Dev team,please tone down AI sharpshooters

[smink1701]

I love so many aspects of this game and can't wait for the summer maps.  BUT, when ever I go up against anything with gunner stations, my SP mission lasts about 30 seconds before I'm critically hit.  Is there no way to fix this?  Does anyone else agree that this ruins encounters with anything but fighters?  Stuka's were supposed to be sitting ducks for fighters but in BOS they have the advantage.

[Alkyan]

For stuka fly below them and at the last moment zoom up and boom !

[TP_Jacko]

High slashing attack works well. But how many ai are you attacking and are you alone

Edited October 13, 2015 by TP_Jacko

[Gump]

i agree...now you DARE not fly above a stuka. alkyan's method works, but only of you get the stuka - don't miss or the gunner will set you ablaze in an instant. actually, the fighters are pretty darn magical shots now, too. trained snipers.

[Siipiorava]

Knowing your enemies blindspots is a must.

For Stukas,best to approach them from below, or do a high speed dive from steep angle.

For Il-2, same thing, but below yields again the best result, as you have also chance of hitting the unarmored radiator and engine.

For Pe-2 i've found it best to attack from above, as the top rear gunner has very little elevation. I don't recommend attacking it from below, as the belly gunner has a good view on you.

You should also try coming from the side, that way you force the gunners to lead their shots, which makes it easier to evade.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Siipiorava

[6./ZG26_Gielow]

Keep gunners as they are right now. People get too close to hit something and get shot in the process. If you play as a gunner you will see that is pretty easy to hit enemy fighters coming from behind. Evolve your tactics.

[Remontti]

The gunners might be accurate, but they are also slow. In HE111 the nose gunner is aleays late to fire, because he crawls to firing position when he spots the enemy. When he is in position to fire, the target has gone already. I wish he would man the gun when other crew members spot the attacker.

[Dutchvdm]

Keep gunners as they are right now. People get too close to hit something and get shot in the process. If you play as a gunner you will see that is pretty easy to hit enemy fighters coming from behind. Evolve your tactics.

 

I agree. Attacking a group of bombers should not be a walking in the park. As said above you should consider you're angle and find the blind spot's. 

The gunners might be accurate, but they are also slow. In HE111 the nose gunner is aleays late to fire, because he crawls to firing position when he spots the enemy. When he is in position to fire, the target has gone already. I wish he would man the gun when other crew members spot the attacker.

 

And this! Reaction time could be tweaked.

[Finkeren]

Gunners are fine. They are dangerous as they should be. If they posed no threat to an attacker, there would be no need to have them there in the first place.

 

If I'm careful with how I'm attacking, I hardly ever get hit by gunners. It's only when I get too eager (which happens much too often...   ) that I get taken out for sure.

[Finkeren]

Just set up some quick missions against these supposed 'sharpshooters': 2 missions against 4xJu87 and 2 missions against 4xHe111 all veteran AI. I was leading a flight of 4 LaGGs armed with VYa-23s. All four missions ended with all German aircraft shot down in a few minutes, mostly by me (I think I shot down 3 out of 4 on both the Stuka missions and all 4 and 2/4 on the Heinkel missions) The worst I got was a fuel leak on one mission and only the Stukas managed to bring down two of my wingmen on one occasion (despite them attacking quite suicidally) In the rest of the missions all four of us survived (though mostly my friends were damaged by the end)

 

All I did was use high slashing attacks, nothing magical about it.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Finkeren

[=FI=Blue2]

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that attacking bombers in WW2 was actually a daunting thing.  Maybe it's because so much of the literature, movies etc. out there focuses on the aces, who knock down plane after plane with seeming ease.  Can't blame anybody for that.  That's where the 'flash' and glamour were.  We just need to remember:  relative to the total number of pilots flying for each of the services, the aces were just a small percentage - that's another reason people wrote about them, after all.

 

The fact is that a lot of guys, including a healthy number of aces, had their planes shot out from under them, were wounded, or died trying to bring down bombers in that war.  A LOT!

 

It's also true that the gunner's job was very tough, and that once again, only a small fraction scored kills.  A lot of the kills scored were probably 'group' kills, if I had to guess.  Anyway, it's also true that most if not all gunners received some intense training.  They HAD to be capable of performing (i.e. hitting targets) to pass their courses and earn their spot on a plane.  (Here's one example worth a look.  Lots of actual training footage there.)  When they got there, they were fighting not just for their own lives, but their buddies too.  They were terrified, but also trained, determined, and pissed off!  Would you want to take on a group of those guys?  I wouldn't.

