Bangs for the buck

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by bartbert:

The Bf-110 may improve slightly once we implement some changes that we are testing out right now.

Currently, aircraft are only rated for Bursts as a measure of their armaments. We are testing out some changes in which aircraft will be rated for Bursts and "Damage Bonus". Bursts will be more a measure of rate of fire, while "Damage Bonus" will be a measure of the destructive power of the gun when it hits.

At a simplistic level, aircraft armed with lots of machine guns will tend to get higher Burst ratings, and aircraft armed with lots of cannons will tend to get higher "Damage Bonus" ratings.

The Burst rating will work the same way it always has, i.e., it factors in to how many burst cards you can play.

The "Damage Bonus" acts as a modifier to the damage value of a card. For example, an aircraft with a +1 Damage Bonus that successfully plays an "In My Sights 1-Burst: 2-Damage" would actually inflict 3 points of damage instead of 2.

We think this will help differentiate the aircraft a bit, and make them more interesting to fly. For example, right now the Spitfire I and the Bf-109E are pretty much identical. The Spitfire I can take one additonal point of damage, but other than that they both have Burst rating of 1, Wingman Offense and Defense of 2, etc.

Under the new system, the Spitfire I has a Burst rating of 2 and a Damage Bonus of -1. The Bf-109E has a Burst rating of 0 and a Damage Bonus of +1. In addition, the Spitfire has a Wingman Offense of 3 while the Bf-109E has a 2.

These aircraft feel a lot different from each other when you fly them now. The Spitfire will be able to get in a lot more bursts, but will do less damage when he hits. The Bf-109E won't be able to fire as often, but when he hits it hurts.

The Bf-110 will get a Burst rating of 1 and a Damage Bonus of +1. That will add a little sting when he hits, but his Performance rating still sucks, so he may not hit all that often.

I've said soem stuff about this a few months back & have some ideas, as always

The British 8-gun fighter armament was calculated to achieve 1 thing - put 250 bullets into a bomber in 2 seconds - some bright sparks had reckoned that you'd only get 2 seconds in a burst, and that it would take 250 .303" bullets to shoot down a bomber, so to get them in 2 seconds you needed 8 guns - simple really!

The German 30mm cannon was also a bomber buster (never mind the AT version for now...) - it had crappy ballistics caused by low muzzle velocity - the barrel had to be short to shoe-horn it into small fighter a/c.

Both combinations seemed to work fine.

In hte game the 8-gun fighters get to try to shoot down He-111's as the "model target", and various possibly 30mm-armed German fighters get to shoot down B-17's and Lancasters.

The 4-engined bombers have much more structure than the mediums, but hte later fighters do not get any extra firepower to try to deal with it.

IMO the solution remains as I suggested a while back - treat the 30mm as a special case, give fighters that have it +1 damage vs bombers for every pair that they have, but don't count it towards the "burst" value for the a/c unless it has ONLY 30mm cannons. The burst value is calculated from the other weapons hte aircraft carries only.

In the later case give a/c 0 bursts for having 2 x 30mm, and 1 burst for having 3 or more. So hte 262 can barge on in, but the Me-163 will have to gain a bit of height and try to manouvre to make the most of it's load.

Aircraft with just 1 x 30mm can get a random chance of getting +1 damage vs bombers from each successful shot - 50% seems appropriate!

I don't think the 110C deserves any particular special treatment - it's armament is hte same as later war British Spits (2 cannon, 4 mg), and it's only against early war fighters with low-ish structure points - not worth the complication IMO.

[BremerWeltmeister]

I think that more damage against fighters would be realistic, too, but these planes should have a very low burst rating, maybe even -1 for heavy-cannon-only planes (like some later BF-110 and the jets.).

Such a plane would have difficulties to fire on an enemy (it has to be tailing unless the pilot is an Marksman,) and the enemy could counter the cards more easliy because the enemy is firing less bursts. But if one hits, the plane would be instantly damaged or downed, as it would happen in real life with cannon fire.

[Guest Mike]

That might not be a bad compromise too.

I was thinking that another way to handle extra damage is to give a/c with these weapons a chance to do more damage with each burst rather than with every burst - eg a 109K with only 1 might have a 20% chance, a 262 with 4 might have a 80% chance of +1, or somethgin similar.

[BremerWeltmeister]

I don't like this idea, because the randomness would make sometimes a huge disadvantage for the site fired on.

Example: An BF-109k is tailing an Spitfire, which has only 2 structure points and one card (an ace pilot) left. The BF is firing an 1:1, and the Spitfire can let it pass (risking destruction if the shot gets the damage modifier) or counter it, which would make easy prey for the next attack. Now, everyone would let the 1:1 pass, but this uncertainity would make the heavy cannon armed planes much more poweful.

[Guest Mike]

well he'd have to weigh up the chances wouldn't he??!!

Knowing absolutely that the 1:1 can't shoot him down isn't all that flash either IMO - a little more uncertainty would be a good thing!

FWIW I wouldn't play the ace agaisnt the 1:1 in hte circumstances you describe - "chances are" there will be no damage bonus under the scheme I suggested