Issues with turret gunners overheating

[FeuerFliegen]

I have noticed that when flying a plane with pilot controlled guns, they will overheat if you are on going very slow or stopped, but if you are going at least a certain speed, I'm guessing 300kph or so, they will never overheat at there is adequate air cooling.

 

Why is this not the case for turret guns?  I'm hoping this was just an oversight and you guys can make it so that turret guns only overheat when you are going below a certain speed.

 

Also, does air temperate affect guns overheating?  I would hope that if we are in an extremely cold environment, like -20C, guns would cool down very quickly as compared with a summertime environment.

[Charon]

Yes, this aggravates me as well.

 

The MG 17s on a bf 109 can dump their entire 500 round belt in one long continuous burst without stopping. Meanwhile, the MG 15 on a He 111 will overheat and start jamming after only 125 rounds. The MG 15 fires from an open bolt, it's sticking out into the slipstream rather than crammed above the hot engine, it has a lower rate of fire, and it gets a chance to cool further while the gunner is changing the magazine. Why then is it more prone to overheating?

 

All the defensive guns do this. Fighter pilots would scream bloody murder if their guns malfunctioned this often, but gunners have to make due with guns that are barely functional.

 

29 minutes ago, SCG_FeuerFliegen said:

Also, does air temperate affect guns overheating?  I would hope that if we are in an extremely cold environment, like -20C, guns would cool down very quickly as compared with a summertime environment.

 

This shouldn't matter very much. Machine gun barrels easily reach 400C or more; from their perspective everything else is already very, very cold. Since heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference, this amounts only to about a 15% difference between -20C and 30C.

[LukeFF]

Noted and passed along to the developers. Thanks!

[FeuerFliegen]

19 hours ago, I./JG3_Charon said:

This shouldn't matter very much. Machine gun barrels easily reach 400C or more; from their perspective everything else is already very, very cold. Since heat loss is proportional to the temperature difference, this amounts only to about a 15% difference between -20C and 30C.

 

I figure it wouldn't matter much for the peak temperatures, and right when the gun is firing, but I thought that after several seconds of cool down, the outside air temp would start to make more of a difference.  I could be completely wrong though.

 

I went to an outdoor gun range once, it was very hot (middle of summer) and it felt like I was waiting around forever for my Sig MCX (AR-15 variant) barrel to cool down enough to safely place it in the range bag.  I didn't do the same in the winter though so I can't compare.  And I know these guns in these planes have much thicker/heavier barrels than my Sig (creating longer cool down time, but also longer to heat up in the first place).

[kraut1]

I have opened my not up to date 5.101 scrips:

concerning the values for barrel temperature I found in the weapons, the BF109 planes and the HE11H6 turrets scrips very similar values, so I don't understand why the problem appears:

 

mg_ger_mg17.txt  (could be modded)

BarrelTemperatureIncreasePerShot = 3.3
BarrelTemperatureDecreaseCoefficient = 0.045

OverheatLimit = 0.4f // 0.4=700/280

 

mg_ger_mg15.txt (could be modded)

BarrelTemperatureIncreasePerShot = 3.96
BarrelTemperatureDecreaseCoefficient = 0.045

OverheatLimit = 0.4f // 0.4=700/280

 

bf109e7.txt

[Gun=0]
        GunType = "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Weapons/MG_GER_MG17.txt"

        BarrelTemperatureDecreaseCorrectionData = 1.0, 4.0, 300.0

he111h6_t1.txt

BarrelTemperatureDecreaseCorrectionData = 1.0, 4.0, 300.0 // Закон охлаждения стрелкового оружия в зависимости от скоростного напора:
    // первое число - коэффициент коррекции коэффициента уменьшения температуры ствола стрелкового оружия, [безразм.], (>=0), default = 1
    // второе число - коэффициент коррекции коэффициента уменьшения температуры ствола стрелкового оружия, при скорости обтекания стрелкового оружия воздушным потоком, заданной третьим числом, [безразм.], (>= первое число), по умолчанию: 1.0
    // третье число - скорость обтекания стрелкового оружия воздушным потоком, при которой во втором числе задан коэффициент коррекции коэффициента уменьшения температуры ствола стрелкового оружия, [км/ч], (>=0), по умолчанию: 0.0

