AA adjustments

[Miked 3]

Many AA tweaks and introductions have led to a substantial lack of deck fighting for the flyboys and a lack of realism for everyone.

The tweaking of the AI AA emplacements has turned them into skynet like guns. The accuracy and range is unrealistic. They take away much of the need for players to defend their city from the air on their own and give pilots a crutch to run away to the second they have someone on their 6. I do like having them in game but they need to be toned down a little. I wouldn’t mind doing the same for airfield AI.

The addition of the ability to spawn AA guns out of mud holes (FMS) is ridiculous. Especially with the new addition of SPAA’s. There are many legitimate ways to get AA where you need it like towing and SPAA’s. Having what seems like an infinite number of 20mm AA guns able to spawn from a 12x12 mud hole just seems silly. It also takes away from one of the main purposes of trucks and HT’s. If you really don’t want to use a truck to tow you, or use a SPAA, the 20mm is manoeuvrable enough that you can roll one in from a FB. Why should they get to instantly spawn into action while the pilots have to fly for 5-10 mins, only to be surrounded by AA guns that were infantry only 30 seconds ago?

With the Skynet AI, the ability to tow guns anywhere and the addition of SPAA’s, this ability to spawn AA from a FMS needs to go. It is not realistic, takes away from the proper use of trucks and HT’s and creates a lack of deck fighting fun for the flyboys.

[madrebel 146]

Deck fighting isn't very realistic for the area we currently fight in. IMO small town AI needs to go completely. Everything player controlled though should be somewhat random and in surprising locations, deadly, and much more numerous than planes. Its supposed to be dangerous down low.

[Miked 3]

AA could still get to surprising/ random locations by driving a SPAA or getting towed

[Miked 3]

Deck fighting may not be historically realistic but it isn’t a game mechanic and it can happen. We shouldn’t have game mechanics in place to take away from something that is a pilots choice

[bmbm 80]

Gang up. Bring bombs. Problem solved.

[flxdakat 0]

I can see allied pilots having a problem with something actually shooting them down...oh the horror

[Miked 3]

I shouldn’t have to gang up and waste all my eggs on guns that won’t stop spawning unrealistically.

The problem isn’t killing them, the problem is it’s not realistic and there’s already many legitimate ways to get AA to target. It takes away from the purpose of trucks and HTs and it takes away fun deck fights

[Miked 3]

1 minute ago, flxdakat said:

I can see allied pilots having a problem with something actually shooting them down...oh the horror

It’s not a matter of allies or axis. Why try to make it one?  It’s a matter of realism and taking away the purpose of using trucks and teamwork.

[BLKHWK8 141]

Combined Arms - Have Infantry or Armor take out AA AI pits. Then protect them from being rebuit from Engineers.

[Miked 3]

1 minute ago, BLKHWK8 said:

Combined Arms - Have Infantry or Armor take out AA AI pits. Then protect them from being rebuit from Engineers.

I am quite aware of how to destroy them. If you missed the point, it’s that nothing in ww2 was that accurate. 

[merlin51 637]

AI dont respawn.
Unless someone goes and repairs it, it stays dead for a very very long time.
If it keeps coming back, there are human beings involved of the engineer persuasion, who probably need killed in some fashion.

Accuracy wise Mozislak puts the AI to shame, at least i can fly through it, cant fly through Mo

[Miked 3]

14 minutes ago, merlin51 said:

AI dont respawn.
Unless someone goes and repairs it, it stays dead for a very very long time.
If it keeps coming back, there are human beings involved of the engineer persuasion, who probably need killed in some fashion.

