Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: hazed- on October 04, 2002, 12:35:09 PM
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found this interesting chart in Americas most celebrated fighter pilots handbook
'Fighter Combat tactics and maneuvering' by Robert L Shaw
note the difference in lethality between the 1933 M2 .50cal and the 1941 or 1944 20mm M2/M3.
I dont really understand the way the lethality is calculated but judging from the numbers its easily less than half the lethality of the 20mm.Also note the rates of fire
in the book it says this about working out thelethality of weapons:
'Table 1-1 is a collection of statistics on many of the guns which have been important in American combat aircraft, and is fairly representative of the armements of other nations, as well.Agood indication of the technological development of a gun is the weight of the projectiles that it can fire in one minute(assuming the barrel limitations and ammunition supply allows).In this table weight of fire is measured by the factor Wf.Tremendous progress can easily be seen here by comparing the post-world war I browning .30cal M2 with the 20mm M61 Gatling gun of the 1950's.'
'Lethality of a gun can be measured by multiplying the destructive power of its projectile and the number of hits.for non-explosive bullets, destructive qualities are generally proportional to kinetic energy: half themass of the projectile times the square of its velocity.To be more technically correct, the velocity used should be the relative impact velocity, but for comparison purposes, muzzle velocity will do.The factor FL in table 1-1, a measure of the lethality of the gun, is proportional to the kinetic energy of each projectile and the rate of fire.
FL should be roughly indicative of the lethality of a nonexlosive bullet fired at a specified rate from a gun,Cannon are a somewhat different case,since much of the lethality of these weapons is derived from their explosive shells.Therefor FL is a fairly accurate relative assessment of the destructiveness of machine guns , but underates the cannon in comparison.Likewise, it can be used to compare cannon of the sam projectile size, but it would slight larger guns in comparison with smaller ones.'
interesting stuff.maybe someone (with plenty of time on their hands :)) could do a calculation for all AH guns and give a figure for them all?
anyway heres the chart:
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Thanks for posting the chart - very interesting.
I have been involved in various debates on other boards about the effectiveness of the .5" compared with 20mm cannon. The issue tends to be obscured by national pride, not surprisingly! However, my conclusion is that taking everything into account, and comparing like with like (ie equal weights of complete weapons and ammunition installation), 20mm cannon provided significantly greater effectiveness in air-to-air combat. Having said that, the six x .50" installation remained effective against enemy fighters.
Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/
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National pride, favoratism, preconceaved misconception,are realy the bais for 90% of all debates on the BBS:)
That is a cool chart reminds me of one in an old balitine book on the Luftwaffe I have around hear somewhear.
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"However, my conclusion is that taking everything into account, and comparing like with like (ie equal weights of complete weapons and ammunition installation), 20mm cannon provided significantly greater effectiveness in air-to-air combat. "
This is well reflected in AH. The Hispano is a far better weapon. The .50's primary advantage is longer firing duration--most the planes armed with Hispanos tend to have smallish ammo loads.
J_A_B
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yes IF all 6 guns actually hit the same point you have a FL score of
6x.50cal 1933 m2 = 38.4
2x20mm 1941 M2 = 31.4
2x20mm 1944 M3 = 36.4
but like the explanation says this is weight of rounds as AP and doesnt calculate the explosive part of the 20mm
with the special types like incindaries and german hexogen etc it surely would add quite a bit more as they have substantially more explosive in each projectile.
im not sure how many of the 6 50 cals would strike a single point but this seems to point to a close convergence and close hit being more effective than a 20mm if both are loaded with AP only.
Over a longer range id expect the dispersion would be a major factor.
Im surprised you didnt already have this tony. you being the man for guns on here :D
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The reason .50 cal is so effective in AH is largely a question of package. They tend to come in 6s or 8s - that's an awesome amount of lead if you get it on target.
The 303s aren't actually that bad - but you have to track your target longer to have any effect.
Personally, I'm an Hispano (Typhoon) or ShVak (Yak-9U) man. Although I was flying the 190-A8 in a TOD recently and found the 20mm cannons on that to be excellent. Managed to kill a pair of P-51s, both in high angle deflections. You essentially just have to follow the same rules as when using the Russian cannon.
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Mausers rule !
http://www.mauser-online.com/de/produktbereiche/luftwaffe/index.htm
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Also shows how badly undergunned the early RAF planes ie hurri and spit were.
