Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Yeager on December 23, 2002, 12:08:56 PM
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From time to time I wonder about the lethality settings in the MA.
I know that lethality is a setting that can be adjusted in multiple ways per arena. I also know that lethality overall is one of the key adjustables of gameplay. Too little and everyone is disgruntled because they cant seem to kill anything. Too much and everyone becomes indignant with regards to the level of of perceived skill required to suceed.
Im of the opinion that AH has the lethality in the MA set way too high. (A recent heavy bomber escort mission that ended as a sad pathetic joke reaffirmed my opinion on this topic).
I hope that the mission arena is a little bit, actually, quite a bit more challenging and believable in this regard. Leave the MA like it is, just give the proffessional killers, history aficionados and aircraft connoisseurs a place to dwell amongst equals
All the fat and balding suicide pukes, pimply faced fuzz scrotuls and simple ego maimed CH 1 smack talkers (wife beaters) will leave the good stuff alone to the real deals.
We, they, know who is who. Do you?
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Any sort of support for your argument that the MA lethality is innaccurate other than your anecdote?
Perhaps upping buff tuff would be a nice gameplay addition in the mission arena, but nerfing guns in general so that fighters can make multiple mistakes and still continue on as mission effective seems to be going in the wrong direction. The goal of not getting shot in the first place seems like a pretty historical objective to me.
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Agreed Yeager
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Originally posted by Yeager
... just give the proffessional killers, history aficionados and aircraft connoisseurs a place to dwell amongst equals
...We, they, know who is who. Do you?
They call it the CT, don't they?
3 points for the trailing elitism though.....
BTW, I hear IL2 may have the kind of gunnery/leath your looking for. Just a thought.
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Damage realism... I really doubt that you can get there by tweaking the lethality ratings in AH. There are simply too few components that can take damage. Even if AH had a detailed component based damage model I'm not sure how one would go about deciding if it was realistic or not.
I have to believe that coding a "realistic" damage model is both quite subjective and quite difficult.
Not that I wouldn't like to see it done of course...
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Compared to Il-2, in AH ACM and gunnery is practicall non existant. The recipee is to spray and pray from several hundred yards (YMMV).
Even a single cannon round will do damage most likely and gamey hit sprites visible through instrument panel are here to make it even easier.
Just as one recieves a shock when trying Il-2 gunnery after AH, it is the same when trying ACM with enemy on your 6 in AH after Il-2.
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I agree with Hiristo. I cant remeber the last time I was killed in ah inside 600 yards. I havent played in the last couple of weeks though.
In ah any hit on what ever surface, at what ever angle can cause damage.
I was just in il2 and fired a mk 108 30mm round into the wing of an il2 and the round seemed to penetrate the wing and exit without detonating. Ded 6 shots in il2 eat the most ammo. I always look for plane form shots.
Under and up, or slight oblique angles are most effective. Also a breaking enemy offers a great opportunity to get deadly hits. He exposes his eng cockpit etc.
I cant wait to see what 6 50s on the jugs do in il2. I bet I dont see them d800 spray and pray shots like I do in ah.
Ofcourse no icons adds to the effect. Also the 1 size fits all hit sprits in ah makes hit detection much easier. Never has any Flight game come close to "when you think you close enough, get closer".
This type of gunnery opens up a whole new level of acm that best fits with those ww2 pilot stories.
I dont think however that playing with the lethality settings in ah would change it much. they play with 80% lethality over in wbs. They also have buff toughness increased. While you do get a better type of fight there it doesnt really fix anything.
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"I cant wait to see what 6 50s on the jugs do in il2. I bet I dont see them d800 spray and pray shots like I do in ah. "
Yeah, this is the game in which the P-51 can barely break 400 MPH. I wouldn't exactly call IL2's flight modeling "unbiased". It's like looking at the world through a soviet-propaganda filter.
As for AH lethality, the major problems seems to be the bomber formations, in which all 3 bombers still seem to take less damage than one pre-1.1 bomber did. This seems more like an issue with bombers than a global problem with weapon firepower.
J_A_B
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really so you've flown il2s p51?
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JAB, that's like saying all the rest of the world is looking things through pro-USA propaganda filter. Game producers choose in data that they believe to be most believable to them according to their own reasons, and if that's "not exactly unbiased", then we might as call AH "not exactly unbiased", too.
The point is that catastrophical structural damages in AH happen so often, from so far out.
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"really so you've flown il2s p51"
I doubt Oleg and Co. are lying. It's possible that they might decide to do things differently but I doubt it. In any case, it's merely an illustration that NO game can be used as a benchmark for "how things should be" because all game developers have their biases and opinions. I put no more faith in IL2 than I do in AH or AW...which is to say, virtually none.
Anyway.....
