A question about HO's

[funked]

Real World:
I'm sure there was some HOing, but I doubt many of the guys who tried it lived long lives!  It's a 50-50 proposition at best, and when you add in the risk of collision I think that the self-preservation instinct kept the amount of HO-ing to a minimum.

AH World:
Lephturn is right on the money about when to start anti-HO measures.  You've gotta figure in net lag.  1.2K is a minimum for a co-alt merge.  My favorite is to decoy low then do a 3-g pull back to vertical.  90% of the time I end up above and behind them.    

Pongo wrote:
 

I dont see how reducing the leathality will lessen the frequency though.. might it not have the opisit effect...

In WB we have had some huge fluctuations in the gunnery model over the last year, and during periods of weak guns there was definitely less HO-ing.  With weaker guns, your probability of scoring a kill goes down, but your probability of death by collision increases because you must wait even longer to start firing.  So the net effect is to reduce ones kill/death ratio in HO situations.

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 02-25-2000).]

[MiG Eater]

 

Originally posted by Jase:
The reality was in WW2 no one had little green or red icons to tell them who was who.  

In the cases of the P-38's or F4U's vs. any Japanese fighter (or German aircraft against multi engined bombers), I'd say the airplane's silhouette from a head on aspect was as good as having an icon.  Hence the higher percentage of reported head-on engagements from the Pacific theater and the many head-ons against Allied bomber streams.  
 

If it was one HO after another in WW2, then I stand correted. If it was not, then sim-play should be adjusted to bring our fights more into line with the way fights REALLY were.

The vast majority of kills (documented somewhere between 70-80%) occured without the target knowing he was being attacked.  They weren't fights so much as hit and runs.  How do you simulate that and make it the sim playable for everyone?  If, eight out of ten times you simply blew up with no warning, this wouldn't be too much fun for anyone.  

Almost every single air combat tactician I've read or studied with states that once an enemy airplane is spotted to be attacking, the first thing you do is to turn and face the attack.  This almost necessitates that you perform some kind of maneuver to put you head on with the attacker, unless you are already heading toward them.  Most survivors avoided the head on shot by introducing some form of lateral or vertical seperation.  (Hristo is great at this here in AH, for instance.)  That also forced the attacking plane to make at least a 180 degree turn to re-engage giving the defending pilot time to exit the combat or to initiate his own attack.  If both turned 180 degrees, they had another front aspect shot regardless of the directections turned - another head-on.  Dogfighting in the visual air combat arena (which AH seems to be designed as) often required flying head on toward the enemy whether it was WW1, WW2, Korea; all the way up to current times.  

Take away or reduce damage from head on shots and you end up with a Brand A environment: virtually no chance of achieving a hit even though your tracers are going right through the other airplane.  Would sure make our job of facing any gunner in a bomber a LOT easier though!  All he has are essentially head on shots on an attacking airplane.

MiG

[Kieren]

Now, now... I flew some off types against your spit too... did ok in the 109 going for alt, though I didn't have the guns to finish it quickly enough.

I didn't go for immelman everytime either.   I did find it was the best thing to do Spit vs Spit.

[Minotaur]

Jase;

I struggled with this quite alot after coming from AW.  I had to rewrite my tactics book on how to accomplish lead turns.

I must say that I really detest the "Frontal Plate Armor" of planes in AW.  Lead is lead, and a plane is fragile from about any angle that it is shot at from.  

Since playing AH, I have learned how to avoid HO's.  In fact the more the NME tries for the HO, often times the easier they are to avoid.

I also realize now that there is a difference between a HO and a "Front Quarter Shot" (FQS).  

I consider it to be a HO, if there is a relatively long set up time. IE Both planes start lining up for shots at about d4k to d6k, with no attempts by either to avoid the HO.

A FQS can be made any time.  Basically they occur where plane A has a shot at the front quarter of plane B.  But plane B does not have a shot at plane A due to the deflection angle.  

Many times FQS's seem or are set up like HO's, but they are not the same.  They often occur after merge reversials or during dogfights.  Often very little deflection, seperates the HO from the FQS.

Remember, the object is shoot down your opponent.  There are no grandious rules on how that must be accomplished.

BTW; I also enjoyed tangling with you in the TA.  I can learn alot from watching your turning ability.  You are way above and out of my league.

