[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.