Gunners in Air Sim

Game Discussion Simulator Battle
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In Simulator mode, the aircraft controls are supposed to be as realistic as possible, and I think this should apply to the gunners mechanic too(about everything changes from rb to sb, with few exceptions, gunners included).

Because of the current mechanic, not only this ruins the “simulation” and “realistic” feeliing of the mode, but they also give stupid advantages like: sounds(even when all the crew is inside the plane), view from outside the plane(is this sim or arcade?), and, maybe the worst, freak stabilization of the aim when in external view( the plane can do whaterever maneuver he wants, and as long as the gun in not in a dead zone, the gunner will aim at the target without any problem, because the aim is relative to the ground, and will able to snipe you from far away, way before you have any chance of shooting).

All of these are reasons why most of the friends I invited to the game quited in no time, not only because of the unrealism, but by the frustration of having to face such stupid thing, and I also have never seeing any similar mechanic to this in other competent simulator game. Here the bombers can easily kill you before you can even aim at them, many even by starting shooting above 1 km(because of 3rd person), also rendering many early fighters useless, as they can only kill by pilot sniping or by damaging the bomber engines(which they cant because they will die before they approch the bomber).

My main goal with this discussion is to bring the attention of the devs to this issue, but i’d like as well to hear any solutions you guys might have in mind.

what I thought a little:
-enable only first person shooting, with the player changing between the gunners, while the others get controlled by AI
-disable player controlled gunners completely(I have heard about this, but I would say it’s too overkill)

Here i’ll try to upload a video of what i’m mainly talking about:

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After getting killed multiple times by players maneuvering like that and shooting at distances about 500m, I now just play custom battles with friends, or with bots in mission editor. No enjoyment in having to deal with this.

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It’s not only the gunners but the fully automated, no input needed bombsight as well.

These are the oldest complaints in WT Sim and they exist since the beginning. They are unlikely to be fixed.

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How do you get that aim sight ? I mean even outside from the normal sight panel

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Mouse joystick+relative control

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I had always been seeing this with mouse joystick friends and the advantage it gives when raising your head, and then I thought: what if? Haha ( you can even disable the cockpit sight and only use it… as it is exactly in the center if adjusted properly)

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I don’t see that site is any sort of advantage over the one in the normal site panel - but I also disagree bomber gunners have a huge advantage, as you have to gun and continue to fly the airplane at the same time. Especially if you’re using VR (which is what I do) as you don’t get the ability to move the camera around the aircraft in VR, the camera is locked in front.

I’d be in favor of them adding in-plane positions for each gunner but we’d need a better autopilot for that to work; or even better, allow another player to occupy the gunners so you can fly and leave your teammate to shoot. Or increasing the AI ability and preventing the gunner use by the player entirely (the AI gunners in Sim are ridiculous and rarely, if ever, even fire at an enemy before you’re shot down).

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physical mouse joystick ?? because that option in controls looks like this. Also the option is mouse joystick or relative, cant be both

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this config only works if u play without mouse: set mouse joystick as you did(the relative control you use will work anyway), and change the configs to something like this
image

this way the aim will be at the center, and you wont have to worry with the dead zone and small aim

*remeber to always leave the mouse at the center of the deadzone circle
*if u are interested, I have some configs I can share later in other topic, as I can’t find older forum posts…

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Could you explain the current autopilot insufficiency thing(I play only up to tier IV so I might be asking a stupid question), and yeah, I used the VR for few months, and I get that the camera is pretty weird to aim.
But about the aiming and flying at the same time: heavy planes with op gunners like the p61 dont have issues with staling and have good controls, which means that with a little bit of practice you can consistently shoot down enemy fighters while avoiding hits. If you happen to be interested in this matter, take a look at any simulation game tier I-IV: ju288s, p61s, tus, me 264s … depending on the case, the ones with highest amount of points drop bombs, then drop smokes and start to cap zones and kill the fighters that approach them. (most usualy in Ground Sim battles, but not rare in air sim)
I agree that part of what I said dont apply to VR btw, but it doesnt change the fact that the current gunner mechanic is an aberration and certanly should be changed as it certanly gives big advantage

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The autopilot as it is only levels the wings but doesn’t control maintain altitude or any kind of heading, and in sim it also seems to jerk when you switch to the gunner mode. It’s okay as it is but if we were to change the mechanic so that you switch to each gunner station in order to shoot enemies, it would need to be improved (in my opinion). Because you’d either be looking out one of the waist portals or, God Forbid, the ball turret and it would be too much to handle both aiming and flying. But realistically I’m not sure what could be done because the AI isn’t going to fly in anyway helpful as the AIs currently hardly evade anything thrown at them.

The better option would be to lock out the gunner camera in Sim and increase the ability of the AI gunners - make them as lethal as they are in Air Assault mode (maybe minus the Pilot Knock outs).

I usually would play heaver bombers vs smaller attack bombers, but every time I have done so in Sim I have been swarmed by enemies and not been able to make to any targets. I also don’t play any form of ground mode (I just end up team killing all our tanks when I have) so I can’t speak to that at all.

Currently I’m grinding higher tiers where bombing with CCRS is my jam and heavy bombers are just missile magnets but I do like playing in heavy bombers when I can, but I’ve been restricted to doing so in RB because it’s too frustrating to try to manage both gunning and flying in sim with VR (I feel like It takes John Bonham levels of coordination and timing to do so).

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You don’t have to gunnand fly though, you can set the plane to autopilot while in gunner view. In addition to that you get hive mind gunners. This is a lie that is perpetuated a lot. You don’t have to donall the work at the same time you can switch between jobs and the workload you do at each station is artificially reduced by a lot. You never have to do the workload of more than one person usually it’s less work thanna single crewman had to do irl.

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But it’s not; I just played a P-61C this morning and though it did fire on a bomber, it did nothing else the entire time, including ignoring an enemy right behind me. The autopilot does not fly the aircraft well, it usually takes correcting in sim.

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The autopilot is far more potent than any real ww2 autopilot was it even autolevels damaged aircraft. It holds cpurse exceptionally well.