Realism-Gameplay gunnery balance

[Toad]

Sure, Oed, sure.

But why can't I make everyone play the way I want them to play?

I hate this deal they do when I get behind them. They start turning and twisting, climbing and diving... really annoying.

Can't I have some "tractor beam" thing so that when I get them in my sight I can flip the beam on and it paralyzes them?

That would be kewl!

[Innominate]

AH's ballistics are somewhat undermodeled.  Bullets from most guns dissapear well within the maximum range they could do damage in.

The two things which make long-range gunnery in AH easy are the giant glowing hitsprites that show up through the plane, and the tracers which perfectly match the main guns ballistics.

More realistic hit sprites and tracers would dramaticly reduce it.

Edit:

HT, normally I fire within 400 yards, usually closer.  However, kills at 800 yards happen often enough to be annoying, and aren't all that difficult.

I really like the idea of fading the hitsprites, it seems like (It could be anyways, depending on implementation) reducing the brightness of them could help a lot without any serious changes.  Perhaps start fading them at 300, so they're completly gone by 500 yards..

[jonnyb]

Originally posted by Shane
i think maybe you need to fly a faster plane, or at least one that accelerates better.

slobberdonkey lame-7 dweeb

In reality, I don't open fire until within 350 of the target.  Usually it's even less than that, around the 250-200 mark.  The only time I will fire at greater distances is when I'm lucky enough to come across a fighter on the deck who is flying level to extend.  I'll fire a quick burst or 2 (up to 1.2k) to get his attention and attempt to force a turn.  I've even gotten lucky once and managed to score a kill at that distance (apparently my round went right through the cockpit.  Plane went boom).

[CyranoAH]

Originally posted by Innominate

The two things which make long-range gunnery in AH easy are the giant glowing hitsprites that show up through the plane, and the tracers which perfectly match the main guns ballistics.

More realistic hit sprites and tracers would dramaticly reduce it.

My thoughts exactly

My proposal was just a simpler way of doing that (not redesigning the hit sprites but just making them disappear at a certain range).

HT, I get kills at a wide variety of distances... from 200yds or less in fighters to 900 in bombers or 1.8k in Ostwinds (done it several times )

I don't think there's anything terribly wrong with the gunnery model (check my first message), it's just that I think that implementing that change (I said 300yds but I could have said 500 or 600 as well) would see a dramatic reduction of the spray-and-pray types.

Daniel

[Hornet]

the only people this change would affect would be newbies learning the game. I bet the vast majority of the experienced sticks in here do their killing
the rest is sour grapes because some people have still yet to learn to subtract ~200 from the distance of an enemy on their 6 to account for the net delay...hence the numerous claims of getting whacked at d800....900 yet not one film ever offered in evidence of HiTech's challenge to document it awhile back

[ccvi]

Originally posted by Toad
I'd love to see a graph of fighter hit percentage for the player base. Bell curve type format.

I'd like to see a graph of bullet-hits versus distance.

Originally posted by straffo
Cyrano it suppose that a human is able to evaluate distance correctly ...

The human eyes (two of them) are not able to distinguish distances beyond 100 yards (maybe even just 25 yards, not sure). At least surely not at 300, 500 or even 1k yards. It all looks like the same distance - distance can only be guessed by the known size of an object.

Originally posted by Zippatuh
I think it’s a bad idea and do not believe it would bring good things.  Gunnery is already a very difficult thing to learn.  Taking away the ability to know for sure hits are landing at long distances would create unnecessary difficulty to the game.

Shooting at 1k isn't really "learning gunnery", isn't it?

[DEMAN]

Originally posted by Hornet
the rest is sour grapes because some people have still yet to learn to subtract ~200 from the distance of an enemy on their 6 to account for the net delay...

I was curious about this myself as I was pretty sure AW lag made this distance difference so I conduct tests on a regular basis while flying formation with my squad. I look back and ask the guys behind me what yardage they see and it NEVER varies more than about 5% from what I am seeing and usually less than that. (20 to 30 yds. at 900 yds)
Just passing on some info for you all.

DEMAN
81st CO

[Paxil]

I agree with Hornet I think it is a difference of perspective. The person being shot down might see D600... the person doing the shooting D400.

I can ping someone at D6 to D1000... but kills? Very rarely... I'm sure it has happened but I can recall it. You just annoy them at that range. Even if you can hit them, the damage is reduced.

I can't remember getting shot down from that range either.

Ammo costs nothing in the virtual sky... so pilots are not too concerned about saving it. My guess is the some pilots firing close in are more concerned with hit % than being realistic... regardless, to each their own.

What I feel is a bit different in AH, is that planes don’t appear to be traveling as fast as they are supposed to. When I am driving on a freeway… cars are coming pretty darn fast, and when they pass, a second later they are goooone. If I tried to turn and catch up…. even if I was faster… forget about it… it would take minutes. In AH you can turn after a merge and somehow they are right there. Now imaging going 300 on the freeway… merging at 600 mpg. It would be tough to spot and hit another car head on if you tried… one once it passes you… long gone. Again… in AH everything is like slow motion. I know the speedometer says 300mph… but if really feels like about 25. There are times when I am going about 200, and someone will swoop by at 400+… and when I turn they are long gone… well to me it feels like that should be the case more often. It is just a perception really… most of the gun footage I have seen shows one plane approaching another relatively slow, but I’d like to compare a HO in real life to what we see in AH.