Eight .30 = 13.6
Two .50 = 12.8
Four .50 = 25.6
Six .50 = 38.4
The fact that just 2 .50's are nearly the match of 8 .30's says it all.
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Originally posted by hazed-
with the special types like incindaries and german hexogen etc it surely would add quite a bit more as they have substantially more explosive in each projectile.
im not sure how many of the 6 50 cals would strike a single point but this seems to point to a close convergence and close hit being more effective than a 20mm if both are loaded with AP only.
Over a longer range id expect the dispersion would be a major factor.
Im surprised you didnt already have this tony. you being the man for guns on here :D
I have various similar tables, mostly prepared by Germans or Russians who seemed keener on this sort of analysis!
The standard RAF Hispano loadout from mid-1942 onwards was 50/50 HEI and SAPI. They never used AP.
The British tested the Hisso HE against the M-Geschoss and reckoned that the two were broadly comparable; the M-Geschoss had more blast effect, which was better in some circumstances, while the Hisso penetrated deeper and inflicted more kinetic damage (large shell fragments) which was better in other circumstances...
Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Military gun and ammunition discussion forum: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/
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Tony could you give us the weight and muzzle velocity and rate of fire for a few guns? like the russian 20mm, itallian 12.7s, 13mm mg131 20mm mg151 and mgFF 20mm? Id like to get the numbers for them to compare with these.
I know its not good for you to give out info from your book but it sure would save me a LOT of internet searching :D
also tony ive always wondered what the rate of fire is for the mg151s in the wing roots as they were syncronised to fire through the prop.Was it substantially lower?
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Hazed, check here
All the Gun Tables you Need (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1840371226/qid=1034004516/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-8488844-1854255)
;)
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Originally posted by Vermillion
Hazed, check here
All the Gun Tables you Need (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1840371226/qid=1034004516/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-8488844-1854255)
;)
What happened to your geocities pages
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er vermillion I like guns and all that but im not buying a book on them just to work out lethality in a game :D
I love books on war and aeroplanes and theres always another i want to read.Im afraid id rather buy more story recounting type of books than technical ones.
R.Shaws book on fighter combat is about as close a book to Tonys as any i have and that just has that one chapter on it.The rest is all about maneuvers and fighting.
whats more I know theres hundreds of webpages that give this sort of info (ie just ROF,bulllet weight,muzzle velocity), I just dont want to go looking for ages, wading through the crap websites drives me nuts!!.
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he's 2
Name Ammunition Rate of Fire Muzzle Velocity Weight
Hispano Mk. II 20mm x 110 (130g) 600 rpm 880 m/s 50 kg
Hispano Mk.V 20mm x 110 (130g) 750 rpm 840 m/s 42 kg
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I'll try to post the requested information later today.
Hooligan
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Is there any A/C in AH modeled with M3 20 Mil??
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http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/8217/fgun/fgun-pe.html
I believe this might help
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F4UDOA:
We don't have any a/c that is fitted with an M3 20mm (though the Hispano MKVs on the Tempest are similar). As I understand it M3 were the standard armament of USN/USMC a/c post war.
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Originally posted by Pei
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/8217/fgun/fgun-pe.html
I believe this might help
Yep, Emmanuel's tables are as good as you are likely to find (I'd hope so - I supplied him with much of the information :))
Since then, I have been doing some more research into specific loadings of particular ammunition, so if you have any detailed questions I'll try to answer them.
Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/
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A 2 second burst from an average(5%) pilot using a 4 hispano battery will land 4.3 20mm rounds. The same pilot will land 8 50 Cals from a 6*50 mount. The Hispanos have much greater after hit damage potential.
That disparity in leathality is well modeled in AH.
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Gun Type PW (g) MV (m/s) ROF rnds/min KE/sec (Kj/s) Projectile type
US Browning .50 cal 42.9 928 800 246 M8 AP/I
US 20mm AN-M2 165.1 799 650 571 M75 AP
GE 13mm MG 131synchronized 38 710 800 128 AP/I
GE 20mm MG FF 115 585 520 171 HE/I
GE 20mm MG 151 115 705 700 333 HE/I
GE 20mm MG 151 92 785 700 331 HE (Mine) for comparison
GE 20mm MG 151 synchronized 115 705 630 300 HE/I
IT Breda 7.7mm 11.3 730 800 40 ?
