AAA mod

[WitchyWoman]

I am not sure if AAA is better now post the last update but try a career mission at low altitude in a C-47 or fighter bomber over Normandy with AAA, with and without AI gunnery combined. On most missions I lose 70% or all of my squadron and 80% of the time I'm badly shot up going home or I am going down to.

 

And yes I know quad 20mms and 88's are very deadly and were in RL but this is nuts. The only way I ever make it out if by flying nap of earth, making a few "pray to hit and kill"  attacks (2 or 3 if I am lucky)  and fleeing back home. The friendly AI has zero chance. I never come out of it without holes in my canopy and fuselage.

Edited July 22, 2023 by WitchyWoman

[Picchio]

10 hours ago, WitchyWoman said:

I am not sure if AAA is better now post the last update but try a career mission at low altitude in a C-47 or fighter bomber over Normandy with AAA, with and without AI gunnery combined. On most missions I lose 70% or all of my squadron and 80% of the time I'm badly shot up going home or I am going down to.

 

And yes I know quad 20mms and 88's are very deadly and were in RL but this is nuts. The only way I ever make it out if by flying nap of earth, making a few "pray to hit and kill"  attacks (2 or 3 if I am lucky)  and fleeing back home. The friendly AI has zero chance. I never come out of it without holes in my canopy and fuselage.

 

Is that with the default Career?

What altitude are you typically flying at?

Low-altitude with a C47 doesn't sound safe at all, it's a huge target.

The AI gunnery mod doesn't control AAA units, AFAIK.

Anyway, what you describe was pretty much my experience during my Ground Attack career (PWCG) in Moscow with the Hurricane, but that was months ago. And I would have liked it if the AI was able to fly defensively (and low enough) while en-route (so many bridges to fly above, all of them defended!) In the end I gave up. I know PWCG has changed the way AAA emplacements are distributed, but I needed a change of pace (and of map).

I'll see how this one goes.

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Picchio

[JG4_Moltke1871]

14 hours ago, WitchyWoman said:

I am not sure if AAA is better now post the last update but try a career mission at low altitude in a C-47 or fighter bomber over Normandy with AAA, with and without AI gunnery combined. On most missions I lose 70% or all of my squadron and 80% of the time I'm badly shot up going home or I am going down to.

 

And yes I know quad 20mms and 88's are very deadly and were in RL but this is nuts. The only way I ever make it out if by flying nap of earth, making a few "pray to hit and kill"  attacks (2 or 3 if I am lucky)  and fleeing back home. The friendly AI has zero chance. I never come out of it without holes in my canopy and fuselage.

This is about what I had experienced. AI is always shredded. It seems in some situations the AA mod is very exciting but some mission types became mission impossible.

[WitchyWoman]

On 7/22/2023 at 3:26 PM, Picchio said:

 

Is that with the default Career?

What altitude are you typically flying at?

Low-altitude with a C47 doesn't sound safe at all, it's a huge target.

The AI gunnery mod doesn't control AAA units, AFAIK.

Anyway, what you describe was pretty much my experience during my Ground Attack career (PWCG) in Moscow with the Hurricane, but that was months ago. And I would have liked it if the AI was able to fly defensively (and low enough) while en-route (so many bridges to fly above, all of them defended!) In the end I gave up. I know PWCG has changed the way AAA emplacements are distributed, but I needed a change of pace (and of map).

I'll see how this one goes.

 

Yes default careers and PWCG....as for the altitude in ground attack 1000 and lower, as low as 300. At 300 I have some chance of evading AA with these mods but I still get shot up. As for the C-47...realistically they did not fly at high altitude as they were making parachute drops in RL so I'm usually at 2500 feet or lower.

 

Below are historical notes on para ops in Normandy. It reminds me of John Wayne limping around after breaking his ankle in the jump, bitching to the medic about tying his boot tight in "The longest day"?

 

Quote

D-Day Airborne Operations

Normal parameters for dropping paratroopers were six hundred feet of altitude at ninety miles per hour airspeed. Owing to weather and tactical conditions, however, many troopers were dropped from 300 to 2,100 feet and at speeds as high as 150 miles per hour.

