Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[horseback]

All the other times I got bored/greedy and decided to do a 6'o clock approach and forgot to break at 300m. So I'd say that my own poor choice of tactics fried my there.

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.

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. Under those conditions, accurate return fire from your target should be next to impossible, and the angles imposed for gunners in flanking aircraft would make it a matter of very poor chance that they would hit you at all, much less hit you anywhere important, like the 'head-sized' magneto that comprises less than 5% of the area you can aim at inside the cowling of a P-47, Hellcat or Corsair, or the considerably smaller reflector sight in your cockpit (and how do they do that without breaking the bulletproof glass in front of it?).

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.

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.

Comparing the capability of a stepped formation of almost fifty B-17s to the capabilities of a couple of vics of Betties or He-111s just takes it into the realms of fantasy. 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. With the exception of the (extremely clumsy and unwieldy) 20mm stinger in the tail of the Betty, most of these aircraft are defended by socket or rail mounted light machine guns and consistently make pinpoint hits at angles which would be impossible for the gunners to look down their guns' sights at the (distant) targeted empty spot in the air which will be occupied by my aircraft a half second and several aircraft lengths later. At 'Rookie' levels.

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

I long ago learned to 'demote' any aircraft mounting a rear or side facing gun to Rookie before flying a mission--LCD monitors aren't cheap and throwing your TrackIR visor at them can be expensive. And of course, let's not forget that they still can hit you while the aircraft they are in is spinning out of control --which was what happened to me for the umpteenth time while I was testing the other night.

There are those of us who don't fly LW vs the USAAF or RAF, and while I understand the tendency of some people to romanticize the German side in that contest, I just can't sympathize with the tendency to 'baseline' your campaign experiences with the comparatively nerfed gunners of the in-game US heavies against my complaints with the gunners on He-111s, Stukas, Bf 110s, Pe-2s, Sturmoviks and more recently, Vals and Betties. All of these aircraft have Rookie gunners superior to any Terminator model James Cameron ever made a dime from, even the hot little blonde one.

Take your 'red' Fw 190A up against a flight of Betties and see what happens. It will shock you.

Only eight out of forty missions sounds like heaven to me; I've had several individual campaign missions where one specific gunner gets me every damned time from every angle and distance imaginable, even after being demoted (do you think that they might be bitter about it?). I hit the 'Refly' button four or five times in a couple of hours and then I just have to walk away for a few days (or months).

There must be many hundreds like me who simply never come back.

cheers

horseback

[MaxGunz]

Was it 4.07 that came with tracks showing how to attack bombers without getting shot?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by horseback

The over accuracy of the ai gunners is primarily a concern for the off-liner; specifically the off-liner who mainly plays fighter scenarios.

Agreed, but I can accept the odd outlier. Unless you're moving faster than a gun can traverse, there should be a small chance of getting hit. It should be statistically very unlikely to happen, however.

I'd also like a system where gunner skill falls off as you add complications to the firing solution.

Rookie gunners should be reasonably effective at simple low-deflection shots against non-maneuvering planes within about 300-400 meters and should have about a 2% accuracy rate against planes flying at about 250 mph (~400 kph) and maneuvering relatively gently in one dimension (i.e., equivalent to what a target tug would do).

But, their accuracy should fall off severely due to their plane maneuvering, target planes traveling at much more than 300 mph (~500 kph) or with more than about 30 degrees of deflection in more then one dimension (i.e., a fighter performing a pursuit curve - diving and crossing over the gunner's plane). Each additional complication reduces chances to hit by some order of magnitude.

Better quality gunners have a slightly better chance of hitting the "baseline" targets and don't have quite the same penalties to skill to hit trickier targets.

Even so, any gunner's chance of hitting should go down to "almost impossible" against very fast-moving or erratically-moving targets.

Originally Posted by horseback

It is enormously frustrating to spend 30 or forty minutes trying to fly formation with an AI `escort’ routine that seems more concerned with either burning off your fuel or playing hide-and-seek behind your canopy frames than it is with keeping in close contact with the bombers we’re supposed to be protecting, finally catching a formation of Bf 110Gs down low and then getting your engine shot out by a Rookie rear gunner

Again, I'll accept the odd outlier, but statistically the AI is still too good in such cases. And, oddly, it seems to vary a lot by individual plane. Instead, gunnery should be made a bit more "generic." Unless you've got proof that a particular gun mount was much more stable and effective, pretty much every single ball-mounted rifle caliber MG gunner station should behave in the same way. Ditto for pintle or Scarff mounts with single or double rifle caliber MG, or single or double HMG.

Originally Posted by horseback

[*] For the off-liner or online player who specializes or even dabbles in mud-moving in two-seater, medium or heavy bombers, the gunners are not nearly effective enough.

Which means that there should be a player-controlled option for setting gunnery difficulty. For offliners playing at being a fighter pilot, there should be a GUI setting to "dumb down" AI gunnery. For offliners playing at being an attack or bomber pilot, there should be an option to keep it the way it is.
For onliners, there should be a server-controlled setting to keep gunnery the way it is or to introduce all the hassles that real gunners faced.

Other than that, I think that your suggestions are excellent.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

CloD is dead. Time to move on.

Of course people will abuse any feature of a game. It doesn't change the fact that different belting options would be a cool addition to IL2.

And, since CloD is dead, it also means no good reason for an embargo against early war planes like the Spitfire MkI or Bf-109E-1, or maps of England.

[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.

[Pursuivant]

For folks who are interested in the nitty-gritty about how fighter guns were calibrated, at least for the USAAF

http://www.avia-it.com/act/profili_d...monization.pdf

[majorfailure]

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. Under those conditions, accurate return fire from your target should be next to impossible, and the angles imposed for gunners in flanking aircraft would make it a matter of very poor chance that they would hit you at all, much less hit you anywhere important, like the 'head-sized' magneto that comprises less than 5% of the area you can aim at inside the cowling of a P-47, Hellcat or Corsair, or the considerably smaller reflector sight in your cockpit (and how do they do that without breaking the bulletproof glass in front of it?).

