B-17 Chin Turret

[Bjoring]

The chin turret on later model B-17s was distictive and would be alot more useful in-game than the cheek guns. The devs said that including a station to control the turret made the nose too crowded, but that could be fixed by removing the largely useless cheek mounts.

[Tamren]

Yes please! You don't need to remove the cheek guns, you can simply have the bombardier control the turret whenever the player is not actively looking through the scope. This is exactly how the turret was used IRL. If you don't want it to be automatic you can put a toggle switch on the bombardier position to switch from scope to turret and back again.

Also as Bjoring pointed out, in addition to the chin turret you could also give players the option of removing the cheek guns to save weight that can be used in other areas.

See here in the first picture, the turret controls are that console gamepad looking thing on the right. The bombardier sits in the chair and is the only crewman who can use the controls.

https://media.defense.gov/2016/Jun/20/2001556672/780/780/0/160606-F-PD696-451.JPG

There are all sorts of funky experimental chin turrets you could implement in the game too.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0c/6b/45/0c6b4591ed0882346c8f0615589a60e7.jpg

There is also the YB-40 experimental gunship b-17 that added a second dorsal turret and doubled the side guns.

https://i2.wp.com/www.defensemedianetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/YB-40-2.jpg

[static]

The devs explained this a while back. They weren't able to implement the G model chin turret because of UI and player control issues. This led them to model the B-17F (with the G-model tail turret assembly). It's not a huge loss because the F model is arguably the most iconic and famous of the B-17 variants anyways.

The YB-40 was an abject failure and was never used ourside of limited testing due to severe speed and range limitations caused by how heavy it was compared to B-17s that had hit their target and were returning home.

[Tamren]

Originally posted by static:

The devs explained this a while back. They weren't able to implement the G model chin turret because of UI and player control issues.

Yeah I get that, but I just pointed out a solution. The original issue is that players need to click on each station to tell crew where to go. With two cheek guns and the bombsight in the nose it's rather crowded and there is no room to make a separate nose gun station the way it is in the Lancaster.

But since the chin turret is controlled by joystick you can just combine the bombardier and nose gunner positions into one. Exactly how it would be operated in real life. If you want to keep the positions separate to keep the micromanagement element just have a toggle somewhere on the UI. It would be just like having two "browser tabs" for the bombardiers station, when you flip over to gunnery you get the UI buttons for things like Focus. When you flip to the bombsight you get the controls to open the bay doors and such.

Originally posted by static:

The YB-40 was an abject failure and was never used ourside of limited testing due to severe speed and range limitations caused by how heavy it was compared to B-17s that had hit their target and were returning home.

Well yes, but Lancasters IRL would be just as crap and overweight if you slapped quad-quad 50cal turrets on them. It's a good source of ideas if nothing else, this game thrives on offering lots of equipment options to pick from even if they aren't totally realistic.

[Tamren]

Also it occurs to me that you could simply combine the two cheek guns into a single unit for upgrade purposes. (you could also do the same thing with the side guns). The cost per-upgrade would have to be adjusted but that would solve the UI issues in the outfitting screen (which is already at capacity) because you need fewer buttons. That would leave room for the chin turret.