Range effects and DP boxes

[RWILLS]

I've set up a "mission" using a P38, with the guns angled to shoot straight ahead at ground targets while sat/parked on the runway, and placed a series of buildings at increasing distances. The results so far seem to show conclusively that there are built in range effects causing decreasing hitting power as the bullets travel further. Changing the bullet flight time (?) which is usually 2, appears to affect the distance that the bullets become ineffective and how quickly they lose hitting power. Some of the tutorials available indicate that the bullets retain their damage points over distance but this seems to be not the case. Similarly I have been experimenting with damage boxes where aircraft typically have a separate "pilot" box, or fuel tank box, that is often completely enclosed in the fuselage box. Some of the tutorials have indicated that bullets will travel through one box and into the next, but again this seems not to be the case. Placing a damage box inside or behind another box does provide protection. I decided to put some serious effort into this as I was getting frustrated by some otherwise excellent visual aircraft models that were almost impossible to shoot down, caused by a combination of dp boxes within other boxes, and "systems" being damaged that CFS2 did not recognise. Some explosion effects such as "BOMB" seem to penetrate through DP boxes but the effects are variable, sometimes objects nearby survive and sometimes identical objects further away get destroyed. Other weapons such as rockets appear to be unable to penetrate through one DP box into the next.

[Worthless]

Very interesting. Please keep reporting your results.

[Deathwind]

Hmm interesting. One good tactic to bring down bombers is to stay behind their firing range or the range they start shooting which could be a good distance depending on the aircraft. Some mods shorten the range a lot meaning you can nearly fly into them before they shoot. It’s harder to shoot a longer distance’s as in real life itself but the bullets will take them down if you hit ‘em. Dp boxes work by hit points meaning they can absorb some damage without being completely destroyed. They generally don’t travel through into other boxes like they do in real life in most cases. It’s still a good setup though and where you get hit at on the plane should effect the way it flies. Anyway it’s a great game and it’s getting better as it age’s especially in the mod department not so much in the Windows department where it seems to being taken in most of the flak. Some of these planes are supposed to be hard to take down. Many a German could tell you not to stop firing at the Jug or P47 as those who thought the smoked one realized it was still flying. If you have a aircraft you believe is to strong it’s easy to dial them into a more realistic range or preferred range by editing the Dp with the age old software must people drop out of college trying to learn (Notepad).

[RWILLS]

To help with this, I've altered the stock P-38 to fire fairly level and also managed to change the panel view so that this is also looking ahead level, with the gunsights roughly correct for 600m, and zoomed in x4, which has helped a lot!. If I set the cannon to fire at 769 m/s, with a target 625m away, the bullets start to fall short with the flight time set at 0.77, but 100% of bullets are hitting the target with the flight time higher than 0.77s. I've played with the weight of the bullets and it doesn't seem to affect the trajectory at all. Neither does changing from mg to cannon. The velocity though does affect the trajectory. Initially I thought that the trajectory was being affected by bullet weight etc, but using the x4 zoom shows that the aircraft sits slightly differently each time on the runway. Target is an oil tank with 1500 damage points. At default flight time of 2, it takes 56 rounds of 30dp to destroy the tank. With the bullet flight time set at 1.5s, it takes 71 rounds, and with the flight time set at 0.90s it took about 250 rounds to destroy the tank. At the 0.90s setting, a second tank directly behind the first, so approx. 10m further away, took another 300 rounds without exploding. The point of impact/trajectory seemed to be identical for each flight time setting. With flight time of 0.75s I was getting 28% of bullets hitting/reaching the target. 66% at 0.76 and 98 - 100% at 0.77. 100% hits at 0.78s but not seeming to cause any noticeable damage. In addition it seems that the ammo weight is placed at the [GUNSTATION] location, and that the muzzle flash/firing point should be placed approx. the barrel length further forward in the [guns.x]. If the bullet weight is not affecting the trajectory or hitting power, then it seems sensible to use the weight of the rounds rather than of just the bullet, especially on aircraft where this is going to affect the inertia and cg.

