decreasing bullet effectiveness with increased range

**RWILLS** · April 18th, 2022, 07:30

To try to get a bit more realism, I've been playing with the flight time (maximum range) of individual machine guns, (and "hit points") in order to try to simulate the fact that a machine gun bullet will cause much more damage at short range than it does at distance.
CFS2 gives the same number of "hit points" irrespective of range, but in reality the smaller size machine guns are/were relatively useless at longer rangehit points revised.txt

For 6 and 8 gun fighters it's fairly simple to adjust each individual gun, so that a burst of fire gets progressively less effective as the range increases.

For the ZERO I've left the cannon as they are, but doubled the number of machine guns, each with half the firing rate, and turned off the tracer on the "duplicate" guns.

**peperez** · April 18th, 2022, 09:12

...the bomber's gunners are too precise. Uncle TGT uses a little deviation in his DP's. In my opinion, the gunners engage the interceptors too early. In my opinion, we need to create a new DP Table with 30% less range and a small DP value for the bombers gunners, around two or three points.

Pepe

**RWILLS** · April 19th, 2022, 04:25

Originally Posted by peperez

...the bomber's gunners are too precise. Uncle TGT uses a little deviation in his DP's. In my opinion, the gunners engage the interceptors too early. In my opinion, we need to create a new DP Table with 30% less range and a small DP value for the bombers gunners, around two or three points.

Pepe

I find that a G4M2 Betty will open fire on me (in a P-40) at about 400m if I gradually approach from dead astern, level, (with the Betty rear cannon set to 900m in the dp).
If I set the rear cannon to 2000m, (and the bullet flight time to 4s so that it will get that far at 555 m/s) then the Betty will open fire at about 750m.

I am going to try some other values, and some bigger aircraft to see if that makes any difference.

***UncleTgt*** · April 19th, 2022, 05:39

I dont think the Sims creators get enough credit - they were designing something to run under WIN95/98 & PC hardware around at the time, so some compromises were inevitable.

I don't think the decreasing hitting power by range is one of the significant flaws. After all, which type of round? AP bell, yes, it loses power with time & range, but anything with an explosive component - APHE, etc. will be just as deadly within the 2 sec window that the sim actually tracks it for.

If you think it tracks any bullet for longer, just fly high over a stock JAP destroyer & wait for the flak to reach out to you - it never does.

CFS 2 treats everything using the same ballistics/fire control logic.

If you have something in the DP that uses the cannon trigger, the AI will never use it. Try a QC against the stock George to see what I mean.

AI bomber gunners will track & fire as though they are fighter jocks, able to manoeuvre their own position "at will", & with no restrictions with ammo supply to worry about too.

Actual bomber gunners "sprayed", in relatively short bursts, often outside killing range as much to scare as anything.

Handheld weapons were harder to hold on a target than powered/turretted weapons, & these were less effective than aiming the whole aircraft (fixed guns).

So, flexible guns are less accurate than turretted guns, & these are less accurate than fixed weapons.

All AI guns should use the MG trigger in the DP file (Gunstations).

I double the time between rounds for turretted guns
I quadruple time between rounds for flexible weapons

Usually the tracer %age in the DP is set at 40% for fixed weapons.
I change this to 55% for turrets & 60 or 70% for handheld weapons.

What you see is plenty of tracer, but there are not many rounds that can really hit & hurt you.

I deal with the "deadly" aim of gunners by introducing an "aim-off" error (GUNS section)

Turretted/stabilised weapons have a +/- 0.3 error in EITHER Up/Down OR L/R aim off sections
Handheld weapons get the +/-0.3 error in both axes.

What you see is (wildly) innacurate fire at first. This gets closer as: i) you close the range (angle-off error is smaller), ii) the AI learns to adjust for the Gun aim off error.

Lastly, as RWILLS has noted, the DP value for AI engagement range is often not what you experience in the sim.

So, I calculate some AI engagement ranges (based around the 2 sec flight time) & adjust:
flexible gun ranges are reduced a bit, tail gun ranges are increased a bit

Bomber gunners often reported engaging out to 1400-1500ft (500m), so I'm finding you need to set bomber gunner ranges AT LEAST 500m, & sometimes 700m (or more).

Even so, I often find I'm able to get quite close to an AI bomber formation before they seem to notice me & take me under fire. I think the aircrew quality is obviously an influence here, but as most missions have Veteran crews (for a variety of gameplay reasons), it's obvious to me that the AI range in the DP file has to appear to be far to large a number.

The kicker here is that, once they know you are around, they will continue to engage out to these numbers, & sometimes that can feel ahistorical. It's a compromise. If the gun accuracy has been adjusted as described above, you won't be too concerned about the extra time spent under their fire unless you're silly enough to sit right behind them, close in... LOL

***UncleTgt*** · April 19th, 2022, 05:43

PS.

The same principles above also apply to, & are even more obvious when you look at flak in CFS 2.

The 2 sec flight time governs everything...

So for longer ranged weapons you have to make a "bullet" fly faster, which then means you have to introduce some aim-off errors, otherwise heavy flak behaves like a Flash Gordon Death Ray ...

***Worthless*** · April 19th, 2022, 07:48

Increase AI tracer %. Boy, that one never occurred to me. Great idea! Thanks Uncle.

**RWILLS** · April 19th, 2022, 11:15

It's interesting/useful looking at the AI behaviour, especially for mission building. It's certainly not the same for different aircraft within each category. Missions often seem fine when viewed/experienced from the point of view of the player only, but getting the AI aircraft to perform, especially when trying to reproduce some historical accuracy, can make the missions much more enjoyable.