Originally posted by Toad
I don't think it proves anything. I think it explains why when somebody says "gunnery" I think of the event from the end of the barrel to the hit or miss of the target.
Thats why I asked what was the point of posting. I thought I missed something.
"Apparently, when you are talking "gunnery" you're talking damage model and or leathality as part of it. I don't see that; I view those as separate and distinct from "gunnery".
"Apparently"? It just came to you? It was pointed out at the very front of the thread. It was also pointed out by many others..
OK, clear something up for me.
You say IL and AH have the same ballistics. To me, that means the same trajectories for identical weapons/rounds and the same kinetics.
Since I don't have it and haven't played it, help me out here.
I assume the leathality is different. By that I specifically mean the effect of each round, chemical or kinetic, is different between AH and IL. BTW, I don't consider damage by either chemical or kinetic energy as part of "gunnery". To me that is properly in the leathality area.[/b]
Yes lethality, dm etc is different but ballistically what happens when the bullet leaves the barrel is as believable and as "scientific" as ah or your calculations above. Thats why ballistics werent the issue.
[/b]Now, the "artificial gamey stuff" that is different. That would be what, exactly? what are the differences in:
Tracers, hit sprites, range counters, ammo counters, every round/equal damage, hybrid rounds.
I think I know, but I want to be sure. Did I miss any other things that you feel make a big difference?[/b]
Thats already been answered in the thread. Go re read it.
[/b]Now, suppose for a second, that all these things were identical in both games. Do you hypothesize then that suddenly AH shooting habits would be like IL shooting habits? IE: shooting at shorter ranges?
And would the results of the hits at ~ the same ranges be the same with respect to leathality/damage/destruction?
What's your opinion on that?
[/b]
Same as kweassas
I believe so, Toad, I belive so.
(..and if there isn't any difference still, even when the many factors concerning the process of shooting are exactly up to IL2/FB levels, then the case be humbly closed... At least we be content there is better eye-candy.)
Look, YOU'RE the one that keeps on bringing up ammo counters like it's some BFD to a player. It's not to me and a lot of others like me I suspect. If I didn't have them, it wouldn't change the way I play. I KNOW I have plenty of ammo for one or two engagements in ANY case. After that, I'm still going to take any good shot, same as I would in the first two or three encounters.
Counters just don't figure into it for me or a lot of people. You make counters a key point of your argument as part of the "far more to it". I'm simply telling you that coutners don't matter to some folks, so you assumption isn't really valid in all cases, yet you continue to focus on it like it's an incredibly key factor.
Hey, like I said, take 'em out. I really doubt anyone will miss them, nor would they switch rides to get those critical counters back. As to reducing long range shooting, I think the effect, particularly in the MA, would be minimal. I know it wouldn't change my engagement tactics in the least.
Oh bull****.. keep bringing it up?
The only time I mentioned it was in defining "gunnery". I suggested as a part of the overall gunnery model that ammo counters
amoung many ohter things (like ballistics) contribute to what we experience in AHs gunnery model. No where (quote me if you see other wise) did I say Ammo counters were an end all or even a major factor.
Outside defining gunnery the only time I "brought it up" was in reponse to your focus on that 1 issue. In the same way you focussed on ballistics even though it has been pointed out consistantly by many of the posters in the thread.
I said exactly what I meant about ammo counters
Ammo counters are a crutch and facilitate the amount of spray and pray you see because after 1 or 2 engagements where a person has expended ammo they will be unsure how much they have left. In the main where their are high concentrations of enemy one may be less likely to spray at long range and wait for a target thats closer in order to get the most out of his ammo load. Now one would look at the ammo counters see 200 rounds and think I am good for another pass. With out them hmm "how much ammo do I have? I'll go rearm". In planes like the hurr1 IIc typhie or the ho 5 in the ki 61 you run out of ammo quick. Withtheir high rate of fire its impossible to track how much ammo you have left. This is less a concern in jugs and ponies but it stillw will have an effect. This is especially relevent to events and scenarios. But you are focussing in on this like its the end all, much like your "ballistics".