 

Don't let the books or Hollywood fool you.  Tactics & caution are mandatory against gunners - and even then you still might eat a bullet!

[Wulf]

Geez, that was a close one. I thought that last Jap had put little Peewee's lights out but it looks like he made it through in the end.

 

Poor wee guy, he appeared to be semi-retardo.  

Edited October 14, 2015 by Wulf

[Ace_Pilto]

I've never had a problem in this sim with bomber AI gunners. Just stay fast! They are lousy shots.

 

Ace fighter AI on the other hand... Well, it approximates what you see online quite well.

[SvAF/F19_Klunk]

...

take a moment to go in the gun positions and you'll see how limited their range of gun movement can be.

 

S!

^this

[Finkeren]

Just did a bit more toying around with AI bombers and shot a bit of video of it, which I think demonstrates nicely just how effective and relatively safe slashing attacks from the sides can be:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQINqnPBij0

 

Notice that I bring down or seriously damage all four Heinkels within a very short time, and not a single bullet hits my aircraft, despite the fact that I wasn't even very careful and wandered into the gunners' field of fire several times. Still they did not hit me, because I was flying relatively fast and kept a high angle of attack against my targets.

 

If I had just attacked from a dead six, regardless if I had come in from above or below, slow or fast, I would've been damaged or killed very quickly.

 

EDIT: Sorry for the stuttering in the video. I sometimes get that in quick missions for some reason, and Fraps seems to have made it worse.

 

EDIT2: If the quality of the video is horrible, I do apologize. I have no experience with either recording, encoding or uploading vids to Youtube. I only just downloaded Fraps yesterday

Edited October 14, 2015 by Finkeren

[VBF-12_Stick-95]

Ground gunners seem pretty darn good.  Maybe it is accurate, maybe not.  I haven't had too much of a problem with bomber gunners when attacking.

 

From a bomber defense standpoint my issue is the reaction of gunners.  After an attack has commenced, they get up and fire and after the enemy passes, they sit down and go back to reading their comic book.  Really?  Then there is the same delay time to get up and take the gun when the enemy comes back.  Once attacked they should stay at their post until, say, 10 minutes has gone by without an attack.  There should also be a command to tell gunners to take their post and lock and load, not wait until attacked.

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

Ground gunners seem pretty darn good.  Maybe it is accurate, maybe not.  I haven't had too much of a problem with bomber gunners when attacking.

 

From a bomber defense standpoint my issue is the reaction of gunners.  After an attack has commenced, they get up and fire and after the enemy passes, they sit down and go back to reading their comic book.  Really?  Then there is the same delay time to get up and take the gun when the enemy comes back.  Once attacked they should stay at their post until, say, 10 minutes has gone by without an attack.  There should also be a command to tell gunners to take their post and lock and load, not wait until attacked.

 

Or a "Gunners: At ready!" and a "Gunners: At ease!" command.

[Finkeren]

Funny how the discussion turned from "gunners are too effective" to "gunners are bloody useless" in a handful of posts

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

Funny how the discussion turned from "gunners are too effective" to "gunners are bloody useless" in a handful of posts

 

Their accuracy is very high so when they are firing it is very effective... But you can't always do much firing when you're getting in/out of your seat to handle the gun.

 

Happens to me every time I fly the Stuka on WOL... Gunner stands up to fire, Yak dives slightly below Stuka, gunner sits down. Yak climbs back up, gunner stands up to fire, Yak dives, gunner sits down... Generally, this process will repeat until you're a smoldering pile of rubble in the snow.

Edited October 14, 2015 by Space_Ghost

[BraveSirRobin]

Funny how the discussion turned from "gunners are too effective" to "gunners are bloody useless" in a handful of posts

 

Gunners are snipers when I'm attacking, and useless when I'm the one they're defending.  

[unreasonable]

Funny how the discussion turned from "gunners are too effective" to "gunners are bloody useless" in a handful of posts

 

The interesting thing about how the gunners are programmed is that it can make them both too effective and bloody useless simultaneously, depending on whether you know how to game the game.

 

The AI gunners have some degree of ability to lead (I think): they are not just pointing at the target, but I think it is highly likely that the AI gunners are extrapolating a straight line course rather than a curve, while a human gunner would be making an intuitive allowance for the course of the target - perhaps well, perhaps not.

 

In that case a constantly changing lead will always defeat AI gunners, as in your slashing attacks, because once they have determined their aim point using an extrapolated course they hit it with a high degree of accuracy.

