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50 cal Ballistics/Aircraft Damage Model Questions/Concerns


USARStarkey

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So I did a series of 20 Dogfights of 51 v 51 and 190D vs 51. I know issues with the Damage model have been discussed before. I am also aware the some of the issues were fixed in the last patch: like the tail re-growing. However, after looking at the track data, it is clear that is not the just 190s dmg model that is at fault here. On average, it took around 100 HITS to down either the 51 or a 190. That is incredibly silly. In several cases, 190s or 51s sustained between 90 and 80 strikes in a SINGLE burst without dying and had to finished off later by as much as 30 strikes. It will be easier to tell once we can fly the Dora, but the 20mm may have the same issue based on how many hits Ive taken without being brought down.

In reality, while not as good as cannons for pure power, 50cal armed planes had very effective armament. The USAAF considered 1 20mm round equivalent to 2-3 50 cals. The Germans considered 20 20mm shots effective to down a B-17. Making some rough estimates off of this, about 60-70 rounds would be required to down something that is far larger and more durable than a 190 or 51. Even a cursory analysis of the gun camera footage or pilots descriptions shows 50 cal armed planes downing planes in far less than 100 rounds. This needs fixed please. 100 rounds to kill a fighter is insane. It seems routine even in human v human matches that planes riddled with bullets suffer little serous damage. Control surfaces remain function, planes rarely catch fire, ailerons and elevators seem to be nearly immune to destruction. Ive seen 51s piloted by humans covered in massive holes all over the fuselage and wings and still flying like nothing is wrong. The fuel leak seems to be the only reliably inflicted damage.


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Yep, i agree, i have the same frustrations, whats the point of having this realistic aircraft to fly and manage when your opponent is modelled on a TIE fighter.

 

There has been an improvement since 129 but the thing can still zoooom climb 2000ft and drop speed to 78knots and still keep climbing from a standing start, completly unrealistic.Lift weight thrust and drag, out of the window, queue the empire.

 

I can manage my energy and all the rest of the guff, but when you've riddled the airframe,cockpit and engine with over a 100 50cals and its not even sneezed i'm getting no training value out of the scenario.


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I'd like to compare vs a human controlled 190 when it comes out... see how different it is.

 

I mean part of it is the fact that the AI is using simplified systems... I think this is making a huge difference... maybe the AI aircraft need to be made more fragile... even artificially.

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50 cal Ballistics/Aircraft Damage Model Ridiculous

 

That's what I'm getting at. Any fix would work until the model becomes more advanced. This definitely affects the human planes though. You need far too much time on target. This critically affects people doing b n z.


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Everything that flies in DCS feels like they're made of superman's skin, and many kinds of ordnance does either too few or too much damage.

 

Funnily, with 15-20 .50 cal hits, we can destroy an armored vehicle, but aircraft can shake off much more, and shooting down, for example UH-1 or Mi-8 with M2 is very difficult. MANPADS don't pack a lot of explosives and that's ok, also mostly don't have proximity fuses either so fast jet can be relatively safe from them that's also ok... but A-10 and Su-25 can shake off up to 4 direct hits from MANPADS sometimes. Same goes for Ka-50. Yeah sure they are very robust aircraft but, this much resilience really gets one wondering :)

 

Damage & Ordnance modeling really is one of areas in DCS where things can be improved quite a bit...

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I dont know that I agree with all that... I have seen A-10s go down with 1 shot from a MANPAD... it shouldnt be consistant.... 1 bullet can bring an aircraft down, doesnt mean it always should.

 

That said, I appreciate these threads, but complaints without tracks as reference dont help me at all either. If you believe strongly in something you need to reference tracks from the sim for us to review and see exactly what you do.

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I dont know that I agree with all that... I have seen A-10s go down with 1 shot from a MANPAD... it shouldnt be consistant.... 1 bullet can bring an aircraft down, doesnt mean it always should.

 

That said, I appreciate these threads, but complaints without tracks as reference dont help me at all either. If you believe strongly in something you need to reference tracks from the sim for us to review and see exactly what you do.

 

I will post the tracks. I saved 4 of them. It is hard to see visually, so make sure to look at the summary at the end for the number of hits.

 

Also, that is another think i forgot to mention. the tracers dont flash on impact like they should, which makes it very hard to know your hitting.

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So I did a series of 20 Dogfights of 51 v 51 and 190D vs 51. I know issues with the Damage model have been discussed before. I am also aware the some of the issues were fixed in the last patch: like the tail re-growing. However, after looking at the track data, it is clear that is not the just 190s dmg model that is at fault here. On average, it took around 100 HITS to down either the 51 or a 190. That is incredibly silly. In several cases, 190s or 51s sustained between 90 and 80 strikes in a SINGLE burst without dying and had to finished off later by as much as 30 strikes. It will be easier to tell once we can fly the Dora, but the 20mm may have the same issue based on how many hits Ive taken without being brought down.

