88s

[pembquist]

88 and the other man guns are fine or awful depending upon context. When a base is being over run and there are 10 vulchers, fine. When one plane plinks at the base ack to try to stir something up and all he gets is manned ack/88 blech! When one plane is fighting 2 at a hostile base and the 88 joins in, blech! its Blech Blech Blech till some line is crossed and then it is all fine. The problem is  then guns are usually killed when it would be fine and who wants to bother when it is Blech?

[Vraciu]

88 and the other man guns are fine or awful depending upon context. When a base is being over run and there are 10 vulchers, fine. When one plane plinks at the base ack to try to stir something up and all he gets is manned ack/88 blech! When one plane is fighting 2 at a hostile base and the 88 joins in, blech! its Blech Blech Blech till some line is crossed and then it is all fine. The problem is  then guns are usually killed when it would be fine and who wants to bother when it is Blech?

Well said.

88s should also go down longer than a measly 15 minutes.  Blech!

[JimmyD3]

Obviously a man of limited experience.   It is far more nuanced than this.

  Come on V, with your gunnery skills taking out the 88's should be a piece of cake.

[Vraciu]

Come on V, with your gunnery skills taking out the 88's should be a piece of cake.

When I want to, yes.   But I often get oiled for my trouble and by the time I get back the stupid thing is almost up again. 

[Oldman731]

Fights and winning the war don't mix nicely.

Valid point.  It's been an issue since the beginning of AH.

On the plus side, people from both schools are still here, having fun.

- oldman

[Vraciu]

Valid point.  It's been an issue since the beginning of AH.

On the plus side, people from both schools are still here, having fun.

- oldman

Sounds like the dynamics need a tweak so that fights are part of winning the war. 

[ccvi]

88 and the other man guns are fine or awful depending upon context. When a base is being over run and there are 10 vulchers, fine. When one plane plinks at the base ack to try to stir something up and all he gets is manned ack/88 blech! When one plane is fighting 2 at a hostile base and the 88 joins in, blech! its Blech Blech Blech till some line is crossed and then it is all fine. The problem is  then guns are usually killed when it would be fine and who wants to bother when it is Blech?

88s are neither an issue when in a fight (exception a fight that consists of staying high and flying in a straight line) nor when deacking. The maneuvering typical for these activities makes hits by the 88 very unlikely. 88s are a real threat only to something that moves in a straight line.

[bozon]

They are already toned down.
HTC has not dialed them up in game as to what they were like in real life.

In real life that was not a single 88 gun, but a whole network of them instead. Given the amount of shooting and the number of planes they were shooting at, the chances to kill something with it were not that high - they just kept “rolling the dice” again and again until they got lucky.

But that is besides the point because AH is a game - we want to pick and choose the better parts if real life to be implemented in the game, and leave the boring or horrific parts of life out of it.

88s in AH enjoy a perfect range finder that they did not have in real life. The perfect range on the icon is what allows the game 88s to keep adjusting the explosion distance with high accuracy. You rarely get hit directly by the 88 unless you are diving on it. Kills usually happen by a near-miss explosion. Mess with their range finder and on maneuvering targets most shell will pass by and explode past the plane, or won’t even reach it. Wirbs by the way enjoy this too since perfect range give a good indication of required lead.

All HTC need to do is to give GVs and manned guns the same level of range details that planes get: 200 yards steps up to 1000, then 0.5k steps, then 1k steps.

[Lusche]

Unlike planes, AA guns actually had rangefinders   

[icepac]

Perfect rangefinders?

Do they account for the arc?

Are the increments displayed within the size of the ack explosion?

[1stpar3]

Ok, make all ACK on bases automatic...turn Air Strips into small Task Groups (with equivalent AA capabilities). Make the guns capable of taking out potential Vehicles camping runways. As of now, gun installations can NOT hit vehicles that roll right up to bases. I can de-ack a town or small airbase with an M3. Dont believe it? Sit on a field AFTER CAPTURE and see how many guns you can kill...its most if not all(before you get killed in Wirb). The closer you get to a GUN, the safer you are. The positions are elevated and cant traverse low enough to kill even a Jeep, just drive right up and 3 .50s its dead. A change in AUTO ack, IMO would fix the GUN FIRST defense that players may feel required to provide themselves

[DmonSlyr]

Ok, make all ACK on bases automatic...turn Air Strips into small Task Groups (with equivalent AA capabilities). Make the guns capable of taking out potential Vehicles camping runways. As of now, gun installations can NOT hit vehicles that roll right up to bases. I can de-ack a town or small airbase with an M3. Dont believe it? Sit on a field AFTER CAPTURE and see how many guns you can kill...its most if not all(before you get killed in Wirb). The closer you get to a GUN, the safer you are. The positions are elevated and cant traverse low enough to kill even a Jeep, just drive right up and 3 .50s its dead. A change in AUTO ack, IMO would fix the GUN FIRST defense that players may feel required to provide themselves

I agree with you here for the most part.

Manned acks on ships only.

People who lose a 15-30 min sortie to a manned ack pisses people off more than anything.

Manned acks take no risk. Zero. Nada.

They don't protect from vulchers.

You can't "fight" against a manned ack.

If you Jabo a manned ack, they will more than likely connect, thus ending your sortie.

They aren't fun to fight against.

It's lazy gameplay.

Who would quit because they couldn't up in a manned ack compared to who would quit after getting their sorties ruined time after time by manned ack every time they jabo a field?

Players should not have the advantage of being able to ruin sorties from a field ack unless it's from a a shipor CV.

[pembquist]

I wonder, is it more irritating to die from manned ack or auto ack?

[icepac]

If all base ack was auto, cybro would collect that many more proxy kills.

[Vraciu]

I wonder, is it more irritating to die from manned ack or auto ack?

Is it more annoying to die from being run over by a bus or by an automated robot car?