The road to Buff-killing

[rosco-]

 Hey im definatly not an expert as i am sure my record would show. But what does seem to work more often than not is diving from 2k above him. You want to start your dive from in front of his flight path so when you are in guns range you are flying straight down into him. This attack always works if I take the time and set it up right. Of course if its a 30k B17 ill just give him the finger and not bother.
 Ive been flying buffs to try and get enough points so I could fly a 234 for a squad mission or something, and by flying em i think its helping in downing them. Those that get me I try and remember that for my next time attacking a buff.

 I got 3 in a row tonight, all by myself so it is possible.

[bowser]

"...smart bomber pilots will turn to keep you chasing at their 6 all the time, something that they couldn't really do in real life lest miss a target off-course or break formation..."

Exactly.  The people recommending attack from this angle or that angle must be attacking different bombers then the rest of us.  When the bombers are continually turning, it's impossible to set up a good attack.  This is the silliest part of the whole thing.

bowser

[DoKtor GonZo]

By the same token, we shouldn't have platoons of FlakPz's chasing after squadrons of cannon armed fighters. FlakPz's were defensive weapons, but in AH they have the initiative - because they have higher chance of scoring a kill 1-1 with a fighter. The *last* thing an *open-topped* FlakPz should want to see is a couple of fighters looking for them.

    -DoK

[Voss]

When you said:

a) Patience
b) Fast slashing attacks
c) Knowledge of blind areas
d) Altitude
e) Speed
f) Fill in things I've missed so far


I think you meant:
A)Patience
B)Altitude
C)Speed
D)Fast slashing attacks (I like vertical)

The rest doesn't matter. If, you do this right, one pass in a six-.50 cal ride will bring anything down. You have to hit it though!  

------------------
Voss
13th TAS

[ElLobo]

First thing I do when I want to kill a buff is find a likely buff target. HQ is usually good especially if enemy has close bases. climb high 30k or so and wait. Usually a buff will come along loaded with bombs determined to hit his target. Slash and run concentrate on getting hits but don't worry about killing him in one pass. Never come up his six. If you come at him fast from above and behind aim for his wingtip. I'm not real good at it but buff hunting is one of my favorite AH sports. Let em climb High grab a 152 and show em what High is.

[flakbait]

Here's some buff tactics I posted a while back that work great:

 

Historically speaking, there were three angles that a bomber was vulnerable to. A 20º cone head-on, and directly above. Slashing attacks were nearly impossible to defeat due to the angles and speeds. Attacking from directly behind is suicidal, that's a given. But head-on attacks, with up to 7 guns on you, can't be done in AH. It should be only 5 guns, but since the ball turret can be elevated to about +5º you can fire through the aircraft with it. Known bug that still hasn't been fixed.

Lancs aren't trouble; they're flying targets. Some 30 caliber machine guns positiioned on top and on the front. A pair of 50 cals tacked on the rear, gee there's a real threat. Come at 'em from below and they're toast; aim for the wings.

B-26s are easy prey too. Above and behind or directly above are prime angles for a sure-fire kill. I vulched one guy 4 times simply by diving on him; this was done using a D-hog.

Ju-88s are easy to kill at any angle.

B-17s are impossible to kill from head-on, rear, and below. So you're stuck with slashing attacks, which work very well. In a single sortie I shot down a pair of B-17 using slashing attacks and a D-hog. 10 and 2 o'clock work best, and aim for the inboard engine. Dispersion will not only kill that engine, but maybe blow the wing off or cause a pilot-kill. Any other angle usually won't work unless you get the drop on the pilot/gunner. Attacks from above are sort of a grab bag; you might get him, he might get you. The same goes for strikes from below.

TBM-3s are also easy kills. Below and behind works, or a simple bounce from above. Again, aim for the wings to be sure of a kill.

Someone once asked me why he kept losing kills. Easy, he didn't keep shooting. If you blow an engine the guy can still ditch, but if you rip his wing off he's dead. Inflict enough damage to make sure he goes down. This means aiming for the wings or tail section. Once you've got him burning and going down all you have to worry about is someone stealing the kill. Or you can keep firing until the guy explodes, which wastes ammo in my opinion. Crutial if you drive a Yak like me.

