AAA mod

[JG4_Moltke1871]

_gen.zip

 

Here I have the file from my latest test in QMB with your latest Beta AAA

It was about the simmilar situation like in the Video, same result, maybe I survived a bit longer. Means MG fire is still much too accurate.

After a few more missions in my careers, I have to revise my previous statements about the high alt AAA a bit.
Aggressive heavy flak feels exciting at high altitude, but at lower altitude it puts the slower two seaters in so much trouble that it feels unreal. The 7.7 cm Flak gunners react like sniping robots on crystal meth.

My statement now is the accuracy of ground and high alt need to be reduced more. It's really difficult to adjust this mod considering the fact that there are slower planes out there. The heavy bombers are the slowest, followed by the two seaters, then the fighters. And even among the two-seaters, a Breguet is still considerably faster than a DFW and thus better able to outrun flak.

Same for WW 2, a Ju52 or C47 must still be able to drop their Paras' from 600 Meters.

 

[Stonehouse]

5 hours ago, JG4_Moltke1871 said:

_gen.zip 139.54 kB · 0 downloads

 

Here I have the file from my latest test in QMB with your latest Beta AAA

It was about the simmilar situation like in the Video, same result, maybe I survived a bit longer. Means MG fire is still much too accurate.

After a few more missions in my careers, I have to revise my previous statements about the high alt AAA a bit.
Aggressive heavy flak feels exciting at high altitude, but at lower altitude it puts the slower two seaters in so much trouble that it feels unreal. The 7.7 cm Flak gunners react like sniping robots on crystal meth.

My statement now is the accuracy of ground and high alt need to be reduced more. It's really difficult to adjust this mod considering the fact that there are slower planes out there. The heavy bombers are the slowest, followed by the two seaters, then the fighters. And even among the two-seaters, a Breguet is still considerably faster than a DFW and thus better able to outrun flak.

Same for WW 2, a Ju52 or C47 must still be able to drop their Paras' from 600 Meters.

 

I'll check out the mission when I get some spare time today. Just a sanity check perhaps - disable the mod and fly this mission under stock AAA and see how it feels to you compared with mod on. Better? Worse? I'll try the same at my end and compare.

 

I can't see how it will be possible to maintain a uniform playability across all aircraft slow/fast/nimble/heavy without having a different mod setup for each category. If it is going to remain maintainable for me then it pretty much has to be one size fits all and that will mean (like real life) some categories suffer more than others. I do tend to test with fighters. 

 

I'm trying to get a feel for what your expectations are. Maybe I'll have a better chance after looking at your test mission. 

 

Anyway, will revisit accuracy again.

 

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

Ok focused on WW1 changes only this time. My test mission was a Bristol Fighter 3 starting at the free flight marker near Arras with an airbase across the lines to the SE with active AAA. No clouds etc. Start at about 4000ft, headed around 130 deg from spawn. Engaged auto level and time accelx8. Turned off time accel when the icons for the AAA appear (I test with markers and icons on as I get more info). I found that if I flew straight and level for more than about 20-30 secs the heavy AAA would begin to close in on me and I was almost over the airbase when I was hit. Restart the same mission and repeat. This time I stayed between 4300-2600ft and every few secs did S turns or dived and climbed on my course across the field. This time I made it all the way across and would have been able to continue on or disengage from the AAA. I believe I had no or minor damage. I turned around and went down to a few hundred ft. I had to jink quite a lot to avoid the MG fire but was able to strafe the tents at the field. I got greedy and lined up on another ground target and must have stopped being unpredictable because I was hit and crashed.

 

I think there were maybe 2 or 3 heavy AAA and perhaps 4-5 light.  Obviously, I was solo with no AI as it was a free flight so all the AAA focused on me as a target. If I had been with a group, then I think it would have been possible to hit the airfield and get out without 100% losses although I am sure losses would have occurred. 

 

Hopefully this is better. If so, I will move onto WW2. Note that I've left some working files in the zip so it's a little bigger than last time. Will clean up once we get a good beta.

