Anti-aircraft battery firing range

[VAG_Sevy]

Hello everyone and developers, this is for them.

 

I noticed that the german light flak did'nt trigger its shot at, at least the effective range in relation to their real performances.
For example:
Flak 36/43 start of shooting at 3000m, too short between 800m and 1800m from reality.
Flack 38 and Sdkfz-10 38 start firing at 1700m, too short of 500m from reality.
Flakvierling / Sdkfz-7 38 start of shooting at 600m, too short of 600m and more.
In addition, the 38's do'nt trigger when facing the target. they wait for it to be above the artillery position or for it to be passed.
It's annoying for those who want to defend their position, to be shot first before returning fire
The bofor begins his shooting at 4200m, that's correct.

 

Correct or overvalued for British and undervalued for German material! That's a long story of developers!

[AEthelraedUnraed]

This is a mission design problem, not a problem with the game and certainly not something the Developers can "fix" (there is nothing to fix). I've had all of those fire at much bigger ranges than you give here. Definitely not 600m for the Flakvierling.

 

If you're the mission designer yourself, adjust the range of the AttackArea MCU or object-link a Force Complete MCU set to Low to the Flak. If you're not the mission designer, bring this up with whomever designed the mission.

Edited October 12, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed

[VAG_Sevy]

AEthelraedUnraed ? suis mort de rire. The AttackArea MCU, as if I hadn't thought about it !!!
Repeat tests or send me a mission that proves the opposite of what I'm saying!

[AEthelraedUnraed]

3 minutes ago, VAG_Sevy said:

Repeat tests or send me a mission that proves the opposite of what I'm saying!

Ehm, pretty much any mission I've ever made, as well as all of the official scripted campaigns?

 

Seriously, if the Flakvierling only starts firing at 600m and the Flak waits with firing until you're over the target, there's something wrong with the mission. If you post the mission file, I'm willing to take a look at it to find out what's wrong, but don't immediately blame the Devs.

[VAG_Sevy]

So you see! It's me who makes the effort to chew up your work! I provide you the test mission. MCU settings couldn't be simpler. If unfortunately I made a mistake in parameters, I will apologize.

 

The test plane is at 1000m alt., all you have to do is take landmarks when firing. The rest is a trigonometry problem, I guess you'll get it.

Maps template.zip

[Gambit21]

6 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Ehm, pretty much any mission I've ever made, as well as all of the official scripted campaigns?

 

Seriously, if the Flakvierling only starts firing at 600m and the Flak waits with firing until you're over the target, there's something wrong with the mission. If you post the mission file, I'm willing to take a look at it to find out what's wrong, but don't immediately blame the Devs.

 

Theres always been an issue with the Flak half-tracks taking too long to ‘wake up’ and fire, even with properly applied logic. There should be a ‘ready’ option where the sideboards are down and the vehicle is able to respond immediately. Or at least more quickly than it does.

 

With a low, fast flyover the aircraft is almost out of range before it can fire.

 

If it’s fixed, then it’s only recently so.

Edited October 12, 2021 by Gambit21

[VAG_Sevy]

12 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

 

Theres always been an issue with the Flak half-tracks taking too long to ‘wake up’ and fire, even with properly applied logic. There should be a ‘ready’ option where the sideboards are down and the vehicle is able to respond immediately. Or at least more quickly than it does.

Looks like it's the same for German light guns, there is no anticipation of fire and the trigger ranges have been set too short. In the test mission I sent. the Bofor, it is adjusted so as to trigger around 4200m, which is the historical distance at which the artillerymen began to fire.
If they can do it with the bofor ????

I would even say more ... If any of you ever have fired with a heavy weapon, a good gunner will always anticipate a fast target moving toward his position. With a 20mm, it will increase its shooting distance by at least half of its range. The loss of efficiency is compensated by the speed of approach of the target and the time of flight of the shell will reduce the distance.
But this must be very difficult to program!

[AEthelraedUnraed]

On 10/12/2021 at 4:04 PM, VAG_Sevy said:

So you see! It's me who makes the effort to chew up your work!

"My" work? I'm sorry, but I'm just a random guy who happens to do some mission editing in his spare time. I'm not affiliated with 1C in any way, and it is most certainly not my job to do anything for anyone at all on the Forums. It is not "my" work to fix your missions for you. It is your work to fix your missions and instead of bitching, you should be grateful that people want to help you.

