Awesome!
With Beta2 and Beta3, I naturally assumed that the gunnery modelling wasn't finished, and the drones probably didn't have any "hit registry" on the wings, and only on the fuselage.
Until now!
I found out that the drones, can actually be hit anywhere, and there aren't any places where just bullets go through!
The gunnery was so unlike from what I've seen in initial Beta or AH1, that it seemed to me the bullets just went through without hits, so I just assumed it was a beta issue. Well, it turns out that when shot from close enough, and really accurately, getting hits on those thin trailing edges of the wings, are indeed possible.
I was fascinated by this and did some more experimenting.
I placed myself behind a P-51 drone in a Spit5, and peppered the thing with .303s. I found that it was very difficult for me to get salvos of continuous hits on the mark. Only a few of what I fired would hit the plane - and most usually, only one side of the guns fired would hit the plane.
"What the heck?" I was frustrated.. it felt like some streams of bullets always missed. I'd see two groups of hit sprites when I was real close, and totally parallel to the target's bank angle.. but in most cases, two streams from both wings never connected in a single spot. I thought, "this, definately means the hit registering process is not finished.."
And then it suddenly hit me. I had my convergence at 400 yards for both the cannons and the MGs, like I did in AH1 !
In AH1, the difference in planes with wing armament never really bothered me, except in the rare cases of P-38 and the Mossie, where the centralized armament really showed difference in accuracy and firepower.
But frankly, I think that's only because these planes had exceptionally powerful and accurate weapons grouped together on the center line - Hispano and the .50 all in the center, in the case of the P-38.
In the other cases, I never had difficulties with shooting in the wing-armed Spit, compared to the centerline 109, be it 100 yards or 500 yards. The Spit was always easier to shoot with, since convergence, or differences in armament carrying styles, never really bothered to show itself in AH1 - whereas, ease of maneuvering always paid off.
Well, it seems that's a bit different now in AH2.
As the thought crossed my mind, I (with some excitement from expectation) went back to the hangar, changed the Spit5 convergence to 150 yards. Tried the same thing again, saddling behind a P-51 drone at close ranges and fired away.
Well, it was definately easier!! A lot more rounds began to connect, and the hits were more grouped together. And number of the "streams of bullets that seem to run astray" was reduced drastically. Wow, convergence makes quite a difference in AH2!
So I tried the same experiment with the 109 - shooting at close ranges with different convergences. The difference in convergence didn't really show. The difference from the Spit5 testing, was that the 109, when shot at accurately, connected all fired rounds to a single point regardless of convergence.
...
I don't know if anything changed in modelling ballistics, but the recent changes of Beta2 and 3, in the 'gunnery feel', seems very good. Mid, long range shots seem incredibly harder, and snapshots also seem harder.
As I wrote in prior post about AH2 Beta gunnery, I'm no crackshot. This could be all placebo, or it might be changed in the final relelase - but currently, I like the gunnery aspect I see in Beta2 and Beta3.
Seeing two streams of tracer smoke pass left and right side of the drone's fuselage, because you were shooting at 70 yards distance, when the set convergence out too far.. was a very cool experience!
...
So HT, just what exactly were the changes?? I'm not interested in influencing any decisions or arguing. I'm just curious.
Did the hit zone become smaller? Or maybe the dispersion became less??? Or could it be the change of visible tracer size influences gunnery this much??
ps) By the way, I saw how CV ack was firing now. No more yellow laser bars - but, bright white flashes of tracer rounds firing at the drones.. looks really cool!!
Thumbs up!