In reality, while not as good as cannons for pure power, 50cal armed planes had very effective armament. The USAAF considered 1 20mm round equivalent to 2-3 50 cals. The Germans considered 20 20mm shots effective to down a B-17. Making some rough estimates off of this, about 60-70 rounds would be required to down something that is far larger and more durable than a 190 or 51. Even a cursory analysis of the gun camera footage or pilots descriptions shows 50 cal armed planes downing planes in far less than 100 rounds. This needs fixed please. 100 rounds to kill a fighter is insane. It seems routine even in human v human matches that planes riddled with bullets suffer little serous damage. Control surfaces remain function, planes rarely catch fire, ailerons and elevators seem to be nearly immune to destruction. Ive seen 51s piloted by humans covered in massive holes all over the fuselage and wings and still flying like nothing is wrong. The fuel leak seems to be the only reliably inflicted damage.

 

How did you count the exact number of hits?

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Despite lots of people complaining about superskinned FW, I find concentrated fire easily causing fatal structural damage to it.

 

 

 

Structure is probably divided into blocks whose integrity is expressed via hitpoints. The problem might be that single .50 takes only fraction of hitpoints, and there is no much difference between blocks having (let's say) 100% hitpoints and 5% hitpoints left. So, if you spread the damage, you just end up with target, which has soaked lots of bullets, but still flies like new.

 

AI FW is simplified, it might get finer damage modeling once flyable FW is released, however I don't think things will change revolutionary. In fact, my experience with P51 in MP tells me, that you can't hope crippling the target via structure damage. It either fatal damage via concentrated fire or damage to systems (i.e. damaged engine and so on).

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So I did a series of 20 Dogfights of 51 v 51 and 190D vs 51. I know issues with the Damage model have been discussed before. I am also aware the some of the issues were fixed in the last patch: like the tail re-growing. However, after looking at the track data, it is clear that is not the just 190s dmg model that is at fault here. On average, it took around 100 HITS to down either the 51 or a 190. That is incredibly silly. In several cases, 190s or 51s sustained between 90 and 80 strikes in a SINGLE burst without dying and had to finished off later by as much as 30 strikes. It will be easier to tell once we can fly the Dora, but the 20mm may have the same issue based on how many hits Ive taken without being brought down.

In reality, while not as good as cannons for pure power, 50cal armed planes had very effective armament. The USAAF considered 1 20mm round equivalent to 2-3 50 cals. The Germans considered 20 20mm shots effective to down a B-17. Making some rough estimates off of this, about 60-70 rounds would be required to down something that is far larger and more durable than a 190 or 51. Even a cursory analysis of the gun camera footage or pilots descriptions shows 50 cal armed planes downing planes in far less than 100 rounds. This needs fixed please. 100 rounds to kill a fighter is insane. It seems routine even in human v human matches that planes riddled with bullets suffer little serous damage. Control surfaces remain function, planes rarely catch fire, ailerons and elevators seem to be nearly immune to destruction. Ive seen 51s piloted by humans covered in massive holes all over the fuselage and wings and still flying like nothing is wrong. The fuel leak seems to be the only reliably inflicted damage.

 

I respectfully disagree. All depends on what you hit, just like in real life I suppose. If you get lucky, the P-51 or Dora you attack will be a burning wreck after single short burst. Sometimes it takes more effort. Known DM models issue aside, I honestly don't see any problem with .50 power or ballistics. It takes some time to adapt to the convergence etc., especially when you play other sims, but the .50 cal is modeled just fine imho.

 

There are issues with DM and there are discrepancies between the actual (physical) damage and the visual representation on the 3D model. None of this does not matter of you concentrate your fire on one area and get good hits.

 

As for your 20mm to .50 cal conversion, I really don't think that 50-60 bullets would be typically enough to bring down a B-17 :smilewink: It's relative though, some 109 pilots RTB'd with as many as 30+ .50 holes in their plane.

 

As for the visible flashes, that I believe is modeled correctly and depicts different round types in the ammo belt. I am not sure what exactly is modeled in DCS, I suspect later variant with API-T, the puffs of smoke might be coming from HE rounds etc etc. Not all of them leave a flash.

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Nothing wrong with .50 power vs players. All the issues I hear about relate to the AI taking damage (or not).

 

If it IS hitpoint based it all makes sense. Especially how half a second bang on convergence will flame AI! Whereas player controlled often ends up with systems damaged to the point the plane becomes ineffective just from peppering.

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I respectfully disagree. All depends on what you hit, just like in real life I suppose. If you get lucky, the P-51 or Dora you attack will be a burning wreck after single short burst. Sometimes it takes more effort. Known DM models issue aside, I honestly don't see any problem with .50 power or ballistics. It takes some time to adapt to the convergence etc., especially when you play other sims, but the .50 cal is modeled just fine imho.

 

There are issues with DM and there are discrepancies between the actual (physical) damage and the visual representation on the 3D model. None of this does not matter of you concentrate your fire on one area and get good hits.

 

As for your 20mm to .50 cal conversion, I really don't think that 50-60 bullets would be typically enough to bring down a B-17 :smilewink: It's relative though, some 109 pilots RTB'd with as many as 30+ .50 holes in their plane.