This is what I used for the stock P-38 guns in order to get them all hitting a level target at 600m

gunstation.0=0,24,1,0.08,839,2,0.01,750,2,40,1d1*1 4,0.086,0.298,3.477,5.91965,0,0,0,0,0,0,1.6
gunstation.1=0,24,1,0.08,839,2,0.01,750,2,40,1d1*1 4,-0.2,0.179,3.420,5.91965,0,0,0,0,0,0,1.6
gunstation.2=0,24,1,0.08,839,2,0.01,750,2,40,1d1*1 4,0.2,0.181,3.486,5.91965,0,0,0,0,0,0,1.6
gunstation.3=0,24,1,0.08,839,2,0.01,750,2,40,1d1*1 4,-0.086,0.299,3.571,5.91965,0,0,0,0,0,0,1.6
gunstation.4=1,31,2,0.11,769,0.9,0.05,500,4,40,1d1 *30,0,0.094,3.639,5.74945,0,0,0,0,0,0,4.4
gunstation.5=2,-1,4,0.00,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
gunstation.6=3,21,8,0.00,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 ,0,0,0,0,0

and added this to the panel cfg

[VIEWS]
VIEW_FORWARD_DIR=6.600, 0.000, 0.000
VIEW_FORWARD_ZOOM=4.000

[RWILLS]

To check out the enclosed dp boxes, I took the stock Val, enlarged the pilot box but keeping it completely within the fuselage box, and then increased the damage points of every system except the pilot, to several thousand each, changed the pilot effect from DEATH to BOMB and then tried shooting at it. If any bullets at all where getting through to the pilot dp box then the pilot would die fairly quickly but no bullets gets through. If something else explodes nearby though it can kill the pilot.

[Deathwind]

To check out the enclosed dp boxes, I took the stock Val, enlarged the pilot box but keeping it completely within the fuselage box, and then increased the damage points of every system except the pilot, to several thousand each, changed the pilot effect from DEATH to BOMB and then tried shooting at it. If any bullets at all where getting through to the pilot dp box then the pilot would die fairly quickly but no bullets gets through. If something else explodes nearby though it can kill the pilot.

The bullets don't travel through one end of a plane into another. When the bullet hits it takes away a certain amount of hitpoints from the system it hits and that's it it wasn't designed to break a front leg bone tear through the heart then exit the other side like a deer rifle. Effects does play a roll after a bullet is done so that in a round about way makes certain hits more damaging then others because that fire will keep burning and it's damaging the system it is in and explosions have a big impact too. It's not a perfect setup to real life but we can make it real without getting up in the real air and start slinging projectiles at each other then it would no longer be a game because of the try again button would be eliminated.

[RWILLS]

Results so far;
At longer range >800m the tracer seems to be higher than the normal bullets. This may be deliberate as tracer rounds are often faster through the air (less drag than a normal bullet.) Reducing the tracer % seems to help get more bullets on target at long range, depending on the size and shape of the target. At ranges of more than 850m, it seems effectively impossible to get 100% hits even on a large (Oil Storage Tank) target. Shooting low seems to get more hits than aiming for the centre. I think that possibly, to achieve a spread of shot, the software possibly gradually turns bullets into "flyers" as the range increases. Effectively like having bullets with too much powder in the case, but never having any with too little. Some anomalies in the terrain mesh (Port Moresby!!) also may have affected initial results, so I switched to using Wake Is. I've found the B-25 (TR_B-25C-1_HllsFr) ideal for this as it needs hardly any adjusting to shoot straight and level along the ground, and means I can use the same aircraft with the same settings in the air later. The oil tank target I'm using is AF_OilTankB1, which has a dp box 14m x 14m x 10m high, as a target. When the bullets hit the target, the flash is always in the same place, which seems to be the nominal aim/trajectory point, and with the oil tank at 900m range, I get most hits consistently by aiming near to the bottom of the tank hardy any bullets seem to drop short which I've verified by using a lower building in front of the tank. Increasing the flight time from 2 to 4, generally seems to improve the hit % as well as increasing the power of each bullet. The damage points in the GUNSTATION seem to be about right at typical combat range, with the bullets seeming to be more powerful at closer range (than defined in the GUNSTATION) and less powerful at longer range.