 

For this one time I'm gonna help you because I'm in a good mood and because you've given your location as Belgium and I live close to the Belgian border and like Belgian beer. But it might be advisable to adjust your attitude in the future, sir.

 

First of all, you should always use a delay between the Mission Begin Translator and any MCU. You want to wait a while for everything to have finished loading properly before giving any commands. Try 3 seconds or so.

Secondly, unless you've got a very specific area that you want the AAA to target, you should use a Force Complete MCU with the Priority set to Low, instead of an Attack Area MCU.

Especially if you follow up the latter rule, the AAA should fire at a *much* greater distance than 600m.

 

On 10/12/2021 at 8:52 PM, Gambit21 said:

Theres always been an issue with the Flak half-tracks taking too long to ‘wake up’ and fire, even with properly applied logic. There should be a ‘ready’ option where the sideboards are down and the vehicle is able to respond immediately. Or at least more quickly than it does.

True, the half-tracks can take a while to properly deploy. But I think that's mostly realistic; it's not like the Allies phoned up the Germans saying "hey, tomorrow at 10:55 we're gonna attack your vehicle columns between there and there." The only first-hand Flak source I can remember tells about how they shot down a P-47, and they were only ready to fire when the P-47s made their second pass. Of course it's just an anecdote, but I think a large delay is pretty realistic for tactical Flak (things are of course different for large Flak batteries that would be phoned well in advance of a large incoming attack). If you want the Flak to be ready sooner, it's a small sacrifice to just take one of the fixed Flak guns instead of a half-track (although, of course, a "ready" option would be better, but it ranks pretty low on my wishlist).

[Gambit21]

3 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

True, the half-tracks can take a while to properly deploy. But I think that's mostly realistic; it's not like the Allies phoned up the Germans saying "hey, tomorrow at 10:55 we're gonna attack your vehicle columns between there and there." The only first-hand Flak source I can remember tells about how they shot down a P-47, and they were only ready to fire when the P-47s made their second pass. Of course it's just an anecdote, but I think a large delay is pretty realistic for tactical Flak (things are of course different for large Flak batteries that would be phoned well in advance of a large incoming attack). If you want the Flak to be ready sooner, it's a small sacrifice to just take one of the fixed Flak guns instead of a half-track (although, of course, a "ready" option would be better, but it ranks pretty low on my wishlist).

 

Good little story and insight even if just one anectdote.

 

Still if placed say at an airfield, I want an option to have them ready/alert, as would often be the case in real life.

 

[VAG_Sevy]

AEthelraedUnraed and Gambit 21 :Thanks for the info and we'll have a beer together as soon as you come to Liège. I expressed myself badly with "shew your job", the expression is better in French!
It is obvious that in the test mission, I simplified, otherwise in my missions I use a spawner and an entry / exit zone detection and the MCU "force complete" finally, I will not go back to the configuration, I master pretty much the logic of the editor.

You both have good arguments to defend or analyze the state of affairs on the German light flak, but be objective on the whole problem and explain to me for the Bofor to fire at the right distance (+/- 4200m) and that for inherent development considerations which for me have nothing to do with it, the flak 36 could'nt also start firing at its historical distance, 4800m for the later versions ?? ? So I repeat my question: why devalue the German guns compared to the English guns and also Russians in a lesser extent!

 

I would really like to have the opinion of a developer.
If for reasons of script it is necessary to delay the firing of the flak, it is easy thanks to the MCUs, anticipating the firing is impossible.

[ZachariasX]

There is no range as such where Flak gunners get ready. They are either ready or not, for various reasons. The most important reason being them being ordered to get ready with attacking planes well out of their detection range.

 

There should be a logic/trigger making them ready, or even ready and facing the right direction depending on the setting or info reaching them by field telephone/wireless.

 

You should also have a logic to make them point their guns in a given azimuth and elevation and delay firing to set up Flak traps, the most dangerous/efficient of all settings for light Flak.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

16 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

There should be a logic/trigger making them ready, or even ready and facing the right direction depending on the setting or info reaching them by field telephone/wireless.

I can agree with your desire of having a certain command to ready them. Facing the right direction is only a very minor point IMO since most flak rotates pretty fast.

