CV Puffy Ack

[ToeTag]

Does anyone know if CV auto Pufy Ack is a random pattern generated around your flight axis when you get to the appropriate alt and distance?  Or is it actually fired from the cv and tracks you from there. 

The reason I am asking is that I was @ 17 thousand feet in a dog fight last night turning, dropping alt and changing speed say in a 2.0k sphere and the ack was right with me the whole time.  I would think that this would be nearly impossible to track a fighter manuvering that much at that alt.  You would have to lead the target so much that you would need to be pshycic to predict were the AC would be to fire the shot.

Yes, I bought the farm

[Lusche]

Does anyone know if CV auto Pufy Ack is a random pattern generated around your flight axis when you get to the appropriate alt and distance?  Or is it actually fired from the cv and tracks you from there.  

It's a random pattern on a "box" centered on your plane.
The size of the box is changing with your speed and flight path (=turning)

You would have to lead the target so much that you would need to be pshycic to predict were the AC would be to fire the shot.

And that's why there usually isnt a single gun "tracking" you, but several ones shooting a pattern.

[ToeTag]

It's a random pattern on a "box" centered on your plane.
The size of the box is changing with your speed and flight path (=turning)

So it is not actually traced from the ship its just a random pattern of explosions that are based on my speed assuming that the ships guns are operational?

So... basically fly into designated ALT and Distance box of the CV and a box of explosions starts happening around the plane?  If this is how its modeled then no amount of evasive manuvers can save your butt.  Because the box is always with you. 

It needs to be tracked from a gun on the ship that is on the correct side or end that can actually track you with a distance, speed (of shell) and timed explosion based on your last know altitude. 

[Anaxogoras]

This is why I've said that puffy ack doesn't meet the usual quality standard for inclusion in the game.  FYI, it can also fire through mountains.

[Lusche]

So... basically fly into designated ALT and Distance box of the CV and a box of explosions starts happening around the plane?  If this is how its modeled then no amount of evasive manuvers can save your butt.  Because the box is always with you. 

As it would be if the rounds would actually be traced fom cv.. the effect is pretty much the same. They get more accurate if you fly slow & straight, less accurate when you fly fast & with heading changes.

The "box" thing is quite close to how real heavy ack works - of course it's higly improbable to get a direct hit with a single gun, so that's why a whole battery is firing patterns ("box") around you.

The main difference (and annoyance) resulting from this particular way puffy ack is modeled in AH is that there are no line of sight requirements - you can be shot by factory puffy ack on the other side of a mountain 

[ToeTag]

A CV group would have a 1 in a million chance of hitting a manuvering fighter at 17 thousand feet.  It happens way to often because of the way it is modeled.

Set fuse for 17 thousand feet get aiming solution and fire....by the time a shell would get close to target it would be 1000 feet (most likely below) from where that last position was.  As it stands now the shells just show up at your postion because you are there.  Evasive manuvers just dont count when Puffy ack is involved.

How many guns from a CV group are even able to get a solution to be able to shoot?  All of them?

All guns should not be able to fire at all times because all of the guns can't see you.

I never noticed that they can shoot through mountains.   

Any chance of getting this damage model fixed? 

[bj229r]

This AM (called in sick ...last of 3 sick days I get for the year) I was in aft 5" of a cv, watched set of B24's approach from 7:00...were about 12k....I fired at em (I'm not very good with em)...whole task force was firing at em...nothin else around to divert the ack's attention.....they just drove right up, dropped bomb...left....not 1 plane hit. Now if I'm a lone P47 going 350, changing heading, alt....it vaporizes me about 50% of the time...is utter bs, but I suspect it's very hard to change

[RTHolmes]

This is why I've said that puffy ack doesn't meet the usual quality standard for inclusion in the game.

