Originally posted by hitech
Some thoughts.
They do change size with range.
Well, that's definitely nice to know. But regarding the rest? Gun shake based on caliber would increase immersion factor. Particle-based hit effects would look a lot better at close-medium range, especially with GVs.
Very doubtfull.
I remember Pyro saying somewhere that he did not want to model individual types of ammunition. Whether or not this is indeed a factor in the high-lethality we have I don't know. I do know that modeling round types accurately would increase the amount of realism present.
This would make 1 ping/golden bb kills even happen more.
After makeing the vehicle damage model i've found that drastic randomes caused by things like armor penitration, fuel lines,oil lines and such increase the perseption that there are bugs. Even thow the idea sounds great, people tend to want to see consitancy of out come. I.E. you would be constantly hearing 2 things.
"This damage model is porked , I was hit by 1 303 and it killed my engine"
"This damage model is porked, I put 50 rounds into that plane and it didn't die"
We hear those exact 2 things all the time with the vehicle damage.
At the current lethality levels, you're probably right. It would also cause more varied damage effects; which would be a vast improvement over the current "it works or it's destroyed" system we have. With regards to the GV damage model, it's been a long time since I opened up at a GV with 50 cals and saw any effect. The legendary Hizooka seems to cause some damage against tanks when the moons are aligned, but for the most part they bounce off as often as .50 cals do. At least from what I've seen in H2H.
This would have very little impact on planes. We do have this type of model running with the ground vehicles. But exactly how much armor is on a plane, it mostly only applies to the pilot.
With gound object damage, the model is very simple, range dosn't even effect damage. But other than a few special objects like ships, it's realy not worth the setup time to define all the penation details of an ground target.
Agreed, fixed ground targets are simplistic enough as to not require a highly detailed damage model. Though I would say that impact velocity and energy should be a part of the damage done to them.
Aircraft, vehicles, and ships should all be playing by the same rules, though. With the current GV armor model being as detailed as it is, you could port that over to ships with ease. When combined with a more detailed DM for ships, people would be able to knock out all sorts of things on them. Aircraft also need a detailed armor model, and armor in any AC affects more than just the pilot. Ammo magazines, fuel tanks, engines, windscreens, and so on were armored in one aircraft or another. Not allowing the DM to reject some aircraft hits based on energy/impact angle leaves us with a DM similar to to the old GV model. With that model we were seeing regular .50 cal kills of GVs, and 20mm cannons were more like lasers.
Penetration and impact are 2 different items. If anything explosive shells are not lethal enof.
Indeed they are two different items, and without one the other can't happen. But explosive shells are APHE in the current model, not strictly HE rounds. While the blast effect might be undermodeled, the penetration factor is overmodeled.
I would say that the norm is not getting kills at long range. So if you wan't to disscuss this start by defing RARE, 1 in 10 1 in 100?
Then take a look at the main and see what the kill ranges are.
2nd start with the assumtion that kill ranges will be longer in AH than antidotal information provides. Because it is a given that AH players have at least 100 times more practice than in real life.
You can also find out the dispersion on all aircraft by using the .target command.
I can not verify what the kill ranges in the main are as they vary from encounter to encounter and pilot to pilot. In addition, the main never reports the range a person was killed at. WW2 pilot reports with regards to range are rarely accurate (as stated by Tony) which makes figuring things out all the more difficult.
As for player experience, that has been known for quite some time as a major factor in getting kills at longer distances. As strictly an example, if the average WW2 kill was bagged at 300 yards, the average AH kill would probably be around 450 yards. Possibly even further out, I'm not entirely sure.
Yes, the .target command has come in handy in the past for pointing out dispersion bugs and I'm very glad we have it available. The plus-sign dispersion hiccup last year was fixed with the help of it.
Is it realy hurting the game? How many good gunners in AH do you know that spray and pray. I Think it happens more to new guys then people you would be concerned about hitting you.
Personally I haven't seen too much spray n pray, but the problem has been brought up before. This was simply a suggestion about what might curb it. Besides, adding somesort of gun malfunctions would make things a tad more interesting.
It would make thing harder, but would it be realistic? Tracers are large primarly so you can see them when being shot at. From the shooter point of view they are down to 1 pixel size very rapidly anyway, so are you asking for tracers to disapear out side of 200 yards? If so how far in real life can you see the tracers.
Tracers weren't used as an alarm signal for enemy pilots to know when they're being shot at, tracers were there to aid the aim of the pilot doing the killing. Take a screen shot of the AH tracer when shooting from any GV, then look at day and night photos of actual MG fire. AH tracers during the day glow from all angles, real tracers only glow from the rear. Look at any Vietnam war footage from a door gunner's perspective and watch the tracers as he fires. In AH we'd see thirty-foot long bolts of light arcing for the ground. In the footage I've seen the tracers are rather small, but they do glow rather brightly. Another aid for tracers was very well known: color. AH tracers are yellow universally. Basing tracer color by country would create a more impressive visual effect, and let you know roughly what country of AC was shooting at you.
Rockets do NOT fly in the direction a plane is pointed in real life.
Yes, they do. If the rocket motor, nose, fins, and body of a rocket are fixed to the rack, and the rack is anchored to the wing, the thrust from the rocket being fired will always be exactly perpendicular to the wing. Unless, of course, they had rotating rocket launchers in WW2 that would aim the rockets in some different direction. Also, according to this statement, you can hit ground targets with rockets even if you're not pointing the nose of the aircraft at them. Getting the nose on target is a basic requirement of using any ballistic weapon, rocket or bullet.
We could intruduce the wind factors you are talking about, but inflight wind is constant. 95% of the time turblance is only down low.
Inflight wind is currently no better than most primative flight sims. It is always blowing at a constant speed from a constant vector and only changes when the host settings are changed. A more detailed ballistic model would require more realistic weather, which is why I mentioned the wind. Deja once asked if cross-wind dynamics were modeled (the thread link above) but without a more detailed weather system any additional ballistic effects would be too predictable for the pilot.
Flakbait, thanks for posting in a non combative tone. You discused the issues and gave your view points with out pulling all the other crap into the post. These type of post are the ones that can be responded to.
HiTech
Again, you're welcome HT.
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Flakbait [Delta6]
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