#111
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Gun convergence was set to 400 meters. Very typical for US fighters of the time. Quite possibly back then they knew a gun works beyond point blank range.
If you can manage a fifty meter radius around an F6F sized target, conservatively assuming linear distribution, one in 800 rounds will hit the F6F. Statistically, 8 hits require 6400 rounds. Ten mission with eight enemy aircraft, every aircraft needs to fire exactly 80 rounds to achieve that outcome. The ground tests from the worst mount gave a ten meter radius, the best mount gave a two meter radius at about that distance. That leaves room for somewhere between 40 and 48 meters of aiming error. That's like missing a disc 3 feet wide from 20 feet away. Just as a ballpark. As to the "regardless of speed or angle, you will be hit, period" - I shot down eight of them one flight without being hit at all, and I did it from close range. Period. It's called "proper tactics", and it works better than whining. Last edited by JtD; 08-17-2013 at 08:52 PM. |
#112
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In the USN/USMC during WWII, the vast majority of fighters' guns were sighted in at 1000 ft, period. BuAer was pretty strict about it. The main exception was for night fighters, which were generally boresighted at about 200 yards. Quote:
Adding a human to fire the gun will increase the error significantly, and the error would vary from person to person, and day to day. A human element tears the statistical curve to shreds, but the error set with the gun strapped down will be an absolute minimum (and likely less than half the error of the best human result for an open mount gun on a pintle or scarff ring mount). Applying those same accuracy standards to a moving platform firing at a target moving constantly and randomly relative to the firing platform is comparing apples to oranges. When you compare the accuracy of a turret mount in a B-17 to a scarff ring mount in a G4M, that is comparing apples to watermelons. BIG watermelons, the kind that win prizes at the county fair. Clearly, you've never been in a ballpark any more than you've ever fired a real machine gun. Unless you found a way to set a formation of 8 aircraft, you had two formations of 4 aircraft, generally separated by about 700-1000m apart, too far away to lend mutual support except in rare instances where you wandered in between them. So at any given time, the greatest probability is that you were being shot at by a maximum of 4 aircraft initially, and as you shot them down one at a time, that number decreased down to one before you went after the next formation of 4. I tried your test a few times with an F6F-3 and a convergence of 500m, which allows me some accuracy beginning at 600 meters. Since you specified that you hung back at more than 500m, I consistently pulled away at 520 to 450 meters, and then made another approach. The Rookie Betties began firing intermittently when I got to 900m of them and their bursts increased in frequency as I got closer. I took as little evasive action as possible and kept my speed at approximately 190 kts, which allowed me to slowly approach and peck away. I took hits fairly regularly at 750 and closer, and lost my engine once, got a wing shredded twice, and on the third or fourth go-around actually got them all before I ran out of ammo. I took more than 8 hits by the second pass every time. Repeating the mission four times in a P-51C, I took hits to the engine every time, once at a range of over 750 meters which resulted in a runaway prop. Smaller target, less stable at that speed, which means that I should have been harder to hit, but the opposite was true. I was hit more often on the nose or engine compartment, and suffered greater damage sooner. Quote:
I use my speed to zoom back up to a 3500 ft advantage, get back over them and to one side and lather-rinse-repeat... I still get hit often as I am in my dive or as I cross my target's tail which are both high deflection, tiny window shots for the top ring mount gunners and a nearly blind shot for the guys in the stingers as I blow through their cones of fire at 160 meters per second less than fifty meters away. The hard part should be avoiding his elevators. The tactics are fine. They worked very well historically. But as long as the 'Rookie' ai gunners are more deadly than Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis in their prime all wrapped into one, the game is unrealistic and artificial the moment you introduce an aircraft with guns that are pointing in more than one direction. cheers horseback |
#113
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I think that given the tactics used by the AI Hellcat in the 1 vs. 1 and 1 vs. 8 missions, the Japanese Ace gunnery is about right. Rookie gunnery might be a bit too effective, however. Gunnery might still be too effective at all levels when swinging a heavy gun - like a 20 mm cannon - while a plane is banking. At least for Japanese gunners on the G4M1, they start shooting at extreme ranges - 1000 meters or greater. I also previously said that hanging out at the limits of effective range for most air guns, even at 6 o'clock, and taking sniper shots is a good way to get lots of kills and minimal damage. A better test of AI accuracy would be to take maneuvering shots from the rear quarter but within the effective range of the AI guns. Yes. |
#114
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Level Bombing Dive Bombing Torpedoes Rockets/Ground Attack Fixed Aerial Gunnery Flexible Gunnery Piloting And, different crewmen should have different skill levels. For example, Ace tailgunner and Rookie ball gunner, or Average bombardier and Veteran pilot. |
#115
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Park your fighter at 4-5 o'clock or 7-8 o'clock off a bomber's beam at about 300-400 meters and fly in formation. Determine hit percentages from that. Anything much about 2% means that gunnery is too good. Quote:
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I'm more interested in what happens over dozens of missions where fighter pilots make more realistic attacks (pursuit curves, like I posted above) with their guns set at historic convergence distances (typically 300 meters for U.S. planes, although pairs of guns could be set to converge at different distances). Due to a combination of inept AI bomber interception tactics and AI gunnery which is perhaps too good in some situations, I'm getting a situation where the gunnery accuracy by bombers is much better than it was historically. This makes it impossible for me to recreate very typical missions, such as late war German fighters intercepting U.S. heavy bombers. |