IT Breda 12.7mm synchronized 36.7 760 630 111 ?
Sov 12.7mm UBS 48 840 900 254 AP
Sov 20mm ShVAK 96 800 800 410 AP/I
Notes:
All rates of fire are the Aces High rates of fire. For what it is worth, Aces High ROF data is a very close match to data from the archival sources that I have.
US data is from a Bureau of Ordnance manual on the M8 AP/I round and from a 20mm data chart that Pyro posted on this BBS.
German data is from a German 20mm ordnance manual and Reichlen pamphlets.
Italian data is from Gustin’s page.
Soviet data is from “The Machinegun, Vol. II” by George Chin, US Ordnance Bureau. 20mm ShVak’s apparently came in a variety of barrel lengths. A longer barrel will impart a higher the muzzle velocity for a particular round. I believe that my figures probably represent a 42Kg ShVak. Most characteristics of this gun i.e. muzzle length, projectile mass, propellant mass and muzzle velocity are generally close to those same characteristics of the Mg151 firing similar rounds. I have seen muzzle velocities between 750m/s and 860 m/s listed for rounds of this weight. AH may model the longer/higher velocity ShVaks or my assumptions may be wrong. Nonetheless the presented data should be useful for comparative purposes.
Hooligan
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wow thanx all for response for info :)
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Originally posted by hazed-
wow thanx all for response for info :)
And dont discount Tonys book hazed. Its not a text book. Its a history of these kinds of weapons.. very good book that I bet you would like and learn alot from.
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Now how come our Mk108 30mm doesn't do this... like it did during an RAF test on a grounded Blenheim?
Jason
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Yea, in AH it just blows the tail clean off. I'd say we've got it pretty good.
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Seriously, I use to have that calculation for every gun on Emmanuels page and several others, and posted on my old website.
However, about a year ago, my webhosting service moved to a new server (mysteriously losing all my webpages) at about the same time I had my HD crash on my personal machine. Which resulted in the loss of the only copies of the data. I never bothered to reconstruct all the old webpages, since others had done a good job over the years with similar data.
It pretty easy to do with a spreadsheet, Tony's book or Emmanuels webpage. Its the simple Kinetic energy equals one half the mass times the velocity squared equation, times the number of rounds on target in a minute.
But the major problem with it, is that it neglects the explosive content of the cannon rounds.
A nice indicator of effectiveness, but it does have its drawbacks.
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Originally posted by Vermillion
But the major problem with it, is that it neglects the explosive content of the cannon rounds.
A nice indicator of effectiveness, but it does have its drawbacks.
If I rem correctly your old web page also had some calcs for converting the weight of explosive powder to an additional kinetic component............ I think you called it "chemical energy"
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Originally posted by Hooligan
Gun Type PW (g) MV (m/s) ROF rnds/min KE/sec (Kj/s) Projectile type
US Browning .50 cal 42.9 928 800 246 M8 AP/I
US 20mm AN-M2 165.1 799 650 571 M75 AP
GE 13mm MG 131synchronized 38 710 800 128 AP/I
GE 20mm MG FF 115 585 520 171 HE/I
GE 20mm MG 151 115 705 700 333 HE/I
GE 20mm MG 151 92 785 700 331 HE (Mine) for comparison
GE 20mm MG 151 synchronized 115 705 630 300 HE/I
IT Breda 7.7mm 11.3 730 800 40 ?
IT Breda 12.7mm synchronized 36.7 760 630 111 ?
Sov 12.7mm UBS 48 840 900 254 AP
Sov 20mm ShVAK 96 800 800 410 AP/I
Notes:
All rates of fire are the Aces High rates of fire. For what it is worth, Aces High ROF data is a very close match to data from the archival sources that I have.
US data is from a Bureau of Ordnance manual on the M8 AP/I round and from a 20mm data chart that Pyro posted on this BBS.
German data is from a German 20mm ordnance manual and Reichlen pamphlets.
Italian data is from Gustin’s page.