 

 

AAAmodbeta.zip

Edited April 18, 2023 by Stonehouse

[jollyjack]

Did you do any comparison towards priority settings? f.e. with trains and waypoints low gets the most AA activity.

Just curious as i am setting up a WW2 bombing raid and it seems difficult to get AA firing at 7000 m bombers ...

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, jollyjack said:

Did you do any comparison towards priority settings? f.e. with trains and waypoints low gets the most AA activity.

Just curious as i am setting up a WW2 bombing raid and it seems difficult to get AA firing at 7000 m bombers ...

No - I haven't had time yet to look into that side at all sorry. Any spare time I've had to look at mods has been trying to sort out the WW1 side.

 

FYI 7000m is almost max range for the flak 37. Standard 88s had an effective range of 8000m. flak38-39s have 9450m. Either way though the bombers would need to be within range to shoot so you aren't going to see any shooting until the slant range is within max.........so the bombers will only be about 3.5 km horizontal range from the gun at that height before they can fire for flak 37s. It will be about 6km for the flak 38-39.  Pythagoras's theorem is your friend..........

 

They will track them further out, however. Not sure if that helps you?

[jollyjack]

Surely, i'll look at it ... i had a lot of m1a1gun-aa set ..

just found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anti-aircraft_guns

Edited April 18, 2023 by jollyjack

[Stonehouse]

Been rereading some of my references. Particularly one produced in 1943 by the US Military Intelligence dept on German Flak units and weapons. Found that I've misread/misunderstood something. Range for German 88s and 105s will get longer in the next version of the mod based on max fusing time. Additionally, the game ROF is based on cyclic not practical ROF. So for German AAA 2cm and larger I will switch to practical ROF (slower) as well. Will need to try to find the equivalent for UK, US and Russian if I can.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Stonehouse

[JG4_Moltke1871]

In any case, my big thanks to you @Stonehouse for your work and effort??

Next days I will fly variously missions and report my impressions.

[Stonehouse]

On 4/18/2023 at 8:20 PM, JG4_Moltke1871 said:

In any case, my big thanks to you @Stonehouse for your work and effort??

Next days I will fly variously missions and report my impressions.

 

Any other feedback for WW1 Moltke? Is it ok now?

[JG4_Moltke1871]

4 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

 

Any other feedback for WW1 Moltke? Is it ok now?

Sorry,

some unexpected real live challenges reduced my flight time drastically..

I will report as soon as I can.

[Stonehouse]

Just now, JG4_Moltke1871 said:

Sorry,

some unexpected real live challenges reduced my flight time drastically..

I will report as soon as I can.

No problem, I was just curious. Thanks

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

In the end I settled flying the original version of the MOD, which on easy/medium career difficulty seems to be appropriate for the late war WW2 FLAK over Normandy/Rheinland. 

[FodderMonkey]

Very happy with how the flak patterns in WW2 are now. Feels intense, but not overly accurate so long as you keep maneuvering. The only thing I’m struggling with now is the AA machine guns. Seems to always be one or two around the target who snipe my pilot with a headshot in their first salvo.  

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

What I see after the latest patch is that the heavy FLAK seems to be somewhat less responsive, while before I think they used to create denser barrages of fire. But I will test further (this at least appears in the quick mission and might be different in the career).

Edited April 26, 2023 by Rudolph
Additional info

[Stonehouse]

Besides the ongoing changes being made for WW1 and WW2 light flak this one will need an update anyway post 5.102 as a few things changed in files

[JG4_Moltke1871]

On 4/25/2023 at 6:48 AM, Stonehouse said:

Any other feedback for WW1 Moltke? Is it ok now?

Just flew a mission where I tested different altitudes.  My flight five Breguets+Escort. I crossed the frontline in 2K and on the way I fly close to enemy airfields to try out the enemy high alt AAA. The result is the heavy AA is no thread anymore, there was no close hits to my squad. A total contrast to how it was before. Also at low altitude no threat anymore, although the heavy flak was there in large numbers. On my way back I cross the frontline in 1K and I noticed hits on me from ground MG fire.

