bomber gun convergence

[MadHatter]

I'll take a poke at something here - most previous sims had some version of the dreaded "hit box", which meant the developers had to use fuzzy math to try to get things to work out, and they rarely did.  Or at least, not consistently through the entire range of aircraft matchups.

I (personally, this is just my opinion) think that the increased fidelity of the physics, coupled with a no nonsense, non automated gunner system for the bombers, makes all the difference in the world. 

Agreed. I've always been fascinated with bombers, and pretty much been disappointed with other games when it comes to dealing with them.

[Dadsguns]

I still laugh at effective ranges from a WW2 .50 cal at 1 kilometer, as they are in game (actually was killed at 1.5K the other day).  I guess to make a good game, you make some concessions.  <shrug>  

Historically, 200 yards was already at the far edge of the effectiveness of bomber defensive armaments.

I would like to read your Historical data that says 200 yards was at the far edge of effectiveness. 
Must have been the Intel pamphlet that was passed out to the German pilots prior to attacking a buff formation for the first time.   

Actually, the game is very reserved in the actual Max Effective Range for .50 cal.  The M.E.R. is 2000 Meters.  
2000 m = 2187.226 yds
2000 m = 2 km

1.5K is well within the 2k range of being hit.

The game does not even address its Maximum Range, it only addresses its Maximum Effective Range.  Two different animals.

[hitech]

I'll take a poke at something here - most previous sims had some version of the dreaded "hit box", which meant the developers had to use fuzzy math to try to get things to work out, and they rarely did.  Or at least, not consistently through the entire range of aircraft matchups.

I (personally, this is just my opinion) think that the increased fidelity of the physics, coupled with a no nonsense, non automated gunner system for the bombers, makes all the difference in the world. 

<S>

Flown more fighters then buffs. But we have simply tried a lot of things that didn't work. Eventually we found some that did. In AH we started with the concepts that we will not have auto, and a buff driver needs to defend himself with out a gunner on board. That lead to our current system with a number of revisions.

HiTech

[MORAY37]

I would like to read your Historical data that says 200 yards was at the far edge of effectiveness. 
Must have been the Intel pamphlet that was passed out to the German pilots prior to attacking a buff formation for the first time.   

Actually, the game is very reserved in the actual Max Effective Range for .50 cal.  The M.E.R. is 2000 Meters.  
2000 m = 2187.226 yds
2000 m = 2 km

1.5K is well within the 2k range of being hit.

The game does not even address its Maximum Range, it only addresses its Maximum Effective Range.  Two different animals.

The maximum effective range may well be 2,000 meters for the shell....However, you will not even reach 10% of this range based on the complex physics and the inability of using a telescopic sight in WW2 gunner positions.  I'd like to see your historical data that says the Mk1 human eyeball can hit a target 40 feet by 20 feet at a distance of 2,000 yards unaided.  Hitting a car from well over a mile....unaided.  BS.

This is why the effective range in WW2 was around 200 yards to 12, 3 and 9.... 500 yards to dead 6.  You may wish to consult training materials from the time.

There were rules relating to gun bursts, or rather the rate of fire.  The student was instructed not to fire until the enemy reached a range of 600 yards or closer-beyond that, accuracy degraded. At that range, only a few very short bursts were called for.  As the attacking plane reached 300 yards or closer, this was the time for the gunner to pour it on.

Enemy fighters had many advantages over the bomber gunners; they were faster, more agile, and had 20MM cannons with greater range than machine gun bullets.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22367889/Bomber-Legends-aerial-Gunner-Training

[hitech]

<prau37: You may want to read that more closely.

From Page 5.

Students were instructed not to shoot beyond 600 yard because the accuracy degraded. But it does not say the guns were not still leathal beyond that range, Just simply it became more difficult to shoot accurately.

Read page 4. It describes the difference in ballistics at different directions. Funny how it uses 1000 yards as a reference. Why would it say anything about that range if the 50's were not capable of long ranges?

HiTech

[MORAY37]

<prau37: You may want to read that more closely.

From Page 5.

Students were instructed not to shoot beyond 600 yard because the accuracy degraded. But it does not say the guns were not still leathal beyond that range, Just simply it became more difficult to shoot accurately.

Read page 4. It describes the difference in ballistics at different directions. Funny how it uses 1000 yards as a reference. Why would it say anything about that range if the 50's were not capable of long ranges?

HiTech

It's called "tracking".  Furthermore, using the calculated drift at 1000 yards doesn't address the ability to hit anything at that range, nor the effectiveness of the weapon at that range.  

