Fixing HO in the game

[Sancho]

Originally posted by Toad:
There are two top-secret weapons for avoiding death by HO.

One is the stick.

The other is the rudder.

I think you forgot high latency and packet loss.  

[DamnedATC]

Do the 50% thing for HO's.  After flying Air warrior for 5 years, where HO's are very rare, you will see people  flying skills come more into play.  If the HO does not work for the most part you will see many more engagements, where the Hi/low yo yo, immelman, hammerhead, etc will be a big player.  It takes little skill to try to HO someone.  Make the dogfight a match of wits and skill.  The HO is Too big a player in the outcome, it only needs to be less effective.  

ATC

[Buzzbait]

S! Toad

"I think you'll get far closer to the truth with the equations than the memoirs."

Do you know how arrogant that sounds?  Do you, the dweeb behind your blue screen pathetic representation of a fighter really think you know more about the reality of air to air combat than someone who was really there, who was Brave enough, Precise enough and Intelligent enough to excell?

This kind of reminds me of the Idiots in early '60's USAF who insisted dogfighting was a thing of the past, that combat would be a matter of missiles fired from beyond the horizon and that guns were unnessesary weight.

Too bad that Vietnam came along as a nasty wakeup call for all those pilots who had believed the magical words of the slide rule practicioners.  Who found themselves in very sticky situations with so-called 'obsolete' Mig-17s on their butts.

Do you think all those WWII pilots are lying about the difficulty of gunnery at long ranges?  That there is some kind of twisted conspiracy which crosses national boundaries and language barriers?

Yep, I bet you watch the X-Files too.

[AKDejaVu]

I question "All I know, is that all the first hand accounts I have read from pilots of WWII, reported 99% of kills as happening at way under the ranges which kills happen in AH."

Do you know what range 99% of all kills in AH happen at?

I know what range 99% of my kills happen at.. and I'm sure its also way under the range you think 99% of AH kills happen at.

I know what range I get kills at... and I know what range I get killed from.  Just what range do you think that is?

I also get a chuckle out of people that make people out to be heroes after reading their memoirs.  Seems for every memoir ever written, there were always people in the background saying "I guess it kinda happened like that".  Embeleshment is seldomely left behind.

Now.... go out and fire a .50 calibre weapon.  See how difficult it is to hit a 10' target with it from say 600 yards.  Then try to imagine 6 of them firing 3600+ rounds per minute.  That is what we can call real life experience.  That way you don't have to come here and proclaim that you know more about gunnery because you read someone's memoirs.

AKDejaVu

[Baddawg]

Funny thing math.  Math  dictates buy this rifle because by the numbers its  trajectory is flater its velocity faster and it packs alot of punch on impact if using as say... Nosler partition bullet.
 Purchase gun... go out with old farmer relative with an old .303 both of ya  shoot a deer.
Hey the math is right your deer is dead  it has a hellova big hole in it but its dead nontheless.
Look over at the old farmer..  wow his deer is dead also ! The hole is not as big and when he guts it the inside aint a big  pulpy mess like you got.

 The Math is 100% correct The bullet travelled  faster ,flater and packed more  punch then its  advisary.
 But one thing math cant calculate is death.
Sure it can calculate  energy on impact, but the old hunters axiom still rings timelessly true.... it aint the size of the  bullet its the placement.
 Both kill, one just makes more of a mess is all  .

[Toad]

Yah, Buzz, I'm sorry. You are ABSOLUTELY right.

I will help you in your new campaign to get HTC to do all programming from pilot memoirs.

Trajectory, Rate of Fire, Turn Rates, Rate of Climb, Corner Speed...

We'll just dig up a bunch of memoirs from pilots that flew each plane and use those.

After all, what good is arrogant old empirical data?

Especially when we have "total recall" completely unbiased memoirs?

I surrender to your inescapable logic that this would make the game "better".

 

[AKSWulfe]

Remove icons, you'd see how close you would have to get to hit the target.

Icons assist us in longer range shots.

Do I think we should remove icons? Sure man, I also think that Mars is going to be impacted by a meteor tommorrow, thus sending it out of orbit and spinning so fast that a strong gravity field is created and sucks the Earth into it's surface where we all die... we will collide with Mars by 2002.

 
-SW

[Cobra]

Uhhmmm, I'm not real sure there Buzz, but I think Ole' Toad has more hours in more different type of aircraft than I have sox! (I wish my logbook read like his!)

Plus, he actually does the research and gets "Data" to back up his positions.


BTW, Buzz, what are the effective ranges of the .50 cal weapon of the Mustang, the 20mm Hispano of the Spit and the 20mm of the FW190?

Cobra

[Westy MOL]

IMO making a global arena setting of tossing out HO's for fighters, as AW does, is for the birds. All that accomplishes is the removal of a necessity to learn more ACM and SA skills.
 Also, not having to deal with HO's only makes the AH leaning curve shallower. HO's were a realistic threat in RL and a lack of HO's, such as in AW, does nothing for AH or any other sim at all other than make it easier to fly. Perhaps that is one reason AW should stick with HO's and other games aspiring to be more of a game->simulation should not.
 