 

16 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

You should also have a logic to make them point their guns in a given azimuth and elevation and delay firing to set up Flak traps, the most dangerous/efficient of all settings for light Flak.

Except pre-aiming their guns, delaying their fire is already possible by using CheckZone MCUs.

 

On 10/14/2021 at 4:30 PM, VAG_Sevy said:

AEthelraedUnraed and Gambit 21 :Thanks for the info and we'll have a beer together as soon as you come to Liège. I expressed myself badly with "shew your job", the expression is better in French!

That's alright, ton anglais est meilleur que mon francais.

 

I did my own testing, with an (invincible) aircraft slowly moving away from a flak object, and I noticed something strange. Both vehicles (Sd.Kfz. 7 and 10) were perfectly capable of shooting at their historical range of 2200m (and even slightly beyond that). However, the static Flak 36 stopped firing well before its range, and I couldn't even get the Flak 43 to fire at all. I'll have another look into why this is, and report back.

Edited October 20, 2021 by AEthelraedUnraed

[unreasonable]

At some point in the last couple of years the reaction time of flak guns was made stochastic: ie there is an RNG for delay associated with each event where the guns would "wake up" when a bandit enters their MCU.  This is very obvious in my old testing set up, which had a plane fly past a series of identical spaced guns, all programmed to fire so that hits, if any, would happen in a very narrow range/angle band. If I try it now, a few of the guns fire as they all used to, some fire very late and some do not fire at all. Making systematic testing impossible (not that I suppose that this was the purpose of the change.....)

 

A ready command would be very useful.

 

 

[ZachariasX]

3 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Facing the right direction is only a very minor point IMO since most flak rotates pretty fast.

In the game, that may well be so. In the real world, turning your aim 180 deg and have even the last of the dorks see the target soon enough to take aim is a different story.

 

3 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Except pre-aiming their guns, delaying their fire is already possible by using CheckZone MCUs.

Great!

 

Mission designers should definitely put up more Flak traps. This wouls also reflect more the situation Allied pilots back then  faced. Generally, if the enemy is not caught on the run, you, as combat pilot, should expect most obviously visible, juicy targets to be as well defended as being inconsequenial. Flak is also often set up in a silly way, as it usually does not take topography into account. Bait and guns should be placed to take advantage of the most obvious trajectory an attacker could choose to go after the targets. This way, you can make guns effective. A gun in the field is just a victim. This is well reflected by the „success“ you can have by using the Flak trucks in MP.

[Stonehouse]

No idea of whether it applies but your discussion triggered a memory - a recent mod BlindAAA plays around with aiming and other things. 

 

It's possible that couple of the parameters might be relevant. The two I'm thinking of are below from one of the files vehicleturretaiantiairflak.txt

 

targetingDistance = 5000.0f

TargetRecognitionDelay = 10.0, 20.0, 30.0    //Delay before start to aim to a new target at 1000m range

 

I'm not sure exactly what AAA this impacts and I'm not sure if the comment (which may a translation of Russian to English) about 1000m range means range between gun and target or previous target and new target or perhaps each value is the delay for a range bracket but thought I'd mention it for whatever it's worth

 

There is also a file for AAA MGs and tank/vehicle mounted MGs in the mod. Both with much lower values than the first file for targetingDistance. ie 1000m

 

Believe the vanilla game files are in the scripts.gtp file

 

I won't have time for a while but perhaps play about with the values and see if anything makes a difference or at least compare the mod values to the std ones.

 

Also the mod author talks about setting up a version for each type of gun as I understand his reply to a question I asked. I haven't yet had time to follow up on it. 

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/73101-mod-less-accurate-gunners-more-powerful-ap-ammo/?do=findComment&comment=1109250

 

<edit> also perhaps worth looking at the individual gun definitions like flak36turret.txt

 

 

Edited October 20, 2021 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

Emailed myself a copy of Flak36turret.txt and some of the other bits to work to check at lunch time. These files sit in luascripts\worldobjects\vehicles\turrets (within scripts.gtp) and I found the following:

 

In Flak36turret.txt

.

.

[attach=0]
    position= 0.0, 0.0, 0
    object = "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Bots/BotGunnerMachineGun.txt"
[end]

.