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by WitchyWoman

[Stonehouse]

Low down as long as you are reasonably close to heavy AAA you should be pretty safe due to the fusing. An 88 per game specs has a min fuse setting of something like 1.3 secs. ie based on muzzle velocity that's 1000m approx. or about 3200 ft. Therefore, if you are closer than that the fusing prevents you getting hit. Additionally, the rotational rate is 9 deg/sec. If you are crossing their line of fire, they will struggle to track you if you are close.

 

OK so reading between the lines from people's comments here, I'm tending to think that the main issue down low is light AAA. Not to say that I won't revisit heavy AAA re Moltke's initial reports.

 

I have a concern that Normandy and Bodenplatte are much denser flak environments than say Stalingrad early war. If I balance things for later war situations, then earlier war may become too easy. Have to see what I can do. I don't really want to end up with multiple versions of the mod to maintain as it gets too time consuming.

 

One other thing - AI fly dumb. I can't do much about that. If I make it so that casualties are greatly reduced in the AI contingent, humans will be able to pretty much ignore AAA assuming they don't fly as badly as the AI in terms of AAA avoidance. My intention was always to have AAA a legitimate threat to human pilots not eye candy.

 

In real life AAA casualties to Allied pilots doing ground attack were very much higher than those casualties due to enemy aircraft. I can say quite categorically that there is much less flak emplaced near game ground targets than would have been used in real life. It wasn't rare for a squadron doing ground attack to suffer 50% casualties in a sortie against a heavily defended target like a no ball site or airfield unless they somehow managed to surprise the defenders. By 1944 both sides had very experienced gun crews and good equipment. German AAA lethality is well documented in reference and in anecdotes in pilot biographies. By late 1944 it was the main thing to fear for most Allied pilots. Attacking targets that ended up being flak traps was their nightmare, but even "normal" targets and their flak defenses were something to bring sweat to the forehead and give a pilot a case of jitters until they got too busy in the air to worry.

 

I don't know off the top of my head what flak losses to troop carrier aircraft doing their drops in daylight were, but I would expect them to be high as they were in the light AAA zone in slow large aircraft. I would expect the Allied staff would have been quite cold blooded in their planning for such missions and if X troops were needed for the mission and loss expectations were say 30% then 1.3 (or more to be safe) times X troops would be sent. Likely that is why (or partly why) most of the D-Day drops were done at night or just before dawn so as to reduce the AAA threat to the slow aircraft. Possibly the career missions should be more night focused. I haven't flown C47s or Ju52s or their careers much.

 

I'm trying to balance between a historical feel/better immersion for human pilots and gaming expectations of "winning" missions with a one size fits all mod..........

 

Just so I have some sort of gauge to base tweaks on and please to recall that career and PWCG are low skill AAA crews, can people advise:

• What are they expecting in terms of AI piloted plane losses?
• What do people feel is acceptable in terms of AI losses to flak in terms of different gun crew skills?  eg X planes attack a heavily defended target with high skill crews, what % of X on average should be shot down to make people comfortable?
• What do people feel is a heavily defended target? eg 2 heavy and 6 light AAA (noting that in real life this wasn't even a single battery of AAA and that for example Abbeville airfield in 1943 had 14 heavy guns and 21 light guns plus numerous MGs within 3km of the airfield center and that later in the war AAA defenses were improved on important targets)

Edited July 24, 2023 by Stonehouse

[MajorMagee]

Quote

 

Operation Plunder began at 9 pm on the evening of 23 March, and by the early hours of the morning of 24 March Allied ground units had secured a number of crossings on the eastern bank of the Rhine. In the first few hours of the day, the transport aircraft carrying the two airborne divisions that formed Operation Varsity began to take off from airbases in England and France and began to rendezvous over Brussels, before turning northeast for the Rhine dropping zones. The airlift consisted of 541 transport aircraft containing airborne troops, and a further 1,050 troop-carriers towing 1,350 gliders. The U.S. 17th Airborne Division consisted of 9,387 personnel, who were transported in 836 C-47 Skytrain transports, 72 C-46 Commando transports, and more than 900 Waco CG-4A gliders. The British 6th Airborne Division consisted of 7,220 personnel transported by 42 Douglas C-54 and 752 C-47 Dakota transport aircraft, as well as 420 Airspeed Horsa and General Aircraft Hamilcar gliders. This immense armada stretched more than 200 miles (322 km) in the sky and took 2 hours and 37 minutes to pass any given point, and was protected by some 2,153 Allied fighters from the U.S. Ninth Air Force and the Royal Air Force. The combination of the two divisions in one lift made this the largest single day airborne drop in history. At 10 am British and American airborne troops belonging to the 6th Airborne Division and 17th Airborne Division began landing on German soil, some 13 hours after the Allied ground assault began.

