Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

This has been happening for a while but my most recent game frustrated me so much that i just have to ask. Why cant i shoot anyone down? This is only when im flying a plane myself. I can get on a persons tail and expend my ENTIRE MAGAZINE into their plane and they dont even smoke! meanwhile other people seem to shoot me down in less than four seconds of concentrated fire. I just dont understand whats going on here. Its incredibly frustrating, im a decent pilot, i get good firing solutions and blast away but my guns might as well be spit wads for all the good they do. So, why? why why why!?

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Aim.

Engines, and tank (which should be hard to reach in air combat ;)) are best zones to shot a plane down, but you can also make a overloop and shot the pilot trough the cockpit if you're a good pilot - which should be even faster than shoting the plane

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

server lag usually.

I've had this happen to me as well. It cant ALL be lag, so i'm assuming its a bug with the flight models.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Thanks for your replies. Master Minder, i do aim. Once i was getting low on bullets i made sure to put my last few salvos into the cockpit. Nothing happened.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

we'll test this - but it should work like it is allready

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Is your crosshair registering hits, or are you seeing broken bits falling off the plane you shot at?

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I know ive shot all 2000 some rounds into a b-25 on gudalcanal and im sure over 90% of those registered. Might want to look into it. Same thing happened again on Adak with a p47.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I can down planes it as little as 50 bullets :P I once killed 3 spitfires on el alamein in a single pass :P It just takes practice most people cannot fly well, infact most of the people in this forum can't fly well :lol: :p

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Aim for the engine. The best way to shoot down a plane is not to tail it unless its aware of you being there then its just a case of manouvering and waiting for the person your tailing to show you his vulnerables;). If thats the case I often find people just circle around and around so climbing above them cirlcling often works and then they get a false sense of secuirty as they thing there not being tailed any more so they go on about there business. At that point you can dive on them and open up at your point of choosing. Usually best is when they've found a tank to bomb and are concentrating on that.

Another tactic is to get above it/behind it and wait for it to turn or climb and fire infront of the plane when it makes its turn (a climb makes them much easier to hit because they lose speed) and wait for the plane to move into the bullets and they will rake the engine.

Have a practise trying that, its all about you choosing when you want to fight and giving the other person no chance to react.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

i always play chicken going full towards a enemy plane and see wich one doesn't fly off first but i mostly shoot em down

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I never do that i've crashed to many times.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Lol, german planes on El Alamein have to watch out for bren guns... they are really good at AA... once shot the pilot of a Fw190.. still riflegrenades are best.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

well, with what ? SMG and pistols mainly dont do any damage to planes ...

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

LOL, no one uses an SMG as an AA weapon unless their a 'n00b'

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I've actually shot down my fair part of planes with support weapons like the bar, bren, mg34,... :D

Aim for the engine!

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

thats a MG not a SMG :P I too have inflicted a lot of damage on a plane with an MG but yet to shoot one down :(

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

No shit :rolleyes:

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

well i dont know about you guys but i had the problem... but now i lead the plane, it doesnt target a section of the plane well but it does the job

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

sometimes u see hits on the plane, but only on ur client, because of lag (which u dont have to "feel") the server sends data too solw, so on serverside u dont hit the plane, but ur client shows ur hittings. but that happens quite few times :/

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

i've managed on one occasion to shoot down an SBD which probably had 0.1 health (it was smoking badly) left with a No.4. Pure luck but very satisfying.

I got called or sorts of names and accused of being a 'h4x0r!'

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

cool. I also usually shoot at planes with my rifle, but more to annoy the crew or scare them away ("He shoots at us with a rifle! May be he can kill us with one bullet, so lets get away!")

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

lol, i did that to a corsair too. Shot it with a k98 when it was smokeing. Piled into hte ground right in front of me and i got the kill for getting the last shot in :p

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

theoreticly, you could hit something important with the rifle, like the pilot...
pfft, that's nothing. I shot down a Heinkel111 on Kharkov with the PPSH :p (atleast it said so after he crashed into some trees)

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

yeah, I shot a B17 with a SGT44 once quite funny :)

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I once shot Lightning (NL) down in a BF-109 quite funny :lol: :naughty:

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

uhm.. yeah, whatever :rolleyes:

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

hehe, i've not seen you play for days you still mapping?

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Night before last, on Bocage, I was trying to sneak up on the 105mm Sherman that was pounding the axis base, from the back road. A mustang was diving for a run on our base and I paniced, as he was headed straight at me with all guns blazing. When I paniced I pulled the trigger on my PanzerFaust. He killed me and as the camera pulled up and away his burnt wreckage spun by my corpse.
I had hit him with my panic shot. He started calling me all kinds of names.:lol:

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

nah, I'm playing Half-life 2 ;)

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

LOL, I thought it crashed.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

yeah, it's got lots of bugs in it and it keeps crashing, but I just restart when it does...

