FWs Durabillity

[julian265]

As others said, the problem is not unique to 190s. However, the cases involving 190s stick out in my memory.

A key finding myself and others made, was that when shooting from close to directly behind the 190, it is much less sensitive to hits than from other angles.
It often absorbed 50+ .50s and still kept flying. I remember a few cases online with more than 100 .50 hits from 6 o'clock (using gunstat before and after), and the prick continued to speed get away.

Whilst there is no magical number of bullets that should bring down a plane, it just seemed far too common to be unable to drop a 190 with lots of hits from directly behind, whilst it wasn't too hard to knock them out with snap shots from other angles.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by falconilia

Started QMB mission test vs 2 ACE Wellington III bombers and the results are not looking good....no fire at all,only minor damaged engine.
But VS 2 Ace B17 Bombers i had lot of main fuel tank fire.
Still no Engine fire.

Stick with opponents equipped with just .30 caliber/7.62 mm flexible guns.

Historically, 0.50 caliber/12.7 mm guns were extremely effective fighter killers, with just a few shots being able to stop an engine or cause a fuel tank to explode, even at extreme limits of gunner accuracy. That effectiveness makes it harder to pick out oddities with the DM.

By contrast, being "nibbled to death" by .30 caliber fire helps to pinpoint problems.

Another tool which is helpful when bug-stomping damage models is a good cut-away drawing of the plane you're testing which show the placement of all internal systems.

If you pause the game and compare the drawing to a bullet's trajectory, sometimes you'll be pleasantly surprised when a hit that seems to prove a DM fault turns out to actually be good damage modeling.

For example, I've had bullets "seem" to penetrate armor like it wasn't there, but careful examination shows that the bullet actually passed through gaps in the armor to hit a vital system.

If you get a really strange damage result, immediately pause the game, take a screenshot, and make a note of the circumstances (range, what you were doing when you got shot).

Screenshots and statistics are the most valuable way to make your case.

If you can say, "I flew 25 missions with the Fw-190A vs. a bunch of Ace Wellington III (or B5N2, or SBD-3, TB-3), each time attacking from 6 o'clock level at 250 kph until I got shot down or couldn't keep up with the bomber stream. These are the stats of how I got shot down . . . none of them involve engine fires, even though these screenies show that my engine was filled with holes" then you might have a good case that the Fw-190 DM for engine fires is porked.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by julian265

A key finding myself and others made, was that when shooting from close to directly behind the 190, it is much less sensitive to hits than from other angles.

This isn't surprising. If you're attacking a plane from exactly 6 o'clock level, it presents its narrowest profile, and most WW2-era planes had armor to protect crew and vital systems from hits from the rear.

So, unless the convergence of your guns is perfect, many of your shots will miss the smaller target, and many of the shots that hit will be stopped by armor.

That's why you ideally never attack from exactly 6 or 12 o'clock level. Always incorporate a bit of "angle off" when attacking from those directions so that you get a slightly bigger target and some of your bullets will bypass armor.

Originally Posted by julian265

It often absorbed 50+ .50s and still kept flying. I remember a few cases online with more than 100 .50 hits from 6 o'clock (using gunstat before and after)

With all respect, unless you were playing with "arcade mode on" so you could record exactly where each shot hit, all you can say is that you shot 50+ or 100+ 0.50 caliber rounds at an Fw-190 and it still got away.

That doesn't make the Fw-190's damage model incorrect, it just puts you in the company of however many thousand allied pilots who had the same problem in real life.

If your gunnery wasn't up to scratch, you might very well have sprayed a lot of virtual lead around the target, with a fraction of the bullets hitting the target but being scattered such that there was never the concentrated fire needed to score a kill. A few more might have been stopped by armor.

Killing aircraft with a machine gun requires a higher level of precision than killing them using cannons. Your deflection and convergence has to be just right so that you can bring several seconds of fire onto a single vital system, and you have to be close enough to your target that you can reliably hit that system.

Achieving those conditions can be quite hard, which is one of the reasons that most air forces ultimately chose cannons as their airborne weapon of choice!

[falconilia]

After dozen and dozen tests FW A8 VS 4 Wellington III,B17,B29,and online games my conlcusions are:
FWs can be shot down:
A)You hit and destroy its ailerons/elevators
B)Pilot killed
C)Damaged engine with also damaged wing but being at low alt
D)Fuel tank fire
E)Destroy/cut off elevators(if u aim the tail its easy)
F)All the above

You can not:
A)Set fire on engine including 20mm guns
B)Cut wing(flying P47 and trying to aim only the wings in photo one it took 75 bullets and in photo 2 147 bullets.In 3rd photo you can see the heavier damage can take one wing from 0.50s.

PS:This is not a 4.13 issue.This bug? was also was on 4.12 but i thought someone would notice it

[falconilia]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

This isn't surprising. If you're attacking a plane from exactly 6 o'clock level, it presents its narrowest profile, and most WW2-era planes had armor to protect crew and vital systems from hits from the rear.

