Bofors 40mm rounds are not leathal agaisn't EA!?

[fxmmauser]

I do a lot of Anti Air with bofors but the 40mm is unable to blow up spits and hurris quite often at least hitting them on the front engine (based on at least more than 500 sorties while bofors live testing after latest changes to Bofors dispersion)

I made 4 frontal engine hits with 40mm on a EA and the pilot still lived, sometimes a frontal 40mm round will just make light white smoke on enemy air craft.(1,2,3 hits frontal engine can lead to the same result often)

I ask for:

-The increase of shrapnel, currently seems like hitting a tail by shooting over the cockpit is not producing enough shrapnel to affect the rest of the airplane.

-The increase of threshold on the engine 1 hit could save the pilot but a second one would complete take out the engine armor and kill the pilot.

-Add a safeguard that a 3rd engine hit with a 40mm always flame the engine.

Or improve the HE round by adding a damage sphere (while keeping the shrapnel) with 30cm to 1m of diameter that would damage the aircraft components or instant kill the crew if they were both inside that damage sphere.

I would say that hitting the frontal engine of those planes will result in a 45-65% chance that the EA will escape without any kill awarded to the player and usually with a credit kill from the bofors shooting at him.

The current dispersion values enable you too kill but I encounter a handful of cases that despite having the EA center on the ironsight the round would just jump from one place to the other almost looking like it was avoiding the target, having this current dispersion and the poorly model HE round seriously reduce fun and sense of accomplishment for the AA players.

I have no complaints about hitting bombers/big planes but the two planes mention earlier are the most questionable.

Edited October 22, 2011 by fxmmauser
some text was missing

[narg]

I do a lot of Anti Air with bofors but the 40mm is unable to blow up spits and hurris quite often at least hitting them on the front engine (based on at least more than 500 sorties while bofors live testing after latest changes to Bofors dispersion)

I made 4 frontal engine hits with 40mm on a EA and the pilot still lived, sometimes a frontal 40mm round will just make light white smoke on enemy air craft.(1,2,3 hits frontal engine can lead to the same result often)

I ask for:

-The increase of shrapnel, currently seems like hitting a tail by shooting over the cockpit is not producing enough shrapnel to affect the rest of the airplane.

-The increase of threshold on the engine 1 hit could save the pilot but a second one would complete take out the engine armor and kill the pilot.

-Add a safeguard that a 3rd engine hit with a 40mm always flame the engine.

Or improve the HE round by adding a damage sphere (while keeping the shrapnel) with 30cm to 1m of diameter that would damage the aircraft components or instant kill the crew if they were both inside that damage sphere.

I would say that hitting the frontal engine of those planes will result in a 45-65% chance that the EA will escape without any kill awarded to the player and usually with a credit kill from the bofors shooting at him.

The current dispersion values enable you too kill but I encounter a handful of cases that despite having the EA center on the ironsight the round would just jump from one place to the other almost looking like it was avoiding the target, having this current dispersion and the poorly model HE round seriously reduce fun and sense of accomplishment for the AA players.

I have no complaints about hitting bombers/big planes but the two planes mention earlier are the most questionable.

Done a fair bit of AAA back in the day (almost none now).

Bofors is very lethal against the Spitfire. In fact, I love it when Spitfires strafe a bofors.

Hurricanes require 2-3 hits and even then you're don't have a surefire kill on them.

[hastati]

In my experience the bofor rounds tend to "Bounce" around the target as its diving down, killing it only after im dead

But then i've never been a good bofor dude!

[fxmmauser]

Done a fair bit of AAA back in the day (almost none now).

Bofors is very lethal against the Spitfire. In fact, I love it when Spitfires strafe a bofors.

Hurricanes require 2-3 hits and even then you're don't have a surefire kill on them.

It's one of these spits I have problems with:

-Spitfire Mk IA

-Spitfire Mk IIB

[DOC]

bofors rounds are lethal against aircraft

not sure what your testing found, or how you controlled your testing or tabled your results, but they work in our testing exactly as we expected them to

did you find that only Spitfires and Hurricanes were affected ? How did the Bf109's and Fw190's in your test handle the bofors impacts ?

was there a common trend you can identify ?

are you counting spinning prop disc hits on incoming aircraft as engine hits ? They aren't and they won't damage the engine as they fuse before impact with it

[bronco69]

bofors rounds are lethal against aircraft

not sure what your testing found, or how you controlled your testing or tabled your results, but they work in our testing exactly as we expected them to

did you find that only Spitfires and Hurricanes were affected ? How did the Bf109's and Fw190's in your test handle the bofors impacts ?

