Battle damage resistance: Overly frail aircraft

[Widewing]

When I find the time, I have been familiarizing myself with the AH sim offline. Within this context, I have been following the N1K2 discussion and there's two things that I find troubling.

1) Battle damage resistance is minimal. I have been practicing by attacking the circling P-51s and I have found that is takes next to nothing to explode these with a very short, well aimed burst. These aircraft are entirely too easy to kill.
I would point to the damage resistance modeling used in EAW as being considerably more realistic.

While I'm discussing battle damage, I should comment on the incredible amount of insanely dense smoke pouring from a damaged fighter.
The damned Chicago fire didn't generate that much smoke! Could someone explain what it is that fuels such a huge plume? More importantly, what allows it to be sustained for such long durations? Geez, an entire flotilla of WWII Destroyers couldn't put down a smoke screen of that duration or density. What makes this even worse is that the smoke trail is modeled as a solid.

2) I feel that the effectiveness of the 20mm cannons are grossly over-modeled.

One final note on the N1K2: Late run aircraft were redesigned to move the engine forward about 12 inches. Why? Well, according to what I have read, this was done to shift the Cg forward to correct for an instability that caused spin troubles. Well, as anyone can find out, spinning the AH N1K2 is next to impossible. I have deliberately thrown it into an accelerated stall, only to have it flip over with nearly no loss of altitude, and I could recover in 2 or 3 seconds. Try that with a real fighter, such as the P-51D and you will need a minimum of 500 feet to recover, assuming you caught it before it began to rotate. What Ah has programmed here is a 360 mph J-3 Cub.

One other complaint... The blackout and redout effects are adequate for an 80 year-old man, but set in too soon and too severe for a healthy early 20s fighter jock. Moreover, it appears that AH has not modeled in G-suits. G-suits?! You bet. By late 1944, all American aircraft were being upgraded to incorporate the new G-suit. All aircraft arriving in combat zones were plumbed for the G-suit. This allowed the American pilots to more one or more Gs than the Axis pilot before suffering the effects of oxygen deprivation. Another factor not modeled is the Fw 190 seat, which was reclined about 10 degrees greater than typical. This also delayed the onset of G induced blackout. I feel that the G tolerance model is inaccurate for a young, well conditioned aviator.

Well, that's my observations... Comments are welcome.

My regards,

Widewing

[-towd_]

20 mm grossly over modeled . hmm seems like we have heard that before. beware they will flame the hell out of you.but i hope they dont thanks for a great post .

[LJK Raubvogel]

Well Widewing, I have to say that I agree with all your points more or less. But watch out, the Pom-Pom toting cheerleaders© will shortly arrive, and verify that there is nothing, nor was there anything ever wrong with AH and you better have some data to back it up or we'll call you a whiner.  

[LLv34_Snefens]

One thing to keep in mind is that when you see an exploding plane in AH it can just as easily mean that the pilot was killed, since we currently lack any kind of effect showing the pilotless plane spiral to earth.
The actual ratio between simple pilot kill or actual mid-air explosion I have no idea about.

[This message has been edited by LLv34_Snefens (edited 02-12-2001).]

[Tac]

Been wondering about the damage myself. All the gun footage ive seen shows an enemy airplane taking a crapload more of bullets than an AH plane...and those shot were done at 300 yds or less.

N1k? Hehe, I know Agent K is driving it... *Men in Black Tune echoes in the background*

[715]

AH is mainly an online game.  Yes, it is very  easy to kill the offline drones, but I think the game designers must allow for the vagries of online games in setting survivability of aircraft.  Although many will probably disagree, I think that network lag, and the variability of network lag, makes it hard to connect with online targets.  You only get updates of your targets position about twice a second, and the updates come somewhat randomnly due to variable net lags.  At 250 mph your target moves six times its own length in the 1/2 second between updates.  And that is in a perfect world.  Whats worse, your FE must do an extrapolation of the targets position, not an interpolation.  Extrapolation is fraught with error because your FE can't know, until its too late, that the target pilot jinked or changed turn rate or direction.  Thus what you see on your screen is only an approximation to reality and just hitting that image is not enough.  The host must receive your bullet information and check to see if indeed your bullets hit the target given the other players FE info of his actual position.  I think that the end result is that a much lower fraction of your shots connect in the online world and if accurate survivability data were used for aircraft, it might take forever to bring them down.  Therefore, to counteract this the game makes them easier to destroy.

Of course, then again, maybe I'm just a bad shot  

715

[Jimdandy]

         

Originally posted by Widewing:

(1)...These aircraft are entirely too easy to kill...

(2)...While I'm discussing battle damage, I should comment on the incredible amount of insanely dense smoke pouring from a damaged fighter...

(3)...Moreover, it appears that AH has not modeled in G-suits. G-suits?! You bet. By late 1944, all American aircraft were being upgraded to incorporate the new G-suit. All aircraft arriving in combat zones were plumbed for the G-suit. This allowed the American pilots to more one or more Gs than the Axis pilot before suffering the effects of oxygen deprivation. Another factor not modeled is the Fw 190 seat, which was reclined about 10 degrees greater than typical. This also delayed the onset of G induced blackout. I feel that the G tolerance model is inaccurate for a young, well conditioned aviator...

