Quote:
Originally Posted by bladeracer
Off topic how?
The topic is the in-game abilities of aircraft to destroy tanks en-masse and that is what we're discussing. Personally, I view the "anti-armour" missions the game generates as merely being symbolic for general "very difficult ground attack" missions simply because of the dearth of ground activity generally. Basically you are attacking ground units with only a small chance of limited success, as opposed to when you are sent to attack soft targets which you effectively wipe out completely.
In other words, I think of it as a pure "game mechanism" rather than a genuine attempt at replicating ground attack. Seeing tanks burning is merely the game's way of saying your attack has disrupted an enemy ground attack, I don't regard it as "you have destroyed four tanks".
Since a very large part of the air war was directed at ground targets I would love to see a more believable implementation, but I don't know what capability is possible with the IL2 engine.
I particularly enjoyed F15: Strike Eagle III and Falcon 3.0 for their ground war implementation many years ago and would love to enjoy something similar from the newer sims. But even with modern weapon systems I doubt I ever tallied 36 vehicles killed, not even in Longbow 2.
I think all IL2 really needs is the ability to inflict a range of effects on vehicles (and other ground units) rather than simply "dead". Then you could certainly "hit" 21 tanks and even destroy several of them, but most would be vehicle damage or crew losses rather than "destruction".
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Here you hit a point.
A downed plane is invariably a total loss (unless it finds a friendly airfield just below). Obviously, a damaged tank can be repaired. More obviously, the repair is easy if the damage is light, as is common when the damage comes from the light armament of any anti-tank aircraft. We should consider that a 37 mm (Ju87g or Il2-37) or 40 mm (Hurricane IId) gun is
very light by tank’s standard. A track can be easily damaged, and this damage effectively stops any tank, but can it be considered “destroyed”? Only if it’s abandoned to enemy hands. So, here I agree with you: it’s not off topic and it’s not a matter of gun-versus armour only.