 

Landing paratroopers, and especially gliders, without the cover of darkness left them exceedingly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. The official history of the British Airborne Divisions highlights the cost of this trade-off, stating that of the 416 gliders that landed, only 88 remained undamaged by enemy fire, and that between 20–30 percent of the glider pilots were casualties. Another historian argues that the gliders landing in daylight was a calamity, with the 194th Glider Infantry Regiment having two-thirds of their gliders hit by ground fire and suffering heavy casualties as they landed. The casualty rates were worsened by the slow rates of release and descent of the gliders themselves, and the fact that each aircraft towed two gliders, slowing them even further; as the time to release a glider unit was 3–4 times longer than a parachute unit, the gliders were vulnerable to flak.

A large number of paratroop drop aircraft were hit and lost as well. This was largely due to the hostile conditions encountered by the drop aircraft. Operation Varsity's paratroop drop phase was flown in daylight at slow speeds at very low altitudes, using unarmed cargo aircraft, over heavy concentrations of German 20 mm, 37 mm, and larger calibre antiaircraft (AA) cannon utilizing explosive, incendiary, and armor-piercing incendiary ammunition. By that stage of the war, German AA crews had trained to a high state of readiness; many batteries had considerable combat experience in firing on and destroying high speed, well-armed fighter and fighter-bomber aircraft while under fire themselves. Finally, while many if not all of the C-47s used in Operation Varsity had been retrofitted with self-sealing fuel tanks, the much larger C-46 Commando aircraft employed in the drop received no such modification. This was exacerbated by the C-46's unvented wings, which tended to pool leaked gasoline at the wing root where it could be ignited by flak or a stray spark. Although 19 of 72 C-46 aircraft were destroyed during Operation Varsity, losses of other aircraft types from AA fire during the same operation were also significant, including 13 gliders shot down, 14 crashed, and 126 damaged; 15 Consolidated B-24 bombers shot down, and 104 damaged; and 30 C-47s shot down and 339 damaged.

 

 

All of this happened in front of Winston Churchill who was watching from a purpose built observation tower.

 

Overview Movies (They make it look so perfectly planned and executed, when it really was a mixture of successes and spectacular failures.)

[Picchio]

6 hours ago, Stonehouse said:

• What are they expecting in terms of AI piloted plane losses? 
• What do people feel is acceptable in terms of AI losses to flak in terms of different gun crew skills?  eg X planes attack a heavily defended target with high skill crews, what % of X on average should be shot down to make people comfortable?
• What do people feel is a heavily defended target? eg 2 heavy and 6 light AAA (noting that in real life this wasn't even a single battery of AAA and that for example Abbeville airfield in 1943 had 14 heavy guns and 21 light guns plus numerous MGs within 3km of the airfield center and that later in the war AAA defenses were improved on important targets)

 

How about pushing for improvements from the Devs for better AI behaviour when receiving ground fire while flying between waypoints? It'd be easier than balancing things within the mod, when the AI is just unable to react...

 

But to answer your questions:

1 and 2: an historically belivable ratio of losses given the AI behaviour while en-route (but, as you noted, will it work for all theaters?)

3: personally, I'd rather experience as realistic as possible levels of threat - again, within reason, so this has to be balanced: other than the AI, the other limiting factor is the number of aircraft we can have in the air in a typical Career mission, so the quantity and density of AAA emplacements must follow accordingly.

 

If I didn't wish for these challenges I'd just play without the mod... ?

[Stonehouse]

1 minute ago, Picchio said:

How about pushing for improvements from the Devs for better AI behaviour when receiving ground fire while flying between waypoints? It'd be easier than balancing things within the mod, when the AI is just unable to react...

I've posted in the suggestions thread months ago but no idea whether it has any traction. I do know from personal experience that if you are the flight lead and constantly alter your altitude slightly around the briefed height by a few hundred feet that the AI will mimic your moves and this helps keep them alive in a flak zone. Of course once you hit the IP and head to the target this doesn't work as the AI will break and carry out their attacks as coded in the game but it does help enroute to the IP.