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

:vikki: Playing illegal Games.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

yeah... well... I didn't know it was illegal officer, can't you just let me off with a warning?

and it's got too many bugs in it to be called 'a game' :)

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

LOL if it wasn't 1.4 GB I would DL it but i've not DL 1.4 GB of Bugs.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

but having windows installed, you're the one to call^^

Anyway I thought about dl it, but with all those fakes flying around....na, not necessary.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Microsoft= own3d by CD-RW Burners :P

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

too true

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Your problem is that you're aiming at the plane. You have to aim in front of the plane and either bring the crosshairs towards front of the plane as you're shooting, or let them fly through your bullets. I can take a plane down with like a 10-15 shot burst everytime like this, even when they're super far away and you can barely see it.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

It is also great fun shooting down planes with your tank cannon!

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

Er... at the risk of repeating the... er.. repeated, Beef I find that I can blaze away into a plane, and get the little bits falling off, but no smoke. Whole magazines, nothing.

Puzzled, I changed aimpoints to WAY off the plane in front, and using the 109 in El Alamein managed to get a good number of kills with very little ammo. With the 190, barely touch the trigger and down she goes.

suprised to say the least.

IMO I suggest you aim a good 1/3 of the target plane length in front of it, and give it a one second burst.

You should not be aiming at the plane at all, even if you are relatively in line behind. Feels VERY wrong, but the results will speak....

Always, always expect lag to fool you into shooting too far behind. Adjust by aiming a healthy percentage in front.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I don't get it, are you saying that if you are in the rear gunner position you should aim BELOW a plane trailing you? Or lead it in the direction its moving? The few times I've gotten kills is when the enemy is off to one side and almost stationary from my point of view. In those cases its only a second or two before I can shoot him.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

This is interesting. I think planes are far too easy to shoot down when in another plane. I can shred any plane in half a second with the FW190 and in 1.5 seconds with a Spitfire or Corsair. 2 seconds with a Zero. The planes are made of paper they are so easy kill. Not that easy when a skilled pilot makes it hard to hit them, but if you DO hit them they are pretty much dead.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I once destroyed a plane with a jeep on Gaudalcanal, albeit an accident. I was casually jumping my jeep off the hills as I sometimes like to do and he swooped past me as I was jumping and I hit him and we both blew up. I thought it was funny, but I got mad cause I was also enjoying jumping the jeep off stuff.

I was also wondering are the ammunition loadouts for the planes right? Just seems like on some planes 900 or so rounds seems like nothing. You get in one prolonged dogfight and youre outta ammo sometimes. Or if you have trouble with a medium bomber and use up a ton of your ammo. I thought theyd have more ammo than what they have.. maybe that's fixed in .6 or maybe I dont know what Im talking about.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

i've killed plane with detpacks, he was just flying a little too low to the ground, trying to kill our with his proppellers.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

and if they go low enough mines will kill em :P

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

about the original topic, its lag. if u make ur own server, u can shoot ppl down by aiming right at them, because u have no lag, but if it is not ur server, u have to aim in front. it was annoying when i first started playing too. try making ur own server and when someone comes, u will see its quite easy to down them. just remember to aim in front in public servers. hope this helps and hope someone at FH fixes this if its possible.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

You have to consider the physics of the trajectory. If the enemy is directly behind you and you are a rear gunner, then yes you fire directly into the plane. If you are pursuing another plane then you have to take into consideration that you both are moving and calculate a proper lead. If you are aiming at where he is when you pull the trigger, by the time your bullets reach that spot the target has moved to another point in space. You have to shoot at where the target is going to be when your bullets reach that point, not where he currently is. This is why computing gunsights were invented. Airspeed of both planes, deflection, wind, air resistance and gravity are all factors you have to take into consideration. The farther back you are from your target, the more you have to lead. He climbs, aim above him. He dives, aim below him. In a turn, aim in front of him. If your targeting reticle doesn't change, then you are not hitting the target. ADJUST!! I love the planes with both MG and cannon. Fire both at the same time and you can really shred the other guy. For bombers, target the engines to get the fastest kills. I haven't played Bocage since the new patch. I hope the flight characteristics have been fixed for the P-51. It took forever to turn that plane before. I know the Mustang was much more nible than depicted.

Re: Why cant i shoot anyone down?
 

I know people will argue this but at low altitudes the P51 flew like a brick, a fast brick but at high alititudes it ruled the skies.

The RAF combat trials for most WW2 planes are freely available and they show direct comparisons with similar planes, both allied and axis and are an interesting read.