Your application of bomber defensive arc is off.  Take that for what it is.  Every historical source I see says so.  Don't take it personally.  If you're gong to model the Ki84 with crap fuel ( a historical detail, however accurate or inaccurate)  you might look into the ranges of typical bomber defensive fire during the period.

Even German writing of the period puts 1000 yards "well outside effective range"  and a "safe zone" for setting up new attack runs.

[MORAY37]

Yes and no. Well, actually more no than yes...



And no: The effective range for defensive guns in heavy bomber sin terms of bullet trajectory was much higher than a mere 200yds. And remember: A bullet fired rearwards has an ballistic advantage. Usually, the effective range of .50 defensive guns was considered to be ~1000yds, not 200.
That's the reason why the Luftwaffe was frantically looking for weapons being able to engage the bombers at many hundreds and even thousands of yardss, well outside of the bombers defensive fire: 37, 50 and even 75mm guns, WGR, R4M rockets and ultimately guided missiles like the X-4.

I'm sorry Lusche, with all due respect (and you know I mean it), the development of those weapons was for dead six attacks of more than 1000 yards, only. They were not designed for anything but dead six attacks, where the distance of .50 caliber rounds is extended by the slipstream.

The missiles and rockets were designed to create mayhem in the bomber box and separate flights into single bombers for easier attack with cannon.  It was not an attempt to avoid closing into range with the American bombers, or to maintain standoff effectiveness.

This does not change the fact that 12, 3, and 9 attacks were still successful due to a radically decreased effective range of the gunner positions there.  You know already that they were limited to 200 yards or so.

[Lusche]

This does not change the fact that 12, 3, and 9 attacks were still successful due to a radically decreased effective range of the gunner positions there.  You know already that they were limited to 200 yards or so.

And this is the same in AH. Almost the only time you will be shot down or even hit by a buff gunner at D1000 is when you approach at dead 6 AND the buff gunner is a good one with a lot of practice.

The number of buff gunners in AH that can consistently get hits on attackers from more difficult angles is very small, and only a very tiny percentage  (those with literally hundreds of times more practice than any real ww2 gunner) is capable of hitting anything at ranges over D400.
The thing I do most in AH is hunting buffs, and usually I'm even pretty safe when flying parallel to a buff formation at D1000 when trying to overtake it.

[Dadsguns]

I'd like to see your historical data that says the Mk1 human eyeball can hit a target 40 feet by 20 feet at a distance of 2,000 yards unaided.  Hitting a car from well over a mile....unaided.  BS.


.....The maximum effective range may well be 2,000 meters for the shell....However, you will not even reach 10% of this range based on the complex physics and the inability of using a telescopic sight in WW2 gunner positions.....

I have done it many times with a .50 cal mounted on a tripod on rolling deck of a ship at sea with a smaller target than 40ft x 20ft with my naked eye.  Ever hear of a Killer tomatoe target.  Its not BS.

For your second remark, thats absurd.  Now your claiming it wont go further than 200 meters......  

[gyrene81]

Moray, no offense but...how many times have you fired an M2 in your life? If you had you might have a better idea of what it would actually take to hit a 40 foot long moving target from 1000 yards out...the M2 had/has a maximum range of somewhere near 4 miles and a maximum effective range of around 1800 meters at approximately 3000 feet per second.

Bomber - 200 mph = 293.4 fps
Fighter - 245 mph = 359.7 fps
Bullet - 3000 fps

Distance to target 3000 feet and it's moving at a speed of 359.7 feet per second toward you...do the math

Not saying that AH has all the elements of real world physics involved...nor the fear factor of trying to shoot something that is shooting back...but on a semi stable platform such as a turret mount on a bomber travelling in a straight line, it's not difficult to believe that an ambitious gunner might be able to put a couple hundred rounds of ammo into a plane trailing his bomber at 1000 yards. The waist gunners would have the least stable mounts and the nose gunners would have physical forces working against them...and they wouldn't be as accurate even out to 4 or 500 yards.

[MORAY37]

I have done it many times with a .50 cal mounted on a tripod on rolling deck of a ship at sea with a smaller target than 40ft x 20ft with my naked eye.  Ever hear of a Killer tomatoe target.  Its not BS.

For your second remark, thats absurd.  Now your claiming it wont go further than 200 meters......  

No...in order to further your reading comprehension, I stated that those rounds were inaccurate at those distances, not that they couldn't travel that far. 

I'm merely going by historical record, where German pilots repeatedly wrote about 1000 yards being a safe circle around formations of buffs. The US Army Air Corp gunnery school taught that any shot over 600 yards was frowned upon due to the low possibility of getting a hit.