Accuracy wise Mozislak puts the AI to shame, at least i can fly through it, cant fly through Mo

I realize how the AI works. I’m not a noob. I realize it takes people to keep it up. That is not the point. Just because a single person is as accurate as the AI does not make it acceptable. I can also fly through the AI, as long as I make constant adjustments to the stick without leaving it neutral for a millisecond. But it shouldn’t be so accurate that if you are neutral for a millisecond it will hit you with every round while remaining neutral

[Miked 3]

In a combined arms game that is player controlled and player driven, that touts itself on “every vehicle or weapon being controlled by a real person”(quote from home page), where we are supposed to rely on teamwork and comms, I don’t understand why so many are so quick to defend the crutch of having some AI code save your bacon

[merlin51 637]

Fly across the AI's firing arc.
If it's constantly traversing, it cant tighten up well, kind of like when you get caught by one on the ground as infantry.
Go as perpendicular to it as you can, and it can't catch up to you very good.

If someone is running to the town for sanctuary, that probably means hooking the outside of the town and catching them on the other side.

The game, aside from predictable locations like factories, major naval installations, and airfields, just has a trivial amount of AA AI for the most part
most of it being light AA so mg34, bren, mle31.

It's not a crutch to save someone's bacon, if someone chooses to go hugging it, that's between you and them, they gotta leave sometime right? But that isn't what it is there for, It's there because there aren't 800 people defending the town, so not enough to set up proper heavy flak formations to drive off a vulch fest and keep the spawnables guarded at the same time, and mostly serves as an annoyance and minor hindrance to it at best.

At least you aren't flying over Berlin

[jwilly 368]

I don't see why spawning/respawning light AA from FMSs is any more "unrealistic" than the game's other spawning/respawning.

Spawning is a fundamental design element of most combat games. The places from which spawning is permitted are arbitrarily representative of military units that have substantially larger numbers of resources than what's sapwnable at once, and theoretically are at the forward end of a supply chain that's capable of providing replacement units for combat losses. AFAIK that conceptual understanding should be applied not just to large units spawning from an AB or FB, but to the smaller tactical units that FMSs represent.

Edited April 15 by jwilly

[Miked 3]

15 minutes ago, merlin51 said:

Fly across the AI's firing arc.
If it's constantly traversing, it cant tighten up well, kind of like when you get caught by one on the ground as infantry.
Go as perpendicular to it as you can, and it can't catch up to you very good.

If someone is running to the town for sanctuary, that probably means hooking the outside of the town and catching them on the other side.

The game, aside from predictable locations like factories, major naval installations, and airfields, just has a trivial amount of AA AI for the most part
most of it being light AA so mg34, bren, mle31.

It's not a crutch to save someone's bacon, if someone chooses to go hugging it, that's between you and them, they gotta leave sometime right? But that isn't what it is there for, It's there because there aren't 800 people defending the town, so not enough to set up proper heavy flak formations to drive off a vulch fest and keep the spawnables guarded at the same time, and mostly serves as an annoyance and minor hindrance to it at best.

At least you aren't flying over Berlin

You don’t need 800 people defending a town to prevent a Vulcan fest. According to your comparison to MO and the current state of AI, all you need is 1 good gunner. If there is a vulch fest, it’s pretty darn easy to keep the AI down anyway. 

I mean no offence but please stop giving me condescending tips on how to avoid a stupid game mechanic. You’re speaking as if I don’t have 8000 sorties under my belt. I know how to avoid and play around the AI. I know how it works. That doesn’t take away from the principle that it is too accurate or shouldn’t even be in the game.

I firmly believe it is a crutch to save someone’s bacon. Even if they AI doesn’t kill you, if they can hug it long enough for backup to come and wipe you out, that’s a crutch in my books. If it was player controlled, that’s another story.

[Miked 3]

8 minutes ago, jwilly said:

I don't see why spawning/respawning light AA from FMSs is any more "unrealistic" than the game's other spawning/respawning.

Spawning is a fundamental design element of most combat games. The places from which spawning is permitted are arbitrarily representative of military units that have substantially larger numbers of resources than what's sapwnable at once, and theoretically are at the forward end of a supply chain that's capable of providing replacement units for combat losses. AFAIK that conceptual understanding should be applied not just to large units spawning from an AB or FB, but to the smaller tactical units that FMSs represent.

Then by that logic we should be able to spawn tanks and planes from an fms too

edit: which would be equally as silly

Edited April 15 by Miked

[jwilly 368]

Just now, Miked said:

Then by that logic we should be able to spawn tanks and planes from an fms too

Not if the game designers don't want us to.