Maxim Flak and MG fire: 3 of 5 Breguets killed in this mission by Maxim 14 Flak + 3 escort Spads, one Spad down by Spandau MG. This is ok, because Maxim Flak and MG's was highly concentrated, 

My Summary: Groundfire ok for me but heavy AA feels more harmless like the original.... seems really difficult to find the right mix. But in this mission heavy AAA feels like just cosmetic.

Edited April 27, 2023 by JG4_Moltke1871

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

6 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Besides the ongoing changes being made for WW1 and WW2 light flak this one will need an update anyway post 5.102 as a few things changed in files

It would probably make sense just to update the original mod version as it seem that AAA logic has changed again in the last patch, making at least the heavy AAA less lethal. 

 

I am looking forward to the updated version, really makes the sim and especially ground attack careers much better in my opinion. I just tried stock career ground attack missions and there was no threat for us from AAA, compared to diving through a wall of FLAK with the mod. 

[Stonehouse]

23 hours ago, Rudolph said:

probably make sense just to update the original mod version

I don't want to make people download stuff over and over in a short time frame while I am tweaking things............

 

Anyway - new beta.

• WW1 Heavy flak accuracy increased slightly to make it more threatening.
• WW2 Light flak accuracy reduced slightly as per some feedback higher up the thread.
• Where I could find good references for the practical ROF I have amended the gun definition from cyclic (theoretical) ROF to practical. Generally practical ROF is less than cyclic.
• Added torpedo boat type S-38 (which had an incorrect cyclic ROF. I think the devs accidently copied the Flak38 ROF when it is a Flak30).
• Attempted to increase responsiveness of WW2 flak. Note that best I can tell nothing changed in this regard in the stock files that I am able to view.......but attempted to tweak things anyway since feedback indicates people feel it has reduced.

Please test it when you have time and provide feedback. Thanks.

 

 

AAAmodbeta2804.zip

Edited April 28, 2023 by Stonehouse

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

Thank you very much for the update and your hard work. So far after my limited testing, light FLAK for WW2 is ok - accuracy and rate wise, however heavy FLAK has quite vanished, they fire only a few shots here and there and that's it. Accuracy wise, heavy FLAK seems to be OK, but they just do not create any barrages of fire anymore. My opinion here is that their rate of fire should be higher than historical to simulate more guns in the area than available in the sim. 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Rudolph

[Stonehouse]

9 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Accuracy wise, heavy FLAK seems to be OK, but they just do not create any barrages of fire anymore.

Hmm ok thanks. I will recheck the rof values I have used. It is a calculation to get the reload rate per second so it is possible I've stuffed up. What you say is also possibly the reason for the devs using the theoretical ROF as its always higher

[Stonehouse]

@Rudolph it may or may not be important but what side was the flak on? US? UK? German? etc? Can you advise what heavy flak guns were in use? eg Flak 37?

 

Thanks

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

3 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

@Rudolph it may or may not be important but what side was the flak on? US? UK? German? etc? Can you advise what heavy flak guns were in use? eg Flak 37?

 

Thanks

Hello Stonehouse, it is German flak, Flak 37, 38-39. I am testing with QMB and also career missions in Normandy. After having flown some 85 ground attack missions in my ongoing career, I think that the fire rate of flak needs to be theoretical than historical, as we are very far from the historical numbers of guns and generally FLAK emplacements in the game. It is just needed to find the right balance, I think that now accuracy is very reasonable, just the volume of (german) heavy FLAK is too low. 

[Stonehouse]

37 minutes ago, Rudolph said:

Hello Stonehouse, it is German flak, Flak 37, 38-39. I am testing with QMB and also career missions in Normandy. After having flown some 85 ground attack missions in my ongoing career, I think that the fire rate of flak needs to be theoretical than historical, as we are very far from the historical numbers of guns and generally FLAK emplacements in the game. It is just needed to find the right balance, I think that now accuracy is very reasonable, just the volume of (german) heavy FLAK is too low. 

