BLOODY FLAK FROM FLEET!!!

[hazed-]

I know its been toned down but jesus christ!

today whilst climbing away from a base over the sea i sort of stumbled on the fleet ..i was about 13k climbing at 200. Flak bursts all around me made me jump   so i quicky dived away turning 90 degrees and 70 degrees inverted with wep.then began a hard weave in a general direction away from the fleet!!!
the damn flak chased me for what seemed like miles almost on me the entire time.weaving changing alt NEVER slowing i just wanted to get out the way but the damn flak killed me after several near misses with shrapnel hits!
I dont mind flak dont get me wrong but whoopee it HTC if i want to get shot by a computer ill buy a 1 player game!
When i was hit i could only just see the cruiser and flattop for gods sake! any gunner in real life would have no way of reading my direction whilst weaving diving climbing and running at over 300 mph! not unless he was blessed with eagle eyes!

Im getting sick of it! its happening far too much still.Ive had great missions ruined by wandering within fleet range(what is it 50 bloody mile or what?)

ok ok im ranting and im sorry for it but im sorry i just dont fly near the fleets anymore
because of the flak and the only time its safe'ISH' is when some poor other pilot is getting shot at while we slip past but you can garentee when hes dead it will switch back to you and within a few shots you'll be dead.
I liked it how it was at the biggining of 1.05.I actually saw and attacked fleets,now i dont want to and its spoiling it for me.
anyone who disagrees remeber to test the flak alone not with others around, you get a false impression of their accuracy when others are around.

hazed begging tone it down just a little more HT .

[Tac]

Agreed. Flak may not hit you on the FIRST shot, but it is still ridicously accurate.

Just now I was helping A40 which was under attack from Bish CV to its SE. Upped from 39, flew to 40, ack started exploding around me, dove at 500mph in my YAK and died DURING the dive. This is simply IMPOSSIBLE for WW2 Flak.

Took off again in P-38. same crap. At a 450 mph dive (compressed) diving after a con, flak pings me and BEWM.

Went to 40's tower inmediately and looked up to where I had died. the flak trails followed my dive in a STRAIGHT LINE.

Please HT, fix the flak or remove it altogether until it IS fixed, this is absolutely intolerable. All a fleet has to do is park itself off a field and make any air defense coming from a friendly field be not only confronted by the hordes of Cv-borne fighters, but also by FOO FIGHTERS FIRING FLAK.

[hazed-]

just a footnote:
anyone noticed how now we charge the fleet into the enemy base area and just stay there?
why? because the fleet has become the ostie runway shooter from beta maps!remeber them? sitting just outside ack range shooting people taking off?
well now it requires no skill even to shoot.
If we want this base taking to degenerate into furballs in front of fleets with flak killing wave after wave of hapless defenders until the fleets flak range covers a base and kills everything lifting off them or the fleet is sunk after 20 repetative sorties trying to attack it, then just sit back and watch.
I no longer fly tbm which i loved for torpedo runs,I dont dive bomb them and its because of radar perfect flak.

hazed

[popeye]

Stumbled on a nme fleet today, at 22k in a B-17.  Flak opened up on me while I was on my bomb run over A53.  Even though I was straight and level at 150 IAS, I took no hits from the flak, though it fire at me for at least a minute.

Maybe the key is to not show it any fear.  

[hazed-]

popeye maybe at 22k i would have been ok but i think average height of fights are much lower.Im going to do some tests i think.
hazed

[Fatty]

Been making divebomb runs from 10-12k, the flak shoots a lot at me, but is rare to hit me, even rarer to do significant damage.

[hazed-]

Fatty i dont know why this would be the case.
Im no newbie to avoiding flak and ack i assure you.maybe its a net lag thing where im appearing slightly behind my position but the flak instead of exploding behind hits bang on?
If i fly through fleet flack it always bursts around me not behind.As for the flak hitting you and rarely damaging you htc said the lethality has remained unchanged.You  must be lucky  

hazed
 

[Maverick]

Do away with the flack you might as well just drop fleets from the game. Any jabo fighter will be able to remove the fleet simply by sinking one ship, the CV.

Parking the fleet is the result of mandating that high ranking players can control them and everyone else is out of the loop. Unless you are one of the top players forget it, you are not going to be able to make changes and salvage a fleet. Too many top scorers like to park the fleet and then use it for quick turnarounds right next to a base. This leaves the fleet vulnerable to a multi prong attack. Since PT boats now spawn from some bases, a combination plane and pt attack are surprisingly effective unless there are players manning the ack guns.

Fighters at high speed cruising near a fleet will draw the AI gunners and the buff can lay eggs on the one ship needed to remove the entire fleet.

We need separate fleet options here. Those that want to shell a base at close range need a cruiser and a couple DD's. The cv needs to be kept away from the shore and launch planes, not try to shell a base with lousy gunnery accuracy and an almost total lack of ground hit sprites. A range finder needs to be implemented for ship to ship and ship to shore engagements.

Mav

[Tac]

Hazed:

Flying straight while ack fires will hit you after a good while of being fired on.

However, when you MOVE (aka, dive, climb, barrel roll) you fly into one of the ack puffs and BEWM.

What REALLY pisses me off is when you change alts, from 15k to 12k then back to 15k and the ack follows you perfectly. It makes a tunnel of black puff through which you fly with. The day a flak battery, consisting of 5 or more individually manned flak guns can all set the shell bursting altitude, load and fire the guns at inside 200 ft of each other AT THE SAME TIME and each one of those guns adjusting their fire to follow me during a 500mph powerdive or a barreling climb will be the day computers will become obsolete.

And that definetely did not happen in WW2.

