Looking at A2A Combat numbers.
Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2026 6:09 pm
My Abbreviations:
HP = Health Points (known as Durability of a plane in game)
Plane armament directions: (hint: likely irrelevant)
I am not sure in how far multiple Fighter are/can be shooting at the same Bomber. I tried setting up AGs and flight sizes of 1 plane each with different plane types/names but unfortunately did not manage to get this to run yet.
So it is possible that multipled Fighters attack the same Bomber.
But the average will at least remain the average.
Starting out easy.
The Combat Window.
The Soviet fighters report 3403 damage done.
The German bombers report 1980 damage received.
Ratio is 58% damage reported was received.
Conclusion: Reported numbers do not make sense.
Continuing easy.
The Air Phase report.
We meet the two figures we found earlier yet again.
I want to highlight the 32 ...or 46 damaged Ju 88A... Ghost Divisions ....nooo Ghost Flights.
If these numbers were used to balance the DES vs DAM results in A2A it is no wonder the game is missing damaged planes and pretty much 100% gets killed. Since this is not a 22:32 or 22:46 ratio but at max a 22:2 Ratio [actually being a 22:1 and likely ending as 22:0 damaged planes due to automatic repair (or so)]. In large tests like T1 you'd likely see 100 DES and 500 DAM out of 1000 Sorties and think that it makes sense, but it doesn't.
Conclusion: Reported numbers do not make sense.
Going heavy.
The Combat log.
Remark on "ranges" and ACC in A2A.
In air we have ranges between 5 to 1 closing in. A2A Weapons are usually having ranges of 5000 and below while usually keeping clean figures like 3000, 4000 and such.
The Combat log gives a "range" of 4,3,2 and 1 which reflects those "thousands". So a plane that has a gun with 4000range will be able to make its first shots with this gun at "range 4" and so forth.
Furthermore there is a line for guns with "ACC :: RANGE", this Range - whatever that is, it is not the exact ACC or range numbers of the Devices.
e.g. ACC
12.7mm is 31 vs 30 on the device
7.62mm is 39 vs 37 on the device
There are several oddities and issues I will list with examples.
Damage versus Durability
As hinted before I feel like there is an issue about the damage done by weapons. This further plays into the issue I have with "missing damaged planes".
Why is that.
The eyeballed average durability of a Fighter is ~30 and that of a Medium Bomber is like ~43. Fine.
If we look at the damage done by simple MGs already at longer "ranges" like 3, we see that even bad pilots at such ranges seem to oneshot everything on average.
Two examples:
Occasionally we see damage figures which seem balanced and well thought, like adding 7 or 10 damage but those are relatively rare and we mostly get figures of +30-50 or even worse, even with the worst MGs.
Now what is our average damage "burst" of a gun at an average range?
Note: I added the damages manually, errors may have happened.
Math:
Total '+ Damage' = 3595
Total '+ Damage' done without the Ju 88A firing = 3463
Number of Events without Ju 88A firing is 80-3=77
So 3463/77=45 damage per "burst" on average of a single armament (1x12.7mm or 2x7.62mm MGs).
So each burst on average oneshots a Medium Bomber.
I also want to highlight that "total damages" often exceed 100 and may even reach 200-250 figures, no plane has anywhere near such durability.
"Total Damage Results" we have are:
15 kills were complete "overkills" of 100+.
4 were close (44-55).
3 were somewhat close (60, 73, 98).
There are no inbetween results between 2 (one plane that survived) and 44.
Here we have again the total of 3463 damage (which btw. does not match any number in the Combat Window/Air Phase Report).
Since we know here that 23 planes were shot at, of which one survived we can look up the average total damage per plane.
3463/23=150.5HP.
So the average MiG-3 plane, flying inside a not even 70 SKILL flight deals 150 damage per engagement when rolled to engage.
Some thoughts
The question is....what are Machine-/Autocannons supposed to improve if simple MGs are already oneshotting things?
Do planes types matter?
Looking throught the ridiculous RNG is hard ....but...