According google the russian text means in english:

/ The law of cooling of small arms depending on the velocity head: // the first number is the coefficient of correction of the temperature reduction coefficient of the barrel of small arms, [sizeless], (>=0), default = 1 // second number - coefficient of correction of the coefficient of decrease in the temperature of the barrel of small arms, with the speed of air flow around the small arms set by the third number, [no dimension], (>= first number), default: 1.0 // the third number is the speed of the air flow around the small arms, at which the correction coefficient for the coefficient of decreasing the temperature of the barrel of the small arms is set in the second number, [km/h], (>=0), default: 0.0

 

If the values of these files in the current IL2 GB version are the same and the developers are not able to fix this bug it could be possible to create a mod with changed "mg_ger_mg15.txt " values.

 

(For the early BF109-F0/F1 and the early cannon armed Spitfire have created working mod for late 1940 BoB missions to simulate the unreability of the 20mm cannons by creating overheating:

e.g: for the Hispano:

BarrelTemperatureIncreasePerShot = 300.000 // original 6.092,
BarrelTemperatureDecreaseCoefficient = 0.090 // original 0.045

 

Edited July 21, 2023 by kraut1

[Stonehouse]

I think you'll find that the turret definition and plane weapon mount definition is an override/adjustment for the temperature info in the weapon definition. So, I would probably guess that if you felt a turret position overheated too quickly then that is where you would experiment and do your mod rather than the base weapon definition. Modding the base weapon would impact every instance of its use regardless of the individual situation. Note that the 3rd number is in kph and that for instance the He111 had a max speed of around 430-440 kph depending on the aircraft version so most of the time the airflow speed across the barrel will be probably not sufficient to have additional cooling as per the turret definition (ie 300 kph).

Part of the issue is also that in stock the turrets fire very long bursts. This is one of the things I altered in my AI Gunnery mod. In the mod the amount of ammo for the gun position influences the max burst length and therefore the gunner tends to fire in more controlled short bursts leading to less overheating.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Stonehouse

[kraut1]

On 7/22/2023 at 5:07 PM, Stonehouse said:

I think you'll find that the turret definition and plane weapon mount definition... in my AI Gunnery mod. ...

Currently I am in vacation for 3 weeks without PC. If the issue is not solved when I come back I will try a simple stop gap solution mod. Maybe there is one uniform parameter that is equal for all turrets that I can change with WinGrep.

[Stonehouse]

7 hours ago, kraut1 said:

Currently I am in vacation for 3 weeks without PC. If the issue is not solved when I come back I will try a simple stop gap solution mod. Maybe there is one uniform parameter that is equal for all turrets that I can change with WinGrep.

I guess what I was meaning was - if you are using the AI Gunnery mod does the problem persist? ie does the shorter bursts fired by gunners resolve the issue without fiddling with overheating parameters (which may break more than it fixes)

[kraut1]

15 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

I guess what I was meaning was - if you are using the AI Gunnery mod does the problem persist? ie does the shorter bursts fired by gunners resolve the issue without fiddling with overheating parameters (which may break more than it fixes)

yes, this could be the solution.

[[CPT]Crunch]

You say air cooling is factored in according to airspeed, so if it's an equation in the software tied in with the flight model, will it factor in negatively if the gun is facing backwards?

[Stonehouse]

17 hours ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

You say air cooling is factored in according to airspeed, so if it's an equation in the software tied in with the flight model, will it factor in negatively if the gun is facing backwards?

No idea sorry. All I know is one of the parameters has a comment that indicates it's related to the speed of the airflow.

[FeuerFliegen]

19 hours ago, [CPT]Crunch said:

You say air cooling is factored in according to airspeed, so if it's an equation in the software tied in with the flight model, will it factor in negatively if the gun is facing backwards?

 

Even if it was blocked from being directly out into the airstream, I should still cool faster than the majority of forward facing guns,  being that those are inside of a wing, fuselage, etc. and covered up.