A20 rear gunner is useless! ?

[VR_Dogfighter]

Anyone else had any luck being defended by the rear gunner? I don't think mines ever shot down an enemy plane and yesterday he sat and watched doing nothing whist a 109 swooped down and followed taking repeated shots until he took my back end off. At least the PE2 gunner has a go lol. 

Edited August 3, 2019 by Nake350

[Jade_Monkey]

Did you try ordering the gunners to shoot at a long distance and fire at their own discretion?

 

I don't think they are more accurate but they are more active. I have both orders bound to the same key for when I fly bombers.

[Lusekofte]

If they only could report enemy planes at a distance I myself would spot them, not when you actually got fired upon things would be great

Edited August 3, 2019 by LuseKofte

[COVIDCowboy]

17 minutes ago, LuseKofte said:

If they only could report enemy planes at a distance I myself would spot them, not when you actually got fired upon things would be great

 

"Number 1 is engaging!"

I get freaked out just thinking about it

[VR_Dogfighter]

45 minutes ago, Jade_Monkey said:

Did you try ordering the gunners to shoot at a long distance and fire at their own discretion?

 

I don't think they are more accurate but they are more active. I have both orders bound to the same key for when I fly bombers.

I wasn't aware we had to tell them what they are there to do! ?? I wonder what else they could be for then?

Thanks though I'll try that out. ?

[Zooropa_Fly]

It occured to me the other day that in real life your gunners would be spotting when not shooting.

So in-game there's no reason we can't be alerted to planes in the area by our gunners.. is there ?

 

I just use 'fire at will' and 'cease firing' toggled on and off, but I do wonder if selecting the more specific instructions would make them do a little better. I'd always assumed 'fire at will' would turn them into trigger-happy madmen taking a pop at anything that twitches, but that doesn't seem to be the case (in RoF at least but I assume they work similarly..).

 

S!

 

[ShamrockOneFive]

It's possible that it was just useless. I don't know much about the rear gunner position in the A-20 but there must have been issues with it seeing as the Soviets replaced the position with their own turret in a field modification and the production model A-20s later got a powered turret in there too.

[VR_Dogfighter]

He's an image just before being sent to a firey grave!

My gunner had already seen him swooping and taken a few shots in vein whilst he was higer up. Now the 109 has dropped behind, but you might just make out my gunner actually has his gun pointing to the left of the tail and slightly down for some bizare reason and makes no attempt to fire back! ?

Edited August 3, 2019 by Nake350
Added second image showing rear gun relative to bandit position

[56RAF_Stickz]

I knows this may seem totally illogical but seems to me he is trying to engage whatever is 7.96km away on your 4-5o clock. Assume its an enemy (text seems red to me). I "think" the gunner defaults to engage at long range if you do not countermand that. So, as daft as it may seem perhaps he is looking at the long range target, rather than the one staring into the whites of his eyes. Either that or he picked up the wrong glasses when getting outta bed.

Dont be disillusioned, I fly almost totally GA bombers, and my  gunners aint had a kill in months and months.

[-=PHX=-SuperEtendard]

With just a 30 round ammo box the gunner spends more time reloading than firing

[Feathered_IV]

I could never figure out why the gunners are wherever possible not shown at their positions, but instead are sitting on a passenger seat somewhere adjacent.  They are modelled just gazing into space until they receive some psychic clue and then get up as if to say "ah well, time to get to work" and start blazing away at the last minute.  

[[APAF]VR_Spartan85]

It would be nice to have a ‘gunners to stations’ command... kind of like gunners safe, gunners armed...  The resting configuration could be for take-off and landings.

 

[Avimimus]

8 hours ago, Nake350 said:

He's an image just before being sent to a firey grave!

My gunner had already seen him swooping and taken a few shots in vein whilst he was higer up. Now the 109 has dropped behind, but you might just make out my gunner actually has his gun pointing to the left of the tail and slightly down for some bizare reason and makes no attempt to fire back! ?

 

This is probably because the other aircraft isn't in the gunner's field of fire... which can cause them to forget about it.

 

I spent a bunch of hours modding the Rise of Flight gunner AI, and they can be quite forgetful/fickle in that way.

IMHO, the modelling of physics impacts on the gun positions (making them harder to use) and sighting problems isn't that deeply modelled... so to avoid the AI having super sniper skills a couple types of offsets are used.

 

Ultimately it comes down to three things if I recall: (1) some inaccuracy values related to skill level which causes the gunner to reliably aim away from the target (2) some g-force related values and target lead values which can cause inaccuracy (especially when modded) and (3) the interaction between the relative position of the planes and the ballistics modelling (which means that at certain angles/ranges the gunner becomes much more accurate than at other angles/ranges).

 

These limitations of these systems are most notable when flying a slow aircraft close to large AAA guns (e.g. 77mm Flak)... where at some ranges the AI can reliably get one-shot kills against a tiny WWI scout!

 

We need an overhaul of the AI which deals with (1) better modelling of sighting/ranging errors and (2) errors due to limitations to the gun mounts (e.g. fine/gross traverse systems and traverse times, physics impacts on the turrets themselves, fusing errors for large caliber guns).

 

Hopefully some of the modeling from the Tank sim will eventually makes it way back (possibly combined with inspiration from the new pilot physiology model).

[LLv24_SukkaVR]

Well it is useless, at least when compared to Pe-2. Narrow field of fire, 30 round magazine(lol) and rudder blocking your view. It's absolutely crap and i don't wonder why Soviets replaced it with better turret.

[Yogiflight]

My guess is, the gunner simply hasn't field of fire to the attacking fighter, because your vertical stabilizer is exactly where he had to shoot to. What I do when I get attacked from the six is, using the vertical pilot left/right, to give my gunner with this small adjustments of my heading free field of fire. This did the trick for me.

The other thing is, Fire on your own and fire at large distance had for me the effect, that my gunners were shooting at every enemy inside their range, no matter how few sense it did make. A fighter passing from left to right in 2k distance, well let's shoot, I will never hit him, but he is in my range. 

I let my gunners shoot at short distance and when the fighter is too far away to engage it, my gunner tells me we are under attack. Unfortunately, he also tells me so, when i attack an enemy.

Are there situations, where it does not work? Yes of course, because AI is not perfectly and is not ment to be. We want them to make mistakes, just not when they are our gunners.

And they will do these mistakes, when you let them engage at large distance, too.

[354thFG_Leifr]

8 hours ago, spartan85 said:

It would be nice to have a ‘gunners to stations’ command... kind of like gunners safe, gunners armed...  The resting configuration could be for take-off and landings.

 

 

That would be very nice.

[Yogiflight]

10 hours ago, spartan85 said:

The resting configuration could be for take-off and landings.

 

i am pretty sure, this was how it worked IRL. For example when you see the ventral gunner in the He 111, how can he see if aircrafts are approaching, when sitting on his seat inside the fuselage. He was lying behind his machinegun during flight. 

With a command 'Prepare for landing' you could save some ventral gunner's life, when belly landing.

[BubiHUN]

Simply give the gunners more time to hit them. Dive a little bit.