The 88 flak solution.

[alpini13]

  I have seen a lot of post concerning more flak at bases,or tank destroyers etc.....until more of that becomes available how about a towable 88 flak(towed by the german halftrack already in the game) that can fire AP.HE,and AA rounds with proximity fuse,maybe smoke as well.
   It would be easy to destroy as it is an open manned gun,but difficult to find .it would have no icon when deployed as man guns in the game have no icon. but when trailered it would have a std vehicle icon and can be spotted from air or tower,etc.
   It would need time to deploy(like the re-arm pad takes time)maybe 30-45 sec. it could not carry supplies of any sort and no troops(halftrack would be used for ords and crew to operate the 88Flak
   To deploy,use the O key to open doors and O again to deploy,and another key to trailer and O to close doors.
 I know 30-45 sec is not a believable deployment time,and neither is 30secs to re-arm and re-fuel a plane or a box of supplies that can turn a tank back over from its side in 2 secs. but it is a game,and would work well,deal with it .

[Lusche]

The 88 did not have proximity fuses.

[Rino]

     Thanks Lusche 

[EagleDNY]

The trailer concept is unnecessary - there is a version of the German sdkfz halftrack with an 88mm gun mounted on it.  I made a posting on this with a picture of the thing a while back (you can search the BBS for it).

The big problem is as described - there are no proximity AA fuses for the 88.  They used a time fuse setting that was set so that the round would explode at a certain altitude.  Since they had optical rangefinders at the battery, they could come up with a pretty good estimate of the altitude of passing bombers, but we have no such capability in AH.  I could see the ability to set the round with a dot command (either a .fuse <time> or a .alt <altitude of detonation>) setting.  A quick and dirty rangefinder could be approximated by creating a gunsight image based on aircraft type (hashmarks of wingspan for a particular aircraft at a certain height).

If such a gun were implemented though, I think it should cause damage to friendlies as well.  An exploding shell should not care if you are Bish, Knight, or Rook. 

$.02

[Lusche]

If such a gun were implemented though, I think it should cause damage to friendlies as well.  An exploding shell should not care if you are Bish, Knight, or Rook. 

There's a reason why friendly fire by players is off. And no reason why it should be different for the 88 than for any other player controlled gun in game

[EagleDNY]

There is a reason why flak gunners stopped shooting when friendly fighters attacked.  It really is gamey if a bunch of 88 gunners are blasting away into a furball of friendly and enemy fighters. 

Frankly, I could lose the prohibition vs friendly fire.  We seem to be able to get along pretty well in FSO without it.  I know we'll get some jerks that go to some side to bomb their own CV or something stupid, but a system message on every friendly fire kill would quickly identify those folks, and the scorn of the community would soon follow.

[Lusche]

Frankly, I could lose the prohibition vs friendly fire.  We seem to be able to get along pretty well in FSO without it.

FSO is an entirely different beast than the MA. You are in uniform, it's highly structured, you have clear rules that are being enforced by CM's.  The MA is a unstructured are full of n00bs, no rules and no one there to enforce them anyway. How about approaching the runway in your highly perked 262 with a lot of kills just be be blown to pieces by either
- a 2 weeker  who doesn't know better ("Yayyy my first kill!")
- another player simply holding a grudge against you (maybe you just didn't follow his "orders" and now he wants to show you what he thinks of "furballers")
- or simply someone who does, because he can.


There is no way to enable friendly fire and not turn the MA into total chaos.


And by the way:

There is a reason why flak gunners stopped shooting when friendly fighters attacked. 

Very often they did not. Flak gunners tended to shoot first, ask questions later... if any. See the Luftwaffe's operation Bodenplatte ...

[EagleDNY]

There is no way to enable friendly fire and not turn the MA into total chaos.

And by the way:
Very often they did not. Flak gunners tended to shoot first, ask questions later... if any. See the Luftwaffe's operation Bodenplatte ...

Bodenplatte was kind of a clusterf*** on the part of the Luftwaffe.  If you don't alert your own flak batteries, then you get what you get when friendlies fly over.  During 'normal' operations vs american daylight bombing, there was much better air-ground coordination. 

I can see what you mean in the MA for friendly fire, but that still leaves the a big problem for the 88 then.  The 88 really is a 'puffy ack' weapon - the number of aircraft directly hit is very low compared to the number damaged by explosion and shrapnel.  Maybe the solution is to enable friendly fire for puffy ack only, but you might still get the noobs and idiots sitting on a friendly airbase popping off puffy ack at landing aircraft.   I wonder what the minimum altitude for an 88 round detonation would be?

[AWwrgwy]

Friendly fire works for the auto-guns. The auto-gunners are generally good enough leads that they don't hit friendlies very often but it does happen.


wrongway

[rayace1]

The 88 did not have proximity fuses.

The 88 did have proximity fuses, it was the main gun that Germany used to destroy the American Bombers.

[Lusche]

The 88 did have proximity fuses, it was the main gun that Germany used to destroy the American Bombers.

It was the main AA gun, but still never used any kind of proximity fuses. EagleDNY explained the actual fusing.

[cobia38]

  Shells were time fuzed in the manner Erik Shilling described.  It took the
88mm shell apprx. 20 seconds to reach its maximum effective altitude of
20,000 ft., so the fuze delay was set at 20 seconds.  A Kommandogerat
optical predictor was used to determine the azimuth, slant range,
elevation and time setting.
From 1943, visual aiming was done by salvoing into a predetermined "box"
through which the bombers were predicted to pass.
Fortunately, the Germans never developed proximity fuzes, as the allies
did.

[Lusche]

And this is how the fuses were set:

[alpini13]

   well ofcourse they didnt have proximity fuses...but for the sake of game play the prox fuse would simulate the timed fuse range finder portion of the process, the key here is as a vehicle it would have an icon,as a manned gun it wouldnt......and so it could defend a base,town, spawn or attack the enemies that be at the base and spawn points. it would be easy to kill but difficult to find and pack a powerful punch.

[ToeTag]

There is a reason why flak gunners stopped shooting when friendly fighters attacked.  It really is gamey if a bunch of 88 gunners are blasting away into a furball of friendly and enemy fighters. 

Frankly, I could lose the prohibition vs friendly fire.  We seem to be able to get along pretty well in FSO without it.  I know we'll get some jerks that go to some side to bomb their own CV or something stupid, but a system message on every friendly fire kill would quickly identify those folks, and the scorn of the community would soon follow.

You realize this renders the gun obsolete.