As it is, just like the laser bombsight, the buffs in game have laser targeting for their guns too....at ranges up to 3X their historical effectiveness.

[MORAY37]

Moray, no offense but...how many times have you fired an M2 in your life? If you had you might have a better idea of what it would actually take to hit a 40 foot long moving target from 1000 yards out...the M2 had/has a maximum range of somewhere near 4 miles and a maximum effective range of around 1800 meters at approximately 3000 feet per second.

Bomber - 200 mph = 293.4 fps
Fighter - 245 mph = 359.7 fps
Bullet - 3000 fps

Distance to target 3000 feet and it's moving at a speed of 359.7 feet per second toward you...do the math

Not saying that AH has all the elements of real world physics involved...nor the fear factor of trying to shoot something that is shooting back...but on a semi stable platform such as a turret mount on a bomber travelling in a straight line, it's not difficult to believe that an ambitious gunner might be able to put a couple hundred rounds of ammo into a plane trailing his bomber at 1000 yards. The waist gunners would have the least stable mounts and the nose gunners would have physical forces working against them...and they wouldn't be as accurate even out to 4 or 500 yards.

So now you're trying to tell me you have experience firing a .50 caliber weapon from a moving 230 mph platform at a moving 400 mph target, and that you can speak on its effectiveness? (what fighter is attacking a bomber formation at 245 mph, in your opinion, during WW2?)

This thread is getting retarded.  Again, I'm only speaking from historical record, by the people that were doing the shooting.   You can recite all the figures you wish, I'll go with the opinions from the people that were there.

[Lusche]

No...in order to further your reading comprehension, I stated that those rounds were inaccurate at those distances, not that they couldn't travel that far.  

I'm merely going by historical record, where German pilots repeatedly wrote about 1000 yards being a safe circle around formations of buffs. The US Army Air Corp gunnery school taught that any shot over 600 yards was frowned upon due to the low possibility of getting a hit.

As it is, just like the laser bombsight, the buffs in game have laser targeting for their guns too....at ranges up to 3X their historical effectiveness.

This thread is getting retarded.  Again, I'm only speaking from historical record, by the people that were doing the shooting.   You can recite all the figures you wish, I'll go with the opinions from the people that were there.

Sorry I repeat myself, but my points are still

- the average AH buff gunner can't hit fighters with "laserlike" precision at D1000 either, we will only get hits at this distance on fighters on his 6, and with lots of spraying
- as a fighter, you are quite safe at D1000 at any other angle, even when flying parallel
- a good AH buff gunner has many hundreds of times more practice than his real world counterpart. A AH buff gunner with the same amout of firing time at live targets won't do that much better than his WWII counterpart. But most players surpass this number of firing occasions withing their first few weeks. You can't do a simple 1:1 comparison between a standard WW2 buff gunner and a vet AH player for that very reason.

It's the very same situation as for fighter gunnery in AH. More than a few of us are capable of getting regularly hits (& kills) in situations that would have been called "amazing" by wwII standards. But then we have tens of thousands of fights in our logbooks, not just a dozen or a few hundred at best. (And countless of hours training in TA & offline on top of that)

[hitech]

Morey, first using words like laser gunnery is not a good idea, they only tend to inflame discussions, and you degrade into classic name calling. 2nd widening the argument with a bombing discussion only shows that you are no longer sure of your idea about the guns, and the use of words like laser gunnery also show you think you may be loosing the debate, because you starting calling things names to belittle them.

2nd I and others have stated /shown per the document you choose to use, AH matches it very closely, so there really is no disagreement other than in your mind.

3rd, it is very very obvious you have not spent much time in a bomber or you would not be claiming the ranges you do.

4th, You confuse what is normally done with what can be done. Just because you can be hit, does not mean it is wise to spray ammo at long ranges. But that in no way says that you can not be hit at longer ranges than suggested in that document.  50 cals still are still effect at 1k, they are just much harder to hit with when shooting out the sides.

5th go spend some time in bombers and see how much you can hit at 600yards out the sides.

HiTech

[MORAY37]

3rd, it is very very obvious you have not spent much time in a bomber or you would not be claiming the ranges you do.



HiTech

It is not necessary to be in a bomber to observe the ranges they are getting kills at sir.  3 times this week I've died to bomber fire at 1.5K, when drawing abreast of a flight.  Three different gunners that hit me at 1.5 K at approximately 2:30 position, and got the kill.  At least 5x that amount have hit me, for damage.

Implying you can only know the range of bomber gunners by being in the bomber is ludicrous. You can just as easily observe it from the cockpit of a fighter, as you're taking damage