So, unless the convergence of your guns is perfect, many of your shots will miss the smaller target, and many of the shots that hit will be stopped by armor.

That's why you ideally never attack from exactly 6 or 12 o'clock level. Always incorporate a bit of "angle off" when attacking from those directions so that you get a slightly bigger target and some of your bullets will bypass armor.



With all respect, unless you were playing with "arcade mode on" so you could record exactly where each shot hit, all you can say is that you shot 50+ or 100+ 0.50 caliber rounds at an Fw-190 and it still got away.

That doesn't make the Fw-190's damage model incorrect, it just puts you in the company of however many thousand allied pilots who had the same problem in real life.

If your gunnery wasn't up to scratch, you might very well have sprayed a lot of virtual lead around the target, with a fraction of the bullets hitting the target but being scattered such that there was never the concentrated fire needed to score a kill. A few more might have been stopped by armor.

Killing aircraft with a machine gun requires a higher level of precision than killing them using cannons. Your deflection and convergence has to be just right so that you can bring several seconds of fire onto a single vital system, and you have to be close enough to your target that you can reliably hit that system.

Achieving those conditions can be quite hard, which is one of the reasons that most air forces ultimately chose cannons as their airborne weapon of choice!

You are correct above all these.
with the right convergence and angle of attack you can destroy even a B17 easy.
But hitting FW in a specific point u only get the max damage at this point as i mention before.... dont know if you u understand me.i tired ))))

[KG26_Alpha]

They left off the engine on fire damage because they felt so sorry for the rest of what they have done to it.

Its getting boring this kind of damage modelling stuff, there's plenty of planes out there that are over specification and have strange damage modelling.

And complaints over the years have never had any effect on having these changed.

Best thing to do is report it to DT in the stickies and see if anyone is willing to look at what your saying.

eg:

Spitfire wing absorbing Mk108 damage no effect aircraft flies normally
ever been fixed ............ nope.

The Fw190's wing takes a few MG rounds and the aircraft is almost un-flyable certainly run for home time when its flown by humans and not AI.



Unfortunately theres lots of planes with problems, it seems the FW190 has had a bad time over the years,

I should know I have CooP missions I made from the the beginning of the IL2 series featuring the "Butchered Bird"
so its progress at the hands of patching over the years has seen it goes backwards in performance and damage modelling.

How about Delta woods amazing properties

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by falconilia

B)Cut wing(flying P47 and trying to aim only the wings in photo one it took 75 bullets and in photo 2 147 bullets.In 3rd photo you can see the heavier damage can take one wing from 0.50s.

I know that I have shot off the wings of 190s more than once. Though usually with some Russian armament, which frequently features 20mm cannon(s).

And you can kill the engine totally, but set it on fire -doubtful if I've ever seen it- it is at least not common. And though not as common as with other birds - Fw190s can go 1 million pieces puzzle, too.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by falconilia

A)Set fire on engine including 20mm guns
B)Cut wing(flying P47 and trying to aim only the wings in photo one it took 75 bullets and in photo 2 147 bullets.In 3rd photo you can see the heavier damage can take one wing from 0.50s.

Something that would help make your case would be taking screenshots with Arcade Mode on.

That is, go into your conf.ini file and using a text editor alter "Arcade=0" to "Arcade=1"

In arcade mode when a plane takes damage you'll see a big "arrow" through it which marks the bullet trajectory. Explosions give a "starburst" effect, like in KG26_Alpha's post. This is a tremendously valuable tool for A) checking the accuracy of your gunnery. B) Determining exactly where a bullet goes when troubleshooting DM problems.

It IS possible to take the wing off a FW-190 using machine guns in the game, but you need to get sufficient concentration of fire on one location, as I said before. In particular, you have to get enough bullets through the main wing spar, which might be hard against a hard-maneuvering target.

While the IL2 damage textures have little to do with where bullets actually go, in the P-47 vs. FW-190 duel, it looks like the P-47 sprayed a whole lot of lead randomly into the 190's wings without getting that concentration.

But, in fairness to your argument, something that may or may not be modeled in IL2 is ammo explosions. And, one of the few design flaws of the FW-190 was that its 20mm cannon ammo magazine was right next to the main wing spar. One bullet in the right place could cause a secondary explosion that could rip the wing off, as shown here at 0:21 on the video:

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65...ng-over-clouds

Note the relative lack of prior 0.50 caliber impacts on the wings prior to the blast.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

I know that I have shot off the wings of 190s more than once. Though usually with some Russian armament, which frequently features 20mm cannon(s).

That's entirely reasonable. I would be surprised if a couple of 20mm hits to the wings DIDN'T blow the wing off a fighter, or at least render it virtually unflyable.

[gaunt1]

Originally Posted by KG26_Alpha

And complaints over the years have never had any effect on having these changed.

Not only DM. Also the power of certain weapons. Like soviet 20mm is vastly overpowered, (in RL, it had one of the weakest 20mm ammo), but at the same time, soviet 12.7mm is underpowered.

And this is despite that there is a very good reference for all of this.
http://www.quarryhs.co.uk/WW2guneffect.htm