No, with 6'clock attacks I meant really lazy attacks, with not enough speed difference. And the way I see it I'm an easy target even if I close with 200kph excess -only change is distance, and that's a shot an ace gunner from 200m away should be able to do most of the times, and a rookie should be able to judge by his tracers if he's shooting too high or low. And even if he's leading for 500m distance, and I'm only at 300m, then he will highly likely still hit -as that shot needs no lead in angle left/right and no lead in up/down motion.

Originally Posted by horseback

There are those of us who don't fly LW vs the USAAF or RAF, and while I understand the tendency of some people to romanticize the German side in that contest, I just can't sympathize with the tendency to 'baseline' your campaign experiences with the comparatively nerfed gunners of the in-game US heavies against my complaints with the gunners on He-111s, Stukas, Bf 110s, Pe-2s, Sturmoviks and more recently, Vals and Betties. All of these aircraft have Rookie gunners superior to any Terminator model James Cameron ever made a dime from, even the hot little blonde one.

Usually I play both sides of the medal, so I did the US/Brit side before, and I found the German/Italian bombers nowhere near the capability of a B-17.
The only real danger is the Do217, because they are so fast you are sometimes forced to attack from behind. And when flying planes with .50cals the He111 can be tough, though it is vulnerable to attacks from the front. Strangely enough, the most troublesome Axis bomber for me is the Ju87, because it is so small and usually evades and its gunner shoots below where IMHO he shouldnt even be able to see me. Upside is if using a very low 6 or side/front attacks next to any hit on that thing makes it burn.

Bettys, I've shot countless out of the sky using P-39 (awesome game moments: head on passes with 37mm that connect and blow that thing right out of the sky) or P-40s and F4F.
P-39 is easy, either stay behind and snipe them from a distance or use your superior speed and head-on tactics, high attacks from nearly directly above also work fine.
F4F/P-40 is more difficult, the speed advantage often is not enough to make an intercept possible using head-ons. High 6 attacks work okay, and high sides attacks too. High 6 attacks are better IMHO, its easier to hit the wing tanks, and thats the Bettys vice, its basically a big unprotected flying fuel tank. I would guesstimate that nine out of ten I got were due to fuel tank fire, except when flying the P39, and even then when 37mm ammo was out the .30 cals light them good.

Originally Posted by horseback

Take your 'red' Fw 190A up against a flight of Betties and see what happens. It will shock you.

Will do.

Originally Posted by horseback

Only eight out of forty missions sounds like heaven to me; I've had several individual campaign missions where one specific gunner gets me every damned time from every angle and distance imaginable, even after being demoted (do you think that they might be bitter about it?). I hit the 'Refly' button four or five times in a couple of hours and then I just have to walk away for a few days (or months).

That reminds me of the game before 4.10, when gunners were godlike (and were able to survive 20mm hits). I can remember a BoB campaign, where Ju87 shot you out of the sky with 90% probablity when anywhere within 500m behind.
He-111 and a 6'o clock approach was certain doom, when they appeared, the only surviving member of my squad usually was me - head on tactics worked.
Bf110 had to be left alone, attacking them was suicide, they could turn so you nearly blacked out turning with them, and still the gunner fired with pinpoint accuracy.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

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.

That may be one of the reasons we do get strange results, the AI gunners acquire targets at any angle at about 5km, even if they can not see it. Without confirmation from anyone that can read the game code, I'd speculate that any gunner already has your speed and distance and heading estimated before you come into his FoV. If that's the case, that shouuld be changed.

[ElAurens]

OK, let's stop speaking about the AI as if they are beings. OK?

The AI is the computer program that runs the sim. It doesn't have to "calculate" anything. It already "knows" evey parameter of your aircraft's performance, and it knows how you have set your gun convergence. It "knows" where you are at all times, it knows when you make a control input, and has a perfect solution for hitting you at all times.

All that the settings can do is either slow this process down or limit the range that it picks you up as a target.

[MaxGunz]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

OK, let's stop speaking about the AI as if they are beings. OK?

The AI is the computer program that runs the sim. It doesn't have to "calculate" anything. It already "knows" evey parameter of your aircraft's performance, and it knows how you have set your gun convergence. It "knows" where you are at all times, it knows when you make a control input, and has a perfect solution for hitting you at all times.

All that the settings can do is either slow this process down or limit the range that it picks you up as a target.

I don't know how much of that goes into the AI calculations. What can be is not necessarily what is. But I can say that the AI is only predictive to a simple level and that a constantly changing path is beyond any AI in-game.

[Janosch]

I find that in most cases, the AI gunners have more difficulty in shooting an attacking fighter if the speed difference is indeed great. Try, now, a Me-163B against B-17s, it's wonderful! They might score a lucky hit, though, but it's acceptable imho.
I understand that 9 cases out of 10, one won't have such a huge speed advantage, but then it's better to go against the escort fighters instead. Who's to say it's not important to shoot them down over hostile territory (to them)? Carrier ops are another matter, of course.

Originally Posted by ElAurens

OK, let's stop speaking about the AI as if they are beings. OK?

I don't think we should do that... at least it's ok to speak as if they are in fact beings. As technology advances, AIs become more and more "beings" with real emotions, ambitions and dreams. As such, they should have the same rights as human players do. For now, however, they don't even get to decide whether or not to play in the first place, so they should in fact have some advantages over Joe Regular Player.

What we say here and how we say it will set a precedent on how we treat artificial intelligence beings, and our words will echo untold centuries into the future.