(Deep breath)....Bullet effects question. - SimHQ Homepage (2024)

Most of my enquires have been fairly casual but this one goes a bit deeper...

I own a number of WW2/WW1 flight simulators, some barely fit the discription, and the bullet effects vary from sim to sim. Some are a turkey shoot and others have been made more "realistic" over time with user made addons.

Now, to the point...I cannot for the life of me shoot more than one plane down unless perhaps, I'm using the Yak 9T and I'm getting troubled by this. I have played around with convergences, have experimented with different firing distances and have tried the gunnery training tracks that are around but I'm still not making what I'd call good progress. I've even switched to the easy settings offline to get some sort of satisfaction but they are wost than EAW's vanilla 1.2 and are no challenge at all. I am confident of my flying skills and ability to handle most of the fighter options available but I just can't seem to get kills which is keeping from going online.

I don't really want to get into an "are they not effective enough in this sim?" debate as it will likely end in tears but in your experience with sims, are the bullet effects possibly "under powered" or is it simply the situation that we have been over-spoiled with kills with flight sims in the past?

Either way I'll deal with it and go on but at this point I'm really struggling and I'm a bit surprised (ok, my ego has took a bashing..are you happy now?? ) because I always thought I was a pretty fair shot in the past!!

Any comments, arse kicks, or suggestions welcome!

_________________________
"Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast"

"Cricket itself is an entertainment and does not require such cheerleaders to entertain,"

Firstly it's not easy to down planes. They are ( with the slightly flammable exception of some russian planes ) very tough and as such need one of 3 ways to down em. Hit the engine most engines don't last long smoking - especially the 109's. There is a lot of air in planes and a small hole will not do damage so you need to hit the vunrabale spots. On a bomber thats the engines or wing roots. On Single engined planes thats normally the wing routes. Exception being the migs as they are self combusting .

Easiest to down IMO is the ju52 ( I've done 8 in one Il2-I gun load ), hardest probably a 323 especially in a tight group as they have a lot of guns and can take a lot of damage or the fighters. On German fighters especially body shots rarely do bad damage. The armour plate stops you getting the pilot and engine, U need to try to get at the engine ( say when he banks ) or take a wing off. U can shoot em down with body shots but it's hard, unreliable and takes time.

I think depending on what sim you played before, it can be a case of being overspoiled with easy kills in other sims. Before IL2 i played Rowan's BoB and i actually found BoB more difficult WRT shooting than IL2. But if you take EAW as previous sim, it might be a totally different story.

But the shooting difficulty in IL2 varies with each planetype gamesetting and convergence setting. BTW if the cannon is in the nose its convergencesetting isn't important. What works best for me is to hold fire until really close (<100m.).

For easy shooting without making 1 ping kills (big cannons), i like the I16 type24 It has the most amazing lazercannons that can blast wings off a 190 if you aim in the right spot. And the tiny popguns gan saw a 109 fuselage in 2 and in the process kill its pilot. It's almost like they don't do damage until you see the PK message appear. German MG's OTOH don't seem to have any effect whatsoever though

In the I16T24 if you don't use your ammo the spray and pray way, you can make a 4 kill sortie on the cannons alone. Which means you may still have some ammo left for the MG's.

Or you could fly on no co*ckpit servers. That will make a difference in your deflection shooting. There the otherwise "impossible" deflection shots are possible

Overall in IL2 i find gunnery with the German planes generally more difficult.

I had the very same problem (and still do, to a degree) when I first started flying IL-2.

I came from mainly the CFS series, so I was use to one shot in the wing tip sent them (and me) crashing down. I got IL-2 and couldn't shoot a plane down with 10,000 rounds.

Then after playing for a while I started seeing how it was important to hit the planes in 'vital' areas. I see some planes I have shot up that have holes in their wings, but I didn't hit the 'spar' very much. So his plane is still flying, though probably not too well. Other times I will get off just a few rounds in the 'firewall/wing root' area and down it will go in pieces.

I'm still a lousy shot, but feel real good when I do get those 'perfect' shots.

Actually, Ogdens, I'd like to ask a related but far more embarrassing question than yours. It's along the same lines, though, so I don't feel like I'm hijacking the thread.

Basically, what are the distance units on the aircraft labels? If you set your convergence range to 500m, should you open up when the label says .50 or when it says .05? .50 looks much more like 500m, but the target is so small at that range that I can't imagine anyone being able to chose specific areas to hit. By contrast, .05 looks far more reasonable a distance, but doesn't look like 500m.

Needless to say, I'm something of a newbie...

The icon base unit for distance is kilometer / kilometre, km for short.

one km = 1.0 km = 1000 m

So 0.5 is actually 500 metres, 0.05 ist 50 metres.

[edit]: I nearly felt another presence while typing this

[This message has been edited by ADorante (edited 12-21-2002).]

.50 is 500 metres. Which is terribly long range to engage. Set convergence 150m and engage from that distance, and you'll get results.

I think the bullet efficiency is pretty much ok, but there just isn't enough vulnerable things in the aircraft models (oil tanks, radiators, etc.). But I suppose we have reasonable hope for improvement in this section of the game when FB comes.

-jippo

There's a reason why the ac look so small at 500m (0.50km) it's because it's 500m away . I set my convergence to 150m (0.15km) and rarely fire beyond that. Usually well under 100m.

Hey Oggie.

1st off I suspect that 90% of the time you've already mortally wounded the ac but continue to fire 2 or 3 times more rounds in you don't need to. In my Barbarosa campaign I scored a quintuplit and two sextuplits scores, that's 1 I-16, 2 LaGG's and 14 IL2(early) from a 109F4. one LaGG and at least 4 IL2's went down (and credited) well after I sent a single solid burst into the engine before having to break off because of some rude dude on my 6. Another 2 IL2's went down with a short mg burst into the rad. If they're smoking, they'll not likely make it home. The problem there is that there's a chance they'll successfully land or, more likely, your mates will claim it.

Wings come off easier id hit edge on rather then a deflection shot. One or 2 20mm hits and the spar breaks. Rear fuselages, starting from behind the wing trailing edge, are removed easier if you can get a slight deflection. Solid hits in the engine that gets it smoking will be enough, but takes a minute or 2 before quits. A good co*ckpit hit is always good. Radiators can be taken out easily with mg fire, but again, will take time to take effect.

In other words, you don't have to keep firing til it disintegrates. After awhile you'll be able to judge when you've made a killing blow.

[This message has been edited by Sulla (edited 12-21-2002).]