S3 Series

AI buffs were hard to drop. We had a lot of time, 3 sorties in fact, to work them over...again and again and again.

Otto would get you if you closed from 6, enough to discourage you from that route.

Did not drop a single human bomber, or smoke, or cause a fuel leak on first pass through the human buffs.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-pjw8HZFKM[/youtube]

Quite the opposite and you haven't and won't see LW threatening to quit over getting stonewalled mid series for being successful. S3s are about smart tactics and critical planning, not wondering what the hell my guns are good for and watching mega ultra super fortresses slip on by without a need for escort.

If the DM stayed the same then yeah, lets discuss BT. Even though dawgers efforts may not have increased hardness much, it certainly requires greater accuracy on the shooters part. Video evidence supports at least one frame to see what the DM actually does for humans. BT is interfering with an honest assessment.

I agree with Sleepy, 2 was to hard and according to Jabo it was turned down. 1.0 was way to lo low, 2.0 is way to high. We lost 50% of the bombers so you can't tell me they were still to hard to bring down.

The BT assessment was based on a DM that has been altered so comparing frames 1&2 with 3&4 for BT is comparing apples and oranges. BT does not effect AI, yet they became magically far more hard to down in frames 3&4? What changed? Oh the DM we were suppose to be testing frames 1&2 and couldn't because it wasn't there.....

Not saying the AI should be easier to kill, just that BT is getting monkeyed with without seeing what the DM does by itself. %50 losses after LW free for all the way across Germany is lucky. Your effective escort was demolished since the Netherlands and never came back.

I'm turning blue so I think what needs to be said has been said. In Jabo et als hands now.

Do you even read what i post?

I am the guy who did the work to make bombers harder to kill and would like to create big empty spaces in them that bullets pass through and you write the above.

Huh?

Salute!

Thanks, Zin and others, gotta change one thing at a time to have a fair opinion/test.

I have flown this thing since 1998 or so ( S3 as in Three Days in August, not just Warbirds of V 1.1). Back then the buffs were really tuff and otto deadly. The lites then and the lites now would whine. Love it.

The problem for the lites is hitting critical parts and hitting them a lot. Poking holes in ailerons and elevatorss and such is good for hits, but the plane keeps flying. Then there are important parts that are disabled and the buff goes on. Later, when landing, he loses control, crashes and the LW swine gets a kill. We see this with the LW lites that take a few pings from otto or a manual gunner, and then crashes when landing. We get a kill.

The best damage model I think of wouold emphasize the cockpit area and the motors. Wing root would be a biggie, as well. Damage to tail, ailerons, flaps, gear, fuel tanks and all that is great for game play because the buff has to make a good landing after flying another 45 minutes. Yep, another 45 minutes. I have yet to see a lite kill on the buffer that was 45 minutes after absorbing a single ping or more from a buff or another lite. SHOW ME!

All of us here have seen the dramatic pictures of the WW2 buffs coming home with lottsa damage. A lot of success was due to good pilots/crews. A lot was due to buff tuff. And then we saw it 20 years later in my era.

Finally, if we are gonna examine and test and then vote on acceptable levels of damage and kill criteria, we have to change the "disco with damage" criteria.

I am willing to conduct tests using S3 settings and damage models and such. Most nights before 2300 hours eastern. Dobs lives down the street and we could do it all by ourselves in the same war room, but we need a fair evaluation.

Areas of interest:

- otto accuracy
- damage values for areas of the buff
- visual effects due to bad engines, fuel leaks, etc. Sheesh, shut down the smoker and the smoke should go away.
- How many rounds per damage aea

Hate to whine, but most buff losses this series have been to flight/damage models and such. Dobs' great videos show slashing attacks that are wise, but most are versus helpless dweeb drones. I want to see the close up, high resolution hits on we human buff targets that have decent otto and/or human gunners and a few other buffs closeby.

Gums whines....

Frustrating aint it?

All we did this last update was fix a few anomalies in the hit maps, ie such as lancs having bottom guns, 1 gunner being 2 hit boxes wide whilst others were only 1, very small stuff like that. Pilot values were upped times 3 whilst gunners were brought to same level which was down. Now pilots and gunners are indeed the same value for killing.( there was a huge difference tweenst em)
The revamped dm for buffs from a year ago ( this is where I am on board with gums) is DESIGNED to allow 4 eng buffs to absorb damage to non fatal parts and keep on flying. Fuel tanks are more than 1 now so you can get a fuel leak but not lose ALL your fuel. Fatal parts were made stronger, wings, fuse, stabs etc. Engines were upped some. I cannot tell you how many times I have limped back to base all shot to hell and gone, but they still very very killable. A smart guy comes screaming in in a g6 r6 and puts a big burst of 3 20 mm into your face, your going down brother.
Now, whilst the goal was to bring into line many files to be same same between arenas the dm's for big buffs ARE designed to be killable for MA play, everything else seems to be just fine but.....we got an abuse situation in ma play that I am fairly certain we would never see in S3 play. Other factors come into play. S3's ya got big groups with little friends, MA ya got singles running around generally wo escort. Alt is more your friend in MA play( and a defensive tactic) than it is in S3 play.
Despite my fondest desire to be able to use the EXACT same files ( dm wise) in all arenas WITHOUT BT adjustments may not be reasonable. And there was no way to determine that without live load tests ( gameplay). It would appear that a straight up BT of 1 for this type of series may not be working well. It would also appear that a BT of 2 may perhaps work too well. I am pretty satisfied with how the secondary DM are working at this time. I think we seeing the kind fo combat damage to buffs that gums mentions. Rather than rewrite 4 eng dm's so we can use a BT of 1 ( just robbing peter to pay paul) I can see using BT as a means of making MINOR adjustments that can be done by a cm, rather than the more laborious task of rewriting files. This also, was a aim of mine, to make it easier, if deemed by the CM in chg of any arena, to be able to make slight adjustments according to their scenario. YOu cannot imagine how easy it is to mix dm files up in all the different arenas, so having same files eliminates more chances of mixups in wrong files and also enables the player to SEE any changes made by looking at .show. I have hoped that a approach like this would engender trust in the files( that you cannot see) whilst leaving changes to be done in a manner that a player COULD see. Transferring an unknown factor into a known factor so to speak.
I support the use of BT for different scenario's according to type of gameplay and bomber in use for slight adjustments.
IN the MA I apologize constantly using that arena as a live load test all the time, but there is simply no other way to reveal EXACTLY how anything is gonna work out....I imagine Jabo feels the same way.
Ty for your time
<S>

Good post Sleepy!