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.
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.