The good old days

[nopoop]

Correct me if I'm wrong here Beet.

Nose mounted guns with no convergence would only require taking distance into account when aiming out to longer ranges.

Convergence set at 400 yards for a Jug for example gives you options.

At 400 yards all bullets hit in one spot.

At 800 yards they will have crossed to the original position with dispersion of course. At straight and level it's very doable taking in to account bullet drop.

And don't forget net lag. The con putting bullets into you is closer on his FE. Depending he may be less than 500 yards on his FE.

I really don't see a problem with gunnery here. I can't hit squat and haven't been shot up by cons at 800 yards. So I'm a bad example.

[acepilot2]

Originally posted by DrDea
What ever happened to the 10 to 12 K merge with someone that didnt HO on the first pass,gave you a great fight for maby 2 minutes,one died and BOTH said "Man that was fun" Followed by a heartfelt I guess score ruined it all somehow. To sad.Just to damned sad.

*sigh* I agree.  I do get a fight like this ocassionally, but i miss those days:(

[beet1e]

Originally posted by nopoop
Correct me if I'm wrong here Beet.

Nose mounted guns with no convergence would only require taking distance into account when aiming out to longer ranges.

Ah, not quite. The rifling of the barrel can be varied, or the barrel of the gun can be designed so that there is a measure of random dispersion. I remember an army guy explaining how those belt fed floor mounted machine guns were designed to disperse the rounds. That would mean, for example, that at 100 yards, the gun would place rounds in an area about two feet in diameter. This guy was telling me how they had to modify the barrel of the gun to increase the radius of the target circle. Of course, as the range increased, the rounds would be so widely dispersed as not to inflict much damage on any particular part. Conversely, if real aircraft guns were like LASERs, the pilot's aim would become hypercritical to the point where it might be difficult to hit anything at all.

Think of bullet dispersion as the RL method of dumbing down the aiming process, and giving rookies the ability to spray and pray.

[Flit]

hehe you were'nt here in the days of the super C-hog, were ya
also, keep in mind that if you are seeing him at 800 yrds, he is seeing you as 4-500 yards
"things in the mirror are closer then they appear "

[Toad]

As HT has said many time before, AH models dispersion and dispersion actually increases the chances of a hit. Think Shotgun pattern.

Now don't take this as a an endorsement or diatribe. There's a whole lot of things that go into getting shot down here besides a hit.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Toad
As HT has said many time before, AH models dispersion and dispersion actually increases the chances of a hit.

Yes, but with the possible exception of a 30mm cannon round, it's going to take more than a hit to get a result. My interpretation of what I've read is that a balance needed to be struck when designing aircraft guns: If the guns were like lasers, aim would be critical. A pitch change of ½° could make the difference between a devastating hit and missing completely. So dispersion was built in to increase the target area which the rounds would strike - aim becomes not quite as critical. But as range increases, the rounds are dispersed over such a wide area that a hit is all you're likely to get. In AH, we have the dispersion which makes getting a hit more likely. But at 800 or 1000 yards the vast majority of rounds would miss the target completely. In AH it doesn't seem to make a difference to some planes. But in other games (eg. WB, IL2), you have to be much, much closer than 800 yards to get any result. An occasional plink at that range is plausible. Shearing off a guy's wing at that range is BS.

[Shane]

Originally posted by beet1e
at 800 or 1000 yards the vast majority of rounds would miss the target completely. In AH it doesn't seem to make a difference to some planes. But in other games (eg. WB, IL2), you have to be much, much closer than 800 yards to get any result. An occasional plink at that range is plausible. Shearing off a guy's wing at that range is BS.

and such is it in AH...  i've taken a ton of long range plinks and have seen sprites but no damage.  sometimes i do see something fall off or take a hit to go red damage - in most cases the guy probbaly already had some rounds him in from earlier, i just lucked out getting the critical hit to push it over the edge.

abt the furthest i've ever truly torn up someone would be abt 650yds with .50's and that took a nice steady stream on target.

also one factor that has been discussed ad infinitum with this issue is net lag... mirror... objects...closer...appear... yadda yadda.  this is true. the net coding *has* loosened up somewhat from 18 months ago or so and the discrepancies between  what two people might see *has* increased somewhat.  not a lot to make it totally "wtf?!?"  but enough for me to be able to tell the difference.  so 800 to you might be only 600-700 to the guy taking the shots or even.  

simple test, take a buddy up in MA  find a nice quiet part of a sector close to some action.  pace each other, one lead one tail... stablizie speeds  compare what you both see...  let the distance increase... compare again. do it with 2 or 3 other guys, i.e.  a yerpeon like yourself... a kiwi or pac rimmer and then find some yank who has cable  and a decent routing to HTC, then find one who has dialup.  you might be surprised at what you discover.

i guess it was a necessary tradeoff with the huge increase in player base and wide variety in connections/routings. it's not as bad as it could be, but it is very much playable.  this, however is where a vast majority of "cheat/hack" accusations are coming from.  and unlike years past, there are exponetially a lot more people who are truly ignorant about connections, cpu cycles or even computers in general who find AH, like what they see and fire it up.

gah! i need to go bathe after this WoT.