I always wondered why no matter which Bomber I'd use, without Escorts they'd just vanish. Similar to this I wondered why the upgrade to fighters with Auto Cannons did not rly change much (since ....well....shooting down 95% vs shooting down 96% does not seem like an argument to make for even mentioning the change to a plane using autocannons).
How about individual armament/Guns and their directions?
LBs do have defensive armaments pointing in different directions.
What I would expect is, that a bomber with defensive armaments would...
So similar to how Flak has no real "protective effect" (besides the actually downed planes before bombing), the same seems to be the case for all defensive bomber armaments.
And yet again the question about the creation/increase, role and function of the DIS column in the Combat Window comes up.
HP = Health Points (known as Durability of a plane in game)
Plane armament directions: (hint: likely irrelevant)
Important Remark on A2A.WitW Editor Manual wrote: FACE: Select the device facing:
0=Fwd (forward)
1=Side
2=Rear
3=Turret (turret/top turret)
4=BT (ball/bottom turret)
5=TR (top rear)
6=BR (bottom rear)
7=SM (swivel mount)
[...]
I am not sure in how far multiple Fighter are/can be shooting at the same Bomber. I tried setting up AGs and flight sizes of 1 plane each with different plane types/names but unfortunately did not manage to get this to run yet.
So it is possible that multipled Fighters attack the same Bomber.
But the average will at least remain the average.
Starting out easy.
The Combat Window.
The Soviet fighters report 3403 damage done.
The German bombers report 1980 damage received.
Ratio is 58% damage reported was received.
Conclusion: Reported numbers do not make sense.
- A2A_Combat window.jpg (149.72 KiB) Viewed 311 times
Continuing easy.
The Air Phase report.
We meet the two figures we found earlier yet again.
I want to highlight the 32 ...or 46 damaged Ju 88A... Ghost Divisions ....nooo Ghost Flights.
If these numbers were used to balance the DES vs DAM results in A2A it is no wonder the game is missing damaged planes and pretty much 100% gets killed. Since this is not a 22:32 or 22:46 ratio but at max a 22:2 Ratio [actually being a 22:1 and likely ending as 22:0 damaged planes due to automatic repair (or so)]. In large tests like T1 you'd likely see 100 DES and 500 DAM out of 1000 Sorties and think that it makes sense, but it doesn't.
Conclusion: Reported numbers do not make sense.
- A2A_Air Phase report.jpg (165.48 KiB) Viewed 311 times
Going heavy.
The Combat log.
Remark on "ranges" and ACC in A2A.
In air we have ranges between 5 to 1 closing in. A2A Weapons are usually having ranges of 5000 and below while usually keeping clean figures like 3000, 4000 and such.
The Combat log gives a "range" of 4,3,2 and 1 which reflects those "thousands". So a plane that has a gun with 4000range will be able to make its first shots with this gun at "range 4" and so forth.
Furthermore there is a line for guns with "ACC :: RANGE", this Range - whatever that is, it is not the exact ACC or range numbers of the Devices.
e.g. ACC
12.7mm is 31 vs 30 on the device
7.62mm is 39 vs 37 on the device
There are several oddities and issues I will list with examples.
- Shotdown events and destroyed events are off.
In this case we get reported 22 Events that a MiG has shot down a plane but only 13 Events that a plane was destroyed.
Both cases can be seen.
If we divide 13/22=59% we re-encounter a similar percentage as before where we got 58% (altough this at this point is just a hint that should not be taken too serious).
While we are at it. The one shot down MiG-3 was not reported in any of the two ways. So neither "shot down" nor "destroyed".
Conclusion: Events are missing. This may contribute to the numbers being off....may.- A2A_Combat log_downed events.jpg (250.29 KiB) Viewed 311 times
- The target is sometimes missing.
Just see Line 369 above. Usually happens when the damage that was dealt before is already enuff to destroy a plane but fighters keep shooting.
Conclusion: Already sufficiently damaged (therefore) downed planes cease to exist but are still being shot at. This may contribute to the numbers being off....may. - Durability turns to 0 at times.
See line 370.
Likely as above when the damage that was dealt before is already enuff to destroy a plane but fighters keep shooting.
So this point and the point above it are directly related.
