.50 cal ammo

[earl1937]

  OK, Hi Tech, this is not a compliant, but a honest question. Has anything happened to change the effectiveness of .50 cal ammo? I am getting good shots from 200 to 400 yds, with sparkles all over the aircraft and not getting kills,(except every once in a while), don't even get a engine smoke. Don't say its my poor aim, because if you do, be glad to meet you in training arena and show you that I can hit a target at 400 yds as good as anyone else. What I am curious about is this, I have a HP desk top, 8.5 GB, with advanced graphic cards, (2) and 99% of the time, my frame rate is between 55 and 65. So, do you have any suggestions, beside flying up the con's rear and hope I get the kill? I am not the only one complaining about the effectiveness of .50 cal.

[Golfer]

Hitting an airplane doesn't mean you hit something important much less something vital.  Putting one .50 round somewhere it counts is more important than putting 100 of them places they don't. You don't want sparkles (hit sprites) all over the airplane.  You want them focused in one central place where they're going to do some serious structural or system damage.

Another important item to consider is your convergence settings.  When you put projectiles from 4-6-8 guns into the same place there isn't anything that can be done to prevent damage because you're going to hit something with that buzzsaw.

[hitech]

Nothing has changed, but make sure you didn't happen to change your convergence settings by accident.

HiTech

[FLS]

Check that v-sync is enabled in your video card properties and don't let Windows auto update your video drivers.

[R 105]

 I have fired tens of thousands of rounds of 50cal ammo over my career in the Army so I have first hand experience with this round. I too am always disappointed with it's performance in the game. While I understand HTC has to model the 50cal with a performance chart for the game. The 50cal round is one of those magical bullets that out preforms what it says on paper by far.
 
 I could hit range targets like old M113 armor personnel carriers at 2000 yrds with the M2 with no problem and it still had some punch on it at that range. However it is what it is here for the purpose of the game. I find that 300 meters is the most effective range for me with the 50cal in Aces High. Go off line and try different convergence settings until you fine one the works best for you.  

[gyrene81]

sounds like rubber bullet syndrome...

[Wiley]

I could hit range targets like old M113 armor personnel carriers at 2000 yrds with the M2 with no problem and it still had some punch on it at that range. However it is what it is here for the purpose of the game. I find that 300 meters is the most effective range for me with the 50cal in Aces High. Go off line and try different convergence settings until you fine one the works best for you.  

I don't doubt it, but respectfully I'm guessing you didn't do that with a 200-300mph crosswind coming at the gun barrel from a couple of degrees off center.  That's going to play havoc with accuracy, to say nothing of now putting that gun on a relatively unstable flying object.

All things considered, I think the gunnery in this game is a pretty fair compromise between computing capability and realisticness.

Wiley.

[Karnak]

I have fired tens of thousands of rounds of 50cal ammo over my career in the Army so I have first hand experience with this round. I too am always disappointed with it's performance in the game. While I understand HTC has to model the 50cal with a performance chart for the game. The 50cal round is one of those magical bullets that out preforms what it says on paper by far.

If the .50 cal's damage was increased they would have to increase all of the cannons damage values as well.  To the best of my knowledge the AN-M2 20mm and .50 BMG have their damage ratio matching what the US Navy said it was.

Per the US Navy, a single AN-M2 20mm cannon (Hispano Mk II in US service) installation provided equal firepower to an installation of three Browning .50 cals.  That isn't a hit being worth three times the hit of a .50, but the overall firepower value of the installation.

Thus, by the US Navy's estimate, the Spitfires Mk XIV and XVI have approximately the same firepower as the P-47's eight .50s.

[smoe]

I have noticed a lot less smoke/fuel hits spewing from the bombers when hitting the wings. The wing usually comes off before any signs of oil or fuel hits.

[bustr]

Earl,

This may sound strange but, have you updated any drivers on your PC around the time your rubber bullets started? Have you installed any new programs? Did your antivirus program receive an update to it's engine along with the latest definitions? Have you allowed Windows Update to install hotfixes?

Sometime Windows Update turns things on that you have disabled as part of finishing the update's install.

Do you run a batch file or application befor starting the game to reduce your running services down to about 32-33? This is where Windows Update screws you sometimes because you don't count services after updates thinking MS wouldnt dare do that.
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Have you turned your router or broadband modem off and let it sit for 10 minutes recently? Sometimes with ATT I have to do that when I get rubber bullets in AH. When I start it back up I also get a new IP address and a temporary halt to automated scans of my ATT IP address by IP addresses registered to hotels in mainland china.

Something to ponder, how old is your router or your cable\dsl modem? A few years back my first ATT DSL modem was getting old and I had a long streatch of rubber bullets. I replaced it and started hitting things again. I've had the same thing happen with routers going bad. Another thing to ponder is if you login to your broadband provider with PPPoE, is your router MTU and network card MTU both set to 1492?

You can download SG TCP Optimiser from here to test your MTU window size for packet fragmentation on the way to the game server. Packet fragmentation can cause rubber bullets.

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php/
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I recently caused my own rubber bullets by installing the latest and greatest ATI drivers for my video card. I had to roll back 3 versions and my .50cals started sawing wings off again. If Hitech was going to change gunnery it would happen during a patch release as a global effect to every player. If your rubber bullets are not happening right after installing the new patch. The source of the problem is anywhere from your PC to the internet path to the game server.
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Have you run PingPlotter to 206.16.60.38 to see whats happening in your internet path to the game server?

Have you performed normal house keeping of your harddrive like a comprehensive defrag along with a boot time defrag?

Have you checked to see if something is phoning home from your PC that shouldn't be on your PC?
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Whenever I get rubber bullets and it's not immediately after a game update. I run through this kind of laundry list of steps and it usualy comes down to one of them. More often it's just a bad night, or even a week on the internet between me and Texas.

[R 105]

 No I did not fire the m-2 50cal while doing 300mph lol. All were fired from a station tripod or from the top on an M-48A5 M-60A2 M-113 or a scout jeep. Still it is an analyzing round that is coming up on her 100th birthday soon. I was fortunate to have been a range officer for many years and fired about every small arm or crew served weapon you could think of to include many Russian arms. Then I was a range officer on the Police Dept for another 10 yrs and much fun was had.

[Noir]

Do the current 50cal use the same chemicals that the WWII era one? Is the muzzle velocity still the same?

[Karnak]

Do the current 50cal use the same chemicals that the WWII era one? Is the muzzle velocity still the same?

In WWII the muzzle velocity of the ones on ground vehicles were a bit higher due to longer barrels.  This is modeled in AH.

[Tank-Ace]

OK, Hi Tech, this is not a compliant, but a honest question. Has anything happened to change the effectiveness of .50 cal ammo? I am getting good shots from 200 to 400 yds, with sparkles all over the aircraft and not getting kills,(except every once in a while), don't even get a engine smoke.

Found the problem.



If you can't or don't want to aim at a specific part of the plane, 20mm or larger weapons are going to be your best bet. Even if you want to learn to aim better, flying the 109's, spits, and Japanese stuff will do your flying some good as well. Better you know what the other guy can do, better you can kill them.

[Shuffler]

Not a thing wrong with 50s in game. Very very effective.