#116
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Instead, I'm looking at AI performance overall. I want to be able to set up missions where bombers and fighters behave like they did historically, and where the results of AI combat roughly match expected historical results. Objectively: * Fighters, even Ace AI, don't use proper bomber interception tactics. * Gunners, even Ace AI, start shooting far beyond effective range. * We still don't have much data on just how good WW2 era flexible gunners were in the air against maneuvering targets. What data we do have suggests that 2% accuracy against a relatively easy target was the accepted standard for rookie gunners, 600 yards (~550 meters) was the accepted range at which a 0.50 caliber MG had any chance of hitting, and that different gun mounts had different levels of inherent accuracy (ignoring other factors). Subjectively, * AI Gunners might still be too effective, particularly for shots made while the aircraft is maneuvering, for larger guns, for manually-turned guns, and for shots made to anything other than the plane's 6 o'clock. * Gunnery by human players might be unrealistically accurate because the game engine doesn't model things like airframe vibration, turbulence, slipstream effects on guns and bullets, physical requirements of slewing guns around, g-forces, illusory effects of tracer rounds, and so forth. |
#117
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Last edited by Pursuivant; 08-18-2013 at 11:55 PM. |
#118
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So, I guess effective range means that beyond 600 yards, the bullets would just fly off to elsewhere, instead of continuing on their paths. No point in firing a gun at targets further out. Gunners wouldn't fire at anything too far away, because of their implemented radar, they knew to a foot how far the target was away. And of course, they were immune to psychological things, so they'd happily get fired at from 601 yards, without returning fire. Automatic fire with a mounted gun sort can't manage to stay within 3 feet over 20 feet distance anyway and gun dispersion changes if a human touches a gun instead of a remote control. Horseback can't set up a mission where formations support each other, so no one can. Someone programming the game adds if clauses to the AI gunners that make them behave differently depending on the targeted aircraft. 2% is an established figure for gunner accuracy, covering all conditions, because someone on the internet mentioned the figure. Even though 16 veteran Hellcats can wipe out 16 standard G4M with little loss to themselves, the historical results aren't there because 1 Hellcat can't do the same.
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#119
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-Absolute maximum effective range: This the "this round is not considered lethal after crossing this threshold" distance. Neither of the other two common "maximum range" values will be greater than this. Purportedly, NATO defines this as the point at which the projectile's kinetic energy dips below 85 joules (62.7 foot-pounds). This is typically claimed when recounting that the P90's effective range is 400 meters on unarmored targets, as classified by NATO. It's worth noting that while the P90 looks neater than the civilian PS90, the extra barrel length increases the muzzle velocity and thus the civilian model actually has a longer absolute max effective range. -Maximum effective range on a point target: This is the maximum range at which an average shooter can hit a human-sized target 50% of the time. "Point target" is basically a euphemism for hitting a human torso sized area in this context. If this range were greater than the absolute maximum, the absolute maximum would be quoted (a non-lethal hit may be accurate, but it's not effective). - Maximum effective range on an area target: This is the maximum range at which an average shooter can hit a vehicle-sized target 50% of the time. In other words, this is the maximum distance at which it would make sense to open fire on a group or vehicle, etc. If this range were greater than the absolute maximum, the absolute maximum would be quoted (a non-lethal hit may be accurate, but it's not effective). As I recall, the game makes rounds ‘disappear’ after they’ve traveled 1000 meters, which means that while the ai gunners in the Betty can shoot at me when I get within 900 meters and have a chance of the bullets hitting my aircraft, I have to get a bit closer before my bullets will reach them before disappearing. Quote:
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Gun dispersion absolutely does change when a human being is controlling the handles. Machine guns have this thing called recoil and vibration or gun shake; it is modeled for the wing guns of the fighters—lose even one gun on a wing and see what happens. Even if you have that tiny distant point zeroed in where that Hellcat is going to be when the first bullet gets there, the gunshake will knock your aim askew; you’ve undoubtedly seen videos of some poor sap firing a shotgun or high-powered rifle for the first time and being knocked off their feet by the recoil, so you can imagine what would happen when the same poor sap pulls the trigger on an equally powerful weapon and fires three or six rounds in a split second. Even with the body of the weapon tied to a hard mount, a large portion of that energy still has to go somewhere. Quote:
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Even so, it would be a vast improvement over the current model. Quote:
cheers horseback |
#120
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Jtd, Horseback is asking you to fly near the enemy bomber, and play the drone by maneuvering at about 500m, and see how many hits they scored on your aircraft, per shot fired.
The game wont give you AI statistics, only players statistics, so it will be needed a second player to fly the bomber steadily, and let the AI do the shooting. Still, 1000 fired rounds with a hit percentage of 2%, means that you will be hit by 20 rounds each time. And that is enough to be shot down, specially from 20mm guns. Worst with planes that got inline engines, one shot is enough to be seriously damaged. |
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