[Picchio]

3 minutes ago, Stonehouse said:

I've posted in the suggestions thread months ago but no idea whether it has any traction.

 

Mind posting the link?

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, Picchio said:

 

Mind posting the link?

Will see if I can find it, it was a while ago. Late last year/early this year if I am remembering it right. Worst case I can do another lol

[WitchyWoman]

Good points all around. I will say from experience that on Eastern front maps I do not have a problem when using AAA, it seems to work well on those maps. Its the western front (mainly Normandy) that is strangely far more accurate and deadly in my experiences.

 

One thing I do notice. Often way points for career generated missions take a flight straight across the flak zones which makes it far worse on your AI flights survival. I don't want things unrealistic, but if a flight is losing more than half its planes too often that's not good either. Maybe part of this problem could be helped if the waypoint generation was aware of placing flight paths intelligently.  I know a lot of other old sims that generated paths that were realistic and took AA and/or SAMs into account and did a good job at path finding around the heavy concentrations  when possible to the  IP.

 

I also agree that the AI aircraft are deader than a door nail when trying to evade AA, which is not Stonehouses or any other mod makers fault.

 

 

Edited July 25, 2023 by WitchyWoman

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, WitchyWoman said:

Often way points for career generated missions take a flight straight across the flak zones which makes it far worse on your AI flights survival.

Yeah - which is quite unrealistic. Units in real life paid attention to flak location reports and did try to avoid them if it was possible and aligned with the mission objective. I don't know whether the career routes are random within certain limits, planned so to give flak encounters for excitement's sake or just oblivious to the idea of trying to avoid flak if possible.

 

1 hour ago, WitchyWoman said:

Its the western front (mainly Normandy) that is strangely far more accurate and deadly in my experiences

I think it is simply that on the Western front maps the AAA density is quite a lot greater. ie not more accurate but simply more things shooting at you and the law of averages kicks in. There is nothing time frame or theatre specific in the actual gun or bot definitions that changes accuracy other than crew experience and I've been assured by a solid source that all crews are low skill in career missions regardless of career difficulty. Obviously careers with higher density settings will equal more flak guns though but it also all depends on the templates used in career mission generation. These are a bunch of files (similar to the AQMB and QMB ones and all live in scg.gtp) that define the building blocks for career missions so each play through of the campaign is dynamic and the missions are a bit different. As some are now quite old and possibly all consider FPS performance it's likely that old BOS/BOM/BOK templates haven't been revisited for years and the new ones for Normandy and Bodenplatte simply have more units because today's PCs allow it. BOS is circa 2014 and nearly 10 years old now. I expect that while the devs have done some tweaks and bug fixes I doubt they went to expense of major reno's on old careers.

 

Haven't had a chance yet to go looking for my old suggestion post but may have a beta test candidate of a new version soon. 

• Made some changes to heavy AAA
• Created a new bot for light AAA (guns in the 20-40s mm caliber range that are firing non fused shells). Previously these guns shared the MG bot definition. Attempting to set up the new bot to make light AAA more survivable without making it a paper tiger. The Bofors is a bit of an issue due to its long 6400m range. Other nationality's light AAA is approx half that range.

 

Still concerned that AAA in low density environments will be too easy for humans so I hope everyone is willing to do some quite varied testing. It will need some quantity too as we are really looking for trends not one-off things. eg repeating the same mission over and over to see if that one-shot incident was a trend or just a bit of a fluke.

[Stonehouse]

As I've a change already in progress I will just release any 5.105 changes via that. I don't believe 5.105 had any impact on the main AAA mod but possibly it did on the QMB/AQMB AAA attack range mod as there may have been tweaks to WW1 files. I note that Vander also released a new version of EMG in the last 24 hours or so and therefore the EMG AAA attack range mod will need to be checked as well.

[Stonehouse]

Updated EMG AAA Attack range mod in first post to match EMG v77. There were quite a few differences between the generic templates in v76 and v77 so the new version of the mod will likely not work with EMGv76 or older.

 

First beta of new AAA mod version with adjusted heavy AAA and light AAA firing 20-40mm rounds broken out to their own bot definition. MGs left unchanged. Please test. Note that while I am still checking the AQMB_QMB and career AAA attack range I believe that it's fine to use as is for testing this beta. Try to test in different theatres if you can. 

 

If you see a problematic trend in AAA behaviour, please try to provide a mission or a track if you can as well as much detail about the issue as you can.

