Originally posted by HFMudd
This is from memory so the exact details might be a bit off but is in general how Flaks were opereated:
The Fliegerabwehrkanone cannon were all electrically coupled to a central director which was fed from a 41D gun laying radar. The radar would provide azimuth, angular height and range to the central director. The gunner at the central director would dial these values in and then, via the "Flaknet", these settings would show up as the settings on a set of duplicate dials on the individual Flaks gun director. The gunlayer of each 88 in the group would then match his dial set to these.
I'm given to understand if visibility permitted it was common for the azimuth reading to be ignored and the direction set via the Flak's optics. The gun director (which was steroscopic) of each individual Flak could mechanically compute the predict the course of the round.
So, it would actualy be realistic for the timing of the fuse to be set by the system and leave the actual aiming of the gun to a human. Your shells would detonate at the right range but you would need to get the lead correct based on some feed back from the system.
unfortunately this would mean in game terms that we would have a similar system as the fleet AA which if you ask me is far too easy and overly rewarding for the gunners.It requires no skill at all to fire them.
Its ok by me for the fleet as theres so many idiots who kamakazi in lancs etc that its good we have something to blow these idiots up to save a relatively vulnerable carrier but if we had this at everybase you would see 100 kill runs in the 88s because it doesnt require any skill to lead a plane when the 37mm and the auto ack shows you where to aim.
I like the idea of manable 88s at fields but i cannot agree with this auto height finding, or proximity shells like on the fleets.
The manual setting of altitude with a manual adjustment using throttle sounds a bit more promising to me but id further add that they remove the distance display to add a bit of difficulty.Just enemy icon rather than laser range finding.
what we have to avoid is letting the player who does all the hard work of flying for miles be slaughtered without effort by some other player using a gun system that a 5 year old child could use.

just my thought on th subject.