Conclusion: Already sufficiently damaged (therefore) downed planes cease to exist but are still being shot at while reporting 0 Durability. This may contribute to the numbers being off....may. - The shown damage numbers do not add up.
Let's just take the picture above.
Line 374: +54 damage
Line 376: 0+61 damage added. → so +54 turned to +61
Line 379: x2 damage (whatever that means)
Line 380: +50 damage
Line 382: 61+37 damage added. → so x2 & +50 turned to +37
I am greatful that at least the 61 is always correct.
So whatever the x2 .....it also exists as x3/4 and other "multipliers" means it is reported but never makes any sense when combining with the following line or the actual added damage (as we see not even the following line makes sense...but nvm).
Furthermore, when you look at the example pic below you will see that between Line 337 and Line 338 there is an "+damage" Event missing.
Conclusion: Reported numbers largely do not make sense. The only outlier is the "adding up" of damages which is the only case where numbers make sense. Altough they are rather large but more on that later. This may contribute to the numbers being off....may. - Directions of defensive armament seems irrelevant.
MG directions of LBs do not matter at all, when the LB gets the RNG luck of shooting at all it is firing all weapons, no matter their direction at the same time - so it is all or nothing... One could likely completely remove them and only have the one pointing forward and get exactly the same results (since the damage done by weapons is also in most cases an overkill, like in this case the Fwd MG already did 46 Damage against a 28HP Fighter ...but more on that later).
Conclusion: You either shoot or you don't. The 'defensive armament' is not defensive armament. There likely is no protective effect of it besides the blast when getting the lucky RNG chance to shoot at all, if you don't nothing shoots.- A2A_LB directional armament.jpg (314.12 KiB) Viewed 311 times
Damage versus Durability
As hinted before I feel like there is an issue about the damage done by weapons. This further plays into the issue I have with "missing damaged planes".
Why is that.
The eyeballed average durability of a Fighter is ~30 and that of a Medium Bomber is like ~43. Fine.
If we look at the damage done by simple MGs already at longer "ranges" like 3, we see that even bad pilots at such ranges seem to oneshot everything on average.
Two examples:
Code: Select all
1,4,MiG-3 firing at Ju 88A (12.7mm UBS MG) - range 3
1,4,MiG-3 firing at Ju 88A (7.62mm ShKAS MG) - range 3
1,4,ACC 39 :: Range 15
1,4,...damage x3
1,4,...damage +30
1,4,Ju 88A damaged by 7.62mm ShKAS MG (2)
1,4,...damage 0 + 48. durability 41
1,4,MiG-3 shoots down Ju 88A
1,4,MiG-3 firing at Ju 88A (7.62mm ShKAS MG) - range 3
1,4,ACC 39 :: Range 15
1,4,...damage x5
1,4,...damage +54
1,4,Ju 88A damaged by 7.62mm ShKAS MG (2)
1,4,...damage 122 + 94. durability 41Now what is our average damage "burst" of a gun at an average range?
Code: Select all
1,4,...damage 0 + 6. durability 41
1,4,...damage 6 + 16. durability 41
1,4,...damage 22 + 33. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 7. durability 41
1,4,...damage 7 + 15. durability 41
1,4,...damage 22 + 7. durability 41
1,4,...damage 29 + 152. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 12. durability 41
1,4,...damage 12 + 112. durability 41
1,4,...damage 124 + 46. durability 0
1,4,...damage 170 + 55. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 48. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 10. durability 41
1,4,...damage 10 + 9. durability 41
1,4,...damage 19 + 38. durability 41
1,4,...damage 57 + 72. durability 0
1,4,...damage 129 + 103. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 84. durability 41
1,4,...damage 84 + 48. durability 0
1,4,...damage 132 + 70. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 43. durability 41
1,4,...damage 43 + 17. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 33. durability 41
1,4,...damage 33 + 38. durability 41
1,4,...damage 71 + 31. durability 0
1,4,...damage 102 + 40. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 122. durability 41
1,4,...damage 122 + 94. durability 41
1,4,...damage 216 + 33. durability 0
1,4,...damage 249 + 50. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 2. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 55. durability 41