No ammo will [b[help[/b] reduce spray and pray as I pointed out above. I also said ammo counters dont cause long range gunnery previously as well.
You just read what you wanna read. You take the general subject of gunnery and narrow down to 2 a specific issues. Even with the definitions that I offered its not an easy thing to narrow down. But you have ignored every post that said specifically that no one is talking directly about ballistics and now you do the same with ammo counters. It was you who made an issue of both.
I certainly never implied or stated ammo counters are the cause of long range gunnery. I said along with many other things getting rid of ammo counters will help reduce spray and pray as outlined in my quote above. In turn along with this and the "other" things the effective range may become closer then what it is now.
What Tony posted here and what you refer to as pyro posting previously doesnt mean that they were shooting folks down at 800 yards when they thought they were at 200.
The fact they underestimated their range was problem and in doing so they were less likely to get kills.
As Tony writes here
And these were not small errors. When during trials pilots were asked to open fire at 300 yards, the actual distances varied between 800 and 1200 yards! Confronted with such unpleasant facts, the official advice given to fighter pilots was to take divide their range estimate by two and double their estimate of the lead! More practical was the advice to open fire from as close as possible, preferably less than 100 yards, and never from more than 300 yards. Halving the range would quadruple the number of hits."
now go back and read Hohuns post
Dispersion of wing-mounted 12.7 mm machine guns may be 6 mil, which means that at 800 m the projectiles impact in a 4.8 m circle - that's 18.1 m^2, while a fighter-sized target may offer around 3 m^2 target area. In other words, even with perfect aim, only 1 in 6 projectiles is going to hit.
Dispersion of a fuselage-mounted 13 mm machine guns will probably be less than 2 mil. That's an 1.6 m diameter circle, or a 2 m^2 area. That means that with perfect aim, the vast majority of the projectiles is going to hit.
(Of course, wing-mounting versus fuselage mounting doesn't depend on the weapon type. The P-38 for example can be expected to be outstanding in long range firepower.)
Now to get an impression of the effectiveness of machine guns at long range under realistic conditions, we can draw on German studies. According to their figures, the 15 mm MG151 per projectile had 27% of the effectiveness of the MG151/20, which in turn was reckoned to be able to reliably destroy a fighter with 6 random hits. The 12.7 mm Browning projectiles had 68% of the MG151's muzzle energy, which I'll take as indication of their relative effectiveness. As result, I'll consider 33 random hits by 12.7 mm ammunition enough to destroy a fighter aircraft. At 800 m, that would require about 201 rounds to be fired, which a battery of 6 Brownings could manage in about 2.9 s.
For comparison, how about a MG151/20 attack at 800 m? German sources give a 1.9 mil dispersion for this gun, so a 50% hit chance is a rather conservative estimate. That means with perfect aim, 12 rounds would have to be fired from centre-line mounted MG151/20 cannon. That would take a Fw 190 with its wing-root cannon just 0.5 s.
Of course, these calculations rely on the unrealistic assumption of perfect aim. To illustrate the effect of this factor: The Luftwaffe expected that a typical pilot under combat conditions firing a MG151/20 battery at a heavy bomber at 1000 m would have a hit ratio of 3%. However, the ballistic capabilities of the weapon hardly influenced the hit probability: The 50 mm MK214 which probably featured a much better trajectory than any other WW2 air combat weapon still gave the average Luftwaffe pilot no better than 4.2% hit chance under the same conditions.
On the other end of the scale, American gun sight testing after WW2, using a P-38, showed that it was possible for the (admittedly highly skilled) test pilot to make entire tracking runs with the nose within one mil of the ideal aiming point. Such a pilot might have been able to get just the results I've described under "perfect aim" above.
Whether Aces High requires the same degree to skill to achieve "perfect aim" as flying a real fighter does, I can't tell. However, I think this is more a matter of the flight modelling than of the ballistical modelling because the all-decisive question is "How well can you point the guns?"