 

Paradoxically, if they were less accurate in determining the aim point or in hitting it, they would be more effective against an attacker presenting a constantly changing lead, since their error would sometimes bring the shots onto the target. They would also sometimes miss easier shots where attackers have got stuck on their six, but then humans often get it wrong too, training does not make them robots.

 

Personally I think a greater degree of randomization/dispersion of the AI gunnery would be a better simulation of human performance without making obvious mistakes risk free.

[Duckman]

Hmm... This is (as many here probably know) an old discussion going back to the days of the original Il2, and in all likelihood before that in other sims.

 

While there is plenty of historical proof that gunners could be effective, there is also a lot of research indicating they were not as effective as hoped for and that there was a tendency to overestimate their chances of success based on faulty assumptions. I have the feeling sims are often guilty of the same thing, i.e. making the gunners "theoretically correct" while ignoring or downplaying a number of factors that had a huge impact on the real life performance. 

 

This is from Tony Williams's excellent The WWII Fighter Gun Debate site:

 

 

Even the best all-round armament was never enough. Deep penetrations in German territory turned out to be extremely costly. The most famous examples are the attacks on Regensburg and Schweinfurt: The first attack, on 17 August, resulted in the loss of 60 bombers out of a force of 363. Some consolation was found in the claims by the gunners, which amounted to a total of 228 enemy fighters shot down; even after careful evaluation of claims the 8th AF estimated the German losses to be between 148 and 100. In fact the Luftwaffe had lost only 25 fighters. A repeat attack on 14 October gave a confirmation, if any was necessary: 65 more B-17s were lost. The initial claim of enemy fighters downed was even higher than in the first attack, 288; but even the official figure of 104 was way above the real German loss: 35.

 

The infamous attacks on Schweinfurt were not unique. They were merely the most serious in a long series of disasters for the 8th AAF. In 1943, it was clearly losing the battle with the German fighter defenses.

Why did the heavy bombers fail? Apparently the leaders of the 8th AF simply underestimated the difficulty of the task the gunners faced. There were some skeptics, such as Col. Claude E. Putnam, the commander of the 306th BG, who estimated in 1943 that only 10% of the gunners who could theoretically have fired at an enemy aircraft really did so, and that at least four gunners needed to fire to have a 50% probability to shoot an enemy aircraft down. The commander of the 308th shared his doubts, wondering whether the guns were not more a hazard than a protection.

 

The attacking fighters were small targets in an often confusing battle, and it was not at all evident that gunners would see them, identify them, estimate their distance and speed, aim correctly, and fire at the right time. This looked good on paper, but in practice it was an almost impossible task. During WWII, the hit probability for fixed, forward-firing guns was estimated to be only about 2% for an average pilot; and the operation of flexible guns is far more complex. The German fighter pilots flew short missions; the gunners spent long hours in cold, draughty, and incredibly noisy aircraft, shaking in the turbulence created by the large bomber formations. The gunsights were often primitive: The powered turrets had some form of computing sight, but most hand-aimed guns had simple ring-and-bead sights. The field of view and fire from some positions, notably the radio room of the B-17 and the waist positions, was quite limited. Overall, the German fighters held a clear advantage.

 

Another factor was that the gunners were not trained well enough. After the outbreak of war a large training program was created, but there was little experience in the field, little equipment, and it was very difficult to find and retain competent instructors. During the war some improvements were made, but as late as 1944 a War Department report admitted that some gunners simply didn't know how to operate their gun turrets! Operational units had priority for equipment, and gunnery training was sadly neglected: It was mid-1944 before enough aircraft were made available to gunnery schools and gun cameras became available for training purposes.

 

The assumption that the concentrated fire of a "combat box" would fend off fighters also had a fundamental flaw: It ignored that the fighters would react by concentrating their attacks. Initially the Luftwaffe went after the lower groups, but later it often attacked the lead group, because they knew that it contained the lead bombardier. The formation did offer significant protection to the bombers; indeed any bomber that left the formation became an easy kill. But it was not enough.

 

In other words even the best protected aircraft of the war - the heavy bombers - were nowhere near as effective against enemy fighters as air war theorists had hoped, and the reason for this was largely down to "soft" factors like poor ergonomics and poor training, but also to technical factors like poor sights.

 

The question then is: does the game (and flight sims in general) simulate the above? I would say that sims often seem to take a fairly technical approach, where softer factors (i.e. everything from poor gunner position ergonomics to poor gunner morale and training) are not usually given proper weight. I am encouraged by the fact that BoS seems to model things like response time (He 111 gunner example cited above), but I would love to get more input. Ideally every gunner would be modelled as a discrete actor with his own LOS, reaction time, gunnery skill, morale, technology factor etc. You can compare this to how games like Combat Mission treat individual soldiers, who have their own psychological model nowadays.