 

Thanks

 

AAAmod - beta 28 July 2023.zip

 

 

[Stonehouse]

AQMB_QMB and career AAA attack range mod confirmed as no changes required for 5.105

 

[FodderMonkey]

Question: Prior to the mod I was running the following mods together without any issues:

- AAAmod

-AI Gunnery

-AI Gunnery Pilot despawn delay

-EMG AAA attack range

 

However, since the update I can run these without issues:

-AAAmod (7/28 Beta)

-EMG AAA attack range

but the other two mods are causing a crash to desktop.  Not sure which of the two or if its both; haven't bothered to test them separately because my question is whether I even need the "AI gunnery" mods under the latest version of AAAmod.   I thought I read somewhere up the chain that you had combined those, but wanted to be sure.

 

Thanks!

 

[Stonehouse]

49 minutes ago, FodderMonkey said:

Question: Prior to the mod I was running the following mods together without any issues:

- AAAmod

-AI Gunnery

-AI Gunnery Pilot despawn delay

-EMG AAA attack range

 

However, since the update I can run these without issues:

-AAAmod (7/28 Beta)

-EMG AAA attack range

but the other two mods are causing a crash to desktop.  Not sure which of the two or if its both; haven't bothered to test them separately because my question is whether I even need the "AI gunnery" mods under the latest version of AAAmod.   I thought I read somewhere up the chain that you had combined those, but wanted to be sure.

 

Thanks!

 

 

No, I haven't combined them. AAAmod is just AAA and AI gunnery ones are just to do with AI fighter and turret gunnery (and despawn delay) but fyi that I did update both of the AI gunnery ones you mention after patch 5.105 - have you got the latest versions?

 

Also updated the EMG AAA attack range mod.

 

Also just confirmed that the AQMB_QMB and career AAA attack range mod is ok to use with 5.105 without any updates.  

Edited July 29, 2023 by Stonehouse

[FodderMonkey]

28 minutes ago, Stonehouse said:

 

No, I haven't combined them. AAAmod is just AAA and AI gunnery ones are just to do with AI fighter and turret gunnery (and despawn delay) but fyi that I did update both of the AI gunnery ones you mention after patch 5.105 - have you got the latest versions?

 

Also updated the EMG AAA attack range mod.

 

Also just confirmed that the AQMB_QMB and career AAA attack range mod is ok to use with 5.105 without any updates.  

No, I don't think I have the latest; will snag those today.  Thanks!

[Stonehouse]

On 7/28/2023 at 6:10 PM, Stonehouse said:

Updated EMG AAA Attack range mod in first post to match EMG v77. There were quite a few differences between the generic templates in v76 and v77 so the new version of the mod will likely not work with EMGv76 or older.

 

First beta of new AAA mod version with adjusted heavy AAA and light AAA firing 20-40mm rounds broken out to their own bot definition. MGs left unchanged. Please test. Note that while I am still checking the AQMB_QMB and career AAA attack range I believe that it's fine to use as is for testing this beta. Try to test in different theatres if you can. 

 

If you see a problematic trend in AAA behaviour, please try to provide a mission or a track if you can as well as much detail about the issue as you can.

 

Thanks

 

 

Just wondered if there was any feedback yet?  Anyone had time to do testing?

[JG4_Moltke1871]

currently work doesn't leave me time to test sorry

[RedeyeStorm]

I have flown a few missions in career (Moscow) and the light flak seems to be less destructive. First impression though.

[Stonehouse]

On 7/24/2023 at 5:44 PM, Picchio said:

 

Mind posting the link?

 

Sorry Picchio, I couldn't find the post. Either I've included the point as part of a more general AAA comment/response and made it unfindable or I've simply misremembered things. 

 

I've done up a new post now over in suggestions.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by Stonehouse

[RedeyeStorm]

@Stonehouse,

 

Did some more flying and it is looking good. Flying the 110 on Moscow. Target was a rail bridge, flight of four. Three aircraft damaged, one shot down. Easy difficulty and dense units. 
 

(I use easy because then you do not get those terminator flights that home in on you (as much)).

[Stonehouse]

OK thanks. I've done a little tweaking on high and medium skill gun crews but left low skill (what you see in career) as per the last beta. Hopefully get some more feedback but will likely release a new version next week sometime.