[Wotan]

we tested this claim in about d200+/- differences in fe. Its bs. as Deman said we never noticed more the 20-50 yrds. We had guys with cable dsl and dial up. None of them had d300 lag deals. Also its a 3d world why would lag only effect range and not general position. If theres d300 lag why arent there more collisions. I flew 109s with 30mm hub only and would fly in as close I could before firing.

Hornets folks have posted films in regards to that challenge. Theres was one that had a d1200 kill. I may still have the film, I will try and find it.

Also equating computer gunnery with rl in terms of "experience" is another bs arguement.

Long range gunnery has beeen discussed in ah since the day I got here. I remember folks going crazy when torque would pick umm off with d 1k snapshot.

Why does it seem that the effective kill range in these games are a further distances then real life? Who knows. Some say its hit sprits, range and counters, or the dm other say its just the nature of gaming.

The question comes down to does ht want rl physics and balistics or real life effects. No one can doudt that  50 cals or hispanos can do damage at these ranges. The only question is what allows this to happen in the game that wasnt there in rl.

Ultimately this arguement turns into 3 things

1 group says d600+ kills never happen

1 group says the ballistics and our gunnery skills allow it

the other group says its just a game.

[g00b]

Another big factor no one has mentioned. Turbulence! We get to fly around in a glass smooth atmosphere. I have read many accounts of WWII fighters saying how they got bucked around by other planes wakes even to the point of causing stalls and such. Even without "wakes" there would still be a bit of random bumpiness in the atmosphere, anyone who has ever flown knows that. I'm think this alone might account for maybe 50% of the accuracy we see in AH. Extreme Air Racing has a neat wake/turbulent effect, I wonder how hard it would be to implement.

[Toad]

I'll sure go with 2 out of those 3 and maybe all three with a slight modification.

1. "the other group says its just a game."

I am, most assuredly, right smack in the middle of this group.

2. "1 group says the ballistics and our gunnery skills allow it"

I'm in this group. Ballistics CLEARLY allow it. In fact, the case can be made that individual rounds DO NOT TRAVEL AS FAR in the game as they do in "RL". Gunnery skills? Again, what is the AVERAGE PLAYER hit percent? I'm guessing Joe Average shoots between 5-8%.

3. "1 group says d600+ kills never happen"  

I'd say they happen but are not the COMMON kill. Additionally, there's that "previous damage" thing. Somebody whirls and swirls in a furious furball for 2 minutes taking a ping or three here and there from MG and/or Cannon. He survives and low on ammo he decides to RTB. As he egresses, somebody nails him with a short burst at 600. A wing comes off and he dies. The spew on Ch1 begins over the "bogus" kill.

Is it not possible, in fact likely, that this last burst was just "the straw that broke the wing spar's back"?

How many folks have had a "no previous damage" kill at 1k? 800? 700?

I think any honest person would agree that 600+ kills on a competent, maneuvering target that has NO PREVIOUS DAMAGE are rare in AH.

Now, if someone chooses to engage the A/P as they egress at 600 yards.....

[SlapShot]

Cyrano ...

There is no "golden" bullet to solving the "spray and pray" and the "HO" issue.

I believe that your proposal would promote even MORE "Spray and Pray".

Typically those that SnP are new flyers (I know that cause I was once new). If anything, I believe, that the hit sprites improve gunnery skills quicker, thus shortening the time that one must SnP to obtain a kill. Also, as new flyers progress thru the learning curve of getting into the "saddle", this too leads to less SnP.

[Hornet]

I was curious about this myself as I was pretty sure AW lag made this distance difference so I conduct tests on a regular basis while flying formation with my squad.

Where and when were these tests conducted? If it wasn't done in the MA around 8pm eastern with 650 folks flying... then I think you can make a strong case for different conditions than say the TA on a sunday morning with 3 or folks flying around.

I don't pretend to know the intracacies of HTCs netcode, but a 1v1 in an empty sector seems to be intuitivley easier for the game to assign net update priorities for etc...

Again we return to the problem of anecdotal evidence. Someone's buddy got popped from 1.2 last night and now there's a gunnery problem...etc. But a quick browse of the connect forum shows there's some unaccounted for wierdness in the MA, it stands to reason that at least some of these gunnery anecdotes are probably a result of these same connection issues.

Tests or not, flying in peak hours when the MA is rocking, I just accept that the gremlins are going to be out crawlin on the netcode...and letting someone lurk d800 away in a firing solution and assume he's seeing what I'm seeing is rather risky.

[J_A_B]

HiTech's point is correct.    

Long range kills, while possible, are NOT the norm in AH.  

Even in AirWarrior, with it's famously simple gunnery model, most kills came at under 400 yards.   It's just that the long-range kils, as uncommon as they are, get all the attention.

J_A_B

[DEMAN]

Originally posted by Hornet
Where and when were these tests conducted? If it wasn't done in the MA around 8pm eastern with 650 folks flying... then I think you can make a strong case for different conditions than say the TA on a sunday morning with 3 or folks flying around.[/B]

These tests were done during our squad nights, Sunday after 8:00 P.M.  E.S.T. in the MA, historicaly the busiest time and place  possible.
DEMAN