ACMs or Gunnery

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by DoKGonZo
Someone also mentioned how after a year your gunnery is as good as it will get. I disagree.

I disagree as well.  I checked my stats from Tour 12 to the present (and by Tour 12 I'd already been flying for one year), and I was shooting around 5-6% initially.  So after playing for a year, I was pretty much a so-so shot at best.

Over the next couple of years worth of tours, this hit percentage climbed to about a 10% average for awhile, then to 15% for awhile.  Now I'd say it falls somewhere between 17-20% most tours.  This tells me that I've made incremental but steady improvement to my aim over time as I've learned new things and tried new tricks.  Folks certainly are not locked into their hit percentage.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[TequilaChaser]

I am of the opinion those that fly Cannon equipped planes will often hold a higher hit percentage over those that fly machine gun equipped planes ( 303 50cal, 12.7mm etc  )

I fly alot of attack sorties with the F4U1C and for my AtoA I get alot higher percentage to where I fly fighter sorties in the F4U-1 with 50s I have a much lower hit percentage......overall anyhow.........but I never have actually worried about hit percentage, score, stats etc.........I would rather spend my time having fun, shooting down a few red icons and chatting with my friends...........most times I do not even know what my rank is unless someone points it out to me, or ask me to take over a CV.......and the way I spray & pray because the La7, P51, 190D9 or Tyhp etc etc are running for their dear life, I am lucky if my hit percentage is above 2 or 3 in all categorys  

[DoKGonZo]

Lead computing sight? Doh! Guess I gotta look through all them arena settings and find that.

My warm-up is that the first thing I do when I get to the arena is find a field being vultched (I know that's a rarity), and hop in a field gun. Just killing a couple vultch-dweebs with that thing gets me back into the mindset of calculating time-of-fight.

I don't even know what my hit % is ... hell, I don't even look at my scores page. I just go by what I'm able to do in the air and the level of confidence I have when I pull the trigger.

Bustr brings up another interesting point relating to which is better to have. For his role, flying in a more structured squadron setting, ACM and SA are much more important. You can protect a wingman (or several) very well indeed without actually having to shoot anyone down. Rule #8 sayeth: "Fear Works." It helps to shoot 'em down, of course, but scaring enemas out of position - or dragging 'em to their doom - are valuable skills.

[Zazen13]

Originally posted by DoKGonZo
I'm with you on this, TC. I find I get much better hit percentages with the P51 over like a P38. Maybe those hits are less damaging (i.e. not as concentrated a volley as a P38 would deliver), but at least I score the hits.


Someone also mentioned how after a year your gunnery is as good as it will get. I disagree. For the first 3 or 4 months I returned to AH, my gunnery was more or less guesswork - didn't think it would ever improve. Then around November sometime firing .50 cal's finally "clicked" for me. I was getting 1-pass kills on everything from P38's to Fw190's with the P-51, and scoring some wild deflection shots too. I still can't do squat with German or Russian 20mm's ... but the .50 and Hispano now "work" for me where they didn't for the months before.

Some small percentage of people will always have an uncanny knack for shooting. That's just natural. But gunnery is something you can practice offline and consistantly get better at.

Maybe you guys are seeing this because you tend to near miss alot. When you miss in a p38, you miss with alot of rounds, you miss big. With wing mounted guns, you have a greater chance of getting one bank of gun hits while missing with the other bank. So, you can miss partially. With nose mounted guns you hit completely or miss completely most of the time. I think for people who consistantly hit a very large percentage of the time, my postulation about nose/cowl mounted guns holds true due to not having convergence issues...


Zazen

[Murdr]

Originally posted by Zazen13
Be carefull when using in-game hit % data to measure your raw gunnery skill.

I was carefull.  Tour 54 I was not acustomed to AH2 gunnery.  By Tour 58 I was.  Both were sortied under similar AFs and timespans.  My point was that given those similar conditions with exception of the familerarity with the gunnery, there was not a spike of other stats associated with the gunnery.
Also, I thought it was common concencous that a majority of players struggled with gunnery when AH2 came in, and tour 54 is a pretty good baseline for that time period.  

Beyond the conditions I mentioned I agree that hit% in general is not a definitive statistic.  For my own stats I can vouch that I consistantly use low yeild shots as a psycological tool in fights that put my hit% 3-5 points lower than it would be if I instead were more particular with shots.

Zaphoid.  Good discussion.  I agree to disagree, but I think we are on the same page.

[DoKGonZo]

Originally posted by Zazen13
Maybe you guys are seeing this because you tend to near miss alot. When you miss in a p38, you miss with alot of rounds, you miss big. With wing mounted guns, you have a greater chance of getting one bank of gun hits while missing with the other bank. So, you can miss partially. With nose mounted guns you hit completely or miss completely most of the time. I think for people who consistantly hit a very large percentage of the time, my postulation about nose/cowl mounted guns holds true due to not having convergence issues...
 

I agree on this as well. When I miss w/a P38 I miss everything. Have the same problems when using Yak's or La's. I'm sure if I had rudder pedals I could get more out of centerline mounted guns.

[bustr]

Dok,

Arena Flags is where the lead computing sight is turned on. Use your tab key to select the enemy to track. Kinda wish in off line mode the tracers were the cartoon style from AW that you could walk into your con, but with the AH2 hit sprites. The AW tracers stayed the same color and intensity to the con. Sortta like walking dots to the target.

