The flak and the facts

[texace]

OK, ok....I know. The flak right now is accurate,yes...perhaps too accurate. But I've seen how flak works, and have figured it out.

If you have it, load up B-17II and fly over a target. When the flak starts...it always starts in front of the bomber and moves back. Soon you got flak hiiting less the 50 yards from your plane. These shots are almost like we have here. The gunner takes in the speed, direction, and alt of your bomber/fighter, calculates wind, drag, and deprresion, and fires the shot. He then (if he can see it) watches where it explodes, then adjusts for it. Sometimes the LW would be close to the form and would radio the position of the form and the flak bursts. As many as 20 times, I have been blown to tiny pieces of aluminum by the flak in B-17II. It takes luck and the skill of the gunner to do that. Accuracy plays only a little part, because it was timed and proxy fuses for the shells. If the burst was anywhere between 100 and 0 yards it was damaging. Y'all complain about 1 hit flak kills from extream ranges, well it happened...the gunner is just good. I've seen bombers just fly right through it and not a scratch..its random...and always will be.

Now if your at 40K and get hit with a single shot from 15 miles out, that's wrong. But now the way I see it it's realistic.

Can y'all understand that or do I have to point it out?

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Lt. Col. Aaron "txace-" Giles of the 457th BG
    "Fait Accompli"

[Fishu]

One problem is just that it seems planes blows up on instant...
when planes should suffer alot damages from shrapnels when no 'instant kill' hit isnt made.

I'd like to see AH model damaged surface like in b17 II.
If another wing looks like swiss cheese, it sure isnt nice to pull up with the plane..
or if elevators are swiss cheese.. well.
In AH, it's either functional or not, bit too simple... cant even predict that couple more hits might take whole wing out when you cant see damage on it or feel effects of all those holes.

[Midnight]

Texace.. the problem has nothing to do with a gunners skill. If you are in a P-51D at 15-20k flying at 350 true or better you should be immune to flak even firing anywhere near you. Especially if you are jinking left and right and maneuvering away.

The gunners knew the bomber formations had to maintain level straight flight to hit their targets, so yes, they could fire and adjust. However, RL flak guns are not able to move so fast as to track a target at 350mph, and then to have this gunner also be able to predict your evasives? Impossible

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"Wing up, Get kills, Be happy"

Midnight
13th TAS

[TheWobble]

Yea, tex, the flak here is insane it INSTANTLY is within feet of you and no matter what manuevers ya do it will still hit you, inn real life a variation as little at 5 degrees or an alt change of 1000 feet would throw the flak accuracy all to hell making him re-aim, reset fuse an whatnot, needless to say it would not be a constant streame of blasts that there is AH.

[2Late4U]

While you certainly shouldnt be "immune" to flack just because you are moving arond a bit, it really should make direct hits MUCH less frequent.  Thats the "reality" side of things.

The Gameplay side may be what its all about though.  If fighters could attack bases with relative impunity, why would anyone fly a buff?  That said, I cant dont think theres any justification for 15k insta-kills.  I sure cant hit jack at 15k (well I cant hit crap at 5 k either, but 15k is too high for most) with a bomb on a fighter.  I think the low level HEAVY AAA is fine...but while Im way up there, I think it needs to be toned down.

 

[GRUNHERZ]

Hi

The wierd flak isnt fixed yet????  BTW IIRC the Germans figured out it took about an average of 16,000 88mm shells fired to kill one plane at high alt, so there is no justification for what we have now.

thanks GRUNHERZ

[Jigster]

 

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ:
Hi

The wierd flak isnt fixed yet????  BTW IIRC the Germans figured out it took about an average of 16,000 88mm shells fired to kill one plane at high alt, so there is no justification for what we have now.

thanks GRUNHERZ

Ya Grun, but by the time most of the 88's around major industrial factories had fired a salvo at an incoming formation they had already used nearly twice that many   j/k

[Tac]

A picture says a 1000 words dont it? This was a P-38 at 20k during hard barrel rolls. Notice how the flak followed it precisely through the entire manouver. That gunner must be psychic.

  http://www.geocities.com/tacwraith/flakwriting.jpg  


 

[This message has been edited by Tac (edited 01-12-2001).]

[AKSeaWulfe]

Since HT updated the flak code I have yet to be instantly killed.. or even lose anything on my airplane, and I've been plenty close to fleets to figure this one out.
Flak is fine right now.
As to the "dynamic" damage in B17II that someone requested for AH... well you got another thing coming. It doesn't weaken the structure for the plane, I've taken a B17 in B17II with the entire left wing full of holes and even large gaps where the underlying skeleton was visible and an engine that caught fire burnt it's way through the skin before I finally put it out. Put it through a series of loops. You'll be more surpised than I was.. no more damage or catastrophic failures than before. The way B17II's engine works, the visual damage in no way represents the actual damage done to the wing. Kinda like getting half a wing blown off in AH.. although that I think is more dynamic because what is visually lost tends to represent what is lost within the AH flight model.