Soviet data is from “The Machinegun, Vol. II” by George Chin, US Ordnance Bureau. 20mm ShVak’s apparently came in a variety of barrel lengths. A longer barrel will impart a higher the muzzle velocity for a particular round. I believe that my figures probably represent a 42Kg ShVak. Most characteristics of this gun i.e. muzzle length, projectile mass, propellant mass and muzzle velocity are generally close to those same characteristics of the Mg151 firing similar rounds. I have seen muzzle velocities between 750m/s and 860 m/s listed for rounds of this weight. AH may model the longer/higher velocity ShVaks or my assumptions may be wrong. Nonetheless the presented data should be useful for comparative purposes.
Hooligan
AH 109E-4 guns should be MG/FFM not MG/FF. Also ammunition was mainly mine rounds. 109E-3 was last 109 to have MG/FF AFAIK.
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So, are explosive shells / the fabled M-Geschoss modelled ? If so, how ? Giving them an additional KE bonus seems oversimplified, they explode and don't go faster....
Just asking.
The Mk108 kills just fine, so it seems it has a bonus destructivity - given it's low kinetic energy, I shouldn't be able to rip wings off planes or pound engines dead with a single round, which I do.
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Devious,
that 30mm shell hits the wing and the wing is more or less gone..
If for some reason the wing isn't ripped off, the wind resistance aka drag will do it and rip off the seriously damaged wing.
75mm HE cannon shell would be fine against lighter tanks with 30mm or less armour.
152mm HE will tear apart even the Tigers.
So why can't 30mm with low kinetic energy tear apart a wing..
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Yeah Tilt, I was able to obtain data on how much energy is contain per gram of TNT (any solid data on explosives is DAMN hard to get, understably so) and then was able to find how many grams of explosives per shell, and do the calculation that way. There were some assumptions in the calculations, but it made for a decent "rule of thumb" type of comparison. I could do it much better now, if I ever got the energy to put all that work back into the project.
However, the debate comes down to... "how much of that energy is applied to the airframe" which is again an extremely complicated issue that can't be answered without very high end explosion simulation software (which people outside the industry typically do not have access too).
Again it was useful for comparing the potential destructiveness of cannon shells versus other cannon shells, but was essentially useless in a cannon vs MG comparison. The explosive content of the cannon shell just over dominates the MG. Just like the Kinetic energy only comparison made the cannons look bad in the same comparison.
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I think for the purposes of a 'game' which after all is the main reason we want to know the rough idea of lethality, it should suffice to work out what a small charge of high explosives would do to an aliminium/steel frame.I would be acceptable to calculate a kenetic energy and then Add a numerical amount damage of damage from a scale.
say 10 grams causes 20 damage
then 20 would cause 40 etc
you then add the amount for each type of shell. ie if hexogen is slightly more powerfull than normal tnt then add a tiny bit more.
if no info is available on the comparitive destructiveness of one type of HE over another then just use the weight of HE in each bullet as a guide and agree on how much damage is done per gram.
basically if there is no information available for explosives then surely it would be ok to just make a guesstimate rather than ignore the effects of HE?.
Id rather have a slightly flawed explosive round model than one which has no consideration for it at all personally.Im sure HTC must have added some
thing to the model ?
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Originally posted by 214thCavalier
Also shows how badly undergunned the early RAF planes ie hurri and spit were.
Eight .30 = 13.6
Two .50 = 12.8
Four .50 = 25.6
Six .50 = 38.4
The fact that just 2 .50's are nearly the match of 8 .30's says it all.
Recently, during the Norway scenario in the CT, I used the SBD as a fighter, rather than the Hurricane I. Those two .50 cal. MGs proved considerably more effective than the eight .303 Brownings. Combined with the superior maneuverability of the SBD, it proved to be way too much for the 109E and 110C to handle in a turn fight. Instead of raining an endless barrage of .303, a few short bursts of .50 cal was sufficient to kill a 109.
So, in terms of Hurricane to SBD guns (both cowling mounted with the correspondingly tight concentration), the two .50 cal. guns were significantly more effective, especially at ranges in excess of 500 yards.
My regards,
Widewing
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Hazed, in AH the explosive power of cannons shells is included. Is it technically exactly correct? Probably not, but I think it works quite well for our purposes.
