4.13 development update discussion and feedback

[DuxCorvan]

@Pursuivant: Those pics show what the problem really is, and is not engine frailty: it's the incredibly unrealistic gunner accuracy in this game, when most RL reports and accounts testify gunners were more a dissuasive resource than a real threat for pursuing fighters, except at close distance and straight flying.

As I've stated many times gunners in this game -both AI and human- have it too easy to aim and shoot. AI because it cheats, humans because a real gun station would never move as fast, accurately and lightly as a mouse pointer.

If real gunners were so effective, then contraptions like the Defiant would have been a resonant success, and not the failure they were.

[ElAurens]

Good point Dux.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by DuxCorvan

@Pursuivant: Those pics show what the problem really is, and is not engine frailty:

I'm not disagreeing that there is a problem with IL2's gunnery model, but I also think that there are problems with damage modeling, as some of my pictures pointed out - like one rifle-caliber bullet causing an instant fire in a self-sealing fuel tank which was designed to survive exactly such attacks, or instantly making an engine stop.

The ability for gunners to easily track targets is just one of the problems.

* IL2 makes flexible guns much more inherently accurate than they should be, by ignoring natural bullet dispersion over range due to atmospheric factors, and lack of inherent accuracy due to turbulence, slipstream buffeting and airframe vibration.

* Gunners have much better and faster ranging abilities than in real life, especially at long range. Functionally, even experienced turret gunners were useless at much beyond 500 meters. For this reason, experienced gunners held their fire until their targets were within 300-500 yards. Yet, there's an abundance of evidence that IL2 AI gunners are not only opening fire at 700-800 meters, but also score multiple hits!

* IL2 ignores the fact that it's very difficult even for skilled airmen to properly estimate range in the absence of other objects to help judge size, and in thin, clear air at higher altitudes which makes distant objects seem closer than they are. It's also difficult for the human eye to adapt to looking for distant object in the absence of other objects to focus on. Experienced airmen had to focus first on a distant part of the plane, and then start looking for distant foes once their eyes adapted.

* In some cases the game overestimates a gunner's ability quickly to slew a hand-held gun around, especially when when the plane is pulling Gs or is traveling at high speeds and the gun barrels are hanging out in the slipstream.

* 4.12 went a long way towards making gunners less accurate when the plane is maneuvering, it still doesn't go far enough, IMO, to make it difficult for gunners who aren't seated and strapped in to shoot while the plane is pulling Gs.

For example, the gunner in the top turret of the IL-4 had just a "hammock" to sit on, with no back or foot support and no seat belt. How he was supposed to shoot when the plane was doing anything other than flying straight and level is a puzzle.

* IL2 ignores any change of flexible gun or crew "malfunction." Turrets and guns never jam, turret windows don't ice up at altitude, guns never ice up due to cold or overheat after they fire long bursts, and gunners don't need to spend time changing magazines or belts when they run out of ammo. Nor do gunners suffer from frozen or numb fingers, have their goggles fog up, suffer from hypoxia or slip on piles of spent shells at their feet.

* While 4.12 introduced a realistic lag time for gunners to "acquire" their target (that is, detect it, identify it as hostile, calculate a firing solution and aim prior to opening fire), I'm not sure that it's applied evenly, nor is there greater target acquisition time when attempting to shoot targets at extreme (i.e., beyond 300 meter) range.

* AI skill levels for bombers are too "generic" and it's highly unrealistic for an entire bomber crew to have even Veteran level skills, much less Ace level.

For example, in 1942-43, many U.S. bombardiers and navigators never got gunnery training and even graduates of gunnery school got so little effective realistic practice that they had to be retrained once they got to the combat zone. Even worse, until about 1943, many Soviet air gunners didn't get ANY realistic gunnery training!

So, you might have an Average or even Veteran pilot, plus a few Average gunners, and a few Rookies (or even men who were completely unqualified and whose skills are even lower than IL2 currently models).

* Gunners with restricted arcs of fire and limited ranges of motion are far too effective.

For example, I find just about all the gun positions in the Ju-88 or He-111 to be useless at effectively engaging a maneuvering enemy, since they have such limited visibility and arcs of fire. And, for just about all of the gun positions in those planes to engage planes at the extremes of your arc of fire you have to move the gun in such a way that you can't aim.

Realistically, any gunner lying on his belly is also going to have to contort his body to take shots at targets as the edges of his arc of fire which will further harm accuracy.

Based on this, I think that any gun with much less than a 120 degree cone of fire (e.g., most tail gunners in two-seat attack aircraft) should have severe penalties to hit anything other than a non-maneuvering target, both due to the limited ability to track the target before it enters your arc of fire and the limited arc of fire itself.

Despite this, I've regularly taken hits while maneuvering in a single engined fighter from the ventral and rear guns of the He-111 or Ju-88, even at extreme ranges.


* If IL2 wanted to have historically realistic gunnery, Rookie level gunners (i.e., those selected for gunnery training school) would achieve a maximum of 1% hits against a slowly maneuvering target flying roughly at 90 degrees of deflection to the gunner's plane at 250-300 yards while more more less flying in parallel to the gunner's plane - similar to training conditions against target drogues towed by slow-moving target tugs attempting to simulate "combat curve" fighter attacks.

Lesser deflection and less maneuvering would slightly boost hit percentages, faster movement or more maneuvering by the target would drastically reduce hits, as would engaging targets at longer ranges. Closer targets would progressively boost hits, to a maximum of about 5%.

Average level gunners (i.e., graduates of a good gunnery school) would have 2% basic accuracy, Veteran 3% and Ace 5%. These represent realistic hit percentages expected for graduates of late-war USAAF, USN/USMC and RAF gunnery schools, and tests of veteran gunners.

All of these levels assume some level of formal gunner training. Remember, a fair number of gunners had NO training, or such bad training as to represent no real training!

[Aviar]

Another possible solution for dealing with this issue is seperating AI Gunner(s) Skill from AI Pilot Skill. Presently, all planes have one Skill setting. If you want your bomber pilot to have a Veteran Skill setting, all of the AI gunners will also be Veterans.

If you attempt to control the AI gunnery issue by dropping their Skill setting to Rookie, the pilots then become basically useless. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to seperate the two Skill settings, but this addition could have a very positive effect on gameplay.

Aviar

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Aviar

If you attempt to control the AI gunnery issue by dropping their Skill setting to Rookie, the pilots then become basically useless. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to seperate the two Skill settings, but this addition could have a very positive effect on gameplay.

I'm not sure the IL2 game engine would easily allow that change.

Anyhow, I've noticed that Ace bomber pilots seem to collide with each other more than rookies do!