Mitsubishi Stuka and Thunderbolt

[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.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

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

Maybe it's a subset of "slowing the process down," but the AI can also introduce random errors and do other things that reduce the probability of an accurate targeting solution.

[Igo kyu]

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.

That is more or less correct in my opinion, but you don't have to mess with the AI at all. What you have to do is make any round fired not along the exact bore of the gun, but an random point in a circle around that boresight. This is called a circular area of probability, usually it's given as the radius that 50% of the shots fall within, but as a simplification in a sim one could plausibly use a circle within which 99% of the shots would naturally fall and make all of the shots occur at random points within that. Then the AI could be as accurate as they like, but they wouldn't be pulling off 100% headshot kills at 750 metres, because there would be a random element in there, which would counter their unnatural non-randomness and make the whole game a lot fairer overall. It wouldn't affect the scores of humans, because we're not accurate enough to get headshot kills by other than random chance anyway.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by majorfailure

a rookie should be able to judge by his tracers if he's shooting too high or low.

Too high or too low, maybe, but as for actually getting the distance right (and hence, factoring in bullet drop) maybe not. One of the things I've learned is that tracers actually create an optical illusion that can fool poorly trained gunners. As I understand it, tracers make a bullet seem like it's closer than it is.

Originally Posted by majorfailure

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.

This is possibly because it's one of the older planes in the game, which might have had less realistic gunnery arcs.

Originally Posted by majorfailure

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

Yep. The only problem with high attacks from the rear quarter is the fact that you have to deal with 2 20mm cannons.

Originally Posted by majorfailure

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.

This changed a bit with 4.10. To some extent, it's realistic because gunners could talk with other crew, allowing them to "anticipate" targets moving into the arc of fire covered by their guns. But, IL2 still takes it too far and doesn't the need to physically track the target with your guns in order to "acquire" it.

The code needs to be reworked to make gunners delay for a fraction of a second before opening fire on a plane that just entered their cone of fire to simulate reaction times, and then accuracy needs to go down for initial shots against those planes.

[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.