was there a common trend you can identify ?

are you counting spinning prop disc hits on incoming aircraft as engine hits ? They aren't and they won't damage the engine as they fuse before impact with it

dont you think 2 rounds of 40mm BOFORS should kinda "blow" up the spit front??

i had this often enough ... 2 hits frontal into spit that tried to strafe me. nothing. not even smoke. i used to flak alot ... but strafing EA that only needs 1 plink on my crew while i hit him 2+ times without doing any real damage p*ssed me off too much

i have no problems with hurri d520 hawk. main problem is imo is the spitfire

[DOC]

no I don't

if you study a whole buttload of actual combat damage reports from the war, you'll see a wide variety of results and consequences that do not fall into "did blow up" and "didn't blow up" categories

for example, just dealing with 40mm versus fighters, I have several accounts of multiple (more than 1) 40mm impacts from Bofors guns and the airaft flying back to base and landing safely

in two of those accounts the aircfat continued to dogfight and kill enemy aircaft after being hit, and then returning to base

another account I have is where a P-51 pilot had a bofors round deflect off a propellor blade taking a chunk out of it and causing a vibration that he thought would tear the engine out of the airframe, but it didn't and he made it back to base

the point is that you seem to beleive that 2 bofors round hits should equal dead airplane

this is not true

it MIGHT equal dead airplane, even in 1 hit, but it's not goint to be what you're alluding to (100% in every case) unless we change our damge model to a hit point counter, where x number of hits anywhere = dead

additionally, there is the situation in our game where because the game engine can see an impact with the propellor disc the ... the round explodes; but any secondary effects like an out of balance propellor due to any damage that might have been sustained are not within the game engines capabilities

shrapnel might take out your radiator if it's in the nose but most of these aircarft do not have a radiator in the nose, and the engine block itself isn't going to be affected by shrapnel

so no, what you are seeing is what I'd expect. Note I did not say that this is perfect; but given my understanding of the way it works and what it is trying to simulate, what it is doing is pretty much what I would expect it to do

[fxmmauser]

no I don't

.....

Yes it only happens to this 2! Happens to the other aircraft but not this often. I can't say which spit it is I do believe this does not happen to everyone of them but the game makes it difficult to identify since every tag says spit and when most of times you hit other EA or make other kills its difficult to know which of those units were, the game also hides the damage model calculations I can't say with certain what happen. Also the amount of time required to replicate this requires time that I don't really want to give up.(If there was a post on the website on how to record and resize the videos in a transferable file wouldn't mind recording this engagements)

I have done AA duty in both sides this does not happen as often on any axis aircraft as on both of those 2 allied aircraft.

The only think I found hard to hit was a stuka it seemed very slick and in my screen and I saw the rounds pass through him but could always hit him and once I did he would blew up or a wing would come off easily, the 110 they were very fast and difficult to hit and the pilots that I face most would always leave before they got too close to my AA.

So you mention about that a real life allied pilot(s) that he saw a group of BOFORS 40mm on the ground and decide on his hurri or Spit to engage them facing one directly, at 100m he was hit directly by a 40mm round right on the middle of his engine not one but four times he then was able to return to the airfield or glide safely somewhere else.

You also had the reports of those men who fired those 40mm rounds into them , the manufacture list of all those rounds and could say that none were deficient, you also had the humidity levels, the air density, the speed of the round , the rpm of the propeller blade ....

As far as I know the game does not model the blast effect of explosive rounds and all calculations are projectile based.(AFAIK close support planes where usually damage by the blast which would tear the aluminium/wood/cloth apart)

The engine also doesn't degrade armor/material by hitting multiple times the same with place with HE or AP.

Bottom line is how do you know that all my rounds did not explode on the engine and how do I know all of them did not deflect, none of us truly know instead we just argue with words and no real technical proof.

And is it wise to have a complex background calculation that the visual game can't keep up? Who gains with this deflections?! The AA gunner or even the trial account trying AA, won't! the Pilot might get a guilty pleasure or wrong notion that he is actually great at killing AA's.

Can you Kill EA with bofors YES! It is fun bringing down planes YES! Is it often visual incomprehensible YES!

(This isn't something that happen just this week it happens for years as AA I have been)

Real testing can only be done by playing the game alot on live server

[raven4]

I have flown in allied planes and shot at Axis planes.......I have lost my plane many times to 1 hit, especially to the rear of the plane with tail damage, or 1 instant shot kill to my pilot.