It's not an all-or-nothing "logic". It's what the game designers think provides commercially marketable gameplay for the greatest number of customers.

I certainly get that you'd rather have less light AA in the field, because it's more fun for you to have a greater number of undefended ground targets. Game design though is about a reasonable amount of fun for the greatest number of customers, not maximum fun for a few customers.

[Miked 3]

1 minute ago, jwilly said:

Not if the game designers don't want us to.

It's not an all-or-nothing "logic". It's what the game designers think provides commercially marketable gameplay for the greatest number of customers.

I certainly get that you'd rather have less light AA in the field, because it's more fun for you to have a greater number of undefended ground targets. Game design though is about a reasonable amount of fun for the greatest number of customers, not maximum fun for a few customers.

It’s not at all that I want less AA at the target, it’s that I want the AA to use teamwork and comms and realistic approaches to get to target. Like asking a friend or squaddie to tow a bunch of them out there. That was the original purpose of trucks and HT’s. We rarely see them towing the big guns out now

[Miked 3]

If someone spent time and effort to get to a strategic point to take me out, that’s fantastic. If they can spawn in and die to me 3 times in 3 minutes and kill me on a 4th spawn in the 4th minute, that’s bogus

[jwilly 368]

13 minutes ago, Miked said:

AI (...) is too accurate

CRS has told us a number of times over the years that each AI AA point is relatively accurate because it aggregates the lesser accuracy of multiple gun systems, that cannot all be individually modeled because of data limitations.

[Miked 3]

4 minutes ago, jwilly said:

CRS has told us a number of times over the years that each AI AA point is relatively accurate because it aggregates the lesser accuracy of multiple gun systems, that cannot all be individually modeled because of data limitations.

Well there was a point in the game many years ago where they weren’t as deadly. I’m not sure of the coding side of things but was it too much of a strain on data then? 

Is the reasoning then that it has to be this accurate to ease the data limits? Surely that can’t be true..

[madrebel 146]

2 hours ago, jwilly said:

Not if the game designers don't want us to.

It's not an all-or-nothing "logic". It's what the game designers think provides commercially marketable gameplay for the greatest number of customers.

I certainly get that you'd rather have less light AA in the field, because it's more fun for you to have a greater number of undefended ground targets. Game design though is about a reasonable amount of fun for the greatest number of customers, not maximum fun for a few customers.

And this ... less than looped logic has lead us here. Our skies used to be filled with dedicated pilots - they aren’t as filled now.

 

If you want to rebuild this population of mostly dedicated pilots you should consider all the things that drove them off. Small town AI that gets used mostly as a defensive tool by the guy about to die is one of the things that drove players off.

[madrebel 146]

3 hours ago, Miked said:

I firmly believe it is a crutch to save someone’s bacon. Even if they AI doesn’t kill you, if they can hug it long enough for backup to come and wipe you out, that’s a crutch in my books. If it was player controlled, that’s another story.

This - automated bacon saving is BS. 

[Miked 3]

1 hour ago, madrebel said:

And this ... less than looped logic has lead us here. Our skies used to be filled with dedicated pilots - they aren’t as filled now.

 

If you want to rebuild this population of mostly dedicated pilots you should consider all the things that drove them off. Small town AI that gets used mostly as a defensive tool by the guy about to die is one of the things that drove players off.

Completely agree.

There was talk about changes being made to appease a majority of players.  Consider that 1 engineer with an AI pit can keep a whole Air Force at bay or occupied or distracted enough to not follow their mission. How is that fun for the majority?

 

It won’t be fun for the majority when more and more pilots leave the game and it slowly loses its combined arms facet. Pilots are constantly leaving, rarely coming back. Meanwhile only a handful of guys join the air ranks every year and very rarely stick to it. There will be a line in the sand where the air game is virtually non existent and a lack of vets won’t be around to promote the game or train new players. Then even less changes will be done to make the air game fun for the sake of pleasing the majority (ground pounders)