Can you confirm or do you know what crew lvl the pilots have and if both pilots need to die of a AI plane? would be interesting to know
HI,
The B-17 in the mission is set to crewSkillK = 0 , skill = 1 , with AI skill set to NORMAL .
I haven’t specifically tested whether both pilots have to be knocked out on an AI-controlled B-17. In the successful clips I only confirmed the pilot kill result, not exactly which crew member was hit first.
That would actually be interesting to test separately.
Cause many bombers have 2 pilots, thats why i ask about it, not sure if AI bombers are the same in this regard. And crew lvl lvl 0/1 is 3x easier to kill, without looking i thing base is 100% and ace is 300%, also at ace crew dont die on a single 12.7mm (according to the info if i remember correct, but theres definitly a insane difference of playing with and without vitality skilled on a plane,. with crap crew the pilot dies regularly on shrapnels)
Good point. I hadn’t considered the crew level difference.
I may test that separately, but honestly, making a clean and repeatable test setup is the hardest part.
I checked the official War Thunder Wiki regarding pilot Vitality.
My test B-17 uses low AI crew settings (crewSkillK = 0 , `skill = 1), so I agree that this may make pilot sniping easier than against a highly trained player crew.
However, the official Wiki does not describe maximum Vitality as simply having 3x pilot HP. It says that a maxed-Vitality pilot can, “with a measure of luck, survive one hit from a .50 cal (12.7 mm) M2 Browning.” War Thunder Wiki
So crew level is definitely another variable worth considering, but multiple .50 cal hits into the cockpit should still be dangerous even with high Vitality.
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Ah, I see. So the 300% value is indeed shown in-game.
Interestingly, the description still says that even at maximum Vitality, a pilot can only “with a measure of luck” survive one .50 cal hit.
So crew level probably affects the success rate, but it doesn’t really change the main point of my test: reliably putting the burst into the cockpit during such a short firing window is the difficult part.
if u want we can go into custom match and check on a lowtier spaa or smt how many mg hits will kill an exposed tank mg gunner, i thing the hp of the people are the same in tank as plane.
Only difference is that tank crew can´t have more then 200%, but should still give an idea, or we test with a landed plane + tank/plane
Maybe when I have some time. 😄
It sounds useful, but these tests take quite a bit of time to set up properly.
Yeah - except that bombers like B-17’s were literally hit by larger rounds than that, and either made it back to base, or remained airborne several minutes while the crew took the time to bail out. A direct from an 88mm ripped the nose off of the B-17 ‘Mizpah’ and it flew another 10 minutes till the crew bailed out. Another from the 351st that you can find photo’s of took an 88mm (some say it might have been the bigger 128mm guns they had started employing) hit that blew a hole in it larger than the guy standing in it in the ground, ripped open a section of the side at one of the frame sections and caused a horizontal split further down, knocked out the superchargers on the engines - and it still made it back.
Bombers, like all aircraft and even zeppelins, have a skeleton. You hit an area where there’s no skeleton - all your doing is putting a hole in the covering, it’s a flesh would that might cause drag or reduce lift a little. You hit part of that skeleton - now you have potential issues depending on where it is and how much you actually damage. That 37mm hits the area just inboard of the middle of the wing - you might get lucky with a 1 shot just because that area carries a lot of stress on most aircraft and so much easier to snap, you hit the outer edge and take the tip of the wing off - it’s not gonna come crashing down, even hits to the main body are unlikely to be a one shot other than maybe some very specific areas, hit just right and even that is debatable given again - some of these planes came back taking hits from 88mm guns and the like.
There were exactly 2 ways historically to take out a bomber in 1 shot that wasn’t entirely luck based. The first was a head on attack that took out the pilot(s). The second was a hit that caused either the ordnance or the fuel tanks to instantly detonate.
Does the damage model need refining - maybe, I’m not sure that the issue is the damage model as much as something is wrong with cannon rounds, because I’m having more effect taking out bombers with .50 AP/AP-I/API-T than 20mm of the same type. But even if the issue is the DM and not the rounds - they should not be anything close to 1 shot, save maybe something like a Val that turned in to a flaming ball of death with a burst of .50 cal.
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Yep. And P-47s have been hit by 88mm flak and made it back to base. Obviously the P-47 should be made immune to air field flak.
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I think bombers (even 2 engine ones) having their engines burning for several minutes on one or both wings, without any critical damage to control cables, fuel tanks or wing structures is an issue with the DM, not ammo.
I think the control cables live the longest (as they’re made from steel) but wingspars and especially the wing skin, which are made of aluminium, would get soft, melt and even burn (metalfire) after one to two minutes, effectively snapping the bombers wing under its own load. Additionally due to the windspeed you get a “cutting torch effect” of the fire, making the fire/flames so hot, that they virtually “cut” through the aluminium.
Funny that in-game its the opposite. Control cables burn the first, then the wing skin burn to a black state and then the spars. They all will snap if you hit them with any damage.
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Somehow i feel like they should snap on their own if they are damaged enough to be in the black state.
They dont in game until it is damaged or you load it with more Gs.
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Yes, exactly. That’s why i said should
lol
MiG-25 is still not moving down into flareless RWR-less subsonics
I read a pilot testimony where he was flying his Ki-100 fighter and only noticed he had many .50cal hits when he got back to base.
Clearly Ki-100 should be made near immune to .50cals.
There is nothing wrong with cannon rounds. There is a LOT wrong with bomber DMs - even the windows have several milimeters of steel armor.
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Apparently spalling of metal and especially glas is a myth in aviation and nearly half a meter spanning aluminium sheets between the spars with <2 mm thickness are stronger than steel to be able to withstand blast waves of dozens of gram of TNTe at point blank. Not to mention that even HE rounds create fragments from their hull (not many, but they do).
Armor and glas should generate spall in bombers when hit by HE shells even if not penetrated, fire should burn/weaken the wingspars and -skin to the point of self-collapsing under the planes own weight after around 1-2 minutes and the damage sections should be much more granular so that many hits around a specific part cause the part to disintegrate because of aerodynamic and weight/g-forces.
This game needs a whole rework of the damage model and fire (ignition, spread and damage propagation → e.g. a fire fed by leaking fuel, burning outside the plane without direct contact to it, shouldn’t be as devastating as it currently is, damaging parts it isn’t even close to). More granular plane parts, so that fuselage and wings don’t consist of only three parts but many small patches which can be damaged, which would also make wing- and part-rip more realistic and not just need a single 20 mm shell to rip-off your whole side. A single .50 cal bullet also shouldn’t make your elevator nearly useless and a 20 mm bullet shouldn’t rip it off completely. Making it consist of multiple damageable patches, connected by hinges, would do the trick → then you can lose parts of it without losing it whole to one bullet.
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I don’t even play bombers but I think this change was great and makes the game a lot more fun.
Gaijin W
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