Lethality, Gunnery, & Flight Model Interactions

[Vermillion]

I have put in about 3 good "evenings" (guessing about 15 hours) of flight time since Tuesday, and the more I flew, I found myself having less and less fun. I couldn't figure out why, but today I think I have figured it out.

Three key components of the game are interacting in a manner, that is making the game uninteresting for me. Each single component wouldn't be so bad, but put them together and I am really starting to dislike the game.

#1) The Flight Model:  Is it just me, or does it feel like you are flying thru glue? I always thought both WB's and AW were a little too "snappy", but in AH the planes seem downright Glacier-istic in movement.

I have flown both AW (over 5 years, almost all in Full Realism) and WB's (since late beta), and I even have a little bit of real life stick time in an AT-6 Texan.

True I'm not an expert, but something don't feel right when you can't make even a single 360 degree turn in a Spitfire without feeling like your gonna fall out of the sky. And this is from someone who is a dedicated E fighter, I really feel for the TnB pilots.

#2) Gunnery:  Put simply, it feels like I am back in AW with the hit bubbles. You can consistently shoot from 600-800 yards and get solid hits. Snap shots are ridiculously easy, and I have seen hits on aircraft that I thought were blatant misses that register as hits. I know there is a whole other thread on this subject, but to me hitting an oponnent is so easy, that defensive manuvers are almost useless.

#3)Lethality: Wow is it high. It doesn't matter what plane I fly, they all feel like a Fw190 to me, and even a brief snapshot will disable your opponent and send him spinning into the ground.  

It has never taken me more than one or two bursts from any of the aircrafts full set of guns to kill an opponent.

As an experiment, I flew for 2 hours today and used only the x2 .50 cals in the Spitfire. Kills were consistently not a problem, and fairly easy. I was able to remover tails and wings with short bursts out to even medium ranges.

So put these all together and what do you get??

You get aircraft that can not defensively manuever, guns that are able to hit out to what is historically considered "extreme" range, and if you get hit by even a single burst, you better expect to be heavily damaged.

This leads to a game where E advantage & positional advantage (yes I realize these should be very important), almost totally negate differences in aircraft performance and pilot skill.

So it all comes down to who spent the most time climbing out, or who had the best position (even if it is very marginal) at the start of the fight. Pilot skill seems to have little effect in the game.

Overall, I think the beta shows incredible promise, but thess factors are hurting the game.

Just my opinon.    Keep working at it HT and Pyro, I think you have something here.

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Vermillion
WB's: (verm--), *MOL*, Men of Leisure, Goldlandia
AW's: (verm) ACCS, Aerial Crowd Control Services, Cland

[Kats]

   

This leads to a game where E advantage & positional advantage (yes I realize these should be very important), almost totally negate differences in aircraft performance and pilot skill.

So it all comes down to who spent the most time climbing out, or who had the best position (even if it is very marginal) at the start of the fight. Pilot skill seems to have little effect in the game.

I've always thought that performance differences were magnified in WB negating alot of pilot skill (not all, just alot    )

Air combat was always about a fight for position. Pilot skill meant patience, knowing *when* you were in a position of advantage or disadvantage. Experience meant keeping a cool head under stress and knowing when to engage or disengage. Fights were swift one or two pass engagements and that was it, over.

There was another type of fighter known as the muscle pilot, but this can't be re-created in simms. They would perform hi G hi stress manouvers and use their own personal physical advantage to wear down their opponent to exhaustion, then kill him. Of course, these type of pilots were always big headed just by virtue of their assumption that they were tougher than their opponent.

As far as high level aerobatic skill in combat, examples of this used in combat effectively are rare, except in Marseilles technique in breaking the Lufberry circle.

So for me, your complaint in that regard is a positive feature.