I have been doing some checking in the editor (not one of my strengths) but it does seem to me that QMB missions and even Vanders EMG missions tend to activate heavy flak too late and deactivate it too early. Some heavy flak units have 10000+ meters effective range but missions seem to turn them on at around the 5-6 km mark. So if the gun is facing the wrong way it is a slow grind to orientate to firing position and engage when in real life it's pretty likely that the guns would have already been tracking the enemy aircraft. The other thing is that as you say flak unit compositions are incorrect. A single heavy German AAA battery was either 4 or 6 guns and it was very rare for them to operate below that number. Most missions I see 1 or 2 heavy flak guns plus 3 or 4 light which is about 50% of the minimum number it should be. Particularly airfields would have had at least one heavy flak battery plus instruments battery and 2 or 3 light batteries.

 

Anyway, will try switching back rof plus a couple of other things. The trigger radius used in the mission builder is a big part of the issue though as if not active the gun obviously doesn't fire.

Edited April 29, 2023 by Stonehouse

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

3 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

I have been doing some checking in the editor (not one of my strengths) but it does seem to me that QMB missions and even Vanders EMG missions tend to activate heavy flak too late and deactivate it too early. Some heavy flak units have 10000+ meters effective range but missions seem to turn them on at around the 5-6 km mark. So if the gun is facing the wrong way it is a slow grind to orientate to firing position and engage when in real life it's pretty likely that the guns would have already been tracking the enemy aircraft. The other thing is that as you say flak unit compositions are incorrect. A single heavy German AAA battery was either 4 or 6 guns and it was very rare for them to operate below that number. Most missions I see 1 or 2 heavy flak guns plus 3 or 4 light which is about 50% of the minimum number it should be. Particularly airfields would have had at least one heavy flak battery plus instruments battery and 2 or 3 light batteries.

 

Anyway, will try switching back rof plus a couple of other things. The trigger radius used in the mission builder is a big part of the issue though as if not active the gun obviously doesn't fire.

Good observations about the activations and battalion compositions, I fully agree and am looking forward to further adjustments. 

[JG4_Moltke1871]

HELL YEAH!

I flew some WW1 missions and I had a lot of fun!!

Fly attack with Gotha on 2600 Meters, crossing frontline attack target and exfiltrate under heavy fire, some close hits. and in the bombsight scary loud and close  booms... for this altitude really good, go straight feels really unwell and I was forced to dodge the flakfire. I think in next mission I better invest in the time climb 1000 meters more.

While attack a trainstation with Breguets on low altitude the squad was able destroy several AAA trucks and supress this danger fire... while exfiltrate over the frontline on 1000 meters really danger fire..

While a low alt recon mission feels its not a good Idea challange the AAA on 1000 meters alone and they concentrate on me ?

Simmilar results in mid altitude Missions like Balloon attack or attacker escord, in the mission results saw some heavy AAA ang MG AA kills.

Also the QMB AAA airfield thest was positive, I was under hard pressure, got hits but was able to dodge for a while but not forever ?

In any case the AAA feels hard but not mission impossible. Seems this time you find the right mix @Stonehouse?

In later missions I will test it in higher altitudes from 3000 to 4500 meters. If it work like it should I will be more save there.

 

[Stonehouse]

Ok new beta. All changes focused on WW2 heavy flak although it would be good if people can also do a quick sanity check on WW2 light flak and WW1 flak to ensure that I haven't accidentally changed anything in these areas since last beta.

