I also believe there may be a slight "lag issue" which just may be an inherent condition with online gaming…or this might just be the true difficulty of the game and you are require to hit a precise cannon shot in a specific spot on the enemies plane or you don’t get the “kill”…but it does seem the hit ratio of the “long shots” vary wildly from game to game...
I posted this on the devs forum:
Hi Anton,
I noticed something seems to be very unusual as to the ability to get a “kill” from one online game to the next. I originally assumed it was just the difficulty of the game and my skill level. I have been flying in BoP on XBOX just about every night for a few hours since the game came out here in California.
I have now noticed that when I host a large or full room (16 people) my planes ability to actually hit its target is reduced, but when I am in somebody else’s room my ability to hit my target and produce a “Kill” goes up tremendously.
It took me a while to understand this and I have not fully tested it out but recently I was hosting full rooms and could barely get a couple of kills, I would follow a plane and pump what seemed like thousands of bullets into it and it would still not register a Kill. I then purposely had a friend start a room and as soon as it started, from almost a kilometer away I pulled the trigger on a plane and the moment the first few bullets hit the plane it burst into flames, I was amazed. I then went on to get 3 more kills easily and in a very short time. It was as if my accuracy and firepower went up 10 times.
I am a mechanical engineer so I am not qualified to evaluate what may be going on with the program, but my theory is there is a slight “Lag” issue. What I see on the screen and where my bullets go are not fully in sync with what the program is reading so bullets that look like they are going into the plane are really slightly missing when in this “Lag” state…not a lot, but just being a fraction of a second off of a bullets’ projected path will easily throw it way off its target and will not register in the “Kill Box” area that the program is calculating.
This may also happen in just a “laggy” room. I noticed also in a room that certain planes seemed hard to hit and then I noticed they were “jittering”, very slightly at first and then later the jittering became much more pronounced. I believe the same theory may also apply here. The slight online lag is throwing off the programs calculations as compared to what I see on the screen.
As far as the single player game I do not see this condition when playing the AI’s in the Campaigns.
I believe some of the frustration from the “Crash before a Kill” may be part of the “Lag condition”. I always hear online, and from some of the best, most accurate players something like: “I put so many bullets in that plane and I still didn’t get the Kill” The new upcoming scoring system will help alleviate most of this issue but I believe if this condition does exists it should be fixed for the good of the game.
Let me say I love this game. I want nothing more then to see it become a tremendous success.
Please when it is possible have your developers run a few tests and see if this “Lag issue” truly exists and have them correct it if possible.
Thank you for a wonderful game.