Improve your aiming/marksman skills

[hegykc]

Originally Posted by klem

Metres.
I have a ballistics spreadsheet for all the guns in IL-2 '46 somewhere based on RL values but in the end it came down to KISS.

If you could share those that would be great.

The thing is,

with a "one point" convergence you have 3 possibilities : hit, miss, or hit armor. So you have like 33% chance of doing some damage.
With a harmonized 3-4 times larger pattern in all the 3 possibilities you'll hit something: you either hit and then some, miss but still hit something, or hit armor but also hit something else. So you have "100%" chance of doing some damage.
Even if you don't instantly blow them to pieces they still have a long way home. And even if they get back to base, they're still damaged and out of the war machine.

As you can see on the "death cone", with one point convergence you can waste a whole burst on the back plate armor. While with the harmonization you'll always hit something. And you only need one tank, one oil or gas line, one control cable etc...

How it will transfer into COD, we'll have to test and see.

[klem]

Hi hegykc,

I've found it. Its old but I think its still relevant.

I would call your "cone of death" the "cone of impact", there's no "death" in hitting an empty wingroot and it would be a very lucky hit on a control cable in a fuselage with scattered shots (assuming the DM is that sophisticated).

With point harmonisation you have 2 possibilities, not 3. Hit or Miss. Hitting armour may not be too helpful but it is a Hit. Also, most hits are not from the 6 o'clock position, they are at some angle of deflection varying both horizontally and vertically. I usually try for a deflection shot on the canopy especially as the CoD 109s seem to fly on whether burning or hammered hard. Best way is to kill the pilot and I'll probably rake through the engine as I try. True you only need one or two pilot hits so a scatter can do it but point harmonisation will make sure of it at harmonisation range and against bombers you need concentated fire on engines, wing tanks etc.

By the way, with pure 200yd point harmonisation you get a scatter of about 5 feet (about 1.5m) from 150yds through point harmonisation out to 5 feet at 250 yds so you have the benefits of 'harmonised' setup through that range as you close and get closer.

Its a matter of personal choice but I prefer point harmonisation.

Did you know that the best shots in the RAF (like Sailor Malan) preferred point harmonisation at anything from 150 to 250 yards? A 4 feet square pattern harmonisation at 400yards was the official setting at the beginning of the war until it was changed to point harmonisation at 250 yds during the BoB. The thinking at first was that 4 feet square at 400 yds would give the average pilot a chance of hitting 'something' but it was found to be ineffective at bringing enemy aircraft down. They found that concentrated fire was necessary or too many escaped with only minor damage.

EDIT: In CoD damaged a/c aren't out of the war machine. The pilot just gets a new one.

[hegykc]

Thanks for the file.

Cone of death is an expression I've read. It's not mine, nor describing this pattern as being more deadly.
And I don't won't to re-invent the wheel here. I would gladly calculate the convergences according to official harmonization charts, but I haven't found any for WWII RAF.
Also, US standard is 1000 feet convergence. But when you look at the charts, you see that it's not just one setting.

So I thought it might be a similar setup with the RAF. The .50 caliber being more destructive is a solid point and I agree, you can afford to spread them out.
Wish I had official harmonization charts for RAF.

If you can point me to a quote saying the best shots proffered single point harmonization I would be very interested. And, of course they would, I mean the best shots could do with a single bullet.

This is for the guys that are having trouble hitting their targets.

Also your numbers are a little off. Browning .303 has a 4.2 mill dispersion cone, so at 150 yards you get a 1.9 feet scatter, and at 250 yards a 3.2 feet scatter.

Anyway, it's out. If it fails, there's always tweaking, if that fails, back to default.

[GF_Mastiff]

Thank you just trying to unconfuse the new comers that are coming on line the last few weeks.

Just remember in the GUI ammo load outs the convergence is in meters,

I just rounded to the nearest denominator and made me a spreed shoot,

Heres mine

guns 1/8 is at 299meters which converted in the cockpit is 250yards,

then I just set wingspans for everything else.

1/8 299, 250 yards.. ammo is tracer incendiary(1), armor(2), incendiary(3), armor(2), ....up to five each staggered, tracer is once every 10 rounds. so it's like this 1,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3...

2/7 183, 200 yards, these guns are like this 1,222,333,222,333,222,333...

3/6 174, 190 yards, 1,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3

4/5 163, 180 yards.. 1,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,2,3...

this is very effective against all target I find.

[pstyle]

Right, I have set up my guns to match your 300m convergence suggestion, that is:

Outboard (guns 1 and : 120m vert 300m hor
Guns 2 and 7: 268m and 300m
Guns 3 and 6: 265m and 370m
Inboard (Guns 4 and 5):275m and 342m

I have NOT yet corrected for yards, but I will test at m first, just to see if the difference is noticeable

[pstyle]

Originally Posted by pstyle

Right, I have set up my guns to match your 300m convergence suggestion, that is:

Outboard (guns 1 and : 120m vert 300m hor
Guns 2 and 7: 268m and 300m
Guns 3 and 6: 265m and 370m
Inboard (Guns 4 and 5):275m and 342m

I have NOT yet corrected for yards, but I will test at m first, just to see if the difference is noticeable

I can confirm that the above settings are a nonsense.

BUT, in game, aren't the horizontal and vertical convergences the wrong way around?

[pstyle]

you need to Reverse the horizontal and vertical convergences in game. The game has them around the wrong way.

This is already reversed, so enter it exactly as specified: It works quite well:
Outboard (guns 1 and : 300 vert and 120 hor
Guns 2 and 7: 300 and 268
Guns 3 and 6: 370 and 370
Inboard (Guns 4 and 5): 342 and 275

I just tested the above with tracers in all 8 guns. Gives a good cone of fire out to fairly long range.

[Ataros]

Originally Posted by pstyle

you need to Reverse the horizontal and vertical convergences in game. The game has them around the wrong way.

AFAIK it was fixed in one of betas. Worth testing.

Historical settings for the 109 btw:

[hegykc]

I do apologize for the confusion, but as I am unable to test at the moment, I wanted to get it out there for people to try it. Maybe someone even has some charts for the RAF or a better idea.

Anyway these are 2 days work to calculate and setup, I'm no mathematician so I have to do everything "by hand" until I notice some patterns.
There's quite some tweaking to do yet, which I'll do in the next couple of days.

So again, the distances are in yards and must be converted into meters and rounded off.
Inboard guns are No. 1 in the pictures so convert that too.
Don't know if the game has the reversal bug still.

[ATAG_Colander]

Ataros,

Great pic! It never occurred to me that there could be 2 points of vertical convergence.

Interesting concept to be able to shoot at two distances and have vertical convergence on both