 

Changes:

• Revert to theoretical fire rate and adjust accuracy values on that basis.
• Tested against a single German heavy AAA battery defending an airfield using 4 A20s on a level bombing raid. This mission was built using EMG and then tweaked so that
  • AAA wakes up at around 10000m from enemy aircraft. 
  • AAA is already orientated roughly towards the expected direction for enemy action.
  • 3 flavours of mission - one high skill flak, one normal skill flak and one low skill flak. I have included these missions for you to see the difference when you have a realistic battery composition and activation range. I actually think that if missions used accurate unit compositions, then I could revert to practical ROF.
  • Included radar and rangefinder bot files in the mod. 
  • Altered some new parameters that I think are to do with how responsive the guns are.

Couple of notes. 

• Missions will appear identical in the mission list - not sure why as I did rename them but don't know enough about mission building to figure out why - however if you click on each mission when you are picking the one to load, you will see the skill at the top of the briefing near the word Normandy. You can pretty much ignore the rest of the briefing other than you are attacking the airfield and it is an airstart about 15-20kms from target. You are approaching the IP on spawn and are the flight lead. It will be a starboard turn at the IP to a roughly south direction to line up on the hangars on the western edge of the airfield.
• One gun is not well orientated - if you watch it, you'll see it grind around to face the incoming raid. I left it like that to highlight why mission builders need to be careful about AAA orientation when they place the gun. Fortunately, the 10000m activation range gives it plenty of time to get into action. Remember most normal missions activate the gun at 5-6km and deactivate when the target aircraft is further away. When the gun respawns, it has to turn around again. 
• I found that AAA seems to prioritise higher aircraft or perhaps fighters. The original EMG mission had an escort of 4 Spitfire XIVs. I found that with those in play the flak focused almost entirely on the escort and left the bombers alone. I feel this could really be regarded as a bug if the impression is correct. Flak should target in order, aircraft attacking them, fighter bombers doing ground attack/flak suppression, bombers heavy and then light and finally fighters if there is nothing else to shoot at. In the end it was skewing things so badly that I removed them and just kept the 4 A20s. It was only then I could begin to set accuracy values to something that felt like level bombers v's AAA were balanced.
• The A20s are at 4-5000ft. If they were higher the flak would be less accurate but so would their bomb aiming. You can see this in the missions as the flak gets steadily closer as the A20s get closer to the bomb drop point.
• Remember flak accuracy is random within boundaries set by values in the game files and so each time through a mission will give different results for the same skill gun crew. I was trying for an average over many replays in setting the values. So, if you attempt say the normal accuracy and find that you get hit quickly, please remember this and try it a few more times before you report back that normal is too accurate. 
• On stock the low skill guns are pitiful. You can see them change elevation by 40-50 degrees each shot. Under the mod low skill is still dangerous if you are unlucky. Normal is to be respected and you should expect damage although unless unlucky you won't lose aircraft and high while not impossible is to be feared and you should expect aircraft losses. You will definitely get damage of some sort. This is based on aircraft not maneuvering, such as level bombers on the bomb run. Fighters and other more maneuverable aircraft will fare better as they should.
• I think even on stock using a 10km activation range for heavy AAA is better as I believe that even though the stock targeting range is about 5km or so the gun ranges are 10km plus and they will have a go at shooting at you if they are active. I may mention this over in the suggestions thread for the devs to put heavy AAA on a separate trigger and attack area MCU that uses 10km for AQMB and QMB missions. I think campaign missions would benefit from the change if they don't already do it. Ditto making sure the gun orientation is appropriate.

 

Hoping this is the last beta and I can update the main post. I think it is working well now. Please give it a try and report back. Try some QMB and campaign missions as well as my test missions if you can. 

 

Thanks

 

 

AAAmodbeta0105.zip test aaa high.zip test aaa low.zip test aaa normal.zip

Edited May 1, 2023 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

On 5/1/2023 at 8:44 PM, Stonehouse said:

I think even on stock using a 10km activation range for heavy AAA is better as I believe that even though the stock targeting range is about 5km or so the gun ranges are 10km plus and they will have a go at shooting at you if they are active. I may mention this over in the suggestions thread for the devs to put heavy AAA on a separate trigger and attack area MCU that uses 10km for AQMB and QMB missions. I think campaign missions would benefit from the change if they don't already do it. Ditto making sure the gun orientation is appropriate.

