British OOB7 corrections and suggestions

[DRG]

Originally Posted by PvtJoker

Aircraft stuff:

Unit 090: real max. speed 413 km/h = Speed 4.



.

I acknowledge that there can be problems with aircraft speed.

Some of that can be simply traced to different sources quote different speed

Some of that can be traced to early OOB work where definitive sources were not always readily available and the speed was guessed at ( or typically ....."X is 5 and this was faster so lets give it 6" ). The rule laid down in MOBHack help were written after this was discovered to be a problem but the problem is pervasive

That said what we are dealing with in this game is primarily ground attack and ground attack typically takes place near the ground so performace at sea level should be the speeds used even though it's sometimes difficult to find that. Typically you get a maximum speed rating and that's "good enough"

The fairey battle for example....... we had 5 and that would represent an aircraft that can fly between 450 and 549 kph

one source http://desertwar.net/fairey-battle.html claims

Its maximum speed at sea level was only 335 km / h

That's a 3 in game terms

I have found no source that claims the Battle could fly at a speed that would justify a 5 so a 3 or 4 would be more correct with 3 being "most correct" in game terms in the context of a ground attack aircraft

Now....... that's just one example of hundreds. We have 11 "P-47's" in the game 1 is rated 6 speed, the others 8. 8 is way wrong. 8 represents an aircraft that can fly between 750 and 849 km/h. The only way a P-47 could go that fast is if they were plummeting to earth wingless with the throttle to the firewall and even then it's iffy.

What this all means is now I have " review all aircraft speeds " on my to do list and what that means is this year the chances are dealing with all the error reports I have recorded to date and getting ALL of them in the game are approaching slim to none. ( which means some of you really need to find something else to do for the next few months ...... my PLATE IS FULL)

That said as a rule of thumb I would suggest that since generally only top speeds are given in sources ( unless they are really good sources.. ) and those top speeds are only achieved at altitudes much higher than ground attack operate that whatever the "top" speed is it should be one less in the game for ground attack and I know I'm opening up my own can-o-worms with that but it also must be remembered that if the speeds 5 or 7 there's really not a whole lot of difference once the variables the game runs on are tossed in......... but YES, it would appear than in the game now aircraft speeds are generally "optimistic" based on the rules in MOBHack and I will be reviewing them as best I can

For those interesting in things like this .........

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/

is a very interesting source that contains a lot of data such as.."Spitfire Mk IX versus Me 109 G " that has not only some excellent photos but detailed performance graphs that shows that the difference between low level performance and "Maximum" performance in those two aircrafts is about 100 kph. The Spit in this example tops out around 415 MPH ( 668 kmh ) but it's on the deck performance is just below 350 mph ( 555 kph )so what would be a 7 in game should be 6 ( we give it 7 so in the ballpark )
this report........


Unit 400 & 401: max. speed 688 km/h = Speed 7

falls in line with the 695 km/h, 687 km/h and 708 km/h quotes I found but the above source gives this..


High Speed at S.L. 345 mph

.......and that's 555 kmh and that equals 6 in game speed

So yes, the 8 we have now is wrong and is on the list to be corrected but for ground attack....... what they are used for in the game.......... 6 is closer to "reality"


Don

[PvtJoker]

Don, I have been aware of the issue you wrote above for some time, but I didn't mention it here, because I thought it would be easier just to use the maximum speed, and also I didn't want to add more stuff on your plate. In some cases speeds at sea level can be easily found, in others not. In addition, if we want to be really nit-picky, external stores usually limit the speed even more, since they add significant drag.

Reviewing all the aicraft speeds is a big task, especially if absolute maximum speed can't be used. I just did that for the USMC OOB, but didn't post it here yet, and I used maximum speeds. Now, I can try to re-do it at sea level speeds if you want to. Joe Baugher's American Combat Aircraft (http://www.joebaugher.com/uscombataircraft.html) is a good source, since it has all USAAC/USAAF/USAF aircraft (unfortunately only some USN) and it usually lists speeds at several different altitudes. Unfortunately I do not know any on-line sources which would do that consistently for British or German aircraft, let alone Russian, Italian or Japanese.

Oh, and the P-47M actually could do 756 km/h (470 mph) at 9,000 meters (30,000 ft)

[DRG]

Originally Posted by PvtJoker

Oh, and the P-47M actually could do 756 km/h (470 mph) at 9,000 meters (30,000 ft)

OK, granted according to http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/p-47/p-47.html it could get up to 473 mph---761 kph which would indeed be an 8 but we don't fight air battles at 38,000 feet in this game and the best that aircraft can do down on the deck is 367 mph ( 590 kph ) so it should be a 6 and NO I am not interested in the speed of a shallow dive with drag ( and gravity pull ) from the weight of weapons-----there comes a time ( should have been years ago ) when "enough is enough.", there is really only so much nitpicking I can stand

A "simple" rule of thumb that will apply in almost cases is the ground attack speed is one less than maximum speed and that is GOOD ENOUGH and if the maximum is used and it's 1 more than the sea level speed that is GOOD ENOUGH no matter how gratifying it is to dig out a book and say AH HA !!...... we're out by one. We give it 8 and it should be 4....... THAT is an issue not 8 should be 7

Don

[PvtJoker]

Originally Posted by DRG

A "simple" rule of thumb that will apply in almost cases is the ground attack speed is one less than maximum speed and that is GOOD ENOUGH and if the maximum is used and it's 1 more than the sea level speed that is GOOD ENOUGH no matter how gratifying it is to dig out a book and say AH HA !!...... we're out by one. We give it 8 and it should be 4....... THAT is an issue not 8 should be 7

Don

So, can we settle for a rule of thumb that you are interested only in aircraft speed errors that are at least +2 from the "correct" value? Because if we assume that speed at sea level is typically -1 from top speed at altitude like you suggest above, there are a lot of those errors still in the current OOB. When I went through the USMC aircraft, quite a few them had speeds +1 higher than they are supposed to have according to the Mobhack guide rule, and most of the real max. speeds were attained well above 10,000 feet.

[Pibwl]

As a devil's advocate I must remark, that even if we find a precise speed on a ground level, the aircraft often attacked targets from a shallow dive, which was faster

Originally Posted by DRG

That said as a rule of thumb I would suggest that since generally only top speeds are given in sources ( unless they are really good sources.. ) and those top speeds are only achieved at altitudes much higher than ground attack operate that whatever the "top" speed is it should be one less in the game for ground attack

It seems reasonable. My educated guess is, that even modern WW2 fighters won't strafe ground targets with speeds above 400 km/h - even for a sake of precision of fire. But in such case, differences in speeds among aircraft won't be big in the game - 1 or 2 for old designs, 3 or 4 for newer ones...

On the other hand, lowering speed would mean, that aircraft will be more vulnerable. That raises a question, if vehicle AAMGs are rendered correctly in the game... I've mentioned it already, while writing on T-26 tanks, of which a minority was fitted with AAMGs. Is it a real situation, when an aircraft approaches with speed 3, and all the commanders of tanks, halftracks, and even some trucks notice it, open their hatches and start to fire from their AAMGs?...
My another educated guess is, that a dedicated small-calibre Flak was a most efficient mean against low-flying A/C, while vehicle-mounted pintle MGs (often with no special sights) acted purely as a mean of deterrence, with some chance of success.

Michal