Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by horseback

I would think that the game has conditioned your view of what the air war was like rather than having your knowledge of the air war framing your view of the game.

Yep. A common problem for games that portray historical events. At least IL2 tries for realism.

Originally Posted by horseback

Breaking off at 300m when you are attacking with a 200kph speed advantage and are just shooting the hell out of your target would be considered premature against anything less than a formation of 16+ American heavies in real life, regardless of the angle of your attack.

Maybe. I still think that going straight in from 6 o'clock level is still asking for it, even from a rookie gunner. That should be the baseline accuracy and accuracy should go down fast from there.

Originally Posted by horseback

a matter of very poor chance that they would hit you at all, much less hit you anywhere important

I don't disagree, but flaky damage modeling is a different issue from excessively accurate gunners.

Originally Posted by horseback

That they do so even as often as one in 20 passes at 'virtual' distances that would strain the abilities of world class match rifle shots on real-world static (i.e., not moving) targets just slips right past you people.

To put it another way, 1 in 20 works out to 5% accuracy, which was considered to be excellent even at close ranges.

Originally Posted by horseback

Theoretically, it's possible that a human being behind the flexible guns of any bomber or attack plane flown in WWII could have made those shots--in exactly the same way that it is theoretically possible that angels will fly out of my backside when I break wind.

Well, maybe more like 1 in a 100, or even 1 in a million, rather than impossible.

Originally Posted by horseback

My own experiments with the B-17 convinces me that that aircraft's gunners are much less effective than most of the earlier war medium and light twins with rear gunners featured in this game.

This goes to my argument that AI gunnery needs to be made more "generic." You can't claim that any particular plane is "uber" or "nerfed" if every plane in the game with a single rifle-caliber Scarff-mounted rear gun uses the same gunnery model.

It's also possibly something to do with earlier aircraft models being a bit cruder in damage modeling.

Originally Posted by horseback

Worse yet, if you approach within a given distance for a given 'ranking' of AI gunner, even at the extreme edges of his 'firing cone' you will be hit, regardless of your speed and angle

This is another good point, but gunners should have a slightly better chance to hit based on the amount of time that the target remains within their firing cone. Targets that veer in and out of the cone should be harder to hit, since the gunner must reacquire his target and track it prior to opening fire.