Just reran the high mission in stock while on a coffee break. As I thought the guns do fire out to the attack area range/gun max range (whichever is lower) even in stock. So missions should be built with light and heavy AAA on activation triggers and attack area MCUs with specifically selected radius values (the opposite of now) so that heavy AAA spawn and can fire out to the limit of reasonable range.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Stonehouse

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

Thank you Stonehouse for the update. I tested the provided missions as well as QMB and career missions. I must say that FLAK works very well in the supplied missions and provides realistic challenge. Its density and accuracy for WW2 is quite balanced in my opinion. The only problem I see especially in career missions (medium difficulty, dense activity) is that the heavy FLAK is not that much responsive in the target area. It usually goes active only after we leave the target area (I am flying the typhoon usually so we are quite fast 300+ mph) and has a chance to fire maybe one or two shots. Enroute FLAK is somehow much more reactive and gives more challenge. I am not sure if we can compensate the slow responsiveness of heavy FLAK by tweaking its parameters for the career mode to compensate for its late activation and wrong orientations. It is also quite strange that before the last patch when the heavy FLAK became very accurate it was able to fire pro actively in career and started to saturate the space around targets much sooner. I will test career missions more, generally I feel that this current version is very good, so good job with it. 

[Stonehouse]

3 hours ago, Rudolph said:

will test career missions more, generally I feel that this current version is very good, so good job with it. 

Thank you! 

I've triple checked the vehicle and turret definitions (eg a AAA gun like the Flak 37 for instance is defined as a vehicle with a turret) between pre 5.102 and 5.102b and I can't see any differences in winmerge. So, if something changed it isn't visible to me............for instance I can see the error calc for an air gunner on a bomber but can't see the calc for a AAA "turret". It is possible the calc was tweaked somewhere across recent patches.

 

I do think a big part of it is the activation/deactivation radius and the attack area MCU radius. I'll try to look at a campaign mission if it is possible but I think they will be similar to QMB so 5000-6000m radius for activation and attack area MCU and +500m on that radius for deactivation. So if you flew a zig zag course that varied by 500m on the radius distance I believe you force the gun to activate and deactivate and activate etc etc. ie spawn and despawn and spawn etc.

 

When it spawns the 2nd or later time it has the original orientation as specified in the editor not the one it finished with.

 

A flak 37 has a yaw angular speed of 9..........I believe this means it rotates at 9 deg per second. So if the gun is out of whack with the target by 180 deg the gun has to spend 20 secs rotating before it can fire. An aircraft moving at 300 mph (134 m/s approx) will cover 2.68 km in that time. So, it will cross the area of engagement allowed to the gun (6000m radius so 12000m at best if the aircraft directly overflies the gun) in about 90 secs (approx 4 lots of 20sec). A flak 37 has a theoretical fire rate of 20 rounds per min but it can only fire when it stops changing elevation and rotation. 

 

I could easily see a group of guns spending the entire 90 secs trying to get the gun in line with the target and never get to fire before the aircraft leaves the attack area and then passes out of the deactivation radius which forces the guns to despawn. Even at best it will only likely get 4 or 5 shots off unless you are so unlucky to fly directly at the gun and it is pointing at you. Then the best it will do is about 20 shots as when you pass over it the gun will have to pivot. 

 

I'll see if I can look at a campaign mission in the editor to see if I can determine the radius used but not sure if they are encrypted. <edit> can't find the campaign missions so figure they are not able to be read by us - reasonable considering they are copyrighted material. Stock supplied missions only provide the msnbin file so I don't know how to load them in the editor as it is looking for .mission files.

 

I believe the only way it will get fixed is if the mission designers/authors/dev team use a larger radius for heavy AAA as well as trying to orientate them to the reasonably expected threat direction. This allows more time to get lined up and shoot.

 

Ironically the spotter range for the Flak 37 is 25km and the effective range (stock) is 10400m.  

