Icons and the 5" guns

[CavemanJ]

Disable icons for players in the 5" guns for vehicles and aircraft under 500ft AGL.

Trying to get a PT boat into a fleet to really do some damage is near suicide with a half-competent gunner manning the 5's.  Laser range icon, match gun range info on the left, fire an AA shell, dead boat.  Two or three shells if the PT boat driver is lucky.

Same with the Ju88s and TBMs coming in on the deck for torp runs.  Soon as that 3.3k icon pops up the bandit is all dialed in and dead before release can be made.

[hblair]

Good suggestions Cavey.

[K West]

IMO PT boats should not have icons just as ground vehicles do not for the enemy.

 Westy

[GRUNHERZ]

The 5 inch gun snipers are a squeak to fighters as well. The worst is when the bastards fire those guns at you while ur dogfigting one of the CV planes. They should reduce plane icon range for the 5 inch guns as well.

[Blue Mako]

Originally posted by CavemanJ:
Disable icons for players in the 5" guns for vehicles and aircraft under 500ft AGL.

Is this intended to increase realism or gameplay?

For gameplay reasons I think this is a good idea for the attacking player.  Although for the cv defender this would make a difficult job harder as the cv's are already easy meat for buffs or heavy fighters.

As far as realism goes I don't think a PT boat or a plane had very good odds of surviving a run on a cv...

Also dogfighting within ack range of a cv should be a very risky prospect...

My vote would be to give the ship gunners only very short range icons, 3k or less, for all vehicles/planes rather than disabling the icons completely.  That would give the attackers a fighting chance to get in close enough to drop torps and the defenders an easy kill if the attacker wanders into the icon envelope.

[CavemanJ]

Mako I'm only talking about aircraft icons under 500ft agl.  Either remove them or make them 1.5k (like current GV icons to aircraft).  5" guns should get no icon on pt boats.  They're easy enough to spot, and it's no fun for a pt driver to be taken out by a dweeb firing AA shells that are directly dialed in by the laser range icon and the range data on the gun screen.  I've taken to shooting at pt boats with the 40mm on the carriers, alot more challenging and fun  

Current range on icons for aircraft under 500ft is 3.3k.  That's not close enough for a Ju88 to get in drop his fish (2400yd range?)

As for surviving, it's verra risky w/o the 5" guns manned Mako.  Takes a lot of nerve and luck to get in, drop your fish, and get out.  A little skill helps too  
I've taken the cruiser and flattop of a group before with a Ju88 (landed and rearmed after cruiser) and went home to land missing my #2 engine, starboard aileron and one of my flaps and elevators (lost coming off the cv).

Put a player in the 5" guns and it's use in even trying the torpedo loads for TBMs or Ju88s, just load up a couple of heavy jugs and plink the flattop.

[Voss]

Cave, with a competent gunner at the stick it won't matter. I paste a LOT of aircraft at 10k range, and most PT boats at around 6k. Once you can make out the boats as boats and not dots they're easy. The hardest thing to hit is a jinking fighter. The knights seem to have this down to a fine art. Endless streams of heavy Hellcats have been seen snaking into the Bishop fleet on suicide raids.

Obviously, these guys don't care about stats, but worse, without a good CAP it is impossible to defend against such a raid.

[Soda]

I have to agree Voss, it's pretty easy to kill fighters as soon as they hit icon range, if not sooner.  The only thing I can't seem to hit is cons that are flying over the fleet, for some reason I haven't figured out the aim point yet.  It's basically impossible to stop the suicide planes though, eventually enough of them break through to sink the CV.  I watched it last night a couple of times... P47's and P38's coming in in streams suiciding into the ack.

I wailed on 6 fighters from a CV gun last night and I don't consider myself particularily good in a gunner position.  I got 2 outside of icon range.  I actually missed 2 Ju88's on the water though, even though they did get within icon range... go figure.

-Soda