Extra Lethal Flak

[JG27_Mainz]

I have been flying on multiplayer servers such as Combat Box, FVP, Wings of Liberty, and TAW for many years. Most if not all of these servers keep their AA set on maximum difficulty. As a fighter pilot flying high altitude patrols, over all these years, the most damage I had ever taken from puffy flak was the very occasional fuel leak from shrapnel.

Then over the past weekend (July 12-13), I was instantly sniped by flak at high altitude on Combat Box. Highly unusual but not unheard of, so I chalked it up to bad luck. But then in the Combat Box Discord, I saw multiple other players commenting on getting sniped by flak that same day. The server admins had not made any changes at all to flak or server hardware. Also on July 13, on the ACG private server, they also experienced much more lethal puffy flak than usual.

 

To be clear, these deaths are not from the fast-firing AA guns that fire tracers. That type of AA has always been lethal to low-level aircraft. We are talking about flak that fires puffy explosions at long range and high altitude. Somehow, this type of puffy flak has suddenly become much more lethal, regularly one-shotting pilots at extreme range and altitude. On Combat Box, two missions today had the two highest ever recorded pilot deaths that the server has ever seen in its entire history.

 

Has anyone else experienced a massive increase in puffy flak lethality in multiplayer or singleplayer? Has there been some change in the game code?

[354thFG_GiantRat]

Only been flying for a few months now, but I've noticed it also. People in our group have been getting pkd way more often, we normally will weave as we go through flak and the most dmg we take is the occasional damaged engine or some holes in our wings, lately though we all take damage and atleast 1 of us will get pkd by puffy flak. I have died atleast 3 times now due to it, some of us have died 2 times in the same mission to flak killing pilot, it has absolutely gotten way more accurate. 

[Stonehouse]

2 hours ago, JG27_Mainz said:

Has there been some change in the game code?

Can't comment about the actual game code as we cannot see it but for what it is worth I haven't noticed any significant changes while maintaining the AAA mod over the last few game versions. Nothing really has changed in the heavy (or light) AAA weapon definitions, shell definitions or gunner bot files. I keep copies of the relevant gtp data and do compares between data sets when a new patch arrives. I also have not had any feedback that suddenly the mod has become more deadly as you might expect if there was a code change beneath what we can access. The last change I had to make due to a change in stock game definitions was because the Gleaves ammo supply had increased. This was in Feb 2025.

[R33GZ]

2 hours ago, JG27_Mainz said:

I have been flying on multiplayer servers such as Combat Box, FVP, Wings of Liberty, and TAW for many years. Most if not all of these servers keep their AA set on maximum difficulty. As a fighter pilot flying high altitude patrols, over all these years, the most damage I had ever taken from puffy flak was the very occasional fuel leak from shrapnel.

Then over the past weekend (July 12-13), I was instantly sniped by flak at high altitude on Combat Box. Highly unusual but not unheard of, so I chalked it up to bad luck. But then in the Combat Box Discord, I saw multiple other players commenting on getting sniped by flak that same day. The server admins had not made any changes at all to flak or server hardware. Also on July 13, on the ACG private server, they also experienced much more lethal puffy flak than usual.

 

To be clear, these deaths are not from the fast-firing AA guns that fire tracers. That type of AA has always been lethal to low-level aircraft. We are talking about flak that fires puffy explosions at long range and high altitude. Somehow, this type of puffy flak has suddenly become much more lethal, regularly one-shotting pilots at extreme range and altitude. On Combat Box, two missions today had the two highest ever recorded pilot deaths that the server has ever seen in its entire history.

 

Has anyone else experienced a massive increase in puffy flak lethality in multiplayer or singleplayer? Has there been some change in the game code?

Ive certainly experienced this on combat box before, 10kft one shot kills from 88's usually flying dumb, predictable, straight and level. 

Edited July 19 by R33GZ

[354thFG_Leifr]

It's probably worth very little to the devs without multiple track files, as always. That said, there's definitely been a large uptick in complaints about puffy flak PK'ing at the most incredible positions. They aren't just 88s flying level and slow; some of the players reporting this are experienced, flying in aircraft hitting near to maximum airspeeds and turning at altitude. ACG are also reporting the same from their server; an uptick in instant PKs at impropable speed/altitude combinations.

[MDzmitry]

It should be noted that speed or altitude don't matter as much as does proper weaving. And not just horizontally (lonely scissors so to say), but also up and down to throw off the trajectory calculation completely. But it shouldn't be too rushed either, since if you go up and down too quickly you barely change your path in the long run. 

[Barnacles]

On our MP server (Combat Box) we measure stats like number of shoot downs by various methods, and the number of people getting killed/shot down per hour by flak has increased massively this month.

 

On hearing complaints like this, normally my first instinct is to pin this on a placebo effect but it seems that the stats do support that there is something in the OP's statement.

 

I encourage everyone to record their flights and if they get shot down by an egregious AAA barrage they should post it here; devs can't do much without it.

Edited July 19 by Barnacles

[Alonzo]

Here's an image one of our players posted -- it's hard to tell from a single picture, but it looks like the flak burst has more "lethal range" than previously. If flak bursts are now lethal at (say) 50 feet instead of 5-10 feet, that would explain why players are suddenly getting hit a lot more often and harder.

