything, the dorniers just managed to hit just a few times, and the worst damage I had was a scratch on engine oil system, what made me lose some oil with time, anyway's I still did my way back home, safe and sound.

Sitting on a bomber's six it's like being a sitting duck for rear gunners if I'm not wrong. Anyway's I don't have any historical knowledge to make any kinda of statement, but to me it doesn't seem's much realistic.

and yet if you play a similar mission, as a rear gunner for a JU88, just see how quickly you can get a beed on any attacking fighter. Your gun might jump like a bronco when you fire and constant changing of ammo cartridges might be a major negative BUT at least some / most shells should go near the intended target.

It seems online fighter boys complained about the accuracy of bomber gunners early on in IL2's life, since then gunners have been retarded ... very sad.

How it should work;

Ace - many missions, understands deflection firing, saving ammo, crack shot (cold)
Veteran - a few missions, understands deflection firing, good shot (calm)
Normal - 1 mission, vaguely understands deflection fire, wastes ammo at long range, average shot (heart pumping)
Novice - no missions, doesn't understand deflection fire, wastes ammo at long range, poor shot (stressed - nervous)

The first 3 should get shells close to the target @ close range.


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+1

I agree. I think the ACE level AI gunners are a bit too accurate (I've taken hits to the engine 1km away from some HE-111s). But all the other gunners too useless, one can get right up behind a flight of 5 and site there without too much fear. Maybe a less drastic skill curve would be more suitable....

How about when AI fighters fire 10 second bursts. Have you seen that one? AI in general is blind, retarded and dead becuse the developer responsible for AI is a novice. ;)

Agreed, the gunners are either drunk or Terminators

Just remember that historically individual bombers defensive fire was inefective to say the least, only becoming a threat when grouped together in large formations with hundreds of gunners. Even then bombers still got slaughtered.

+1, also there is a thread about tweeking the AI and someone has tweeked the campaign missions also... ;)

Best thing to do is get online! then you have a challenge on an equal playing field!

Despite much effort from everyone here tweaking away in trial and error, there is hardly any improvement at all. Still the f16 barrel rolls, the weird bomber gunners who are either super accurate or not even in the ballpark...

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:

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

Yes this is exactly the problem.