Last night I was flying around an enemy CV. Normally I couldn't care less how its firering or at who it is firering at. I chase down ack runners
However I paid attention due to this thread. I even maneuvered to put myself closer than others and outside the range of others. The ack seemed to work as Hitech said it does. When I got closer than other the puffy targeted me, and when I move farther out than others it targeted them...sorry for putting them in harms way, but it was neat to see the puffys appear 5k away where the other guy was closing on the CV. It wasn't instantaneous so Im sure that was the 3 second resampling that Hitech talked about.
As for being over 3k, it is an air barrage. Kinda silly to have it explode a few hundred feet off the ground and pepper the water with puffy ack
As for damage, picture a basketball as the area of damage a 30mm does. If it hits a fighters wing it blows holes in both sides of the wing, in a buffs wing easily blow out only one side. The bigger the plane the more structure that has to built in to get the larger load off the ground and so the more damage needed to cause the same failures. You see buffs fly through puffy without being shot down. Well they are taking damage, it just takes more to take out a buff and it should.
The only problem I see with the puffy ack is a fighter is faster and more likely to be maneuvering a lot more than a buff. This should make hitting the fighter much more difficult, unless the fighter is flying strait and level or diving strait at the CV group. To me it would seem that a fighter flying through a mile stretch of air space maneuvering all over the place....chasing an ack runner
might get hit once. Where a buff traveling the same space flying strait and level lining up a drop should be hit many times. Tracking a steady speed and alt target should be much easier than trying to track one that is all over the place.
At 3k a buff should be hit almost ever shot, at 5k maybe every other shot, at 10k maybe one in 4 shots. It would seem more "realistic" to me.