 
 Will we be seeing a request for the AW LCOS dive bombing sight (circa 1969) on fighter aircraft next?  

 How about glass cockpits ala Fighter Ace?

   Westy

[Nifty]

Instead of removing Icons, change the way the information of icons are represented.  Keep the country, even the plane type.  2 mi is good for visual ID in the game.  Get rid of "laser range finder"  Visual range cues pretty much kick in under 1000yds on your monitor anyways.  Replace the finder with a rate of closure, either numerically, or a bar of some sort.  Everyone I've seen that wants to keep icons the same says we need the range number to determine if the target is coming to you or going away from you.  Rate of closure gives that directly, without giving away range to target.  Sounds like a good compromise to me.

[Hangtime]

*sigh*   Again? The old worn, chipped dog-eared and by now truly stinky "That ain't the way i heard it wuz way back when..."

We ain't flying 'back then'. We ain't at 28k with a pair of frozen lumps fer feet, with 15% of the the electrical system futzed out, with a drop tank that won't release, a radio that refuses to xmit, a balky #3 cylinder and more worries tha ann landers...

We got it EASY... too easy.
Quit yer squeakin, and go fly yer nice safe computer game.  

[Nifty]

Originally posted by Hangtime:
*sigh*   Again? The old worn, chipped dog-eared and by now truly stinky "That ain't the way i heard it wuz way back when..."

We ain't flying 'back then'. We ain't at 28k with a pair of frozen lumps fer feet, with 15% of the the electrical system futzed out, with a drop tank that won't release, a radio that refuses to xmit, a balky #3 cylinder and more worries tha ann landers...

We got it EASY... too easy.
Quit yer squeakin, and go fly yer nice safe computer game.  

I put those frozen gel pack things on top of my rudder pedals and fly barefoot for that effect!  I purposefully don't drop my tanks sometimes.  I will do a dive bomb, and not release.  I'll have "gun jams" too!!!   I don't always use the radio either!  I kill the engine at random times.  

hehe, now, other than the ice gel packs, I think i've done all of those in game on accident before!   Nothing like missing the radio key and starting to type and watching your plane do lots of fun stuff!  

[DamnedATC]

Originally posted by Westy MOL:
IMO making a global arena setting of tossing out HO's for fighters, as AW does, is for the birds. All that accomplishes is the removal of a necessity to learn more ACM and SA skills.
 Also, not having to deal with HO's only makes the AH leaning curve shallower. HO's were a realistic threat in RL and a lack of HO's, such as in AW, does nothing for AH or any other sim at all other than make it easier to fly. Perhaps that is one reason AW should stick with HO's and other games aspiring to be more of a game->simulation should not.
 
   Westy

Good points Westy.  I am still "spoiled" by some aspects of AW.  I do not disagree with the Bomb site we use in Fighters in AH.  It does require more skill for that than that "other" game.  

ATC

[Buzzbait]

S! Toad

Yours is the classical response of someone who doesn't really want to respond to the question posed.  Instead of replying, they pretend to take the side of the person they are arguing with.  They pretend to 'agree' to a fictionalized representation of what the other person's viewpoint was.  Of course, their representation of what the other persons argument was is completely distorted, deliberately couched in absurd terms, and bears no resemblance to what they were actually saying.

I have never said throw out the 'hard' data. Of course you have to incorporate it all the details of trajectory, bullet drop, muzzle velocity etc.  But when your model, based on the hard data, is in complete contradiction to what the historical record is, then it is wise to go back and re-examine your model, scientifically of course, so you can determine what may be wrong.

That is what I am saying.

[Buzzbait]

S! Cobra

"Effective range"

Hmmmm....  Now there's an open ended question.

What exactly do you mean by that?  Do you really understand what you are asking?  I don't think so.

"Effective range" is a completely fluid concept.  It varies, depending on a huge number of factors, some of which can include:

1)  Is the target moving?
2)  Is the targer moving towards you?  Or away?  Or at an angle?  What type of angle?
3)  What speed is the target moving at?
4)  What angle is the projectile striking the object's surface?
5)  What type of object is being struck?  What type of armour protection does the target have?  Is a sheet of 50mm armoured glass?  Is it a sheet of 5mm Aluminum?  Is it a 10mm sheet of hardened steel?
5)  What type of round is being used?  Is it Armour piercing?  Armour piercing Inciendary?  High Explosive?

If a finite set of parameters is set up, with all tests done to that standard, then it is theoretically possible to establish a reference point for comparing various types of weapons and ammunition loads.  However, to use those results, and define them as the perfect answer to what is "Effective Range" is a fallacy.

For that type of data, I would refer you to the sites set up by Mr Tony Williams, or the books he has written.
 http://www.delphi.com/n/main.asp?webtag=autogun&nav=messages


Other data may be found in the records of the Luftwaffe, RAF, USAAF and other combatants of the period.

For a look at the type of manuals issued to the pilots of the era go to:
 http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/air_combat/RAFgun/

You will note that nowhere in this manual are ranges over 600 yrds even listed.