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this is a 109e4's load out
Aircraft Weapon Ammunition Muzzle Projectile Energy at
Type Velocity Mass MV
(m/s) (grams) (joules)
GERMAN
Messerschmitt BF 109E-4
MG 17
7.92mm S.m.K. 785 11.6 3,574 j
7.92mm S.m.K.L. (tracer) 830mv 10.3g 3,548 j
MG FF/M
20mm AP 585mv 115.0g 19,678j
20mm HEI with 3.6g PETN 585mv 115.0g 40,774j
20mm Minengeschoss with 20g PETN 718mv 92.0g 140,914 j
BTW PETN is alot more powerfull then TNT its VARY close to pure nitro..
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the mgff we have in ah arent Minengeschoss. Theres no way.
The e4 should have mgff/m the e3 had mgff.
I dunno about other "mine" rounds, the 30mm seems lethal enough but the mgff on the e4 and 110 and a5 arent mgff/m.
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BTW PETN is alot more powerfull then TNT its VARY close to pure nitro
Not true according to my sources. PETN produces approximately 10% more energy per unit of mass than TNT. And thats according to an engineer I know that works in the armament industry specializing in the manufacture and demanufacture of machine gun and light cannon shells.
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I think for the purposes of a 'game' which after all is the main reason we want to know the rough idea of lethality, it should suffice to work out what a small charge of high explosives would do to an aliminium/steel frame.I would be acceptable to calculate a kenetic energy and then Add a numerical amount damage of damage from a scale.
say 10 grams causes 20 damage
then 20 would cause 40 etc
Doubling the explosive weight doubles the amount of energy produced by the charge, but the blast effect goes up much more slowly, so you don't get double the explosive effect; IIRC, the blast effect goes up as the cube root of the explosive charge.
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Hazed, in AH the explosive power of cannons shells is included. Is it technically exactly correct? Probably not, but I think it works quite well for our purposes.
I don't think it work well anymore and here is my reasoning:
From my experience in the game and bits of info HTC has posted from time to time is seems as if each round has a set amount of damage it does to an unarmored surface. The amount is calculated from the rounds kinetic energy and explosive energy. This works pretty well for fighters since they have very little armor to worry about but begins to break down quickly for other objects.
By way of example, let's examine the effects of an Ostwind burst on your newly perk purchased (perkchased?) Tiger Tank. Against the armoured front hull the 37 HE does nothing because HTC has coded the game is such a way that HE has little effect on armor. But what if the gun itself is hit? The gun is not armored, it is a big honking chunk of high grade well sloped steel, but it is not armored as such. This means that the HE is effective against the hitpoints of gun itself. A few rounds of 37mm HE later and your 88 is out of comission. Realistic? I think not.
Another example is our ability to strafe a building to death with the 2xMG on a Val. It takes a few passes, but it works.
Another example is CV damage. In theory AH should allow me to put together a Hurri I mission in which I and a bunch of like minded goofballs strafe a CV to death with just the .303's. (And yes, I know that the M. A.'s strafed a destoyer to death with .50's but I would argue that was a fluke in which a .50 round somehow found its way to something that went BOOM rather than the combined damage done by all the .50's. See the difference?)
In short, once the game expanded beyond "fragile" fighters to including AFV's, IL-2's and Destroyers, the simple damage model of applying X amount of damage to Y hitpoints starts to show its weakness.
(Someone please correct me if I am incorrect here as I don't want to spew wrong information about how AH's damage model works.)
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Originally posted by HFMudd
I don't think it work well anymore and here is my reasoning:
From my experience in the game and bits of info HTC has posted from time to time is seems as if each round has a set amount of damage it does to an unarmored surface. The amount is calculated from the rounds kinetic energy and explosive energy. This works pretty well for fighters since they have very little armor to worry about but begins to break down quickly for other objects.
By way of example, let's examine the effects of an Ostwind burst on your newly perk purchased (perkchased?) Tiger Tank. Against the armoured front hull the 37 HE does nothing because HTC has coded the game is such a way that HE has little effect on armor. But what if the gun itself is hit? The gun is not armored, it is a big honking chunk of high grade well sloped steel, but it is not armored as such. This means that the HE is effective against the hitpoints of gun itself. A few rounds of 37mm HE later and your 88 is out of comission. Realistic? I think not.
Another example is our ability to strafe a building to death with the 2xMG on a Val. It takes a few passes, but it works.