Duma refered to the Ju-88's 7.92mm MGs as sonic warfare. He's right too; all those hit sounds are a barrage on your ears! And they probably cause damage just by the shockwaves of impact.  

-----------------------
Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta 6's Flight School
Put the P-61B in Aces High
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and
through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse.
And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the
number was 190." Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb
 

[Nash]

Fowl!  

B-17G 8 kills, 2 deaths
B-26b 16 kills, 1 death
Lanc III 6 kills, 1 death
Ju 88 3 kills, 0 deaths

And I have about the worst gunnery in the game.

Killin a buff will basically offer you the same odds as a good clean Co-E 1v1 vs a fighter. Just because it's big 'n fat 'n slow doesn't mean it's yer god given right to be able to bring it down. It doesn't matter that you say "yes yes, that's all good and fine - I've been doing this for years, and I know how to kill a buff, thank-you-very-much". If you truly did, you would. It's a different mindset, really... and if you aren't prepared to go toe to toe with a buff on its terms, don't complain when it kills ya.  

And while they do exist - those 30k strato buffs are *much* more rare than some make it seem, and not a worthy excuse for makin' the buff driver's job more difficult.

Good tips Effdub.

[gatt]

Amen Effdub. All true ... all wrong. The good Browning gunner who is waiting for you almost always wins. And the problem here are the special (lethality, range, convergence) buff-Brownings. BTW, you have had few clashes with buffs so far. Come back when you have tens of them  

[This message has been edited by gatt (edited 03-22-2001).]

[Skysix1]

 

Originally posted by Nash:
Fowl!  

And while they do exist - those 30k strato buffs are *much* more rare than some make it seem, and not a worthy excuse for makin' the buff driver's job more difficult.

Good tips Effdub.

I agree here.  I have only been above 20K 2 or 3 times.  I made it to 28K at best and it turned out not to be worth the 1 hour effort.  I usually try to make it to 20K.  More than that just isnt worth the time spent getting there (to me anyway). Plus it makes it more interesting with fighters inbound.  Even if I die it is usually a pretty good battle  

I have died 12 times in a bomber.
I have 11 kills in a bomber.

I think it seems pretty fair so far.  But I haven't flown the B-17 yet.  The B-17 was a pretty dang tough plane to kill though.  I tried to chase one down once in a Corsair.  I saw lots of hits and smoke from him but he nailed me.  I came in from his 6 (not too smart but wife was callin me so I had to hurry) and started shooting 1.2 out.  But I have been told not to fly the B-17 cause I will never earn enough perks for the arado so I havent flown it.

------------------
Chuck Perry   
"Sky61"

[Effdub]

Stratobuffs... I think it's a fair trade-off. If you are willing to spend so much time to get alt, just to hit a field, so be it. "If" buff driver would ALWAYS get enough people to fly in huge formations, "if" they'd ALWAYS get enough people to come along as escort you could tone down the bombers. Would this work? I dunno... just take a look at user made missions, how many do actually join those...?  

Time... as I said before, if you want to kill buffs you should make that decision in the hangar. That includes looking at the current map situation and figuring out where buffs are LIKELY to show up, not looking for radar blips that are ALREADY there...
So, instead of climbing frantically to catch a radar blip, you'll already be cruising at alt to hopefully intercept incoming buffs.

Boring? Well, it dosen't have to be YOU that hunts buffs, you could be the furballer, the tank driver, the dive-bomber, whatever. Me, I like hunting Buffs for a taste of something different  

TA-152. Why not take it up to hunt buffs? What else are you going to do with your perk points? Right now I have 500 I think... I could die 10 times in the TA-152 before I take up furballing to buy me a new one...  

Off-Map flying sucks - period.

and Gatt...