For some reason the stock targeting distance for the gunner bots is only 5000m however. Likely this is part of the reason for the 5000m activation and attack radius.

 

Perhaps this was chosen for performance reasons back when Battle of Stalingrad came out 10 years ago in 2013. However, PCs have come a long way since then so I believe the targeting distance should increase and the activation and attack radius should be larger. Possibly the devs felt that after 5000m the gun could only be used to put up box barrage style flak rather than aimed so hence the low range for targeting. I have references that state that 88s were effective at aimed fire at aircraft out to about 9000 yards or about 8300m though. Unfortunately, we don't have box barrage style flak and anyway we also don't have correct unit compositions to get the density required for it.

 

I increase this targeting distance to 15000m in my mod but regardless the gun is absolutely governed by the activation radius that allows it to spawn and then the radius assigned to the attack area MCU. If I had the gun spawn when a target entered a zone 20km in radius but assigned an attack area MCU of 500m the gun wouldn't fire until the target was 500m away is how I understand it works although it might track the target outside the 500 m.

 

Spoiler

Class_name = "CSpotter"
object_name = "Spotter"

UpdatePeriod = 1.0      // ïåðèîä àïäåéòà ñïîòòåðà(cåê)
Range = 25000.0        // ðàáî÷èé äèàïàçîí(ðàäèóñ, ì)

 

Spoiler

AttackDistance   = 14500.0        //AI max aim distance versus ground point (test by 45¡ shot)
AttackDistanceTrgGnd = 2000.0        //AI max aim distance versus ground target
AttackDistanceTrgAir = 10400.0        //AI max aim distance versus air target (test by 45° shot - range for 10° elevation aim) or limited by max fuse distance

Spoiler

LowTargetAngle = 5.0
minFuseDisp = -0.125, -0.250, -0.500
maxFuseDisp = +0.125, +0.250, +0.500

targetingDistance = 5000.0f

 

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by Stonehouse

[RedeyeStorm]

Hey @Stonehouse for the campaign missions look for the _gen.mission file. I am not behind 

my pc so can’t say the directory.

[Stonehouse]

7 hours ago, RedeyeStorm said:

look for the _gen.mission file.

 

I thought the _gen.mission file was the QMB mission last built? 

 

<edit> Found them. Obvious really now I have seen it...........campaigns.gtp........but unfortunately 90% are cmpbin files not msnbin so the editor won't read them. As I thought some sort of encryption, which is as I said earlier, I can understand why.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Stonehouse

[Letka_13/Arrow_]

I have flown more WW2 stock career missions with Typhoon in rheinland. In some of them, the heavy FLAK works very well and is quite intensive (probably when it is correctly positioned in the expected direction of the attack), in some it is less responsive, however in general now I rate its performance as quite good/challenging without being overly accurate in my opinion. 

[Stonehouse]

7 hours ago, Rudolph said:

I rate its performance as quite good/challenging without being overly accurate in my opinion. 

Ok thanks for the feedback. I'll wait until the end of the weekend for any feedback from others and then make this the live version. I'm experimenting with something new to change the radius for activation and attack area in QMB missions and it is faintly possible some career missions will also pick up the changes. Not sure yet. QMB uses group files to hold info about the units being spawned so I think if I locate all the AAA related ones and tweak them I might get QMB missions to use a bigger radius. Lot of tables to change though......upwards of 100.

[Stonehouse]

11 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

Ok thanks for the feedback. I'll wait until the end of the weekend for any feedback from others and then make this the live version. I'm experimenting with something new to change the radius for activation and attack area in QMB missions and it is faintly possible some career missions will also pick up the changes. Not sure yet. QMB uses group files to hold info about the units being spawned so I think if I locate all the AAA related ones and tweak them I might get QMB missions to use a bigger radius. Lot of tables to change though......upwards of 100.

So..........good news. Proof of concept for modding the QMB to use larger activation and attack area ranges is working. Bad news is that it is going to take a while. Have about 300-400 files to alter. 

