AH Bf09E: Tough as nails

[bub]

Hi All,
I fooled with the dice numbers and found that bumping up the ,30 cal/.303 to 18 and the .50 cal to 28 makes it more real and looks like the actual done as per gun camera footage. Something to fool with, just a thought.
Bob

[Roxane-21]

I agree in some DP files gun damage values are too low. I often change them for these values:

0.30/0.303 cal (7.62/7.7mm) : 1D*8
0.50 cal (12.7mm) : 1D*15
20mm : 1D*24

Then, I adjust the [SYSTEMS] section values of each aircraft as explained above, in order to make them suffer realistically from gun hits.

Gun camera footage you find on Youtube shows the best results. In real life, fighters could sometimes take many hits but keep flying. That's why there were three kinds of claims:
- destroyed (wing or tail breaking out, aircraft seen impacting ground or pilot seen bailing out)
- probably destroyed (aircraft smoking and/or burning, but still flying)
- damaged (visible hits on the aircraft, but no significant damage)

[UncleTgt]

It's tricky to get the balance right. Even the different ways an aircraft dp file is constructed can have a huge effect on "toughness". For example the AH BOB aircraft (Bf109E, Hurricane, Spitfire) have 4 or 5 hit boxes per wing. An awful lot of hits don't do anything other than reduce the "AIRCRAFT" total damage. Put them against a single wing & wingtip dp file opponent & they can take damage all day long.
A consistent hit box method & corresponding gun power calculation is necessary to achieve some sort of balance.

IIRC I've posted these before. They are the tools I use to adjust gun hit points & damage box points to try to achieve that balance. I have an excel spreadsheet for calculating gun damage dice, & a newer, developing spreadsheet I use as a guide when adjusting hit box damage points. The latter spreadsheet is oversimplistic, but it's a start.

[bearcat241]

Good points UT, especially on the comments about box counts. The 4 or 5 hit boxes per wing is my preferred method in all DP construction, as well as with the fuselage profiles. If I download a model with only one or two boxes its wings or fuselage configuration, i immediately go to work on it. I keep the box sizes tight and to a minimum to avoid hits well outside of the visual model.

I also found the 'interrupt' column in the Secs per round section of your gunmounts doc of particular interest. The interruptor mech has never been brought up in past forum conversations here about secs per round values in gunstations. Clearly this should have an impact on gunfire effects for models firing through the prop.