AIStartAimErrModifier = 1.0        //Modifier for AI initial bracketing aim error (reduced twice with each shot)

AIAimDelayModifier = 1.0        //Modifier for AI delay before start to aim to a new target at 1000m range

AttackDistance   = 3000.0        //AI max aim distance versus ground point
AttackDistanceTrgGnd = 1500.0        //AI max aim distance versus ground target
AttackDistanceTrgAir = 3000.0        //AI max aim distance versus air target

 

Looking at Flak36.txt from \luascripts\worldobjects\vehicles I see that Flak36.txt will reference the above:

[attach=0]
    position= 0, 0.1378, 0
    object = "LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Vehicles/Turrets/Flak36Turret.txt"
[end]

 

So kind of guessing that the Flak36 weapon is limited to 3000m against air targets as a base. 

 

BotGunnerMachineGun.txt just seems to reference LuaScripts/WorldObjects/Bots/VehicleTurretAIMachineGun.txt and this seems to have a targetingDistance = 1000.0f 

Not sure if the "f" indicates a -ve or not. So this may be a modifier rather than an absolute

 

Not sure why a Flak36 is using BotGunnerMachineGun.txt & so VehicleTurretAIMachineGun.txt instead of botgunnerantiairflak.txt which references VehicleTurretAIAntiAirFlak.txt where the targetingDistance = 5000.0f

 

From memory a Flak36 had an effective range of about 8000m or 26000ft in the AAA role. I guess that would be in battery firing a barrage plotted by the attached Kommandogerät rather than individual aimed fire and I don't know if the Kommandogerät is simulated so if each gun is doing individual gun laying that may account for the 3000m attack distance. I assume that AI skills only modify accuracy and dispersion and rate of fire.

 

<edit 2>

Sorry I'd been laboring under the impression it was the 8.8cm Flak 36 when it is the 3.7cm one. So the effective range is 4200m I believe.

 

Sorry forgot to say the above is all vanilla game values not the BlindAAA mod (which only seems to change accuracy and dispersion and time to acquire a new target)

 

<edit> last comment before I get back to work quick look at the Bofors shows that it has AttackDistanceTrgAir = 5000.0  but also uses BotGunnerMachineGun.txt so perhaps BotGunnerMachineGun.txt is unrelated to how far out the gun engages. The Attack distances Flak36 v's Bofors does seem to indicate something odd though.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Stonehouse
bofors

[Stonehouse]

So had a minute spare and googled something I noticed. The file from the game is BoforL60.txt. I don't know how good a source the site is but if it is accurate, looking here:

USA Bofors 40 mm L/60 Model 1936 - NavWeaps

Sweden 40 mm L/43 ubåtsautomatkanon Model 1932 - NavWeaps

It seems like the range of the Bofors was mostly limited by the ammo which self destructed at different ranges depending on type. These are listed on the site links.

 

However it seems like max range for the L60 should be 7160m for a British L60 and 6797m for US versions in the AAA role. So perhaps the 5000m is not quite right or represents the engagement range rather than max range. The L43 seems to be 4460m for max range which is pretty close to 5000m

 

 

[ZachariasX]

3 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

It seems like the range of the Bofors was mostly limited by the ammo which self destructed at different ranges depending on type. These are listed on the site links.

And this range is far beyond you can even dream of hitting something with manual aim and optical sight. Besides, elevation is important here as well. The higher the elevation, the shorter your practical firing range.

 

In a nutshell, for light Flak you shoot at a distance of 1-1.5 km, medium Flak you have about 3 km range, give or take. If your targets are regularly below 1 km range, your life expectancy as gunner probably gets rather short. If you want to shoot 7 km upwards and hit something, the 88 Flak is about the smallest caliber you can go for.

[Stonehouse]

Probably that is why the gunner definition VehicleTurretAIMachineGun.txt has a targeting limit of 1000m.  

[DD_Friar]

On 10/13/2021 at 11:33 PM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Secondly, unless you've got a very specific area that you want the AAA to target, you should use a Force Complete MCU with the Priority set to Low, instead of an Attack Area MCU.

 

I came to this thread after searching "flack" as I am looking for a solution as to why my flack is not responsive enough, I was going to post a question about what do I do to make it fire, but it seems I may have found my answer, Salute @AEthelraedUnraed (I have MCU Attack Area commands at the moment!)

 

many thanks.

 

Friar

Edited June 11, 2022 by DD_Friar