QFT

[guncrasher]

I think puffy ack shoots at the closest planes over 3k first.  I have been flying around cv and will see ack all over a plane that is closer than me and yet none around me, once i get closer to cv then I am the one that is lucky.  btw i always fly a26's to kill cv at 5500 to 6k altitude and full speed.  I only get about 5 seconds of puffy ack before i can drop my bombs, cv can turn all it wants and still get it more than 95% of the time except when its parallel to me then accuracy drops to about 70%.  once i drop then i start evading left and right but oposite way from cv heading then dive below 3k to avoid puffy ack.  normally i only get minimun damage on all 3 planes except when really good gunners are on board then i'll be lucky if i drop

semp

[Baumer]

This is from the NavWeaps website;

"Starting in late 1942, AA VT projectiles were introduced and became increasingly available as the war went on.  By the middle of 1944, most front-line ships had about three AA VT rounds for every one AA Common round.  The usual practice was to fire this ratio at attacking aircraft.  The smoke puffs created by the time-fuzed AA Common rounds allowed the fire control officers to assess and correct the accuracy of the firing control solution and also provided target guidance for the gun crews of the 40 mm and 20 mm AA guns.  VT fuzing reduced roughly in half the number of rounds fired per aircraft shot down.  A notable success with VT ammunition was that of USS Abercrombie (DE-343) which shot down a Ohka (Baka) rocket glider bomb in May 1945, firing only two rounds."

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-38_mk12.htm

[BigKev03]

Only thing I can think of that would reflect to actual AA fire from a ship like we see in the game would be the proximity fuse used by the USN in WWII.  I was the most accurate of them all.

[ToeTag]

This is from the NavWeaps website;

"Starting in late 1942, AA VT projectiles were introduced and became increasingly available as the war went on.  By the middle of 1944, most front-line ships had about three AA VT rounds for every one AA Common round.  The usual practice was to fire this ratio at attacking aircraft.  The smoke puffs created by the time-fuzed AA Common rounds allowed the fire control officers to assess and correct the accuracy of the firing control solution and also provided target guidance for the gun crews of the 40 mm and 20 mm AA guns.  VT fuzing reduced roughly in half the number of rounds fired per aircraft shot down.  A notable success with VT ammunition was that of USS Abercrombie (DE-343) which shot down a Ohka (Baka) rocket glider bomb in May 1945, firing only two rounds."

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_5-38_mk12.htm

OK so how many rounds were fired typically and how many rounds were fired after the introduction of this ammo?  I was in the puffy for maybe 1 minute manuvering wildly and got popped. 

Did this new ammo shoot through mountains as well?

Was it able to shoot from the side of a ship that did not have line of sight?

It's not the ammo. Its the box of explosions surrounding your plane. No matter what you do the ack is with you randomly popping in a box.   Even nose down at 400 mph.  Is that what the ammo did?

[stephen]

Its more dangerouse to follow a plane through ack then it is to be the one actualy being targeted...anyone else notice that?

[branch37]

ive gotten so pissed at puffy ack that i dont even mess with it anymore.  If im after a plane and he wants to drag me through it more power to him.  Im not followin him

[Baumer]

I agree with you that it would be nice to have the ack not fire through mountains. However, Hitech has explained that it is very CPU intensive to do all the calculations, so we have the best alternative they could figure out.

Your speed has nothing to do with at VT shell exploding, all it has to do is be within a cretin proximity and it will detonate, that's it.

Here is an image from the VT fuse manual to show the efective blast pattern for the shell and the sensitivity for the proximity fuse.


Here's the manual
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/vtfuze/index.htm

An just to be clear if all the ships were modeled with the exact armament the CV group would have the following armament;

CV-15 USS Randolph
5"/38 Cannon- 12
40mm Quad Mounts (Early)- 11
40mm Quad Mounts (Late)- 18
20mm Mounts- 57

CA-68 USS Baltimore
8"/55 Cannon- 9
5"/38 Cannon- 12
40mm Mounts- 48
20mm Mounts- 24

DD-445 USS Fletcher (x4)
5"/38 Cannon- 5
40mm Mounts- 6
20mm Mounts- 7

So if you're flying at altitude around an enemy CV group, you have potentially 44 5"/38 cannons firing at you. That's more than enough reason to stay away from a carrier in my opinion, and it seems to be modeled correctly other than the projectile collision issue. Going with a conservative 3 rounds per minute, you had 132 5" rounds fired at you in 1 minute so the "box" represents (my assumption needs verification from HTC) only the rounds that are close to you, with a larger number missing and not detonating at all.