 

As for the visible flashes, that I believe is modeled correctly and depicts different round types in the ammo belt. I am not sure what exactly is modeled in DCS, I suspect later variant with API-T, the puffs of smoke might be coming from HE rounds etc etc. Not all of them leave a flash.

 

 

My conversion was meant more for fighters than bombers, and was meant to be simple. It does not matter what you hit, which is the problem, especially with ai. Mechanical linkages never fail, engines get riddled and keep running like new, fuel is hit with APIT and doesnt ignite, control surfaces sustain no damage except in extremes cases. Even with human planes, the occasional engine failure aside, plane can be turned into a leaky sieve and fly pretty much just like they were before you poked holes in them. I find myself all the time with a wing that looks like swiss cheese and has holes I could drive a truck through, but the effect of said damage is either so small or non existance to the point that I cant tell if a tiny tiny list is the result of torque, damage, or my trim being off.....

 

As for the flashes they simply cannot be correct when the simply dont exist. Right now all you get is the occasional smoke poof. There are zero flashes. Furthermore, the smoke effect doesn't happen regularly. I discovered that in order to down planes I needed to just hose them down, but I had a hard time figuring this out because I thought I was missing! This was because many of my registered hits were not having any visual returns. There is no flashing from the APIT rounds.

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I agree... I think AI damage is at the very least, the biggest part of the issue.

 

Nothing wrong with .50 power vs players. All the issues I hear about relate to the AI taking damage (or not).

 

If it IS hitpoint based it all makes sense. Especially how half a second bang on convergence will flame AI! Whereas player controlled often ends up with systems damaged to the point the plane becomes ineffective just from peppering.

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I agree... I think AI damage is at the very least, the biggest part of the issue.

 

Sith I admit that the human controlled planes are more susceptible to damage, like engine failure from bullets, but by in large they seem highly resilient. The following is a list of things that dont happen, or often dont happen after large amounts of damage to the critical spot.

 

1. Aileron or elevator destruction (rarely)

2. Mechanical control linkage failure (saw this for the first time in 1.29, once, and never saw it again.

3. Fire from hitting fuel, that doesnt also result in a wing being removed at the same time.

 

4. significant control problems from aerodynamic damage. Wings that are riddled with bullets produce little if any effect on performance. From what I can tell, listing only seems to happen if I take my hand completely off the stick. It is otherwise undetectable, and I'm not even sure exists unless a whole wing section is removed. IE: no matter the damage, I've never had to fight the plane to keep it level.

 

General: Human controlled planes seem to suffer very little from aerodynamic damage. I get into fights all the time where either myself, or my opponent get into a low speed luftberry and I or he gets around on the other despite one of us be highly shot up in the wings.

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This falls on the visual damage issues.... the damage is basically a texture swap when the damage gets to a certain point... its not necessarily telling of how many bullets hit your aircraft.... if fact if you crash land, you can see bullet holes even though you werent shot for example...

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This falls on the visual damage issues.... the damage is basically a texture swap when the damage gets to a certain point... its not necessarily telling of how many bullets hit your aircraft.... if fact if you crash land, you can see bullet holes even though you werent shot for example...

 

Everything I listed there cannot be explained just by that alone.

 

 

Additionally, I havent experienced any significant, if any, aerodynamic penalties even when my plane was damaged to the point that the next short burst i received removed my wing.

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I have experience poor flying qualities when damaged... you might need to share a track when you experience this again...

 

Ill go even further. I will do a series of tests with a human pilot and post all track data. Tests will focus on analysis of the effects of damage. I will shoot a plane with very short bursts and then review the effects after each series of hits. This will take some time though so please be patient.

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That would be great, even try and show a side by side with an AI aircraft... try and hit them both the same. Show me the track and I can report it.

 

They need to be short tracks, so if you are reporting multiple aspects, do a number of short tracks, not one big long one.

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Will do, Ill make it available as soon as possible. I need a guinea pig to test with :)

 

Note: I find it really interesting that there is another relatively new thread that is basically about this exact same issue.

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Thank you for looking into this USARStarkey.

 

I think that the damage model in DCS, in general, is not very robust. Sure, it's detailed, but there's no predicting what might happen when a target gets hit. Take any of the flyable helos, for example, and fly into the path of a MANPADS.

 

I regularly keep flying without so much as a scratch. It's like there's a randomized value placed on damage, rather than a proper analysis of the hit location. If I do get damaged from the explosion, often the damage appears in a strange place.

 

IL-2 1946 had an extremely robust damage model. Things got damaged for a reason, it was more or less predictable, and you could even see it directly using the debug tool. Here's an example:

 

5cf3u1.jpg

 

The arrows indicate damage vectors, with the length showing the severity. The B-17's horizontal stabilizer has just taken a direct hit from 88mm flak, which has blown it clean off. This is represented by the large arrow. Shrapnel from the shell (the small arrows) has caused secondary damage along the tail and wing, radiating away from the point of impact. Parts with arrows in them get damaged, and pilots with arrows in them get killed or wounded.

 

Sadly the DCS damage model doesn't seem this coherent, at least concerning explosions. I often find myself wondering why the cause and effect are at odds.


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