I feel its harder to kill axis planes, but i'm sure the stats and players will say the opposite on each side. But DOC is right...you can't count it by hits, its what those rounds hit and do damage to.

[GOPHUR]

There have been no changes to the dispersion of this weapon since its creation in April 2002. What are you basing that thought on?

I made 4 frontal engine hits with 40mm on a EA and the pilot still lived, sometimes a frontal 40mm round will just make light white smoke on enemy air craft.(1,2,3 hits frontal engine can lead to the same result often)

It's much easier for me to do controlled testing than you and I'm happy to take 5 minutes to look at it but I'd prefer you give me a particular plane to test with. I can't do a complete audit based on the level of reporting in this thread.

-Spitfire Mk IA

-Spitfire Mk IIB

Doh. Didn't read that bit.

P.S. A whole lot of what DOC said.

Edited October 25, 2011 by GOPHUR

[GOPHUR]

Well I would test but the damn betas acting up again.

[fxmmauser]

There have been no changes to the dispersion of this weapon since its creation in April 2002. What are you basing that thought on?

It's much easier for me to do controlled testing than you and I'm happy to take 5 minutes to look at it but I'd prefer you give me a particular plane to test with. I can't do a complete audit based on the level of reporting in this thread.

Doh. Didn't read that bit.

P.S. A whole lot of what DOC said.

ADD HURRI TO THAT TEST

EACH PLANE MUST BE HIT IN FRONT OF THE ENGINE NOT UNDER THE ENGINE.( In mid-air with engine running diving or on the diving position)

Between 50-300m away from bofors.

IF POSSIBLE HAVE A HAWK/dell/p39 OR 109 for comparison

How do you have that info that it was just in 2002?

CRS change the values of BOFORS round dispersion not long ago 2years max ask the rest of the team.( I think it doesn't even have more than one year)

Isn't the readme.txt of patch changes not given to everyone on the team?

There was someone CRS that didn't knew the K98 sound was changed too on 1.34 but it was both on the website on the topic of 1.34 features and It would be easily notice by anyone who played and tried Axis rifleman on 1.34.

[DOC]

He has that info because we have a record of every data change since the day the file was created. If any data changed between then and now, it is in the file record, and cannot be mistaken for anything else. If the dispersion hasn't changed since April 2002 that's what is in the file data. If it did change since then, THAT date would be in the file data.

readme.txt files are not an accurate record, they are simply a text file compiled by the patch builder (Gophur) summarizing months and months of production updates, it isn't automated and it is subject to human error in a hundred places, although there are in fact few mistakes made. It's a little like taking dictation, but 3 times as boring.

"Someone didn't know a file had changed" is just someone NOT searching back through the source file record of the entire project to look for when something changed, and is only evidence they didn't have that change in their memory, but not evidence that it did or didn't change.

This happens when someone comments on something quickly but hasn't done a project creation/change search in preparation for that answer.

(because we few here are doing the work of 3 times our number we sometimes answer quickly off the cuff) If we did this kind of back search answer verification all the time we'd never get any work done.

Gophur in this instance however, DID look up the source files of the entire project to get you the answer to the issue you assumed had changed, simply to determine if it had or not, in fact, changed.

You might feel something is different for a wide variety of reasons but if we didn't change it then we didn't change it, and Gophur wouldn't be telling you fibs. He looked it up to be sure and told you what he found when he looked it up. There have been thousands of times a person has claimed something was changed and we have to verify if it did or not. If we do find something hasn't changed that was claimed to have, then the change they perceive is due to some other cause, personal perception, a different computer or monitor, different control hardware or even software settings. Somethimes it's just a matter of what they wish to believe. If a change is found to have been made and is discussed, we acknowledge that change but we can't if there wasn't any made.

We can't use beliefs in this stuff, we have to use facts, because this is digital logic we're working with. Fitting that logic into a market full of personal beliefs does and always will cause some issues that can never be solved, except perhaps through increased knowledge.

The priorities of this Bug Reporting forum are (in the following order of importance)

1. Bugs related to new development work (beta) that need to be fixed to restore functionality of the previous release version, ie: what we broke with that new development work. This allows us to reach release as fast as possible.

2. Other bugs that might be long standing (before the current beta started) that we haven't fixed because we didn't find them previously, couldn't replicate them reliably or they just fell off the development list due to the volume of other higher priority work. These are important because we want a no bugs game but at the same time we realize that to have any kind of game for you to play AT ALL some bugs have to be passed over until later so that we can actually release something now. It's a compromise.

