I've been killed by fleet flak a grand total of one time. I'm not finding any kind of "patriot" capability here, if anything the ack is too limited - for ships equipped with radar, it takes the AI AA awhile to lock on to and commence firing at a target. Enemy buffs can get one, maybe two passes in at medium altitude before they're even fired upon, and I've never seen fleet ack kill a level buff. Nor have I seen fleet ack kill anything that wasn't attacking the carrier.
Does anyone have any film evidence of these deaths by ack at "50 miles while manuvering", etc.? If not it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that you either:
1. misjudged the distance to the CV
2. were killed by flak from another source (e.g. an enemy land base)
3. were killed by an enemy aircraft
4. sustained fatal structural damage due to other factors, e.g. dive speed
5. had a minor (and lucky) flak hit added to previous damage from other sources, thus causing the actual destruction of your aircraft
6. lagged at the time of death, causing your plane to "drift" into the trailing flak fire
The deadliness of the AAA is apparently another point of contention - but it has to be the way it is. The difference between the flak effectiveness on WWII ships, like the Shoho, and AH ships is that attack forces in WWII consisted of multiple squadrons, potentially adding up to hundreds of aircraft. Flak fire isn't very effective when you have a small task force without radar firing at two hundred attacking planes, all aiming their bombs at a single ship. The AA in AH is, as it should be, designed to counter single attackers or small groups. If you haven't noticed, it's not very good at dealing with large attack forces - all the guns concentrate on one target at a time until it is destroyed, and then select a new target until that is destroyed, and so on. A force of probably ten bomb-equipped aircraft could sink the fleet, since the carrier seems to be made out of gasoline-soaked paper.
[This message has been edited by Specterx (edited 01-17-2001).]
