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[butch]

Is it possibIe to have a haIf kiII show up on your mission report (at the end of your mission) if you contribute to successfuIIy downing an aircraft?

[SAS~Malone]

i don't think so - the way the game does the scoring, it's probably not possible without a major code re-write.... 

[Pursuivant]

Nope. The way that the game assigns and scores kills is a weak point. To get half kills, you'd need to recode the game so that it a) recognizes shared kills b) assigns shared kills between two or more pilots.

There's also the problem that not all countries used the same kill counting system. IIRC, only the U.S. and Great Britain counted shared kills.

Ideally, the game would have at least four scoring systems:

1) Japanese: Any seriously damaged or destroyed plane counts as a kill. Flight leaders can take credit for the kills of their subordinates. (Japanese pilots often "donated" their first kill to their superiors.). Players with sufficient rank or status can "make stuff up" to increase their kill count. Victories over heavy bombers are kept track of separately from other kills.

2) Russian: No shared kills. Any seriously damaged or destroyed plane counts as a kill. (Basically, the current system, with some error built in for seriously damaged planes which land successfully rather than crashing.)

3) U.S./U.K.: Shared kills, with credit given to any pilot in the flight who scores hits on the target. Only planes seriously damaged or destroyed in the presence of friendly aircraft or ground forces, or documented using gun camera footage, count. Planes destroyed or seriously damaged without independent verification count as "probables." Planes hit by your gunfire, but not shot down or seriously damaged, count as "damaged."

4) German: No shared kills. Only planes destroyed in the presence of friendly aircraft or ground forces, or verified as destroyed by gun camera footage, count. Victories over heavy bombers counted independently of other kills. (Historically, German pilots got either one or two kills for shooting down U.S. heavy bombers; one "kill" for damaging a bomber so that it fell out of formation, or one kill for shooting down a damaged bomber flying out of formation. If you shot down a heavy bomber on your own, it counted as two kills.)

And, once you've gone to the trouble to write all that fancy new code, it would also be cool to give the player their choice of victory markings, as well as automatically applying victory and award markings directly to the player's plane so that they appear in the next mission in a campaign. Of course, that brings up the problems that not all pilots painted their kills on their plane, or applied them to the same location!

[SAS~highlander_262]

Also Italy would credit pilots with a full kill only, so if four pilots contributed to bringing an aircraft down they would be credited with a full kill each

[Checkyersix]

Yikes. I didn't know the kill markings rules were so complicated!

[Vampire_pilot]

4) is not entirely correct. i just read the JG26 diary and there the matter is discussed.
a kill is basically a kill no matter what aircraft. but to aknoledge the fact that a 4 engined one is more difficult, later (i think as late as 44) the points system was revised, handing like 100 points on the RLM "scorecard" per engine but not altering the kill amount.
so a heavy is counting more for promotion and awards - actually this IS the system in the game!

then there was the "Herausschuss", forcing a heavy out of formation. this was counted sperately and usually in scoring lists is marked with "HSS". There was a back and forth if this was counted as a full kill or not.


minus the fact, that only observed and confirmed (by RLM Berlin) kills are counted as you stated.

[Vampire_pilot]

... I just thought that what the game does is absolutely different from real life.

to depict the actual thing there needs to be a feature where the player actually has to "claim" an amount of kills after each mission, like entering a number. (and no atomated counting like the game does).

and then there could be rules per country (maybe like the awarding systems red and blue which differ) how that claim is accepted in comparison to the actual count of that mission. a variable could be set to depict heavy overclaiming or a more restrict system.

as said above something like taht would indeed mean heavy reprogramming.

[Pursuivant]

4) is not entirely correct. i just read the JG26 diary and there the matter is discussed.

My bad. Thanks for the clarification. I was working from memory. I recalled that the system for counting U.S. heavies was slightly different than for other planes, but obviously not the exact details.

then there was the "Herausschuss", forcing a heavy out of formation. this was counted sperately and usually in scoring lists is marked with "HSS". There was a back and forth if this was counted as a full kill or not.

I'd be surprised if many German pilots stuck around to find out if they shot a bomber out of formation, with the skies filled with lead from the other bombers in the formation and P-51s and P-47s always on the prowl. It would be easier to notice a bomber in flames, falling uncontrollably, with crew bailing out. Presumably, night fighter pilots didn't get the same deal for "HSS" and Abschuss, since British bombers didn't fly in formation, so their defensive fire was much less dangerous. Anyhow, in my hypothetical "multiple scoring systems" mod, you could count "Herasschuss" for inflicting heavy damage on a 4-engined bomber.

Oh, yeah. For maximum realism there should be a delay before your kills are actually credited when using systems 3 and 4. Time for kills to be registered can vary from a few days to a few decades. (In the latter case, some smartass forensic archaeologist who digs the remains of your unawarded victory out of a swamp, gets a serial number off a part, correlates it to a missing plane/pilot and then determines that you were the only enemy pilot in the air that day who was in the area and claimed a kill/seriously damaged a plane of that sort.)

to depict the actual thing there needs to be a feature where the player actually has to "claim" an amount of kills after each mission, like entering a number.

This is another good point. In the heat of battle, many pilots/gunners would overclaim kills and multiple pilots/gunners would claim credit for the same kill. Gunners on American heavy bombers were notorious for this. Alternately, a pilot might not realize that he got a kill and just claim a "damaged" or a "probable."

In the sim, sometimes I lose track of how many planes I've killed or don't realize that I've killed an opponent during a head-on pass or fast high side attack. I'm sure it was like that in real life as well.

So, for even more realism, you could have pilots seriously overclaiming kills, including disputes over who killed what. Who gets credit, and how much, depends on which scoring system you're using.

Anyhow, I think we can all agree that the current scoring system isn't perfect, but to fix it would require a seriously talented Java coder with an obsession for WW2 aviation history and way too much time on his hands.