3. "I think this needs to be changed" ... while we do care what you think (most of the time) this is the last and lowest of all priorities FOR THIS FORUM. We are not a large team (very very small in fact) with a very very big project. To manage to make any progress at all (even if it is slow) we must be efficient and not field tons of distractions from the tasks we are set. That means sticking to the first two priorities I just listed above, at least IN THIS FORUM and asking you guys to help us by doing the same. There are many other forum to field discussion and opinion based postings that outline what you think should change. That stuff isn't bug reporting. Bug reporting is finding and detailing what is not performing as we *designed* it to, in code and art, it isn't that stuff that doesn't do what you think it should do.

It's an important distinction to keep in mind, once understood, it definately will help us better meet your expectations at the same time as helping you to have better expectations as to what happens where and why. Then we all get more work done with less wasted time, which with this project and this team, is a very very high priority.

We aren't one of those regular big old gaming companies. Hell most of the small ones are bigger than we are.

The title of this thread in the Bug Reporting Forum claims that 40mm bofors rounds are not lethal to aircarft in this game. That is misleading, they are in fact very lethal, but in this case, in some respects not in the way that you think they should be. Thats not a bug but a matter of how they are modeled within this game engine, its ballistic and damage capabilities. If it were a bug it would be that they aren't doing in beta what they do in the current release. That would require our immediate attention to fix, or release would be held up for an even longer delay.

In reality, they just don't do everything you think they should, and you would like them improved. That is valid feedback and we like to get that kind of thing, but it isn't bug reprting and we do ask you to keep bug reporting in the bug reporting forum and discussion/change/I don't like this stuff in the discussion forums. this helps us create a better product, and we all want that I think.

So don't take this as "we don't want your feedback" we just don't want players confusing bug reporting with their desire to change how the game is designed, because these are two very different things. If the bug reporting forum became a design discussion forum like the rest of the forums, we'd get even less bugs fixed than we do already.

[fxmmauser]

He has that info because we have a record of every data change since the day the file was created. If any data changed between then and now, it is in the file record, and cannot be mistaken for anything else. If the dispersion hasn't changed since April 2002 that's what is in the file data. If it did change since then, THAT date would be in the file data.

....

We can't use beliefs we have to use facts, because this is digital logic we're working with. Fitting that logic into a market full of personal beliefs does and always will cause some issues that can never be solved, except perhaps through increased knowledge.

Thank you for the info.

For future updates a disclaimer of what you just say should be in patch readme. And the readme.rtf should also have both the errors and corrections that were made, avoiding this kinda of double mistakes. (this would have probably avoided the need to explain this to me and to other players thus gaining more time to spend on developing the game and at least prevent the fueling of the bias conspiracy theory).

And on both this Bofors and SMG dispersion values I notice the changes when I try them after the patch might be placebo but there were players that were not aware of those changes and also question if it had change I of course said it was, based on what I saw on the readme.

But the mg34 dispersion was very noticeable when it was said that had change if I'm not wrong on 1.33 or the patch before that but It's not mention on readme.rtf

But was it change or not? could have been other thing about the bofors that might affect accuracy and could have been mistakenly said to be dispersion.

The fact that dispersion affects the round when it exits the gun and not having dispersion tie to the barrel or that dispersion affects the round on mid flight easily allow players to see more dispersion if they are looking for it.

This thread is not about dispersion anyways its about something that happens to me and to a large number of axis AA gunners since my first day when it was launch on Europe.

[fxmmauser]

On Tuesday I was with a flak 88 shot an HE round to the belly of the spit Ia(saw the puff of smoke from the hit) no kill credit despite seeing the spit Ia suddenly diving while rotating towards the ground.

I'm pretty sure it was me who made him crash..

But just by hitting a Spit Ia with an 88 HE round on the belly would kill the pilot obliterate completely the plane or at least split it in two, I SAW none of the above.

Is this the normal behavior ?

Sortie: (its credit as damage not kill)

http://csr.wwiionline.com/scripts/services/persona/sortie.jsp?sid=47466&pid=790993&page=1

[uglyboy]

Maybe the kill credit was already awarded to someone else?

[Tigger6]

On Tuesday I was with a flak 88 shot an HE round to the belly of the spit Ia(saw the puff of smoke from the hit) no kill credit despite seeing the spit Ia suddenly diving while rotating towards the ground.

I'm pretty sure it was me who made him crash..