 

Anyway, interesting discussion and I'm sure it will continue for the next 20 years,

Edited October 19, 2015 by Duckman

[-TBC-AeroAce]

Please turn up mp AI gunners!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited October 19, 2015 by [TBC]AeroACE

[Sokol1]

 

 

 I am encouraged by the fact that BoS seems to model things like response time (He 111 gunner example cited above)

 

 

Is not only He 111 nose gunner, all other gunners too act as passenger and only goes for fire position when the fighter get close XXX meters, and leave the position when the fighter is XXX meters far away. Rinse and repeat if fighter goes back. Far from a "realistic" behavior... 

 

http://i57.tinypic.com/2q2r9ya.jpg

Edited October 19, 2015 by Sokol1

[Gump]

 

 

Is not only He 111 nose gunner, all other gunners too act as passenger and only goes for fire position when the fighter get close XXX meters, and leave the position when the fighter is XXX meters far away. Rinse and repeat if fighter goes back. Far from a "realistic" behavior... 

 

http://i57.tinypic.com/2q2r9ya.jpg

.

i must also agree with the frustration this causes. the rear gunner does the same thing in ROF which, of course, leads to him not being ready on subsequest passes and getting the plane shot down (or shot up depending on your pov). it certainly invokes a 'lively' dialogue (with him) which, i'm sure, raises some eyebrows of the rest of the members of one's household who suddenly hear such 'discussion' coming from an otherwise silent PC nerd all decked out with a TIR hat and headphones.

[Wulf]

Hmm... This is (as many here probably know) an old discussion going back to the days of the original Il2, and in all likelihood before that in other sims.

 

While there is plenty of historical proof that gunners could be effective, there is also a lot of research indicating they were not as effective as hoped for and that there was a tendency to overestimate their chances of success based on faulty assumptions. I have the feeling sims are often guilty of the same thing, i.e. making the gunners "theoretically correct" while ignoring or downplaying a number of factors that had a huge impact on the real life performance. 

 

This is from Tony Williams's excellent The WWII Fighter Gun Debate site:

 

 

 

In other words even the best protected aircraft of the war - the heavy bombers - were nowhere near as effective against enemy fighters as air war theorists had hoped, and the reason for this was largely down to "soft" factors like poor ergonomics and poor training, but also to technical factors like poor sights.

 

The question then is: does the game (and flight sims in general) simulate the above? I would say that sims often seem to take a fairly technical approach, where softer factors (i.e. everything from poor gunner position ergonomics to poor gunner morale and training) are not usually given proper weight. I am encouraged by the fact that BoS seems to model things like response time (He 111 gunner example cited above), but I would love to get more input. Ideally every gunner would be modelled as a discrete actor with his own LOS, reaction time, gunnery skill, morale, technology factor etc. You can compare this to how games like Combat Mission treat individual soldiers, who have their own psychological model nowadays.

 

Anyway, interesting discussion and I'm sure it will continue for the next 20 years,

 

 

Some very interesting points.

 

I think we often forget the sim/game must of necessity be something of a compromise.  In this instance the devs are trying to replicate the fighting effectiveness of a bomber 'crew' without the members of that crew actually interacting.  So pilots do what pilots do and gunners do what gunners do but there is no effective interaction/coordination between them.  We have a sort of silo effect going on where crew members just act independently of one another with all the consequences that flow from that type of behaviour.  In short, we have dysfunctional air crews.  This also happen to an extent with the formation flying.  The bombers seldom maintain an effective enough formation to concentrate their defensive fire on the most threatening enemy fighters.  Again, the coordination doesn't really exist.

 

Now, I doubt you could really replicate crew interactions in a pc game or if you could I suspect it would be pretty resource intensive so we compensate for this by increasing the shooting skills or the gunners and/or by upgrading the effectiveness of the weapons they use.

 

As regards the info on the Tony William's site, I never cease to be amazed by the arrogance and criminal stupidity of the air war theorists who insisted on sending the 8th Air force over Germany, unescorted and in broad daylight, in 1944.  Despite all the lessons that had been learned the hard way by the RAF in the preceding 3+ years of air combat over the continent, they still clung to the 1920's fallacy of the self-defending bomber.  Just amazing. 