Scores for Tour 13 vs Buffs...
against
B-17G 11 kills, 4 deaths
B-26b 13 kills, 3 deaths
Lanc III 3 kills, 4 deaths
(oops!   coming in from below didn't work as good as I thought it should)
Ju-88 9 kills, 1 death
(thrown in to make my Lancaster debacle look a tad better)  
 

[Gremlin]

One tactic which I haven't read in this thread but works for me on B17's is starting off with a reasonable altitude advantage, the diving below as the distance is about 1k (the point where the average buff starts firing.  You can then make slashing attacks constantly switching between above and below the buff.  I always do this either from the sides or from a very high rear angle.  The beauty of this is that your constantly forcing the buff gunner to switch gunnery positions  (top turret and bottom turret).  Obviously this doesnt work if your directly on his six as the rear gunner can cover you all the time.  If you take the time to set this up right it almost always works.  Only once in AH have I ever seen a pilot do this on me (me in a buff).  I found it very hard to defend against since every time I switched guns i had to correct aim by which time the fighter had made his pass and was away to set up his next.

Just another angle (if you pardon the pun).

<S>

Gremlin
56th Firebirds Squadron (RAF)

[Soda]

Effdub,
  The whole argument in support of strato-bombers is crap, pure and simple.  I've yet to hear anything even resembling a good excuse for it.  "If people are willing to spend the time to get that high then they deserve to be invulnerable".... what crap.  They start their climb, have a smoke, grab a cup of coffee, whatever, most of them aren't sitting there staring at the screen the whole time.  Even it they are, too bad, you can run an effective bomber raid from 20K and only spend half the time climbing you would to get to 30K.  They fly at 30K, and totally change the balance of the game by hitting something important, be it a field or HQ.

Risking something like a Ta152 at 30K to attack a bomber, well, we saw a lot of that last weekend where it cost the Bish 5 Ta152's to attack a bomber formation.  The Ta152 isn't the answer since I doubt many people want to waste that ride attacking bombers.  An arado, maybe, but not a B17.

Good, or even fair, bomber gunners are getting better than 1:1 K/D ratio against fighters.  A bomber can do as much to set up the fighter as the fighter can do to set up the bomber.  At high alts the bomber is actually at an advantage since it can maneuver far better than a fighter and thus the bomber can dictate the fight, not the fighter.

Bombers are such a powerful force in AH that they are extremely important to defend against.  2 Lancs can totally destroy a country's HQ, or destroy all the AC hangers at 3 small fields and still have bombs to spare.  Flying high looking for bombers, well, that's all great in theory, but even if you are high then you might find yourself still lower than the bombers and getting shot down.

All you suggestions are good Effdub, I disagree with the support for stratobombing, I don't think it's necessary or fair.  Considering the pinpoint accuracy from those alts it really is unbalancing.  Still, setting up good attacks on bombers is quite a skill as well as an art.  It's just that I feel the bomber aspect of the game needs some work in a release pretty soon.  I think it gives a rather unfair advantage to people who climb into the stratosphere where not only are they nearly invulerable that high, but they can also deeply influence the game since they can inflict such crippling damage from those altitudes.

-Soda

[lazs]

I think nash is right.   that's not to say that there is nothing wrong with the buffs or the strat tho.   Even tho he's right.... it doesn't make it any more fun to kill a buff for me.  It is too much effort (and chance) for way too little reward.   In an arena with something to do I will avoid all but front quartering shots with buffs and even avoid that if there is ANYTHING less boring to do.
lazs

[lazs]

notice how all these threads come back to the fact that what little (choke) strat there is is gimicky and not fun.   The strat, or lack thereof,  leads to the goofy concessions.

soda explains the problem well.
lazs

[Hajo]

hmmmmmm........I have LW gun cam film that shows LW fighters flying through, over, and under buffs at speeds very much higher then the buffs.  also have  film of them shredding formations.  gave me the chills watching the film. seems like what I saw on the guncam film, with gear falling, engines actually falling of, and USAAF bombers coming apart in mid air from the weak 20mm cannons on the FW almost an apparition in AH.  I don't think one tail gun gunner could handle that attack.  There were plenty of gunners firing at the fighters, the fighters in the gun cam film had more success against a formation, with more guns trained on them, then we do 1 vs 1 in AH and a single tailgunner.  Just food for thought!