Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[JtD]

Originally Posted by Treetop64

Of course the ignition is crucial to engine operation. Obviously. If the entire ignition system (both mags and the manifold) is rendered inoperative, then of course the engine dies. That is also obvious. One doesn't need "sources' to figure that out. Furthermore, the ignition system is redundant in that there are two systems. That redundancy counts as backup. Not sure why you're talking about it not having a backup.

At any rate, the kind of incoming fire that ruins an entire ignition system will ruin other systems as well, and will pretty much render the aircraft impotent anyway.

You're using the game's damage model to shape your thoughts on how vulnerable specific real-world auxiliary engine systems are, while showing no real-word knowledge on the actual engineering of these systems.

Can you please try to understand what other posters are saying before making insulting assumptions about them?

I've wondered about how it's possible to kill the engine with one shot, went to a museum, looked at the components around the engine and found that there was one crucial component that had no backup. Books I acquired later confirm it. However, all this was many years ago and you'll have to forgive me that I do not remember the details from the top of my head. I don't understand why you prefer to insult me instead of looking into your sources to post the details yourself.

Fortunately, other posters are more constructive - The_WOZ has by now posted the details - thank you. Single magnetos, dual distribution. Hit the magnetos and the R-2800 is dead. One shot, rifle calibre. Magnetos gone, ignition dies, engine dies, the impossible made possible.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Yep. I think that your point about the relative vulnerability of the R-2800 engine and my criticism that heavy fighters in IL-2 "break" too easily are compatible. I'd like to see notably tough aircraft like the IL-2, B-17, Wellington, P-47, F4U and F6F be pretty much invulnerable to anything except direct hits by flak, critical hits, pilot kills, fires and sustained fire by 20mm cannons or larger.

Aren't they? If I shoot B-17s, they rarely shed wings, and their tail section is pretty tough, too. Most of the B-17s going down have fires in the fuel tanks.
That is -historically seen- too many, BUT contrary to many historic pilots I know exactly what spots to hit, and I can hit with percentages that would make Marseille blush(and compared to others in this game I'm still a poor shot).
So basically I do not think the damage modeling in it self is the problem, we, and maybe the AI are. We hit too well. We know where to hit to make it hurt a lot (And I do think the AI did(or does) too, how else could they shoot the pilot with next to limitless accuracy in 4.09?).

Another thing that works against the Jug is its size - just set up a filght of Bettys (or any other well armed bomber) and park a Jug behind them - count the hits you recieve in 60 seconds -do it in a much smaller plane like the La5, and count again - you will recieve considerably less hits. And yes, if you do it a few times, you will get the engine shot dead in the Jug, but what did you expect? - the R-2800 is tough, but not immune- especially to 20mm fire.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

??? I find that those massive rows of .303 machine guns on the Hurricane MkI, MkIIB and Spitfire I are some of the most useless weapons in the game, at least when it comes to attacking anything other than light fighters at close range.

Hmm, early to mid war I find them at least decent, and considering armament on the early P-40s, the Italian planes, Gladiators -they are enough to do the job -if employed correctly, vs. He111/SM79 head on, Ju88/87/52 - shoot wing tanks - burn nicely. Bf109/110/Mc202 -try hitting the engine, but I'm sure you know all that...

[Treetop64]

Originally Posted by JtD

Can you please try to understand what other posters are saying before making insulting assumptions about them?

I've wondered about how it's possible to kill the engine with one shot, went to a museum, looked at the components around the engine and found that there was one crucial component that had no backup. Books I acquired later confirm it. However, all this was many years ago and you'll have to forgive me that I do not remember the details from the top of my head. I don't understand why you prefer to insult me instead of looking into your sources to post the details yourself.

Fortunately, other posters are more constructive - The_WOZ has by now posted the details - thank you. Single magnetos, dual distribution. Hit the magnetos and the R-2800 is dead. One shot, rifle calibre. Magnetos gone, ignition dies, engine dies, the impossible made possible.

I never said, nor did I imply, that it was impossible.

And what part of "two mags" don't you understand? Take out one, the other still operates. They each have their own circuit. Either of the mags by themselves can still run the engine, albeit at reduced capability, but under normal conditions they both operate at the same time. That is the backup system you keep saying is not there. If you get a single shot that makes it past the propeller arc and still manages to take out both mags, then that shot would have had to be a rather large caliber one (direct hit from an 25mm or greater, etc.), and as I pointed out earlier, that kind of hit would hurt the aircraft anyway, no matter where it hit.