No comment from me on E loss in the flight model, I've always thought it overkill - but then again I'm not sure we fly the a/c in the same manner as they would have been flown in real life since we're in a no G enviroment. Then again we can do a 5000 ft tail stand, when anecdotal commentary from ww2 pilots suggest no more than 2000 ft yet flat turns horizontal or vertical suck E so bad it feels like your flying a bath tub - so who bloody knows!!!. A math wizz needs to answer that Q.
That part of the flight model escapes me - and so do the resources to compare it too LOL - hmm lots a yapping for a no comment eh    



[This message has been edited by Kats (edited 10-03-1999).]

[ra]

The gunnery is silly, I've pinged enemies at D1.2.  The lethality is also overdone.  I attribute this to the fact that this is a beta and gunnery and lethality modeling require a lot of work.  Maybe HTC is also trying to keep the beta interesting by making sure there is a log of fragging going on.  I assume both of these issues will be worked on in later releases.

I'm not sure the 360 degree turn energy burn is unrealistic, though.  I always found WB very game-like in the ablility to furball forever, banking and yanking at 150mph.  A turn is a form of acceleration, and a particularly drag-producing form of acceleration, so a 360 max-performance turn should leave a plane gasping for energy.  

Any aeronautical engineers out there with some numbers to contribute to this topic?


--ra--

[Vermillion]

Kats:
Don't get me wrong, I agree that position is VERY important in air combat, but it shouldn't be everything IMO. But with these three factors combined, position is paramount in AH.

ra:
I agree with you too that WB's and AW were both a little too manuverable. I just hope that Pyro can find a happy medium between what we have now, and what we are use too.



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Vermillion
WB's: (verm--), *MOL*, Men of Leisure, Goldlandia
AW's: (verm) ACCS, Aerial Crowd Control Services, Cland

[Mark Luper]

Vermilion,
The roll rate was too slow in my opinion too when I first started to fly these planes. Now we need to understand that all the variables have not been set in stone, like lethality. These were set up last minute with no more than 15 min or so of furballing amongst only about 6 or 7 of us. Give it time, it will be worked out.
I did change my settings in the joystick setup to almost full max all the way across the board and it made a BIG difference. Play with those settings some, you will find the planes will feel more lively.
There are a lot of things left to be tuned and brought to what we may all agree on, but the goal has been to make a realistic sim with good playability in mind.

MarkAT

[funked]

" They would perform hi G hi stress manouvers and use their own personal physical advantage to wear down their opponent to exhaustion, then kill him. Of course, these type of pilots were always big headed just by virtue of their assumption that they were tougher than their opponent."

And most of these guys ended up dead unless they flew for an Air Force with a huge numbers and/or equipment advantage.

[Jochen]

 

As far as high level aerobatic skill in combat, examples of this used in combat effectively are rare, except in Marseilles technique in breaking the Lufberry circle.

Woohoo, Marseille ruled!

No point here, just wanted to say that  

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Oblt. jochen 'Stern von Afrika' 2./ Jagdgeschwader 27 'Afrika'

[Absinthe]

Verm,

Re: #1
We all know the flight model is far from finished. I'd reserve judgement, however I strongly recommend revisiting you joystick scalings -- made a huge difference for me.

Re: #2&3
We've been told repeatedly the gunnery and damage models are in very rough stages at best.

From HT in a post on Wednesday in the news forum:

"We just about finished up the ballistics part of the gunnery model this weekend. There's only one more component of the ballistics model to finish. There's still work to be done on the damage side that I don't think we'll get completed before this next release. If that's the case, we'll make some quick changes to help with the short term playability in this next release. The planes are pretty fragile at the moment."

They clearly are aware of these issues and are working to fix them.

You wrote:
"Three key components of the game are interacting in a manner, that is making the game uninteresting for me. Each single component wouldn't be so bad, but put them together and I am really starting to dislike the game."

Well, THERE's the problem! This isn't a game. It isn't a sim either. It's an extremely early beta version of a piece of software that will not be released for many months. I intend to continue participating in the beta, but I sure don't expect AH to be any kind of substitute for finished sims that are already on the market for some time.

This is only a test.

Absinthe