Another example is CV damage. In theory AH should allow me to put together a Hurri I mission in which I and a bunch of like minded goofballs strafe a CV to death with just the .303's. (And yes, I know that the M. A.'s strafed a destoyer to death with .50's but I would argue that was a fluke in which a .50 round somehow found its way to something that went BOOM rather than the combined damage done by all the .50's. See the difference?)
In short, once the game expanded beyond "fragile" fighters to including AFV's, IL-2's and Destroyers, the simple damage model of applying X amount of damage to Y hitpoints starts to show its weakness.
(Someone please correct me if I am incorrect here as I don't want to spew wrong information about how AH's damage model works.)
er I think you need to do some tests.
303s would indeed shoot a building but it would take literally thousands and thousands of rounds.
AH has a cumalative model which works ok for a GAME for destroying buildings but is hardly realistic i agree
If you go test offlinf with various guns you will find something like 3000 30 cals kills a hanger 800 or 900 20mm does the job too.
now if you think about it most non-hard targets like prefab hangers and fuel and ammo bunkers would indeed be destroyed by this sort of fire BUT a concrete hardened bunker or hanger would shrug off fire no matter how many shots hit it.
This is where the armour model on AH fails it seems to me.If you fire enough shots of small caliber like 50cals etc (ie 12.7mm) you will kill a vehicle even if it has armour which could not be penetrated by that gun. Instead of each bullet failing to penetrate and in effect all bouncing off AH seems to add the rounds up until a certain target number is reached then boom goes your tank.
if you ask me after reading various posts in the past concerning thhe penetrating power of the various guns vrs the thickness of armour they could actually get through we should be almost impregnble in the tiger when it arrives. The thickness of the armour is unbelievable!
Hull front 100mm (3.94in) @ 24dgrees
Hull side (upper) 80mm (3.15in) @ 0 degrees
Hull side (lower) 60mm (2.36in) @ 0 degrees
Hull rear 80mm (3.15in) @ 8 degrees
Hull top 25mm (0.98in) @ 90 degrees
Hull bottom 25mm (0.98in) @ 90 degrees
Turret front 100mm (3.94in) @ 8 degrees
Gun mantlet 120mm (4.72in) @ 0 degrees
Turret sides 80mm (3.15in) @ 0 degrees
Turret rear 80mm (3.15in) @ 0 degrees
Turret top 25mm (0.98in later 40-45mm (1.57-1.77in) @ 81-90 degrees
the weakest point is still 25mm which might not sound like much but its still considerable.
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303s would indeed shoot a building but it would take literally thousands and thousands of rounds.
I have, but it was an imperfect test. Shorty after the Val was introduced I and about five other pilots in Vals *strafed* a town flat in the CT. Granted that in the CT the buildings may have been set to lower value than in the MA but the mg's still did the trick. (At the time of my previous posting I had more or less forgotten it was done in the CT. My bad.)
Instead of each bullet failing to penetrate and in effect all bouncing off AH seems to add the rounds up until a certain target number is reached then boom goes your tank.
On this we agree.
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Exaclty Hazed. Come up with a scenario where 50 cal mg fire can penetrate 25mm or face hardened armour...
It cannot.
It would be far more realistic to just make medium tanks invulnerable to 50 cal in AH then what we have. They were in effect invulnerable in ww2. Think of the code we would save...
as to the tiger. I wish they had implemented the later production tiger 1 so that it could have an anti aircraft Mg.
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Originally posted by Shiva
Doubling the explosive weight doubles the amount of energy produced by the charge, but the blast effect goes up much more slowly, so you don't get double the explosive effect; IIRC, the blast effect goes up as the cube root of the explosive charge.
i was typing up a simlar post when i realised that a cannon shell is exploding in a 3-D object (in the A/C, if explosion is after penetration), where double the explosive power would double the damage (which is to say the radius of equal explosion would increase by ~26%, the volume inside that radius is double the previous volume), or on the surface of an A/C (if exploding on contact), a 2-D surface, where doubling the explosive would increase the damage to the surface area by ~41.4%, but the explosion would almost definitely penetrate the thin skin of the A/C and in fact do double damage (i think)
also, the F4U-4b, which may have been in WWII (obvioulsy it is not in AH), used the M3 20mm cannon. i dont know of any [other] planes that actually carried the M3 operationally in WWII. anyone know any planes that carried the M3 into WWII combat?