In other words, that "one shot rifle caliber" that you keep referring to that makes a direct hit on one of the mags will not disable the ignition system, because there is still another magneto running! You'd have to make a direct hit with a second shot at the second mag to disable the system. Get it now?

I wasn't insulting you, and I'm sorry if you took it that way, but frankly you were getting some details quite wrong.

[JtD]

Originally Posted by Treetop64

And what part of "two mags" don't you understand?

The part with "two".

[horseback]

RE: Jug's (or Hellcat or Corsair's) size relative to an La-5 would be essentially irrelevant to the human eye until you get within shooting range, at which point it will seem closer than it actually is and distort your aim, particularly if it is not a level 'dead six' (distance being crucial to being able to gauge any deflection shot). Being larger should actually make your chances of being hit smaller at any appreciable distance or angle.

LW along Channel Front in early-mid '43 had a terrible time adjusting to targets the size of the B-17 and P-47 after two years of shooting at Spits and Blenheim sized bombers in daylight. Their reflexes told them to shoot much sooner at the bigger targets, and they had to learn all over again to recognize what they were shooting at and to adjust their aims accordingly.

Since AI know to the proverbial gnat's eyelash how far away you are and how fast you are moving, you're hosed. Literally.

Since AI gunners can spin a turret and point a 15kg or more cannon to just the right spot to shoot into your engine cowling or cockpit in less time than it takes for Chuck Norris to deliver a spinning sidekick to your ribs, you're hosed again, even if you're crossing his cone of fire at an extreme angle at high speed a split second after flailing his aircraft with a two or three second burst of 4 or 3 x .50" (which in real life should have the guy stunned and frozen at his guns, if not wondering what that warm wet feeling in his pants was).

Yeah, that's realistic.

Let's fix the AI gunners.

First, change the rules for AI aiming to a circle the diameter of the target wing span at any distance greater than 150m, and then to the fuselage area as the circled area as range and angle decreases. That's realistic. No more aiming at a moving point that is less than a fraction of a degree in width from 500m away (and hitting it-ever). Use your random number generator to scatter the shots evenly in that circle; hitting the middle should be a matter of chance--in fact, I could argue that a third of the shots should be outside the circle by a degree or two, depending upon actual range and relative speed. Machine guns and cannon shake in your hands.

Real-life gunners did not have precise awareness of how far away their targets were, how fast they were moving, what direction they were moving or how big they were; they aimed at an imaginary circle around the largest part of the target and guesstimated where it would be when their bullets reached that point. Given the vibration of the guns they served and the constant motion of the platform they were in, that was the best they could do, and they hardly ever guessed right. Bombers in WWII were dependent upon putting up as many rounds as possible to dissuade fighter attacks, which meant large tight formations to bring as many guns to bear as possible in the hope that somebody would guess right.

Second, assign a speed limit of X degrees per second of rotation for the gun installation type, with a hesitation and re-orientation period when the target is obscured by clouds, other aircraft or your own tail structure. There are mods already out there that slow the ai gunners down, and they work. I don't care if it will be applied to the mouse gunners or not; I find the whole defensive gun crew model of the sim to be oversimplified and unrealistic. Every time I tried it, I wanted to wash my hands afterwards. I'd rather play Call of Duty; at least those guns will simulate the effects of gunshake and pull.

Third, any time that the gunner's aircraft is not flying fairly straight and level, his accuracy should be dropped by at least 33% and decrease more in proportion with G-force/angle or being hit by enemy fire. My aircraft bounces and jerks when it is hit by heavy fire so AI Joe's airplane should too, and Joe should be trying to keep his seat or stay on his feet while that idiot in the front seat is flipping the aircraft around. In those situations, the gun becomes a handle or something to hide behind, not a weapon.

It gets a bit old when you're pounding the living daylights out of an Me-110 (specifically the wingroot/cockpit area) and hear a thump and see the HUD message "Machine Gun Disabled", "Fuel Leak" and/or hear the prop run away. If Hans in the back seat isn't in the process of being converted to hamburger, he ought to have the decency and good sense to be crapping his drawers instead of drawing a bead on a component of my aircraft a foot (30cm) wide and two hundred and fifty meters away and moving at a relative speed of 100kph to him.

DMs become a bit less important for the off-liner if certain parts of the AI are brought within human limits. Bestowing the effectiveness of eight or ten rear gunners on one aircraft is no longer necessary or justifiable; we can put a ton of aircraft and objects into a mission without limiting our FPS these days, so one rear gunner doesn't need to stand in for a wholes squadron's worth of the poor buggers.

cheers

horseback

[JtD]

I'm getting 0.5% accuracy from my veteran autopilot B-25J AI gunners and shot down every time by the attacking veteran A6M5b in an 8 vs. 8 encounter. What do you get?