"The point is that catastrophical structural damages in AH happen so often, from so far out."
There are several causes for this, none of which have anything to do with the power of the bullets.
1. The AH damage model isn't up to the task of modeling the effect of "peppering" something with bullets from long range--no parts can be "damaged". Either the part works fine, or is destroyed. You can pepper an outer wing with 10 .50 rounds in different places and it'll fall off when it should only make 10 little holes; you can hit a wing spar with a 20mm shell and nothing will happen.
2. Pilots in AH fire at greater distances than real pilots will because there's not much to lose by doing so--being out of ammo in AH is at worst a minor inconvienience; being out of ammo in reality means you might end up helpless in a hostile environment. In order to make game shooters as disciplined as real shooters, you must make shooting unrealistically difficult to compensate for the nonexistant fear of dying. This is further complicated because a real pilot is sitting inside a cramped, smelly, loud, vibrating airplane cockpit while we are in the comfort of our living rooms. We have far fewer "irritants" and so it's easier to perform the task at hand (shooting).
3. In order to get kills in AH you must remove something important from an airplane (like a wing). Real pilots would almost always bail out after something such as engine failure; this is not the case in AH. Trying to make a highly "realistic" damage model in AH could very well end up with dogfights turning into fights of engineless gliders trying to shoot each other down before crashing. This actually happened in another game I used to play--just think of the absurdidity of fighters pinging out each other's engines at 20K and glide-fighting each other down to the deck! Therefore, any change to the damage model must be evaluated for both positive AND negative impact on the game--if you make wings and such tougher to remove, then you must somehow force virtual pilots to behave in a more "real" manner....you have to make them incapable of fighting once something like the engine gets shot out.
It's not simply a matter of "make the bullets do less damage". The issue is far more complicated than that.
J_A_B
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Compared to Il-2, in AH ACM and gunnery is practicall non existant. The recipee is to spray and pray from several hundred yards
Hear Hear!
I've screamed out for a long time now for a good and up-to-date dammage and gunnery modell in AH, it is the ONE thing that AH REALLY lacks, specially compared to newer games like IL2 (where the Dammage modell and gunnery modell seam very realistic).
What has to be done to AH can't be changed by raising or lowering the lethality in the arenas, it needs a whole new dammage system without the "hit here and that exact part falls off".
Didn't know Il2 had a P51 yet, does it?
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"Didn't know Il2 had a P51 yet, does it?"
They're working on it for FB I believe, and Oleg and Co. has always been very up front as to how it will perform. Really though that's not the point of this thread so lets not get distracted.
I agree with you I think the "problem" (if you want to call it that) with the AH damage model cannot be rectified by a mere change in bullet lethality. I would say that there's more reasons for that than you hit upon though, some of which CANNOT be modeled in a computer simulation.
J_A_B
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Yes on the bomber formations and the wierd predictable and easy manner in which they are taken apart. There is still something not quite right about it. Yes on wotans comments.
I know a SF weapons specialist who plays both AH and IL2 and he also states unequivicolly that IL2 gunnery lethality has the behavior most believable between the two, by a wide margin.
Im just saying that I understand the way in which AH Main Arena handles lethality. Both as a result of design limitations (multiple munitions types modeled in every round rather than spread throughout the link exmp -two AP, twe HE, one Incendiary and on and on) and a desirable effect on gameplay (simple fun loving people need relatively simple fun lethality to get a decent return on time invested to remain interested in the game). IL2 is too difficult in the lethality department to maintain the broad appeal associated with mass markets.
Also that I would like the mission arena to be more difficult than the current main arena. Just want more difficulty is all. How much? Lets say 10 to 15% more difficult.
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No il2 doesnt have a p51 yet and its officially not slated as a flyable plane for Forgotten Battles.
Its to be ai. Unless a cockpit is ready.
I dont think Oleg said that if they intoduce a flyable p51 it wont fly over 400 mph but he sighted some documents that showed the 51 tested in those documents couldnt get over 400 and had major heating problems.
Good Gunnery makes for a Great game.
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They're working on it for FB I believe, and Oleg and Co. has always been very up front as to how it will perform. Really though that's not the point of this thread so lets not get distracted.
Thanks Jab, I hope my comment on the P51 didn't sound rude, if it did it wasn't my point at all.
Also know this, I do not in anyway think that IL2 has a perfect FM compared to AH or the other way around but I do think that the gunnery and dammage modell in IL2 is FAR superior to that of AH aswell as makes for a more real feal and IL2 gunnery sets a new mark for all flight sims when it comes to that.
IMO HTC should do what they can to update the (3 or 4 year old?) dammage modell and make it more like IL2.
Let's face it, 3 years neither of us had good enough computers nor connections to handle this kind of dammage modell, even offline games only at the time couldn't handle it.