1,4,...damage 55 + 1. durability 41
1,4,...damage 56 + 47. durability 0
1,4,...damage 2 + 6. durability 41
1,4,...damage 8 + 51. durability 41
1,4,...damage 59 + 27. durability 0
1,4,...damage 86 + 114. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 26. durability 41
1,4,...damage 26 + 29. durability 41
1,4,...damage 55 + 51. durability 0
1,4,...damage 106 + 48. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 62. durability 41
1,4,...damage 62 + 12. durability 41
1,4,...damage 74 + 36. durability 0
1,4,...damage 110 + 113. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 16. durability 41
1,4,...damage 16 + 57. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 4. durability 41
1,4,...damage 4 + 26. durability 41
1,4,...damage 30 + 40. durability 41
1,4,...damage 70 + 32. durability 41
1,4,...damage 102 + 80. durability 0
1,4,...damage 182 + 36. durability 0
Ju88 firing 1,4,...damage 0 + 46. durability 28
Ju88 firing 1,4,...damage 46 + 47. durability 28
Ju88 firing 1,4,...damage 93 + 41. durability 28
1,4,...damage 0 + 83. durability 41
1,4,...damage 83 + 26. durability 41
1,4,...damage 109 + 31. durability 0
1,4,...damage 140 + 77. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 61. durability 41
1,4,...damage 61 + 37. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 6. durability 41
1,4,...damage 6 + 45. durability 41
1,4,...damage 51 + 42. durability 41
1,4,...damage 93 + 21. durability 0
1,4,...damage 114 + 92. durability 0
1,4,...damage 0 + 22. durability 41
1,4,...damage 22 + 26. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 5. durability 41
1,4,...damage 5 + 4. durability 41
1,4,...damage 9 + 50. durability 41
1,4,...damage 59 + 115. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 37. durability 41
1,4,...damage 37 + 7. durability 41
1,4,...damage 0 + 69. durability 41
1,4,...damage 69 + 67. durability 41
1,4,...damage 136 + 67. durability 0
1,4,...damage 203 + 56. durability 0
Math:
Total '+ Damage' = 3595
Total '+ Damage' done without the Ju 88A firing = 3463
Number of Events without Ju 88A firing is 80-3=77
So 3463/77=45 damage per "burst" on average of a single armament (1x12.7mm or 2x7.62mm MGs).
So each burst on average oneshots a Medium Bomber.
I also want to highlight that "total damages" often exceed 100 and may even reach 200-250 figures, no plane has anywhere near such durability.
"Total Damage Results" we have are:
Code: Select all
55
181
225
48
232
202
60
142
299
2 [the only survivor that was shot at]
103
200
154
223
73
218
134 [Ju 88 shooting]
217
98
206
48
174
44
2594 were close (44-55).
3 were somewhat close (60, 73, 98).
There are no inbetween results between 2 (one plane that survived) and 44.
Here we have again the total of 3463 damage (which btw. does not match any number in the Combat Window/Air Phase Report).
Since we know here that 23 planes were shot at, of which one survived we can look up the average total damage per plane.
3463/23=150.5HP.
So the average MiG-3 plane, flying inside a not even 70 SKILL flight deals 150 damage per engagement when rolled to engage.
Some thoughts
The question is....what are Machine-/Autocannons supposed to improve if simple MGs are already oneshotting things?
Do planes types matter?
Looking throught the ridiculous RNG is hard ....but...
I always wondered why no matter which Bomber I'd use, without Escorts they'd just vanish. Similar to this I wondered why the upgrade to fighters with Auto Cannons did not rly change much (since ....well....shooting down 95% vs shooting down 96% does not seem like an argument to make for even mentioning the change to a plane using autocannons).
How about individual armament/Guns and their directions?
LBs do have defensive armaments pointing in different directions.
What I would expect is, that a bomber with defensive armaments would...
- shoot at the enemy Fighters and therefore makes them less likely to hit back ('protective effect').
- shoot at the enemy Fighters and damages them.
So similar to how Flak has no real "protective effect" (besides the actually downed planes before bombing), the same seems to be the case for all defensive bomber armaments.
And yet again the question about the creation/increase, role and function of the DIS column in the Combat Window comes up.