[Jigster]

On the bright side, kill shooter is not on for ack...or at least it doesn't seem that way. I've been killed several times trailing people through the fleet ack, which puts you directly in the ack puffs  

Whether it's on or off though, the historical situation might be a solution. i.e. if there is a friendly near the enemy plane, the ack doesn't fire. Course it's alot more complex then that, but so is target aquiring with a large AAA gun.

------------------
   
33rd FW www.33rd.org

[gatt]

My squad has usually orders to stay away from enemy CV groups, even if flak is less Patriot-ish than before.

Great way to enjoy 1.05 eh? We want to find good dogfights not to avoid Patriots, Stingers and laser guided ack-ack.

You have to search carefully for a zone in the map far from those evil CV enemy groups and the fun is back  

[Smut]

Tac, how do you think the 5" guns on ship were controlled?

How do you think they were aimed?

How do you think the optimum shell burst hieght was a) determined and b) set?

I think you might want to do some research into these area before you say things like "The day a flak battery, consisting of 5 or more individually manned flak guns can all set the shell bursting altitude, load and fire the guns at inside 200 ft of each other AT THE SAME TIME and each one of those guns adjusting their fire to follow me during a 500mph powerdive or a barreling climb will be the day computers will become obsolete."

Real AAA guns, under battery control, manned by well trained crews and with a decent (not even state of the art) radar *can* do that.

It's not new technology.

It's not magic.

The USN got very, very good at this during WW2.

For the record, I have no real issues with the fleet ack. I've flown though it and lived, and I've flown through it and died. I live move than I die.

 

Originally posted by Tac:

And that definetely did not happen in WW2.

Wrong. Try telling the Japanese pilots that went up against the late war carrier groups that...

-Smut

[Hans]

The guns are radar guided, and are firing proximity rounds.

Also, when players man them they get none of this, and are aiming them manually thru sights, which is wrong.  You have mechanical computer aiming the guns, not a gunsight.

If anything, the AI is right, the player manned guns are hamstrung.

Hans.

[Jimdandy]

 

Originally posted by gatt:
My squad has usually orders to stay away from enemy CV groups, even if flak is less Patriot-ish than before.

Great way to enjoy 1.05 eh? We want to find good dogfights not to avoid Patriots, Stingers and laser guided ack-ack.

You have to search carefully for a zone in the map far from those evil CV enemy groups and the fun is back  

I know exactly what you mean. I was diving on an F6F yesterday in a 109 G2. Medium angle dive. I was closing on the F6F at approx. 450mph. I here the tell tail flack burst. I think WTF. I don't see the feet any place. The F6 still hasn't seen me and I hate to pass up a sleeper.   So I jink a little for the ack (now I'm flat moving BTW so no super maneuvers are passable) and more flack bursts. I broke and happened to see the fleet out of the corner of my eye about 15k away. Then BANG! Engine dead. And the dang F6F STILL hasn't seen me! Now my gravy kill is a total loss. My previous kill will be reduced and I have to bail. This took a total of 6-8 flak bursts. I'm not real happy with the ack. I'm not happy at all having to constantly worry that I might accidently fly "over" a CV. If you can call over 15k away doing 450mph+, losing alt fast, and jinking "over" the CV. Large bore ack is for barrage fire not sharp shooting diving fighters doing 450mph+. If it had been the "machine gun" type and I was a 1000yrds or less away I would say that was the risk of flying thru that. Big ack is for big, slow, level, bombers on approach to target. Ships have always been vulnerable to planes. That's why they would cap there CV's with fighters. Here is an example (It may also show that the B17 might not have been accurate enough to hit a moving CV):

The fate of the Shoho at the Battle of Coral Sea. This is from a referance book of mine.

"The Japanese carrier Shoho was heading for Port Moresby on the 6th of May 1942 when at 10:30 she was sighted 60 miles south of Bouganvill by four B-17's. All four B-17's attempted a high-level bombing attack on the Shoho, but caused light damage. In a desperate attempt to find the US carriers, the Shoho launched reconnaissance planes for a dawn sweep on the next day. At 7:30 they reported a carrier and a cruiser and the two accompanying carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku lunched a large strike. The "task force" turned out to be a US navy oiler and destroyer escort. This was a fatal error. The US task force was able to discover the Shoho's carrier group. The Shoho had been ordered to launch all available aircraft for attack on the "task force." At 9:50 the Lexington's strike spotted the Shoho turning into the wind. All the planes of the Japanese carrier group were away or on the deck of the Shoho. No resistance was encountered. The first strike scored no hits on the Shoho, but a near miss blew five of her aircraft off her deck. At 10:25 a second strike arrived, from the Yorktown. This strike scored two 1,000lb bomb hits on the flight deck, in spite of a curtain of anti-aircraft fire from the Shoho's escorts. The carrier reeled under the blows, and as she began to lose speed more bombs and torpedos hit her. According to Japanese records as many as 11 more bombs and seven torpedos hit, and the shoho burst into flames. Only six minutes after the last American plane had departed the order was given to abandon ship, and 10:35 the burning carrier rolled over and sank. Only 255 men out of and estimated 800 onboard were saved. It was the first Japanese carrier loss of the war."

A carrier is defended by it's planes and not it's ack. The unfortunate Shoho was caught with no air cover and all her planes on deck. The flack batteries didn't stop all of those bombs and torpedos form hitting her. Four B-17's dropped at her and scratched the paint.

[jihad]

 Just kill the CV.  

 Take a B-26 with 4 1000 lb bombs, attack  bow to stern at 12,000 ft, reduce rpms and salvo all 4 at approx 1/3rd the CVs length in front of it.