Tank vs. airplane

[save]

Understanding how a crew in a ww2 tank work is the key.
It just takes too long time for a commander and gunner to react to something that is not flying into your barrel.
1rst you have to stop if you moving.
Then Commander will have to spot and align the turret .
Gunner has to find target, and compute where the target will be half a second to a second from trigger is pressed and adjust accordingly both elevation and sideways.

Modern tanks will have a much easier task since you have button where commander can do autoaligning of his periscope to gunners sight.
Also modern computers let you do the advanced computing by simply pressing on a button - following the target and press trigger.

[Shuffler]

No idea how to fix it. I'm just pointing out it's gamey. I still laugh when I see it done.

[warhed]

I don't think there is anyway to change without changing the whole mechanics of tanking.

[SmokinLoon]

Yeah, it sucks.  I've given and I have received.  It IS gaming the game.  The amount that it happens in AH2 is no where near the amount that it actually happened in real life... and I have my doubts that it ever did, really.

A tank shooting down an aircraft is in the same category as taking %25 fuel and DT in fighters or %25 fuel in bombers, Lanc-Stuk'in at 500ft, performing evasive aerobatics in a fully loaded B24, etc, or any other gross abuse of the aircraft or gv's in the sim-game that is only allowed because of improper modeling.

I would think there would be a way for HTC to code out the ability for tanks to shoot down aircraft while it is airborne and still allow a tank to destroy an aircraft while it is on the ground.  

[Dream Child]

Not even in the same league...... those are both allied aircraft. Tanks didn't shoot planes with main gun because it was darn near impossible.

And anti-tank aircraft didn't come in at a low angle either. If you do, don't cry when you die.

[Dream Child]

It being darn near impossible in RL was what I meant by gamey. Only in a game are you going to see that happen with such regularity.

A lot of stuff we do here is darn near impossible in real life. In real life, a .50 BMG has a 15.5 foot drop at 800 yards. The 30mm cannon used in most of the German aircraft have approximately a 50 foot drop at that distance. In real life, to hit ANY target at that range during WWII would be an incredible shot. In here, it happens all the time.

[PhantomBarron]

Understanding how a crew in a ww2 tank work is the key.
It just takes too long time for a commander and gunner to react to something that is not flying into your barrel.
1rst you have to stop if you moving.
Then Commander will have to spot and align the turret .
Gunner has to find target, and compute where the target will be half a second to a second from trigger is pressed and adjust accordingly both elevation and sideways.


No different than maning the gunners in a bomber, dropping supps from an M3, flying two drones, driving a jeep inside a tank, coasting at 1,000mph down hill. Some things have to be a little gamey or they would be nothing at all.

[Oleg]

Gamey as in ... how many times can you find historically that this happened.

How many times one fighter plane shot down other fighter from ~1000 yards?
How many times one tanks hits other tank from 3k+?
How many heavy/medium tanks was destroyed by IL-2 guns (23 or 37mm)
How many CVs was sunk by level bombers?
... and so on.

[F111]

"... and so on."
Happened twice at least, as far as I can recall.

[Cthulhu]

I haven't read every post, so excuse me if someone has already mentioned this. I'm guessing that the same rules (considering network lag) that govern aircraft collisions also apply to aircraft and main gun rounds. This would explain why the recordings of tank and aircraft don't both necessarily show an impact. In this case the code may have a tolerance, a "range of interaction", which effectively treats near misses as impacts. Then again, maybe some of you guys can really shoot.

[Dream Child]

I haven't read every post, so excuse me if someone has already mentioned this. I'm guessing that the same rules (considering network lag) that govern aircraft collisions also apply to aircraft and main gun rounds. This would explain why the recordings of tank and aircraft don't both necessarily show an impact. In this case the code may have a tolerance, a "range of interaction", which effectively treats near misses as impacts. Then again, maybe some of you guys can really shoot.

If I'm the shooter and I see my round hit you on my screen, you die, even if it looks like a miss on your screen. If I'm the shooter and I see my round miss you on my screen, you don't die, even if it looks like a hit on your screen. That's basically how it works.

[ScatterFire]

Not even in the same league...... those are both allied aircraft. Tanks didn't shoot planes with main gun because it was darn near impossible.

How many real life aces had 20,000+ kills?

Familiarity.  As you use something more often, you are better ABLE to use it.  When you have torched off 90-100k rounds you are more accurate than your "real life" counter parts are going to be.  Combined with the fact that getting "killed" in real life doesn't let you re-up and use that experienced gained, just like in real life getting your plane shot out from under you generally kept you from learning your enemy's tactics for later use...

In short, its a game.  GVs shooting down planes periodically is no different that the huge number of kills and really high hit percentages of planes in the same situations.

[bozon]

And anti-tank aircraft didn't come in at a low angle either. If you do, don't cry when you die.

That was because they were trying to hit the softer top armor, not in order to avoid the main gun.

Lets assume an IL2 flying at 200 mph and a tank is aiming its main gun at it. lets take IL2's length as the typical dimension for the target which is  ~13m and the shooting distance as ~1000m. In terms of angular size, this is a fairly big target for a tank gun - at least a modern one, I don't know about WWII.

Lets check the time scales involved. If the IL2 is flying at 200 mph = 300 km/s (slow even for IL2) it crosses its own dimension in ~0.15 sec. Typical human reaction time (according to http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php) is 0.215 sec with a standard deviation of about 0.035 (reading from the plot). Therefore, roughly 10% of the population may have good enough reflexes to consistently time the shot right - given they have a perfect aim in space and a timing indication of when to pull the trigger.

Now, lets check the timing accuracy - There is no timing aid (lead indicator), at least not in a tank. The shell is subsonic (or is it?), so we'll assume 300 m/s ~Mach0.9. At 1000m this means ~3 seconds flight time to hit a target that will stay in the kill zone for 0.15 sec. You need a relative timing estimation of 0.05 accuracy. I don't have any data for that, but it would be interesting how accurate can a person estimate 3 seconds.

Anyway, what I get from this is that it is "humanly possible" to make the shot and probably the limiting factor is by FAR the short time you have to actually set up the shot, since this is not a controlled experiment where you know EXACTLY where the plane will fly and wait for him with the gun. It would still be a low probability shot even if you are ready for it, but not like winning the lottory.

[F111]

Wasn't the main gun of the tiger an anti-aircraft gun that was modified for that tank?

[Oleg]

Lets assume an IL2 flying at 200 mph and a tank is aiming its main gun at it. lets take IL2's length as the typical dimension for the target which is  ~13m and the shooting distance as ~1000m. ...

I assure you that virtually all planes vaporized by tank main guns (in AH, of course) flew directly towards tank. So no lead and plenty of time to aim. Anything else is just damn lucky shot.