Yup, we're about 2-4 years off before we can tie in visual damage(like B17II's) to the actual damage within the flight model parameters. For right now, AH's graphics/damage and flight model perfectly fit in with the mid to low range system. I can't see sacrificing framerate for whatever B17II has(and mind you, less CPU cycles are taken up for the flight model. The FM is simply less than half assed). I'll learn to live with what AH has (tongue in cheek, it's perfect for the average user) than deal with waiting for HTC to develope a dynamic visual damage model that ties directly into the actual damage dealt.

Points are points, and that's the way damage models are built for all games. "3 cannon hits to this area will render..." "1 MG hit to this area will render..." "6Gs at x speed will render..." Imagine the cycles required for this, no thanks that has no room in an online game until everyone has 2GHz CPUs with 500MBs of system RAM and a super AGP video card with 100MBs of video RAM onboard plus access to system RAM.
Isn't worth it, if you don't believe me, get a computer science degree or begin on getting one and you'll understand completely.
-SW

[Fishu]

 

Originally posted by AKSeaWulfe:
As to the "dynamic" damage in B17II that someone requested for AH... well you got another thing coming. It doesn't weaken the structure for the plane, I've taken a B17 in B17II with the entire left wing full of holes and even large gaps where the underlying skeleton was visible and an engine that caught fire burnt it's way through the skin before I finally put it out. Put it through a series of loops. You'll be more surpised than I was.. no more damage or catastrophic failures than before. The way B17II's engine works, the visual damage in no way represents the actual damage done to the wing. Kinda like getting half a wing blown off in AH.. although that I think is more dynamic because what is visually lost tends to represent what is lost within the AH flight model.

Actually theres damage...
If wingtip is shot up, your plane tends to bank to right, sometimes so hard that you just can't do anything and has to bail out.
Same with fighters, if another wing is like swiss cheese, your plane goes spinnin wildly around its axis if you pull too quick. (another wing has more lift than another)
or if aileron or elevator has holes, you'll notice difference in control response.. (if any)

I wouldn't care about graphics, but this sort of thing shouldn't be impossible with AH engine, although, would require almost completely new damage model systems..
It would be nice if wings lift would decrease after many hits, instead of working flawlessly until that one hit which rips it off..

[This message has been edited by Fishu (edited 01-12-2001).]

[Fishu]

 

Originally posted by 2Late4U:
   

geez.. almost 140 kilobytes
isn't even that cool what ive seen and this is discussion board, not a picture gallery.

[eskimo]

At any alt, the flack seems to track you like a guy with an MG would at 100 yards.

eskimo

[kfsone]

Remember that within AH the attackers vs defenders ratio is out of whack.. AH doesn't model all of the possible defense guns, etc, it models only a few of them. Because of this concessions have to be made in terms of realism; one flak puff has to represent 4, 6, 8 whatever real puffs that might all have missed you but been close enough to render damage.

The feel of the flak is rather laser guided, as Tac's pic shows.

My suggestion would be that the flak should become less precise at greater distance from the gun, should have a *wider* radius of damage, but also do "softer" damage throughout, so you take pings more often, to give the buffeting effect of flak, but with an increased ping:damage ratio.

The lethality we experience is partly a result of our own reluctance to be bounced. We seem to expect a MUCH higher survival rate than WWII aircraft, despite our tendency towards Kamikaze ("Dang we lost 3 engines, we're leaking fuel and oil, our right wing is held on by chewing gum but I'm gonna drop these bombs anyway!").

Perhaps it's time that more people realised that SIMULATING WWII aircraft combat sometimes means aborting and returning to base. It makes for frustrating gameplay, but it makes for realistic air combat. Certainly fighter jocks regularly complain about runstangs and such, who won't fight to the death.


K

[Westy]

It can. And in the meantime you're lucky if it tracking someone else  

I managed to get a B26 in at 500 feet and sink a Cv because it was locked on to another friendly. I also managed to get a B17 in over a CV at 15k (at A10 lafst night) because it  was locked onto another friendly. Only after it shot him down did it lock on to me and that was AFTER I'd already dropped and was making my way home. It was still firing at me as I passed A10 and I could barely see the CV at all off shore.

 Ack got porked with 1.05.  It's not a game destroyer kind of porked, but it is a mess that need further work.

  -Westy

[Eagler]

Ugh - what's that screen shot 640 x 480 with 16 bit color ? Yuk - never seen AH look so bad  

Eagler