Edited October 19, 2015 by Wulf

[=362nd_FS=Hiromachi]

Gunners are fine. They are dangerous as they should be. If they posed no threat to an attacker, there would be no need to have them there in the first place.

No, they are not. And no, they should not be that dangerous. War has rather proven that bomber defensive fire was insufficient, whether it was 1936 in China when G3M were suffering high losses until escorts were provided, 1939 where German bombers had to defend themselves from a fire of much slower and weaker armed polish fighters, 1940 where Luftwaffe suffered huge losses any time the cover would not rise up to its task, B-17s without escorts suffered much higher losses than when P-38, P-47 or P-51s would assist. Hell, even relatively lightly armed Zeros posed a real threat to B-25s, B-24s and others over New Guinea or Rabaul.

By that meaning the pre-war concept that bomber will always get through was shredded into pieces. 

 

Neither speed, nor defensive gunners would save the bomber. They required escorts and that is why a TEAMPLAY should be base for an effective bombing run, some players provide cover, others drop the pills over the targets.

 

But to the point. Ai Gunners in BoS often tend to open fire at rangers over 500 meters, that is beyond effective range of my weapons (in particular 20 mm, .50 cals tend to be more accurate as they should). What is more their aiming ability and reaction sometimes goes beyond human limits, while testing P-40 I had many times situation when He-111 or Pe-2 gunner would score some hits despite me doing over 60 degree dive on his back, from above - let me say this clear, a suicidal dive was normally prohibited as a very risky maneuver to pull out of due to extremely fast acceleration, yet gunners still can score a hit.

 

Other issue is situation where gunners do not seem to be concerned with smoke, leaking fuel, clouds or other things obscuring the line of sight between me and them. I cant shoot through the cloud, they seem to be able to. And gunners dont seem to be concerned about the fire, bomber is burning yet they keep shooting.

 

 

So while I'm usually extremely positive with BoS and its features, gunner accuracy is one of the issues I've disliked for long and would like to see changed.

 

 

 

I think we often forget the sim/game must of necessity be something of a compromise.

I think there is sort of a compromise, one can aim his gunner with a mouse sitting in front of his desk. No uncomfortable handling, no recoil, no wind blowing in the face. Quite nice I'd say

 

 

 

As regards the info on the Tony William's site, I never cease to be amazed by the arrogance and criminal stupidity of the air war theorists who insisted on sending the 8th Air force over Germany, unescorted and in broad daylight, in 1944.  Despite all the lessons that had been learned the hard way by the RAF in the preceding 3+ years of air combat over the continent, they still clung to the 1920's fallacy of the self-defending bomber.  Just amazing. 

 Especially that before that they (British particularly) gave such lessons to the Germans

 

And no worries, on the other side of the world it was not better. 5th Air Force trying to knock out Rabaul in late 1943 suffered heavy losses, including P-38s. Same could be said of Burma in 1943, where 7th and 308th BGs operating B-24s operating sometimes with but very often without escorts suffered higher losses to the attackers (64th, 50th and 25th Sentai) operating only "lightly" armed Ki-43-II. 

Edited October 19, 2015 by =LD=Hiromachi

[Gump]

...

 

As regards the info on the Tony William's site, I never cease to be amazed by the arrogance and criminal stupidity of the air war theorists who insisted on sending the 8th Air force over Germany, unescorted and in broad daylight, in 1944.  Despite all the lessons that had been learned the hard way by the RAF in the preceding 3+ years of air combat over the continent, they still clung to the 1920's fallacy of the self-defending bomber.  Just amazing. 

 

this always seems to put many minds into a tailspin (including mine). I heard one comment/reason was because they thought the flying fortress was just that, and no fighter could get anywhere close to all those guns, and all boxed up would provide way too much defensive firepower for any attacker to survive.

also, I don't think the mustangs were available yet and the p-47's short legs forced an all-alone situation as they neared the target?

I hear the RAF strongly advised against a daylight mission, but did they have the deadly fortress (guessing at a commander's reasoning here)? besides, the bombers had a much better chance of hitting their targets in daylight.

and, what were the pressures to get the job done with the equipment available? I don't know enough to answer that. was there a time crunch? was Germany succeeding to far too fast? was there a critical strategic, time sensitive objective?

.

whatever the case, the universal opinion seems to be that it was like charging into machine guns on the front. a horrendous ordered sacrifice of boys and equipment. it never ceases to cause gasps and sincere questioning of the competence of command. and, of course, the deepest pity for the souls in those bullet magnets. but, in perspective, one must not forget all the souls being slaughtered on the ground by all types of forces.