Heavy Bombers

[Eisenfaustus]

2 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

USAAF raids of 15-30 B24s or 17s

would absolutely kill performance by time dilation on roughly 80% of our gaming pcs. So many AI gunners tracking targets…

[Stonehouse]

Yeah probably true. I was just confirming someone's else thought that heavy bomber raids in the PTO were much smaller affairs not commenting on anything else.

[Eisenfaustus]

2 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Yeah probably true. I was just confirming someone's else thought that heavy bomber raids in the PTO were much smaller affairs not commenting on anything else.

True yet raids of comparable sizes were common in Europe too. Airfields, smaller railway stations ect didn‘t necessary justify 300+ raids. 

[357th_KW]

As a data point, we recently got a mission running on Combat Box with 18-24 AI B-26’s in a large formation, on a full 80 player MP server with other targets etc.  Obviously frame rates suffered near the bombers, but it wasn’t unplayable on my old gaming laptop running a 1070GTX.  
 

I’d bet that with some optimization, it would be very doable to have 15ish four-engined bombers with a dozen escorts and another dozen interceptors.

[Gambit21]

On 8/22/2022 at 6:45 PM, 357th_KW said:

As a data point, we recently got a mission running on Combat Box with 18-24 AI B-26’s in a large formation, on a full 80 player MP server with other targets etc.  Obviously frame rates suffered near the bombers, but it wasn’t unplayable on my old gaming laptop running a 1070GTX.  
 

I’d bet that with some optimization, it would be very doable to have 15ish four-engined bombers with a dozen escorts and another dozen interceptors.

 

Frame rates are not the issue FYI.

 

 

[Feldgrun]

1 hour ago, Gambit21 said:

 

Frame rates are not the issue FYI.

 

What is the issue, and is it something that Devs can fix given the current system?

Edited August 24, 2022 by Feldgrun

[357th_KW]

25 minutes ago, Feldgrun said:

 

What is the issue, and is it something that Devs can fix given the current system?

 

To add one more data point, when Alonzo built the Mitchell's Men bomber map a couple years ago, 8-9 bombers was about the limit to run on a full server.  There seems to have been some significant improvements in the past couple years.

[RossMarBow]

Heavy bombers are boring game play.

 

Show me a game that makes heavy bombers exciting.

 

We have the options now to be playing high alt bomber missions but none wants to do that.

[kraut1]

I would like have the B24, at least as AI:

 

[357th_KW]

Just to throw an update in here, I'm currently running 18 B-26s, plus 4-8 AI fighters on a live MP server and getting good performance with the low player counts I'm seeing so far.  This is currently running through dserver on my i5 13600kf 5.1ghz desktop, with me playing IL-2 on it as well.  My hope is that this could still run well with 10-15 players on each team.  Come check it out if you're interested in this stuff.

 

 

 

[357th_KW]

To add a followup to this, we had 40 players on The Cold Blue tonight.  I was playing IL-2 and chatting in discord on the same box and did some recording as well.  The tick delay got up into the 11ms range, but I got no overload messages, and Simulations Per Second stayed at a solid 50.  Performance felt pretty good.  I think I'll ultimately limit it to 32 players, as you start running into game rendering issues with that many people - 40 players plus 18 bombers and 6-8 AI and you can quickly have 60-70 aircraft in the same chunk of sky, and it seems the game just can't draw them all.

 

Ultimately, I think an AI B-17/B-24 is doable.  It would likely need a little creativity (for example, does the radio operator's gun need it's own AI?  Or the cheek or waist gunners for that matter?  Just use an AI for the 4 main turrets and split the rest of the guns amongst those) but it could work.

[CountZero]

5 hours ago, 357th_KW said:

To add a followup to this, we had 40 players on The Cold Blue tonight.  I was playing IL-2 and chatting in discord on the same box and did some recording as well.  The tick delay got up into the 11ms range, but I got no overload messages, and Simulations Per Second stayed at a solid 50.  Performance felt pretty good.  I think I'll ultimately limit it to 32 players, as you start running into game rendering issues with that many people - 40 players plus 18 bombers and 6-8 AI and you can quickly have 60-70 aircraft in the same chunk of sky, and it seems the game just can't draw them all.

 

Ultimately, I think an AI B-17/B-24 is doable.  It would likely need a little creativity (for example, does the radio operator's gun need it's own AI?  Or the cheek or waist gunners for that matter?  Just use an AI for the 4 main turrets and split the rest of the guns amongst those) but it could work.

no it would not work, ppl would be mocking them into eterity for making B-17 or B-24 and then at best case we can have 18 of them at server that is caped at half capacity... AI big bomber is pipe dream in this game but 3 engined B-29 AI in new game is more likely

[AndyJWest]

3 hours ago, CountZero said:

...3 engined B-29 AI...

 I know the B-29 had engine problems, but isn't that taking realism a bit too far. ?