 

[-332FG-Wim]

Another image from the same user showing where the flak shell detonated relative to his plane.

[=DW=_BIRDD0G]

examples of excessively accurate AAA.  Watch pilot Dragon-Kid

 

dogfight.2025-07-18_22-35-26_01.zip

dogfight.2025-07-14_00-26-54_00.zip

[Sneaksie]

The last update was in late May, so if you're observing a more recent change it can't be from our side. Perhaps the server owners added more maximum level AAA or (un)intentionally switched some meduim accuracy AAA to maximum accuracy?

[Alonzo]

3 hours ago, Sneaksie said:

The last update was in late May, so if you're observing a more recent change it can't be from our side. Perhaps the server owners added more maximum level AAA or (un)intentionally switched some meduim accuracy AAA to maximum accuracy?

 

That's what we thought, too, but we haven't changed AA levels in any of our maps. 

We've now gone further and ensured all "puffy" flak is 'low' skill. Player complaints seem to have stopped.

[AEthelraedUnraed]

10 hours ago, Alonzo said:

That's what we thought, too, but we haven't changed AA levels in any of our maps. 

Any other changes to the mission or server? E.g. perhaps there was some time dilation issue that made the flax fire less often until a hardware upgrade fixed it, or there were other AI-controlled targets nearby that the flax was pre-trained on. Otherwise, perhaps a case of mass-hysteria where one person had a few unlucky hits and then others thought "hey I've been hit by flak too, there must be something wrong then."

Edited July 22 by AEthelraedUnraed

[Barnacles]

49 minutes ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Any other changes to the mission or server? E.g. perhaps there was some time dilation issue that made the flax fire less often until a hardware upgrade fixed it, or there were other AI-controlled targets nearby that the flax was pre-trained on. Otherwise, perhaps a case of mass-hysteria where one person had a few unlucky hits and then others thought "hey I've been hit by flak too, there must be something wrong then."

We assumed it might be a psychological thing sparked by players talking amongst themselves, however when we checked the statistics there was a very significant correlation with the increase kills per hour by flak and the complaints. 

[Alonzo]

10 hours ago, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Any other changes to the mission or server? E.g. perhaps there was some time dilation issue that made the flax fire less often until a hardware upgrade fixed it, or there were other AI-controlled targets nearby that the flax was pre-trained on. Otherwise, perhaps a case of mass-hysteria where one person had a few unlucky hits and then others thought "hey I've been hit by flak too, there must be something wrong then."

 

It's a dynamic campaign, so the missions are going to be slightly different each time, but the campaign logic has remained unchanged. Time dilation isn't a thing in multiplayer - either the server is keeping up or you get repeated "multiplayer server overload" messages. We aren't getting those messages, and our "tick time" is around 10ms with 60-70 players online (max tick is 20ms to enable 50hz game updates).

We did consider the mass hysteria thing, as Barnacles mentioned, but we found something like a 40x increase in deaths-per-hour to puffy flak. We've now reduced the skill level on all puffy flak guns to 'low' which seems to have eased player complaints (but it also makes the flak pretty worthless, which isn't our intent).

[AEthelraedUnraed]

14 hours ago, Alonzo said:

 

It's a dynamic campaign, so the missions are going to be slightly different each time, but the campaign logic has remained unchanged. Time dilation isn't a thing in multiplayer - either the server is keeping up or you get repeated "multiplayer server overload" messages. We aren't getting those messages, and our "tick time" is around 10ms with 60-70 players online (max tick is 20ms to enable 50hz game updates).

We did consider the mass hysteria thing, as Barnacles mentioned, but we found something like a 40x increase in deaths-per-hour to puffy flak. We've now reduced the skill level on all puffy flak guns to 'low' which seems to have eased player complaints (but it also makes the flak pretty worthless, which isn't our intent).

Interesting, very interesting...

 

Since the missions are dynamic, could it be that the targets in this case were in areas that simply contained more flak than the targets of previous missions?

 

Alternatively, was the flight path of the victims from a different direction than usual? In the case of Flak, their orientation also matters. E.g. if the Flak spawns pointing to the west and the enemy approaches from the east, it needs to rotate 180° and by the time it has done so, the enemy has almost overflown it already and it needs to rotate back. On the other hand, if the same Flak spawns pointing east, it can start firing immediately. Its accuracy won't be affected, but it will be able to get a couple more shots in, with possibly similarly lethal results.

Edited July 23 by AEthelraedUnraed

[JG27_Mainz]

On 7/23/2025 at 4:32 AM, AEthelraedUnraed said:

Interesting, very interesting...

 

Since the missions are dynamic, could it be that the targets in this case were in areas that simply contained more flak than the targets of previous missions?

 

Alternatively, was the flight path of the victims from a different direction than usual? In the case of Flak, their orientation also matters. E.g. if the Flak spawns pointing to the west and the enemy approaches from the east, it needs to rotate 180° and by the time it has done so, the enemy has almost overflown it already and it needs to rotate back. On the other hand, if the same Flak spawns pointing east, it can start firing immediately. Its accuracy won't be affected, but it will be able to get a couple more shots in, with possibly similarly lethal results.

We also observed unusually lethal flak on the standalone rotating missions before the dynamic campaign launched. There has been no change to the standalone missions.