[Picchio]

@Stonehouse A word of gratitude for your continued work and effort, especially for the research of historically composed gun emplacements, which I really hope @PatrickAWlson will employ - unfortunately, I have been away from the sim for a while but I'm looking forward to testing and enjoying the game once again with this mod.

[Stonehouse]

Updated version in first post. Many thanks to the people who helped test the beta versions especially JG4_Moltke1871, Rudolph, Redeyestorm and FodderMonkey for their feedback.

 

Optional Mod to alter activation and attack radii for AQMB & QMB is about half done. Still wading through all the files. There are about 30 folders with multiple sub folders involved with about 15 files to edit in each, so it is taking a bit of time. Aiming for activation to be at 10000m, deactivation at 10500m and attacks out to 10000m.

 

I think this will also change the AAA for careers too but still have to test it when all the edits are done. Fingers crossed.

 

Vander let me know what files are involved for EMG so I think I can likely create a similar mod for EMG.

 

Hoping Pat will consider similar changes for PWCG when/if he has time - don't believe I can do this via a mod as I think it is in his code.

[Stonehouse]

AQMB/QMB mod still WIP now about 80% complete.

 

However, took a bit of a side journey into EMG space and have added an optional mod to the first post that increases the activation range to 10000m, the deactivation range to 11500m and the MCU attack area radius to 10000m for AAA in EMG generated missions. I did also slightly alter the composition of German flak templates as defined in EMG to make them approximately a half battery in strength and more historically correct. So, for those familiar with EMG templates Axis_flak1 is now two heavy AAA plus 1x 20mm AAA plus 2 searchlights. Axis_flak2 is now a mix of 37mm AAA, 4 in number plus 2 searchlights. Axis_flak3 is 6x20mm AAA plus 2 searchlights. Although Vander did say that no theatre template mission uses Axis_flak3 at this time. This will very slightly change the number of AAA units near German defended objectives. 

 

The optional mod is JSGME enabled and assumes you installed EMG into your IL2 folder, and the EMG folder name is EasyMissionGenerator. If this is not the case, then you will need to either manually copy the CoopTemplate_GENERIC.eng and CoopTemplate_GENERIC.mission files into your EMG template folder or alter the mod structure to match your EMG install. I also included a copy of the current stock EMG files of the same name so if you stuff things up you can recover easily enough.

 

While building this I did look at making all AAA match the historical battery composition. It turns out that it would probably require changing all the current theatre template missions plus likely changing the controls over AAA density current employed by EMG (it uses Ambient AI Vehicle Density at present I'm told) so AAA density is better managed. Since this takes it outside the scope of a simple mod and more like an enhancement to EMG, I decided to just stick with increasing the activation/deactivation and attack ranges.

[Stonehouse]

Added the optional AQMB/QMB and career mod to the first post to increase the activation/deactivation and attack range of AAA. I've tested the career side briefly in a Typhoon career over the channel and could see AAA spawn and fire earlier than stock. However, there are a lot and I mean a lot of files involved in this one. So, it may have some hidden glitches which will only come out via people using it. This mod also impacts searchlights as does the EMG version although this one doesn't change the composition of AAA only how when it activates and how far out it will attack.  Hope it increases people's immersion and enjoyment.

[Picchio]

Speaking of AAA density and activation-deactivation ranges, have you checked if using the highest setting in the Career could impact performance? The number of active AAA units is still one of the main factors responsible for the infamous "time dilation"!

[Stonehouse]

Just now, Picchio said:

Speaking of AAA density and activation-deactivation ranges, have you checked if using the highest setting in the Career could impact performance? The number of active AAA units is still one of the main factors responsible for the infamous "time dilation"!

No, I haven't. It likely is very mission specific too anyway in that some missions would have few AAA even on hardest setting while others might be chock full. That would be one of the reasons for making it an optional mod for people to use at their discretion. There are hundreds of files involved so too many to make different flavours of activation range.