The 1-ping Super AI Ack has got to go

[Kweassa]

I think the general idea is to make them 'dangerous dangerous', instead of 'boneheaded dangerous'. A 37mm ack sniping a plane traveling at more than 400 miles per hour at thousands of feet high, while slackering around planes dancing around in low speeds at deck alt....

 ..

 I think this should be the opposite way around, where the guys have hard time hitting the fast guy at thousands of feet alt, while puncturing more holes than a Swiss cheese on the guy dancing at low speeds, low alt...

[Tilt]

Originally posted by LePaul
incredible AI acks that are more accurate the faster you are.  

But, go over an airbase and make a low pass at 500mph, with plenty of evasive manuevers, and you're dead.

How do you make evasive manouvers at 500 mph?  I take it you mean manouvering "out of plain" ie changing direction?

For sure the ground fire is less accurate when you are able to change direction constantly and this is only possible when flying slower.

Hence if there is a variable which is too accurate its the ground fires ability to "lead aim" its target.

I would also agree re lethality.... I would prefer massed 7.6mm, some 12mm and the occasional single 20mm (manned) on most small and medium fields


Tilt

[Midnight]

Example 1. N1k flies into AA range going 200 TAS, slowly turning left and right. It is able to fly through all the AA and kill every gun by itself, the entire time the AA guns are shooting but cannot hit it.

Example 2. A low B-17 (About 200feet) flies straight and level over a field. 3 AA guns are firing everything they have right at it, but the B-17 does not take any damage and keeps on flying.

Example 3. An enemy GV is on a friendly field when an AA gun re-spawns about 20 yards from it. The gun starts firing at the GV but is only able to hit the ground in front of it.

Example 4. You bail out of your plane and hit the silk. As you are floating down, the AA guns are firing at you, but the tracers are going right, left and over you. None hit you all the way down. You land and then end flight. Captured.

Example 5. A freindly plane is being pursued by a bandit. They are both low ans slow, so the friendly drags the bandit into the AA cover hoping to get cleared. The AA fires wildly all over the sky, but the bandit is not hit. The freindly keeps flying around and drags the bandit directly over the AA guns. Finally, the bandit scores a kill and then escapes from the AA guns range.

Example 6. You are in a P-51D flying at 300+ TAS in pursuit of a bandit. The bandit dives for the AA. You decide to pull out at 4000 feet as you see tracers flying up to you. Just as you get the nose up and start banking away, a single round hits you and you're dead.

All of these examples have been seen by many people. It is foolish to say that the AA fire is realistic.

How is it that a gun firing at a plane coming in from the south can INSTANTLY slew 180 degrees to shoot at that same plane as it passes overhead at 300+ TAS?

How is it that a gun firing at a plane as big as a B17 cannot hit it, even when the B17 is less than 1000 yards away?

How is it that a gun can't hit a stationary object right in front of it, but can shoot 8500 feet into the air and kill a fast moving plane?

AA is not accurately modeled and needs to be modified.

[Fatty]

It's never going to be modelled accurately.  Not and still have double digit fps on anyone's machine.

Since it cannot ever be done accurately, I prefer the deadly version of inaccuracy over the pansy version of inaccuracy.

[WildBlue]

CV acks can't down anything flying over them? Hmmm.... wonder how I got those 4 kills from cv today (or was it 5, can't remember)... just lucky I guess... seems like a lot of people who man the cv guns get lucky... of course, that's not AI, so I'm off topic I guess. I actually rarely get the one ping kills, usually one hit will bring me down, but not instantly. And yes, I come in fairly fast, usually around 400 ias in a dive. I have noticed that I get hit more in the dive than when I'm pulling out and circling for another run, and on my second run at lower alt and speed, I don't get hit much at all. It is an odd feeling to get hit by the first ack shot (no previous tracers) at high (15 - 18k) alt. And getting nailed through the clouds... that would be my biggest whine. How do they do it? IR homing ack, lol...

[Tac]

The solution would be for HTC to add single .50 cal AA guns and quad .303 AA guns for the terrain editor and let us show how acks can be made better.

Midnight: I disagree in your observations of the ack firing at gv's and at planes following a friendly plane.

From my experience, if im in a gv and field gets taken and my gv is on a slightly higher terrain that the acks, they will hit the earth only. If im level they will hit me several times (they do miss like 4 out of 10 shots).

However, when im following a high speed con into ack, I get killed INSTANTLY by the gdamn sniper ack. If im following a 200mph con as he jinks and flies to or over his ack, I have a good chance of living through it (but the moment I fly OVER an ack gun I die. Trick: dont fly over the ack guns).

But it is true, a zeke , n1k or spit or any good turner flying below 200mph and turning can wipe a field by itself and not get hit. But a 580mph Me262 changing alts  and jinking without returning to any of its previous positions (aka, left, down, left, up, level, up, right, down, right, down, left .. all done in 5 seconds or less). gets hit with incredible regularity. Just like the 450mph plane diving and corkscrewing to a side as it dive bombs (corkscrewing to keep speed under control).. and WHACK!

[hazed-]

I think its simple.

This is an online game.

the idea is it offers what other games cant. ie boxed SINGLE player games.