[Stonehouse]

Testing new heavy flak effects. So (I think) applies to 75mm and up. Definitely 88mm plus anyway. Was attempting to get a darker, heavier burst with a red heart.

 

Better than stock? worse? indifferent?

 

 

[RedeyeStorm]

Well I see a white square at heart of the explosion. I haven’t seen that with stock flak.I am not that enthousastic about it. The explosions are a bit out of scale to the airplanes. It looks like a single seater would be completely engulfed.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Stonehouse]

8 hours ago, RedeyeStorm said:

Well I see a white square at heart of the explosion. I haven’t seen that with stock flak.I am not that enthousastic about it. The explosions are a bit out of scale to the airplanes. It looks like a single seater would be completely engulfed.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Interesting. Must be a perception thing as nothing I can do will change the size of the explosion, I can only fiddle with the textures used. The stock effects (there are 3 related to this size HE shell ie 500-1000g TNT exploding in the air) uses N_WhiteSmoke7.dds, N_WhiteSmoke7-detail.dds, N_HitFLASH.dds, N_HitFLASH-Big.dds, N_SmokeDarkRAY3.dds, N_HitSmallShellFrag.dds

 

I didn't like the way the white smoke textures interacted with the orange red of the hit flash textures so that was where my changes came in. Maybe you're thinking the stock effect is smaller because you aren't really seeing the white smoke textures.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Stonehouse

[RedeyeStorm]

 funny how that works. I would swear that the explosions are bigger. Can’t trust your lying eyes! 
 

Then the white squares aren’t new either. So I will reserve judgment when I see it in game.

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, RedeyeStorm said:

Then the white squares aren’t new either

Nope that's an issue. Not sure why. It seems to be a problem with N_HitFLASH.dds interacting with other textures.

[MajorMagee]

The video you posted back in April didn't have the white squares problem. It looks like that texture has lost it's alpha layer somewhere along the line since then.

[Stonehouse]

9 hours ago, MajorMagee said:

The video you posted back in April didn't have the white squares problem. It looks like that texture has lost it's alpha layer somewhere along the line since then.

Yeah - I've been fiddling with the efx files for the shell explosion. Perhaps I've pointed them at a dodgy texture, I'll freely admit that I know next to nothing about editing textures.

[Stonehouse]

@MajorMagee Thank you - that was the clue I needed. No white square anymore. Need to just check other large calibre flak now to see if any other efx files need modding. 

 

New version - should be viewable in 1440p. For those inquiring minds - it is high skill gun crews on the 88s below. Opinions on the effects?

 

 

Edited August 13, 2023 by Stonehouse

[MajorMagee]

Why is the red afterglow always shown as two distinct spots (over / under)? Is more overlap or additional textures needed?

 

The red glow seems to remain visible a bit to long as well.

 

In watching movies of ww2 flak there is a single burst and then the flame and black smoke extends uniformly upward from there by momentum.

[Stonehouse]

1 hour ago, MajorMagee said:

Why is the red afterglow always shown as two distinct spots (over / under)? Is more overlap or additional textures needed?

 

The red glow seems to remain visible a bit to long as well.

 

In watching movies of ww2 flak there is a single burst and then the flame and black smoke extends uniformly upward from there by momentum.

Can't control the timing only the texture used. So, if that's perceived as no good, I'd have to find another one. The two distinct spots are just the result of the 3 or 4 textures working together. I wasn't sure about it totally myself. Little bit too "samey". I'll see it I can find a replacement.

[Youtch]

Imho, too reddish. Looks like christmas tree.

[Stonehouse]

Alright, limited selections sorry. I went back to one of my earlier combinations (now looking better due to the white square issue being sorted) that I think is probably as good as I will get with my level of non-skill in texture manipulation. If this doesn't suit people, then I'll just shelve the idea for another time. Once again to reiterate, I can't control the timing or the size etc or even how many textures are involved. Only textures used.

 

 

Edited August 13, 2023 by Stonehouse

[RedeyeStorm]

This looks much better.

[MajorMagee]

Yes, that looks really good.

[Youtch]

That looks much better indeed

[Stonehouse]

Thanks all for the feedback on the effects changes. I've checked and all large caliber air bursts use the same graphic effects so one change will rule them all. I'll be putting up a new version of the AAA mod based on the last beta some posts higher up the thread in the next day or so and will also put the effect change up as a separate optional mod.