Flak accuracy
 

Flying online in ATAG everyone can notice how bad is the heavy flak aim. The black puffs are scattered in a random sphere of at least 2 km around the intended target. This doesn't help at all to spot intruders and encourages strafing of enemy airbases.

Question: is it a game flaw or a server-side setting?

Cheers!

It could be due to a mission builder making the AAA less accurate but probably a better answer would be that the team made the flak a whole less accurate to represnt historical accuracy that is better explained in a really old thread that I or someone else will find for you.

Peace,
Eagle

Flak skill cannot be adjusted. Heavy calibers (88mm, 3-inch, 3.7-inch) leaves black puffs. Smaller caliber (40mm & lower) is far too accurate and should be used sparingly.

Small calibre is accurate to the point of (in my opinion) perfection. It is dangerous enough to be a threat! The large calibres? They're useless, they may as well be identification shells to show that there are indeed aircraft, wait for it, in the air. Useless.

The flak model certainly needs improvement. At the moment, large calibre flak seems to just fire randomly within a certain volume of space which does not represent how flak actually operated in real life. We can only hope that this feature gets some attention during the development of the next edition of the sim series.

Type of improvement:
Provide a means for mission builders to 'tie' flak units (rangefinders, radar, guns etc) together into an AA battery & to specify the type of flak method a group of flak units will use.

Explanation of proposals:
Historically, anti-aircraft batteries operated as a set of coordinated units. AAA batteries used rangefinder units, radar units & optical sight units to measure aircraft speed, height & direction, this information was sent to a director unit which calcualted the aircraft's future postion. The director unit then sent information to the AA guns directing them to fire at this predicted position. AA batteries used three different firing methods: continiously pointed fire, predicted concentration fire, barrage fire.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIYVw...layer_embedded

AA in the game, seem to use a kind of 'barrage fire' where they just put a number of rounds into a volume of space around the aircraft. You can see from the video above, that this is the least effective flak method, and that evasive procedures by pilots do not improve chances of avoiding flak. It would be useful to be able to tie the AA battery units together (maybe with the 'set' button, and be able to select the firing methodology (3 types) from a 'director unit'.

Benefits: Improved realism to flak operations. Encouraging pilots to adopt historically used evasive manouvers. Attackers could target specific 'critical units' in an AA battery thus reducing the battery's effectiveness.

One of the heavy guns managed to knock me out so I must be the most unlucky pilot in the world!
They might get more accurate if you link them together with spotlights and stuff.

Well, the aiming of AAA/FLAK lacks on lead pursuit. Its most of the time behind the moving target, and sometimes you can see and feel it, when you chase the enemy, on his six, that you get hit, and not the enemy just infront.

" ... a heavy gun's shell takes roughly one second to reach 1000 feet"

No, this isn't quite correct. The initial velocities attained by your standard German flak guns, (2cm, 3.7cm, 10.5cm and 12.8cm) are all well in excess of 2500 fps.

I really hope the idea put forward by Salmo is used by the devs. For those that say that Black flak is useless - yes against a single fighter but against large formations of AI bombers its actually very deadly. As others have said the Light AA like the bofors is too accurate and fires at too greater a distance, around 4km's at moving targets...

"The Bofors L/70 40mm uses a single-barrel 40mm caliber. The gun is a development of the original 40 mm Bofors gun, the term L-70 referring to the length of the barrel in caliber. The mono bloc barrel is provided with a flash suppresser. The recuperator spring encircles the rear part of the barrel and this, together with the recuperator spring, forms an easily exchangeable unit. The recoil buffer is hydraulic and the breech mechanism has a vertically sliding breechblock, which opens and closes automatically. The rounds are loaded in 4 round clips, although most systems are fitted with a 26 round hopper. The cyclic rate of fire is 240 rpm and upgrade packages offer 300 rpm. The maximum effective range is 3 to 4 km. The Bofors L/70 40mm can fire a full range of ammunitions as the PFHE Mk2, HCHE, HE-T, APC-T, and P-T."

or from Wikipeadia Bofors Mk1:
Maximum range L/60: 7,160 m (23,490 ft) L/70: 12,500 m (41,000 ft)
Rate of fire L/60: 120 round/min L/70: 330 round/min

What do you think these parameters from the Mk1 bofors file should be changed to?

[Bofors:FiringDevice:Gun1]
StayWhenFire 1
GunHeadChunk head
GunBarrelChunk stvol
GunElevationChunk maska
GunShellStartHook Gun_01
Gun Gun.(v)-40_mm_Bofors_Mk.I
NumShells 800
AttackMaxDistance 8000
AttackMaxRadius 8000
AttackMaxHeight 8000
GunMinElevation -5
GunStdElevation 0
GunMaxElevation 89
HeadMaxYawSpeed 30
GunMaxElevationSpeed 30
ChainfireTime 8
DelayAfterShoot 5
FireFastTargets 1
MaxBarrelStroke 0.10
BarrrelWeight 50
BarrelDamping 0.2

Deadliest flak platform in game is the minensuchboot. Try overflying one of them!

There was a list on the ATAG forums of AAA ranges. I can't find it right now. I see it says 8000(?!) but 8000 what? One would assume metres but once you climb to 4 or 4.5 km's they stop firing at you and with the amount on ATAG when you are over enemy terrortory you are never far away from one. I think 1000 metres would be more accurate, considering that the gunner is using an iron sight. An aircraft of 10metre span - what does that look like at 1km? Would you really fire at it?

Would this work on dedi?

I think it's 8,000ft, as I've seen flack that high, quite often, in the spitfires. That's about 2,800m for the more civilised amongst us. :grin:

All other measurements in the game and FMB are in metres...

How would 2800 fit into my experience of 3.5 to 4km? There is more than meets the eye. ;)

One Luftwaffe study estimated it took over 3,300 88-mm shells to successfully shoot down a bomber.

There was 368 (heavy), 353 (medium), and 78 (light) guns in France, Belgium, Holland. These are only for the Luftwaffe.
http://www.taphilo.com/JG26/AA-defense-reich-WWII.shtml

"German Antiaircraft Defense" from Tactical and Technical Trends

The following U.S. military intelligence report on German antiaircraft defenses was published in Tactical and Technical Trends, No. 11, Nov. 5, 1942.
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/t...t-defense.html

3.7 cm Flak 18/36/37/43
Effective range 4,800 m (15,700 ft) (anti-aircraft)
Maximum range 6,500 m (7,100 yd) (ground range)

Ah salmo, from Wiki, the Bofors 40mm L/70 wasn't accepted into Swedish service til 1948. You should be posting the spec on the L/60.

Actually that is what the heavy flak did, fire at a specific area of the sky.
http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/t...erman-aaa.html

Its most of the time behind the moving target, and sometimes you can see and feel it
http://www.rdox.info/01.jpghttp://www.rdox.info/02.jpghttp://www.rdox.info/8.jpghttp://www.rdox.info/04.jpg