<Salute>

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Mino
The Wrecking Crew
Trainer

[Jase]

Mig Eater you make a good point about the large ratio of kills being "unexpected".  That is something I did not consider.  I suppose I will, like all other aw vets get use to the different tactics here in time.  As I said before, this is still the best Sim out there, and hands down the best community.  Thanks all for you comments and insight.

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+Jase ^Nomads^ AH
Fly-Nomadic
"To Everything Turn..Turn..Turn"

[TT]

 Leph. Who the heck starts fireing at 1500yrds. And what are the chances of me haveing film  running when it does happen. I would guess the odds are slim to none, that I could have captured this on film.

 I dont much care if you belive me BTW. Who are you.

 It didnt take long for the proprietary attuded to develope.

[Toad]

In AH I don't think a HO is that tuff to avoid, provided you are relatively close to the corner speed for your aircraft (and fairly close to "in trim," but let's not get into that can of worms   ). It's just not that hard to make the "average" guy miss you. If the guy is one of the truly good, however, and going for the HO, it might be the day "the bear eats you."

If you are well below corner and have no way to get to it quickly (altitude), then you may have to accept the 50/50 proposition of the HO. No point in making it risk-free for the attacker if you're probably going to die anyway, IMHO.

As far as altering the sim programming to decrease leathality or up the frontal armor, I'd be against it. This won't surprise many people, I suspect.  

Model the stuff as accurately as you can. That should be the goal.

If the gaming environment then dictates tactics that are different from RL WW2, then (assuming you are TRYING to duplicate WW2, which we are not) that is another problem entirely. Now you are dealing with gameplay. You can adjust gameplay to bring it closer to WW2 without affecting the realism of the flight/guns/damage models.

Just my .01

[TT]

 Toad. you make very good points. But jase is right also. It is just one HO after another. Something is incourageing people to do this.

  During the beta. The P51 was an HO monster. They ajusted this, without loseing its guns impact at other angles. I would suggest doing the same thing to all the planes.

[Lephturn]

My point, TT, is that he didn't start firing at D1.5 at all.  Not on his end anyway, it just can look that way on your end due to net lag.  Who knows, maybe he did start firing WAY out, much further than that.  Maybe he didn't start firing until later, but there was some connection issue there.

I'm sorry if I came off as... I don't know.. whatever you took me as meaning.  I meant no disrespect.  Sorry, I should have explained what I meant in more detail in that post, I was too brief and it came off badly.  I'll try to explain in more detail.  It's not that I don't believe you, it's just that to me you are using an unlucky or anomalous occurence and trying to prove a point based on it.

I understand it is very unlikely that you would have filmed this particular event.  The point I am trying to make is that luck and ballistics mean that a few kills will happen that don't look to be "right", or at least seem to be strange.  Combine this with the effects of lag and sometimes things can look quite weird.  The reason I keep asking for film, is that when something odd happens, perception plays a big role in it.  If we can all see it, it really helps.  If it's not something that happens regularly enough to actually be filmed, then it's really not valid to try and use it to evaluate the modelling, IMHO.  By asking for someone to film it, we get to see if this happens enough to base any opinions on, or if it was just a "lucky shot" for example.

If you are ever interested in testing some of these issues, I'd be interested in helping.  Drop me an email and we can hook up in the training arena and see what we can shake out by testing.  

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Lephturn - Chief Trainer
A member of The Flying Pigs
Visit Lephturn's Aerodrome for AH news, resources, and training data.
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"MY P-47 is a pretty good ship
And she took a round coming 'cross the Channel last trip
I was thinking 'bout my baby and lettin' her rip
Always got me through so far
Well they can ship me all over this great big world
But I'll never find nothing like my North End girl
I'm taking her home with me one day, sir
Soon as we win this war"
 - Steve Earl

[This message has been edited by Lephturn (edited 02-26-2000).]

[Sharky]

TT and all,

  How many times have you seen "How do I start the engine?" or "I can't take off!" in the message buffer?  These guys are not ACM experts.  What would you expect?  A guy that can barely fly sees a plane coming his way, he points right at him and starts blazing away! HO!

  Saw the very same thing in early WB.  As the community matures and the new pilots learn the ACM skills HO's will decrease significantly.  And yes I hate them too, but they are a good indicator of the skill level of your opponent.  I usually see the HOer as an easy kill.