If im shot down by a human controlled ack then fair enough but i certainly dont pay money to fight computer controlled guns that can spoil 20 minutes or longer of flying.

make AI guns small calibre with 303s and 50 cals please. Im fed up with ack taking a wing off or destroying my plane in the first pass even whilst using evasive manouvers that no sane world war 2  pilot would ever dare do.

TAC is right AI should be small caliber with manned ack WHATEVER caliber i dont mind.

I dont play to feel frustrated. I play AH to enjoy myself and pit my skills against human players.if i want to fight AI stuff i can do it a LOT cheaper!

[Sparks]

Well I'm with LePaul on this one.

I'd NEVER been able to kill acks with any kind of consistancy until they changed it to the present model.  Now the key for me is get slow - as long as I tool around the outer edges at 200-250 using roll/climb/reverse tactics my survival rate increases.  The only time I'll get killed is a 500kt pass in a tiffie which to me is bellybutton backwards.  I think the history shows that the key to attacking ground installations was fast in - fast out and in AH at the moment that is "the way to get killed"

I'm with the suggestion of more small calibre less acurate acks.

[Mino]

Pretty much will ruin a JABO mission in a hurry.  Your defense against base defense is high speed.  

BUT...

The faster you go, the easier field ack will nail you.  Makes no friggin sense to me.

[NoBaddy]

Originally posted by Mino
Pretty much will ruin a JABO mission in a hurry.  Your defense against base defense is high speed.  

BUT...

The faster you go, the easier field ack will nail you.  Makes no friggin sense to me.

This ain't rocket science , the ack really doesn't care what your speed is. It is tracking and predicting your path. The faster you go...the tougher it is to alter your path. The same does apply to manned guns. I have a much better chance of hitting a P51 crossing my osti's guns at 300 than I do a Spit jinking at 200.

One thing that works well for me is a lot of rudder stomps. It does seem that just this slight change in my path can throw the AI off. The other thing is to NEVER fly directly over a live ack .

[Mino]

NoBaddy;

Doh!  To think no one ever thought of jinking, even at high speed, through the AAA.  What a concept, your the MAN!

But...

IMO, the AAA really hits a fast mover much more often, with unerving accuracy than a slow mover.

Thats the squeak.

[NoBaddy]

Mino...
      Gosh and Gee!!! You're gonna make be blush with such uplifting compliments!!!

      I would have figured someone as brilliant and insightful as yourself would noticed my 2nd and 3rd sentences. Of course, doing so would have made your post superfluous. Those sentences don't state my opinion. They are Hitech's explanation of how the AI works. That being said, your comment "IMO, the AAA really hits a fast mover much more often, with unerving accuracy than a slow mover. " becomes a big....DUH.

Thats the squeak.

[lemur]

What the hell does accurate ack have to do with FPS fatty?

A drunk monkey and a navy seal still fire the same number of rounds per second from an M-16. Same number of rounds = same FPS hit.

Clearly the AI modeling is a tad off. Probably some odd combination of a limit on the traverse speed, mixed in with a few other skewed variables.

The ack needs to:

a) Lead the target, it should start inaccurate but home in quickly
unless
b) The target is jinking a fair amount or the amount of lead required is changing rapidly.

Basically first the ack will figure out how fast your angle is changing, then it'll figure out how much your change of angle is changing.

This should result in the following:

If you fly straight down at an ack, you're toast. The amount of lead needed to hit you isn't changing and neither is your angle to the ack.

If you fly in circles around an ack, you're eventually toast. While your angle to the ack is changing constantly, amount you angle is changing isn't changing and your 'lead' isn't changing. The ack should eventually get you.

Plus the rate at which the ack figures out all these numbers should be inversly proportional to your distance.

In numeric terms: The ack first predicts your Delta Angle and Delta Distance, then it predicts your Delta Delta Angle and Delta Delta distance.

But the Delta Delta info is always calculated with a few seconds or so of delay. This way if you keep jinking (and not just following a predictable circle) it eventually gets you.

~Lemur

[Fatty]

What the hell does accurate ack have to do with FPS fatty?

Where people are having problems is the damage and accuracy per gun is not realistic.  The ack if anything is overall less lethal than it should be (if it's not, why the hell did people even use armor or bombers in the war, all they needed was half a dozen fighters and they could have taken out Berlin).  The most common alternative stated to the current ack is to replace it with a lot of 303s.

Do you realize how many 303s you need to even have a chance of killing an attacking plane, even if he stops right in front of them and allows them to shoot?

I would certainly hope there would not be a change made in that direction without 60-80 ack emplacements for a small field, at least.  That would be a frame rate issue.

[CavemanJ]

Lemur please define eventually.  10 times out of 10 in my 51D I can go screaming (400mph + tas) into the ack envelope at any enemy airbase and 10 times out of 10 I'm 1ping dead in less than 2 seconds.  And no, I don't just fly straight at the ack.  Matter of fact if I do fly nearly straight at the guns I don't get touched til I start jinking.

Once upon a time I had people asking me to teach them to deack a field by themselves in a fighter.  I used to be damned good at it.  Relied on high speed and jinking to come through and wipe out the acks at any field.  But since the last change to them I avoid acks whenever possible.

The acks were FUBAR'ed along time ago and I don't expect they'll ever be fixed.  For whatever reason HT seems to like them the way they are.  Way back when I started a thread or two about the acks but they've been largely ignored.