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punt jus to see if we are correct about this modeling.
does it indeed work this way? do the rounds get added together in effect making armour a sort of hit point type armour? the more its hit the weaker it gets? or are we wrong for assuming this is how it is?
It would certainly explain the seemingly superior tank killing ability of 50cals as its far easier to hit with them and each hit sprite is many rounds I think so it would make it quite easy to pile on the lead in this way.
using the mg151 20mm you have a slower rate of fire and less rounds per hit sprite and so if this modeling is right it would explain their seemingly poor performance vs armour.
maybe this is the whole problem behind the strange feeling that the LW guns are so much less effective. They are probably accurately done but the way the game interprets hits might throw off the feeling of effectiveness?
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punt jus to see if we are correct about this modeling.
does it indeed work this way? do the rounds get added together in effect making armour a sort of hit point type armour? the more its hit the weaker it gets? or are we wrong for assuming this is how it is?
It would certainly explain the seemingly superior tank killing ability of 50cals as its far easier to hit with them and each hit sprite is many rounds I think so it would make it quite easy to pile on the lead in this way.
using the mg151 20mm you have a slower rate of fire and less rounds per hit sprite and so if this modeling is right it would explain their seemingly poor performance vs armour.
maybe this is the whole problem behind the strange feeling that the LW guns are so much less effective. They are probably accurately done but the way the game interprets hits might throw off the feeling of effectiveness?
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I'm 99% sure that one hit sprite is one 'round' hitting. I'm also 99% sure that a 'damage sound' plays for each 'round' that hits you.
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I'm 99% sure that one hit sprite is one 'round' hitting. I'm also 99% sure that a 'damage sound' plays for each 'round' that hits you.
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Originally posted by Urchin
I'm 99% sure that one hit sprite is one 'round' hitting. I'm also 99% sure that a 'damage sound' plays for each 'round' that hits you.
Yes and no.
Each hit sprite you see is a hit.
But as for what you hear, damage packets are only sent so often. Multiple hits within a very short timeframe will all be included in one damage packet. This is why there are "one-ping" kills most of the time. You hear one ping, even though it's really several rounds combined into one "hit" sent to your FE.
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Have you ever died and heard "ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping ping" after you exploded and you are either sitting in the tower or staring at the sheep before you go back to the tower?
That is why I think AH plays a hit sound for every round that hits you. Granted, I do think it is possible to 'lose' those hit sound packets because of packet loss, but I've asked HTC and they said it is impossible to lose the actual damage packets themselves. Maybe the sound comes in a different packet than the one reporting the damage?
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In practice, AH seems to play a sound for every 2-5 rounds that hit you.
The pings in the tower, I'm not sure of anymore. They may be some combonation of a harmless bug, and lag, or maybe a netcode switch once you're in the tower.
I'm reminded of a whine posted not too long ago about someone who was one-ping-killed, and his killer had a film showing a half a dozen hits, all at once.
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Well, that was 1 Hizooka ping I heard with a number of smaller ones.
And Leviathn himself said he fired all the guns- I've been told repeatedly there is no way to tell which rounds are the ones hitting if you fire machinegun and cannon. So what he said was like 10 Hispano rounds hitting could very well have been 1 Hispano round and 9 .303 rounds, correct?
I know from personal experience that 1 Hispano round will take off the vertical stab (or both horizontal stabs).
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yeah, why do we always (99.99999...% sure) loose BOTH horizontal stabs?
why not just one?
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I have a different theory about hit sounds. I think AH sends packets to your FE around 3 to 5 times a second. In a quarter of a second a LOT of rounds can hit your aircraft. Suppose you take 6 hits. Whether you hear one ping or several pings might also be related to how closely timed the hits are and whether or not all the hits came in one packet or spaced over several packets, not to mention what comes out of your sound card when it is supposed to emit multiple pings very close together. You might take 6 hits in less than a quarter of a second and depending on exactly when they landed and when the packets were sent, they might arrive on your FE in one or two packets. This might be a lot of it. The one thing I am sure of from experience is that there is no exact correlation between the number of pings you hear on your machine and the number of hit sprites the other guys sees on his.
Hooligan
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Originally posted by DaLadyzMon
Now how come our Mk108 30mm doesn't do this... like it did during an RAF test on a grounded Blenheim?
Jason
Which side did the shell hit? is the entrance or exit wound facing the camera?