Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[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