But just by hitting a Spit Ia with an 88 HE round on the belly would kill the pilot obliterate completely the plane or at least split it in two, I SAW none of the above.

Is this the normal behavior ?

Sortie: (its credit as damage not kill)

http://csr.wwiionline.com/scripts/services/persona/sortie.jsp?sid=47466&pid=790993&page=1

This is not a proper thread for this- apparently you made the airplane crash by suffering some sort of catastrophic damage. As for no kill credit, the pilot of that airplane was most likely dead or possibly bailed out already. Or a simple bug in kill scoring, we've had these a lot lately.

[fxmmauser]

This is not a proper thread for this- apparently you made the airplane crash by suffering some sort of catastrophic damage. As for no kill credit' date=' the pilot of that airplane was most likely dead or possibly bailed out already. Or a simple bug in kill scoring, we've had these a lot lately.[/quote']

What I point out is that there shouldn't be an intact spitfire Ia after getting hit by a HE round on the belly.

The aircraft before the hit was still flying and avoiding enemy planes.

[Kidd27]

Thank you for the info.

For future updates a disclaimer of what you just say should be in patch readme. And the readme.rtf should also have both the errors and corrections that were made, avoiding this kinda of double mistakes. (this would have probably avoided the need to explain this to me and to other players thus gaining more time to spend on developing the game and at least prevent the fueling of the bias conspiracy theory).

.

This is really a common sense issue. The read me is/has and always will be a summary of what the patch includes. 6 months work in a couple paragraphs. If you thought this was the bible of everything done, you need to step back.

Posting in the bug forums about your experience and concluding a bug is present , and admitted to not wanting to put in the work to find out is it can be replicated, is akin to gossip around the coffee table.

You want DOC to use his time to satisfy the whims of everyone who has a WTF moment?

This doesnt sound like the saem person who is so concerned with wasting Dev time he wants a 2 page disclaimer posted with the read me.

waste of time.

[fxmmauser]

Should a flak 88 HE round in a Spitfire Ia belly blow it up away or at least split the tail off?

Is the spitfire Ia damage model(ripping the tail off , instant blow) not implemented?

Does the multiple 40mm engine hits generate extra shrapnel from the engine + the round and does it impact the aerodynamics of an aircraft? ( isn't a plane engine heavy and the lack of most of weight of the engine flip the air craft or sink it on the ground?)

[OLDZEKE]

1st question is were you the only one shooting at that ea?

If not then you may well have missed but saw a aproximation of someone elses round that on your screen hit but actualy did miss.

Ever been in a town ab and the bofors seem to be constantly hitting your building? They likely aint hitting the building on their view but because 3rd person only sees a aproximation it can appear to be hitting what it's not hitting.

Example of 3rd person viewing bofors fire...I hit the building every shot, you can even see it blow up but no visual hits by my camera man/3rd person.

wfDgn2KwEkA

Now this was just 2 peeps on a server (actualy just me with 2 accounts), imagine now the live server with thousands of rounds flying. And remember I had the exact same ping on both accounts too.

I also did shoot some spits while there, in every case 1 hit to the nose area = dead spit with bofors.

And yes in the live game I've busted spits and 109s in the nose headon with a bofors and he fly out then kill me on the return. It happens, not alot and I expect it's more high ping on the other guys side than anything else.

[GOPHUR]

The spitfire doesn't have visible damage for the tail falling off but it does have the actual tail falling off.

It was a real early model and the way it was built it wasn't able to be cut in half when we add the visible part to the other planes.

They all always had wings and tails falling off since day 1. Just no visible indication. Well unless you count falling out of the sky in one.

[fxmmauser]

1st question is were you the only one shooting at that ea?

....

And yes in the live game I've busted spits and 109s in the nose headon with a bofors and he fly out then kill me on the return. It happens, not alot and I expect it's more high ping on the other guys side than anything else.

1- Surviving allied planes after multiple frontal hits from 40mm rounds happens alot to me, hurries and spits Ia seem to be way more common.

(also I might begin to think db7 are over powerful in terms of damage on aerodynamics I yesterday hit 8-10 40mm rounds at wings and middle of db7 and he still flew quite gracefully *personal record)

2- As far as I know every puff of smoke is a confirmation of a hit every time you see a explosion cloud on an EA a round hit the aircraft.

3- I was alone shooting at EA , I saw the round heading towards the plane and then hitting it.

I think Gophur already answer my core question.

Wish I could have access to the hit on the damage model, I'm sure I could bust a good number of bugs.