Sharky

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You can run, but you just die tired.

[Vila]

OK, I won't pretend to be "Mr History", but I'll say this (with all due respect to my great friend Lephturn).

Long Range Gunnery is still too easy in AH... For whatever reason.  For me, I'd prefer reducing the fidelity of the range counter (so we don't have a perfect laser range finder), and reduce hit sprites at range. That'd help I think.

I was killed by a spray from an Uber-hog with my FE showing him at 1.1K!  Now, he calimed that it was 700 yards on his FE (which might be true, but seems AWEFUL large, considering he was not closing, or closing only slowly), but even 700 yards seems a bit much.

Anyways, With the high caliber of pilots here and the current gunnery model, anything inside 1000 yards is just not safe right now  

Vila

[llbm_MOL]

Well this is an easy one!!

Just say NO to HO!!

Toad put it best IMO.

Dont mess with it and get it as real as possible, its not that hard to avoid and when I avoid it I ALWAYS end up on top , course thats what she said to.........

LLBM OUT!!!!!!!!!!!

[weazel]

Caveat-with the current plane set I think that you will always see the 190a8 pilots going for a lot of head-on passes.Since everything can out-turn it and are faster to boot sometimes its your only option depending on your E state. I know that a lot of my kills are from H/O or quartering shots that if I don`t take the shot and hit means a sure death for me shortly afterwards.What I still don`t understand is the Spit pilots who H/O my 190?

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 JG2 "Richthofen"

[This message has been edited by weazel (edited 02-26-2000).]

[-duma-]

Long range gunnery is very feasible in AH, it's just a really unbelievably stupid thing to do. I ran into a 109 with my F4U-1C the other day, trying to keep him busy as the C-47 came in to take over the field, and eventually the turnfight ended with him extending with a small gain (say 10ft/second). I fired a long burst from the cannons at 900 yards and finally hit him multiple times at 997 yards. Sheared off his wings, but took a hell of a lot of shots. I wouldn't try that normally, trust me! It was a dweeb move, and I apologise to the 109 pilot, but I'm not sure if it's completely unrealistic - he was flying completely level for maximum speed after all.

[Toad]

I know I'm sounding like a "one note" musician, but I absolutely hate the idea of deliberately moving away from realism to playbalance.

I hope HTC models everything as exactly as they possibly can. It's a simple fact that the excellent RL .50 round will easily and accurately travel over 1k and retain the energy necessary to kill/maim/damage at that range.

Now if we artificially make the bullet disappear at say, 800 yards, then we are tweaking realism for playbalance.

I guarantee you that if you are going straight away level, climbing or diving, at 800 yards even _I_ can hit you with .50's (I'm no great shot), You are not doing any ACM at all; you are providing me with an excellent chance to practice long range gunnery if I so choose.

So, is this a gunnery problem or stupidity on the part of the target?

What needs to be adjusted here is the perception that ranges over 800 yards relieve you of the resposibility to continue ACM. It doesn't.

Now, with net lag and the rest, you have to build in a buffer on top of that. The guys with the super 50 ping have this problem to a much lesser degree. My route in takes 11 hops and most of those are just under 200. I know this, having used Neotrace to watch it nightly, and I've adjusted my personal ACM rules accordingly.

I view anyone within 1.5 as capable of landing hits and thus fly as if those crosshairs were on the back of my neck.

Now damage, OTOH, is an inexact science. If you want to playbalance, this is where I'd look. (I'll go on record as saying the present damage model seems OK to me. It's very "playable".) No one really knows how many hits it would take to down a plane at any range because there's too many "it depends" involved.

If you get a .50 to the back of the head at 5 yards or 1000 yards, the results will be the same; the plane is going down.

If you get 50 .50's thru the wingtip, the effect should be negligible at any range.

It depends on where, how many, how far and how sophisticated the damage map actually is.

Obviously this area can be play balanced. That "other sim" is a perfect example. I'm not saying they did it right OR wrong, just that they obviously tweaked damage for playability to suit their customer base.
(They tweaked gunnery too, which I find strange/unacceptable if you're going to tout "bestest, mostest Realistic of all.")

Phew...enough already, my fingers are cramping!