FatR
Posts: 2522
Joined: 10/23/2009 From: St.Petersburg, Russia Status: offline
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Well, about the results of the air test, there are a few obvious conslusions: 1)Shusei was designed by Allied sympathizers. 2)All fighters who rely on a single big gun fail. Logical, considering, that such guns mostly offer less than 100% increase in damage, at the cost of having their accuracy reduced by several times, but wanted to confirm it empirically. Some fail less hard than others and Ki-102b might be worth building, because fighter-bomber units won't accept better planes, but still, they are generally inferior to single-engined counterparts even before you consider that they are more expensive. 3)Late-war 30mm guns seem to offer fairly marginal improvement over 20mm guns, even against heavy bombers. The difference in number of frags between Shinden, that packs 4x30mm guns on the centerline and Jack, with 4x20mm in front, just isn't very big. 4)Speed and armament seem to figure significantly in ability to avoid losses from bombers' defensive fire. Compared again Jack to much faster and better armed Shinden, the latter actually had more edge in survivability, than it had in killing power, resulting in kill/loss ratio twice as good. Now durability, even when changed by small number, also seems to give large returns, but only with all things being equal. Ki-94-II and Ki-201 both have durability of 34, they both are survivability champions, but much faster Ki-201 has kill-to-loss ratio double that of Ki-94-II. Meanwhile, tough but slow Ki-102s suffered much worse pounding than any of them, Ki-93s, even tougher than Ki-102s, also took heavier per day losses, so it is obvious that durability alone does not determine losses against bombers. A7M3-J great survival rate is still a bit of a mistery in the light of that. It's a bit tougher than most single engined-contestants (32 vs 30 on Frank, Jack, Shinden) but is not armed better than Shinden (scored less kills than it, too) and much slower. It is very possible that having cannons firing up allows an attacking fighter to use different calculations, that reduce its chance of getting hit by defensive fire. I need more data, to form definite conclusions, beyond obvious points. Will need to tinker with the setup again, using different planes. A6M5c and N1K5-J might be worth placing into competition, as well as some fighters added or modified in RA.
< Message edited by FatR -- 3/11/2011 1:58:58 PM >
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