AAA activation/deactivation and MCU attack range

[Stonehouse]

@PatrickAWlson

Hi Pat,

I've sort of covered this idea before in amongst a collection of other PWCG & AAA related points. I'm not sure whether you saw that post earlier in the year or what your thoughts on it were. Anyway, PWCG is the one area I can't cover with a mod (see the QMB and career and EMG AAA attack range mods in the AAA mod thread) so I thought I would make a very limited suggestion/request for you to consider for an upcoming PWCG release.

 

Usually, I see in missions that there is a trigger to activate a AAA group, plus one to deactivate the group as targets move away and an MCU that gives the attack range. I believe you set the trigger and MCU ranges with hardcoded values in your code and create these components during mission generation using these values. The main point of this post is that from what I have seen the ranges on the triggers and MCU are much less than the operational range of the AAA - particularly heavy flak which had useful ranges of 10-14k meters against aerial targets. Typically, the mission design uses 5000-6000 meters. At the normal speeds of WW2 aircraft this often means that the larger guns don't have time to turn and engage before the aircraft overflies or passes them moving out of range before they are really engaged. 

 

Could I please suggest/request that the activation range and attack range is moved from a hardcoded value to be a campaign set up parameter. You would probably want to set an allowed range for the value between 6000-12000m. You could also have the deactivation range as a parameter or simply add something like 500 or 1000m to the user nominated activation range.

 

From what I've seen with the AQMB/QMB and career AAA attack range mod increasing the range doesn't seem to impact FPS to any great degree, but I guess it would depend on density in target locations in PWCG missions. However, being a parameter would allow the user to tune the experience to suit and give those with more computing power a more realistic and immersive experience. Note this is mainly a suggestion for WW2 campaigns although there is no reason it couldn't be done for WW1 as well except that the allowable range of values may be different.

 

The other one is perhaps more controversial in that it may cause balance issues or just general angst. Could you please make the AAA gun crew skill a parameter for both Allied and Axis in a similar fashion to what you've done for aircrew?

 

I know I can manually edit a mission file via something like Notepad++ to achieve the above but it is very tiresome to have to do so for every campaign mission so I'm hoping that you may consider these two and that they aren't hard to implement making it more likely that you may consider doing the changes.

 

Thanks for reading and the continued excellence you provide with PWCG.

 

 

Edited August 7, 2023 by Stonehouse