Puffy ack needs to go after 10 years of BS

[Gwjr2]

I don't mind getting hit here and there but tired of playing against your puffy ack HT, last 4 times near a cv 14 to 20k 1 puff boom while maneuvering, it been over modeled for 10 years and you know it! I come in here to fight against Humans not your over powered lazer 1shot BS  too bad stats don't show it kind of makes it easy for you to say "its random,really does not happen that much" I took a 3 year break and came back to some really cool stuff but also same ole same ole.

[Citabria]

its funny that I enjoy being shot at by player manned 88mm. a mind working against me with shell travel times and human reactions. no one enjoys or even likes the "challenge" of the ai insta spawn puffy flak box. the "coding" resource problem excuse flew for a few years but 10 years... my god ten years and its still that same neglected piece of code. when a problem persists this long just put a player behind the trigger and be done with it. everyone will be happier and the flak will actually be feared instead of just hated as the most annoying crap ever.

if its a matter of quantity slave the whole fleet to one player and give them control of the firing box with the same shell travel times as 88mm and firing fuzing. if more players man the guns divide the guns up equally. it would be amazing to have shell travel times like the manned 88mm and never see this bad flak box insta spawn code in action again.

it would actually be able to stop a set of 10k level bombers in its tracks making level bombing of fleets more hazerdous... omg.

[Citabria]

lets have a history lesson on how the ai insta spawn puffy box came into being.

Hitech had coded some detailed great 88mm ai flak complete with actual shells. it worked great for a few 88mm guns and was great fun to dodge as it had the actual bullet travel time constraints like normal ai ack which could be dodged but could also kill you fair and square.

Enter the problem... carrier groups were added.

and above these shiny new carrier groups was a black cloud. a cloud in the form of that ai flak code that basically lost its mind with that many guns on a moving platform. the specifics of what went wrong with the nice detailed flak code are not entirely known. only the part visible to the players of it not firing at anything and just being a black cloud above the ship are what is remembered (by me).

so next patch or so quick and dirty all that detail and realism of the origional malfucntioning flak code is removed. not fixed. removed.

in its place is low detail no shell travel time. no prediction of current path or picking best target. A user front end based instant spawn box system that bases its spawn point on the players current position at all times regardless of change in altitude direction or speed with the small caveat that the spread changes based on speed and altitude. yet the box center is always the player no matter what. whats more to make it "fair" to bombers the box is larger and less concentrated so that in the end a level bomber has less to fear from the slot machine puffy flak statistically than a small maneuvering fighter.

its rather ironic that I built an entire terrain called ozkansas filled with tons of carriers and I never fly near carriers because i am so annoyed by the flak code alone. I even changed how many ships in the fleet when I built it thinking it might cut down on the awful annoying nature of it but even a carrier with no escorts annoys the hell out of me.


10 years. my god. is this even considered a problem that this LOW DETAIL AI CODE has never been replaced when the HIGH DETAIL AI CODE it took over for was replaced in a matter of weeks when carrier groups were added?

fix it please. its worth the effort. it is the biggest realism killer in game at the moment. nothing screams fake like that popcorn box.

its about detail, realism, high fidelity and fun isn't it? this ai flak code fails in all of these categories.

[Gwjr2]

Very well put as I was just pissed lol

[PR3D4TOR]

+1

[clerick]

I can't say I love that the puffy is innefective against straight and level buff formations or that there is a magic floor of 3K. Having said that, I do recall that the proximity fuzed ack was very accurate, like 1 in 45 hitting it's mark. I'm curious to know what our magic ack's probability to hit is.

[AHTbolt]

Easy fix, Dont fly in puffy ack.

[Tilt]

yet the box center is always the player no matter what.

Whilst one would wish for the realism Fester describes...its seems to me that this alone could be fixed even on an FE based system.

[Trukk]

10 years. my god. is this even considered a problem that this LOW DETAIL AI CODE

No not really.  Sure they could code all the actual guns and rounds, etc, and say on average it kills you 5% of the time. Or they could use the current stastistical "let's draw a box around the player and randomly explode rounds" that kills you 5% of the time.

Either way you will die 5% of the time, the big difference is that in the first option your framerate will be a lot lower.  Personally I'll take the second option.

[The Fugitive]

Personally  I have no trouble with puffy ack and I have rarely been shot down by it.

I don't KNOW how it works in the game other than how Hitech explained it recently in a thread. Fester is very good telling stories. Once an idea blooms in his mind it become HIS reality in which he uses as the basis of his arguments. While entertaining, they are only accurate in his mind. Hitech has said that the ack will target the closest guy over 3k to the cv. I try to keep someone between me and the CV at all times and have no trouble. Once that person is shot down it's time to move out. Long swooping moves that continually change me alt and direction with out blowing much "E" until I find another guy that gets closer taking the ack from me.

Can the ack be made better? heck yes! I think buffs should be hit far more easily, bigger target, steady slower speed, less maneuvering so easier to target. All factors that logic says they should be the one targeted, but a fighter escort will go down long before the buffs will.

[Karnak]

No not really.  Sure they could code all the actual guns and rounds, etc, and say on average it kills you 5% of the time. Or they could use the current stastistical "let's draw a box around the player and randomly explode rounds" that kills you 5% of the time.

Either way you will die 5% of the time, the big difference is that in the first option your framerate will be a lot lower.  Personally I'll take the second option.

No, they couldn't.  If the shells were modeled then pulling Gs would make you almost impossible to hit and being behind a hill or mountain would also offer protection.  Currently all that increased Gs do is make the box a bit larger and hills and mountains have no effect.

I don't think Citabria is correct about bombers getting a bigger box though, I think they follow the same rules as everything else.  The difference is that while 25 damage from a hit will take your Spitfire's wing off or kill your Bf109's engine, a B-17G will shrug it off because each damage area on the B-17G takes more than that and the next hit on the bomber is unlikely to be in the same place.  Losing your wing or engine is a lot more dramatic and memorable than a "pwang" sound and a hole appearing on the wing.

[Helm]

Easy fix, Don't fly in puffy ack.

That's not so easy ....I've had puffy ack chase me to where I cant even see the enemy fleet anymore ...yet it's still firing .....and since there is no Icon on the map for enemy CV you can stumble into an enemy CV very easily ....the only sure way to avoid it is to never fly over water ....even that does not work ...you can be defending a base near the water and puffy can reach out and touch ya


Helm....out

[oakranger]

Easy fix, Dont fly in puffy ack.

Not easy.   There are times i would be so far out from the CV that I can not see it.  And still get hit or killed by it.

[IrishOne]

Easy fix, Dont fly in puffy ack.

lets say the motor on your car starts puking oil and smoking.    get it repaired?   of course not.   here's an easy fix, don't drive anymore.     c'mon man, if you don't have something remotely intelligent to add, don't post.   

[Noir]

Easy fix, Dont fly in puffy ack.

 

fix the puffy ack please