[horseback]

Originally Posted by JtD

I'm getting 0.5% accuracy from my veteran autopilot B-25J AI gunners and shot down every time by the attacking veteran A6M5b in an 8 vs. 8 encounter. What do you get?

If I'm flying the airplane, about what you get. You can't provide the absolutely level, perfectly trimmed firing platform that an ai pilot does, and your gunners have no idea or warning about what you will do next (which is sort of like a RL gunner would be).

An ai bomber is in reality a single unit with near global situational awareness that it exploits mercilessly; attacking Player has the left wing lined up at 300m, so the microsecond his finger presses the trigger, roll slightly right. Player has set up sufficient lead to hit the ai's fuselage while climbing, but it's concealed from him by his cowling at the moment he must fire, therefore change direction and at the precise moment he enters the rear gunner's cone of fire as the aircraft rolls, shoot out his engine or knock off his wing with a burst of LMG. No delays for communication either way, they ignore the necessity for bombers to stay in formation, and of course the gunners are accurate at all angles at distances up to 750m, or twice the Player's convergence, whichever is greater.

A human player can't do that; in all honesty, no real life bomber crew had or could have had that level of awareness or communicated between each other that quickly and accurately, even after years together.

And the gunners never had that kind of accuracy at any angle or range.

Your 'Veteran' ai gunners are not remotely as hamstrung as the historical human beings they are supposedly simulating; if the record is any indication, bomber gunners were spectacularly ineffective throughout the war. The 8th Bomber Command would have loved to have one bullet out of every two hundred fired actually hit a German fighter. I would expect that the LW 's losses to the bomber formations would have quadrupled at the very least.

cheers

horseback

[JtD]

I wasn't flying the plane, AI was.

How many bombers did the 8th AF, how many fighters did the Luftwaffe write off after Schweinfurt?

[KG26_Alpha]

Lol

your complaining about ai gunnery not being realistic

tell me what part of your aircraft's guns are realistic your using to try shoot them down ?

No overheating no jamming no freezing etc etc etc.................

The ai gunnery is what it is, learn how to attack bombers with the games limitations.

I prefer the head on attack, or across the wings high speed pass using a technique with the gunsight to extreme left or right of the screen to make it impossible for me to attack from the rear quarters, leaving the sight in these positions stops you getting in behind the bombers forcing you to attack at an angle from the side, sounds strange but it works.

[horseback]

Originally Posted by JtD

I wasn't flying the plane, AI was.

How many bombers did the 8th AF, how many fighters did the Luftwaffe write off after Schweinfurt?

I would have thought you knew that AI on AI is a whole different behavior pattern; put yourself in one of those A6Ms and you would have gotten shot to pieces attacking with and in the same way as your AI wingmen (probably while they got away without a scratch).

There were two major raids on Schweinfurt in 1943: August 17th and October 14th, both considered disasters for 8th Bomber Command. The raid in August cost 60 bombers (with 10 crewmen each) lost over the Continent with another 150 or so damaged and over 40 scrapped after returning and carrying several dead and wounded crewmen. German losses along the entire Western front for the entire day: 27 aircraft (against official claims of 148 by the bombers' gunners), and another 10-13 lost in a series of sharp encounters against the 56th FG and other P-47 groups using pressurized belly tanks for nearly the first time.

Some sources indicate that the actual German losses were even lower (17 was the lowest figure for the day I have read).

The October disaster is generally remembered as "Black Thursday"; another 60 bombers lost, 7 more scrapped upon return, plus another 142 ‘damaged’ for German losses of 38 fighters, seven of which can be credited to the only Allied FG to successfully make rendezvous, the 353rd.

Every history of the bombing campaigns of WWII makes it clear that even the fastest, highest flying heavy bombers could not defend themselves against single and twin engined fighters; even at the end of the war, US bomber formations caught without escorts took heavy casualties at the hands of relatively inexperienced German fighter formations, even 'lightly armed' ones.

As I recall, both raids experienced losses in the 10% plus range, which means that there were at least 500 bombers in the skies on those days, each mounting 10 .50" heavy machine guns manned by some supposedly very well trained gunners most of whom were American farmboys raised with rifle and shotgun to supplement the family diet; it's not like they didn't know how to shoot, or lead a moving target.

It's just unbelievably hard to hit a moving airplane from another moving airplane in any direction other than straight ahead or directly behind; vary the angle left, right, up or down and your firing solution becomes incredibly complicated.

cheers

horseback