HiTech has provided great tools to practice gunnery, but the real time visual feed back could be enhanced just a bit. The lead comp sight is one thing, but red dots that you can watch falling short or walking in to line up with the comp sight will show you faster just how much too soon or too late you are pulling the trigger.

These could be a setting in the arena flag. The natural progression would be comp sight and cartoon tracers. Fixed sight and cartoon tracers. Then fixed sights and AH tracers. I suspect many new players would improve faster with this. Even with the current comp sight(the tracers in AH are usless for tracking into a con) it is an art form to learning the gunnery. Add the second visual aid that shows the real bullet track along with the comp sight and it becomes a matter of practicing to imprint the habit.

I suppose this is a fantasy and many would decry it as arcade flummery. But it would work, just it would be a gimmick.

[Roscoroo]

Hit % has alot to do with what plane I'm flying  .

Say i spend the tour in a jug,p 38 or a f4u
my % will be way down . the more ammo i have the more i use or toss out for guys to run into .

if i spend the tour in a Spit or  Yak my % goes way up ,as for they have small ammo loads and every round is precious .  i still have yet to break past 7 kills in a spit 5 in ah2 without vulching . (my record in ah1 was 9 w/2 assists  in one sorty)

I have had a couple of 5 kills w/ 4 assists sortys so Id say im getting close .

ive just switched back to tracers off so ill see if i improve this tour.

[JB73]

i switched back to tracers for a week...

i missed every shot imaginable LOL the "tracers" obscured the plane i was shooting at, and couldnt judge where i was off.

[Scherf]

Thanks for the tip re: arena flags. I suppose there's no way to jump into films in the film viewer, to "re-shoot" missed attacks?

Cheers,

Scherf

[RedTop]

Originally posted by Roscoroo
Hit % has alot to do with what plane I'm flying  .

Say i spend the tour in a jug,p 38 or a f4u
my % will be way down . the more ammo i have the more i use or toss out for guys to run into .

if i spend the tour in a Spit or  Yak my % goes way up ,as for they have small ammo loads and every round is precious .  i still have yet to break past 7 kills in a spit 5 in ah2 without vulching . (my record in ah1 was 9 w/2 assists  in one sorty)

I have had a couple of 5 kills w/ 4 assists sortys so Id say im getting close .

ive just switched back to tracers off so ill see if i improve this tour.

Hi Roo ,

I agree with all of that. Seems the less ammo I have the more I try to make it count. I'm currently flying a plane that hasn't many rounds at all. It certainly makes you think before you pull that trigger. I have also found that small blips on that trigger is better than blowing and going.

[DoKGonZo]

Thanks ... I knew where to set things, just didn't know that the lead computing sight even existed.

My gripe w/tracers also is that the smoke from them really obscures your vision.

[Zaphod]

Murdr wrote:

Zaphoid. Good discussion. I agree to disagree, but I think we are on the same page

I think I was starting to argue your point in that last response lol.

Zaphod

[Tilt]

For me SA/ACM/Gunnery are three legs of a stool.

You can adapt your game play to suit your abilities in each........if they are equal then the stool is "comfortable" if they are equal and great then it enables you to sup from the table with ease.

SA and ACM require one instinctive ability not always easily learned when lacking..........that of three dimensional perspective.

Given that, SA is quite simple, it just requires an eyes open dicipline. I tend to see it as a defensive asset.

Given that, ACM is fairly complex, but it is a skill and it presents the "learning challenge" across a variety of ac. It also IMO gives the greatest "reward" for achievement the game has to offer in as much as when (occasionally) I out manouver thru tactic rather than luck I get a real sense of accomplishment.

Gunnery also benefits from instinctive 3d perspective combined with the mental ability to compute/judge angles and velocities on the fly. Its obviously an attack asset.

[TequilaChaser]

Originally posted by Zazen13
my postulation about nose/cowl mounted guns holds true due to not having convergence issues...
 

I am curious as to why so many of the flyers in Aces High believe this to be true that nose/cowl mounted guns do not have any convergences issues?

I myself have done offline test on this and find that German planes the cannon drop is 50 to 100 short of the small caliber guns depending if it is 30mm cannon or 20 mm cannon, same holds true for the p38..........so if you set your convergences at 300 in the P38 and aim at a target 650 out you will be below the bullseye, if you set your  convergence at 600 and aim at a target 400 out you will most likely be a bit above it.......

does this not relate to convergence although it is converging in the vertical sense and not horizontal?

I often set my cannons 50 longer than my Mg's so they hit near same spot  most of the time....

I believe the theory of nose/cowl mounted guns having no convergences issues is a myth and that it may seem like it to those that fly these type gun platforms but in actuality it is the mental picture in your brain doing the sighting for you and you are not using the convergence at all........you have flown this type of gun platform for a good while and if you have converged to 600, your mental picture is telling you where/when to pull the trigger not the icon,  same is with any convergence setting...just my opinion though....

how many after flying for a year or 2 still watch the icon? alot of you prob think you do but I would say it is the planes shape/size position in flight that tells that  braincell to pull the trigger.....

and I apologize for side tracking this thread....