[NoBaddy]

Originally posted by lazs2
anyone who flies that high is probly pretty skilless and seeing another con scares the crap outta her.    She shoots in an effort to scare you off so that she can run away.

lazs

Lazs...

Do you always use a shotgun to hunt fleas?

[Mathman]

Originally posted by DrDea
What ever happened to the 10 to 12 K merge with someone that didnt HO on the first pass,gave you a great fight for maby 2 minutes,one died and BOTH said "Man that was fun" Followed by a heartfelt I guess score ruined it all somehow. To sad.Just to damned sad.

Well, I have been here since Beta 1 and the things that I have found to be different are not listed here.  All of what you said did happen, and still does.  However, it did not happen as much as many people here seem to believe it truly did.

The biggest difference between now and then is the price (well, since AH went pay to play).  The lower cost (and the closing or declining appeal of other sims, such as AW and in some way WB) has caused the player base in AH to increase dramatically.  I am not saying that this is bad by any stretch, just that there are more people.  When you get more people, you will see a lot more stuff than you ever did before.  People did "dweeby" things back then, but it wasn't quite as apparent when there were only 200-250 people on during prime time.

The only other thing that I have really noticed as being different from the "good ol' days" is that a lot of the people I flew with and against back then are no longer around.  That is the only thing that I truly miss from AH past.

Oh well, that is just my 2/5 of a nickel's worth.

[Cobra412]

Not sure if any of you have ever read the book Fighter Combat:Tactics and Maneuvering by Robert L. Shaw but if your that interested in air to air engagements I'd suggest you read it.

The guns on many aircraft gun platforms are fully adjustable to what ever range they want.  No different than setting your convergence on AH.  Look on the net for Point Harmonization and Pattern Harmonization for more info on this.  The minimum and maximum effective ranges of any weapons platform can be found out there also.  Many factors come into how destructive a particular weapon is.  Getting hits out past 1k is not impossible and neither is the possibility of incurring damage out at that range either.  Accuracy is the main thing I see folks complain about.  I'll have to find it again but I wanna say the maximum lethal range of a .50 cal round is out near or past the 2k mark.  This is the point at which the round still has destructive/penetration abilities against a given target.  Every target being different depending on how it was manufactured ofcourse.  It is also said that optimum firing range was that of 700 to 800 ft using Point Harmonization methods.

[Tilt]

Originally posted by lazs2
I believe that in the BOB they fought only german planes... I believe that the ones who fought the most got to be the best too.

lazs

IMO you believe wrong.............

It was about the bounce, about numbers, about wing men (LW), about climbing desparately to an enemy to stop his bombers with little thought for your own safety (RAF).

Desperate tactics are practiced in the MA too............ but frankly if you have out witted your opponent and he has only desperate tactics left then he will use them.

The HO merge is annoying.

But if we will play the tactic of alt advantaged boom and zoom (and will not be sucked in to the fight) then eventually HO or near HO will be the outcome. Our opponent will realise that eventually his e will be drained to a point where his 6 is vulnerable and either bug out (if its an option) or force the head on/near head on to either risk the shot or gain an angle.

Frankly Dr Dea is right we do not each other enough infact the MA is a whiners charter whereby the typical view is one where others are aparantly always at fault  ....... but frankly I look up this thread and see some espousing "rule" sets to suit their own play style.

I see many "experten" here who assume it is there cod given right to claim the kill of their victim.............

If the opponent is forced into desperate measures then the experten could give themselves some credit for that.

If our experten was not ready for the acts of desparation then may be he is not so experten as he would wish and yet has some stuff to learn. (As do we all)

Maybe our experten could even suggest a better merge tactic for his victimn that helps the future play........in a manner that is not that of some moaning old vet who has to train his  lunch in how to get on the plate.

[Toad]

Good post, Tilt. I really like the "lunch on the plate" part!

[lazs2]

are you saying that the pilots with the most combat experiance weren't the best?

the tactics in WWII were pretty darn boring... same ol same ol... wouldn't want to simulate that part.   The only time things changed was when new weapons came out... and then... only till the pilots on both sides got "experiance" with the changes.

In the ma, we know the FM's and gunnery of every plane that ever flew.   There is no surprise.   The only variety is the fact that you can mix so many FM's in one fight.

lazs