The computer technology has gotten so far in these past years that it would be nothing short of a small tradgedy if HTC with its highly skilled crew didn't take advantage of it and made a dammage modell and gunnery modell that is more realistic.
So... sorry for going off the subject some. As for lowering lethality in the mission arena, I don't think I'd like it, however I'd really like to try, can't say anything untill I have. But ones again, I think the problem goes so much deaper then just changing the lethality settings in an arena.
As for bomber formations, they drones seam to die so much easier then the player it self, often have I taken out both drones in one pass using a P51 or other 50 cal bird. I've used 30mm and hit the player 10 times and only made him smoke, I'd hit alot of 50 cal in several passes and only made him smoke. Drones are about as durable as paper planes IMO.
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It seems that HTC team focuses on gameplay & fun factor, rather than overall realism of the sim.
And it shows. AWACS type of radar, current hit sprites, simplified damage model, simplified engine management, ammo indicators, questionable 6 view, auto trim, auto take off etc. are very far from reality but serve their purpose in increasing gameplay.
The result:
After couple of hours AH H2H I am having fun. I only remotely feel being a part of some WW2 engagement, instead it feels like some "shoot 'em any way you can" with wings. High fun factor, some things are even funny (weird collision model, for example). But the game has departed from realism.
After couple of hours in Il-2, however, I feel exhausted. Constant scanning of the sky, constant IFF lookout, managing your engine, ammo. Very intense and demanding sim. Attention to detail is incredible (try to attack an enemy truck column - drivers jump out of vehicles and run for cover).
So, if you are looking for fun, go AH. If you want realism, go Il-2. IMO.
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I believe that the problem in AH with lethality is not neccessarily that planes are too easy to bring down, but that the pilots are far more accurate gunners than those of the real war.
As J_A_B said, we are in the comfort of our warm homes, completely at ease. The real pilots were in a turbulent, loud airplane, often in freezing temperatures, undergoing real g-forces, battling with fatigue, fear, and an unruly stick as much as with their enemies.
Watching all kinds of guncam footage over and over makes you realize how poor most WWII really were at hitting other aircraft. There were the exceptional aces with dozens of kills, but they were, well... exceptional.
I recall German pilots being quoted as saying that heavy bombers could be brought down with 3 or 4 30mm hits, or about a dozen 20mm hits, but keep in mind that the average German pilot was lucky if he could land ANY hits in a single pass.
The other thing is that we sim jocks have FAR more combat and gunnery experience than anyone from WWII did, not even the greatest aces come close. We don't die if we get shot down, so we have a lot more practice.
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Yes, but same pilots in AH and Il-2 achieve VERY different results.
After WB, AH was refreshing. Before an elevator damage was losing both elevators. AH actually divided the damage so you can lose only half elevator, along with multiple fuel tanks instead of one. But, essentially, it is still old "binary" damage model.
No loss of performance due to damage, no progressive damage (except fire).
More advanced things like penetration of both AP and HE rounds are way out of reach of this model, it seems.
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Yes, but same pilots in AH and Il-2 achieve VERY different results.
After WB, AH was refreshing. Before an elevator damage was losing both elevators. AH actually divided the damage so you can lose only half elevator, along with multiple fuel tanks instead of one. But, essentially, it is still old "binary" damage model.
No loss of performance due to damage, no progressive damage (except fire).
Exactly.
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I'd like to see progressive damage too, but from the standpoint of a programmer, it is not as easy as you guys think to implement. I'm sure HiTech has the idea shelfed in his head somewhere while he works on a million other things.
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Originally posted by Ecliptik
I believe that the problem in AH with lethality is not neccessarily that planes are too easy to bring down, but that the pilots are far more accurate gunners than those of the real war.
If that was true, then how come in both il-2 and B17 2, i couldn't hit toejam at first, only when i got close enough to see the pilot giving me the finger did i have a chance of hitting and doing some damage
Although i haven't played Il-2 that much, i have played b17 2 alot, b17 2's damage is quite random at times, sometimes you can light them up and they'd still fly, but other times it only takes a few mg hits to make them explode, usualy when they have a DT on.
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Originally posted by BenDover
If that was true, then how come in both il-2 and B17 2, i couldn't hit toejam at first, only when i got close enough to see the pilot giving me the finger did i have a chance of hitting and doing some damage
you're just proving the point. how many times did you die before you got good enough to even hit the other plane? keep at it and before you know it, you'll be getting hits from further out.
it's all about practice making perfect.
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I shot down 5 fighters my first ever sortie in AH. Kind of speaks for the easy gunnery, however that was like 3 years ago now, the DM was very good for the time being. Now, the DM is very bad and outdated while the only "modern" game that has a worse DM is WB3.
Not sure how WWII-Online's DM is as I haven't played it much.