Widewing

1. No. I've shot a LOT of old cars with many different rifles and hand guns. A .300 Winchester magnum will punch a hole through a 1/2 inch plate at 200yards like a drill press without even using full metal jacket rounds. I've done it. If I had full metal jacket rounds and pumped rounds into and engine block with it at 100yards I will guarantee you it would come apart fairly quickly. And we are talking about a round that is FAR less powerful compared to a .50cal. Not to mention a 20mm. A short burst to 20mm into a wing WILL take it off. A 20mm AP round will cut thru a cast iron block at 200yards easy. Not to mention the aluminum and magnesium bocks and aluminum spars on a plane. Look at the post the niklas put up on the Bf 109F-4. They have data in that that talks about the penetration of the .50 cal into the 109. A short burst of 50's into the wing or engine should do a number on a plane. A short direct burst of .50 cal at the focal point would be roughly 25X6=150 rounds into the area the size of an end table into and aluminum wing. It would rip it up.

2. It's right. I drove a 72' Toyota Hi Lux pick up around for several months that burnt a quart of oil a day through the valve guides. I had to clean the plugs ever couple days on it to keep it running. When I was going down the road at full throttle you couldn't see the car behind me in the rear view mirror and that isn't an exaggeration. It was a cop one time and he was kind enough not to write me a mechanical.

3. Your right.

Here is the report on the Bf 109F-4. It talks about the .303, British .50, 20mm HE, and US .50 on page five. They are testing at ranges of 100 and 200 yard. I'm sure you know HE round are thin walled and not intended to penetrate armor. At 200 yards the British .50 cal is punching thru the 0.875in laminated plate thru the fuel tank and thru a 0.33in plate behind the pilot 30% of the time. That's 1.2 inches of armor plate. The laminated metal is effectively thicker because of the added strength of the laminations. The bullet would have deformed after passing thru the first plate and it still did it. The US .50's were even better it sounds like. It also mentions that 20 AP will have no problem at 200yards doing it.

 http://people.freenet.de/luftwaffeln/109f4_intro.html



[This message has been edited by Jimdandy (edited 02-12-2001).]

[BBGunn]

Maybe there should be an AC testing committee.

[Pongo]

Online you will see alot more diversity of damage effects. Sometimes you just cant get a solid hit concentrated in one area and the guy stays intact through several hits.
The pilot kill(likely on a nice 7:30 rear quarter deflection shot) shows up alot more against the drones then in the MA. People wont hold still for it. And a supprise shot is more likey from dead six which lowers the chance of the pilot kill.

The smoke is intended to symbolize a fuel hit(white smoke) or a glycol or oil hit(black smoke) Against the drones you putter along co speed and end up in the smoke from the plane you are dismembering. In the MA the guy gets quite animated when you ping his engine and all the dweebs zoom in to try to help you with your kill..... Both smoke effects look quite convincing from 1.2k away.

[Jimdandy]

Another note on the capability of a 20mm cannon. This is an excerpt from VIII Fighter Command at War 'Long Reach'. Capt. Robert S. Johnson shot down 28 AC in his P-47:

Capt Robert S. Johnson
62nd FS/56th FG

"...Never let a Jerry get his sights on you. No matter whether he is at 100 yards or 1000 yards away, 20 mm will carry easily that far and will easily knock down an aeroplane at 1000 yards..."

And he's talking about knocking down a P-47 one of the toughest fighters of WWII.

[This message has been edited by Jimdandy (edited 02-13-2001).]

[funked]

As in real life, spin entry from an accelerated stall is difficult to achieve.  There are plenty of anectdotes of guys recovering from accelerated stalls under 500' AGL.

Take a Yak-9U, do a vertical zoom and chop the throttle.  Keep the nose pointed up as long as you can, then let the spin develop.  If you can recover within 500' of initiating recovery procedure I will eat my hat.  

[funked]

PS Towd and Raubvogel, you guys are pathetic.  You can't argue with facts, so you just pre-flame anybody who might disagree.  Sad.

[Duckwing6]

Accelerated stall with a spin entry follwoing a horizontal vector = Snap roll ... not too hard to reover from that.

Regards
DW6

[Lephturn]

I just want to point out one thing:

Widewing said:

 

I have been practicing by attacking the circling P-51s and I have found that is takes next to nothing to explode these with a very short, well aimed burst.

AFAIK, the damage model on those offline drones is not proper.  I am not sure that they are the same as what you would find online.  I reccomend you try the same thing online.  The results will be different if my suspicion is correct.  If you need somebody to shoot at, let me know.  

------------------
Lephturn - Aces High Chief Trainer
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Check out Lephturn's Aerodrome!

"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know." - Michel Eyquem, seigneur de Montaigne. (1533–1592)

[gatt]

Widewing,
our squad discovered that you need at least 5-6 full TOD's of whining and moaning before making yourself immune against Hispano-Nikis' anger. Grab a Mauser armed kite and shoot down those Spitfire/Niki/C-Hog dweebs