Train car guns now make hawkeye look like a scrub?

[Von_Fontlebottom]

I have, in several PWCG campaigns, never destroyed a train unless it was deliberately suicidal. My latest attempt was a bombing run, with entire formation led by AI but near my own plane, at 4000 meters. My plane was bracketed by flak with no impact but as soon as I visually saw the train's gun open up I was bracketed by both sides and the third burst of fire directly struck my actively maneuvering Halberstadt CLII 200hp with at least 3 direct hits on the fuselage. My mod list is included, but fairly small and not much, to my knowledge, directly interacts with AA guns on trains. I'm looking through all descriptions to see if I can find a culprit but I hope someone else maybe had this issue and could speed me along. Or are trains dangerous because the AA crews are.... well-trained? 😎

 

[Stonehouse]

On 10/15/2025 at 2:45 AM, Von_Fontlebottom said:

I have, in several PWCG campaigns, never destroyed a train unless it was deliberately suicidal. My latest attempt was a bombing run, with entire formation led by AI but near my own plane, at 4000 meters. My plane was bracketed by flak with no impact but as soon as I visually saw the train's gun open up I was bracketed by both sides and the third burst of fire directly struck my actively maneuvering Halberstadt CLII 200hp with at least 3 direct hits on the fuselage. My mod list is included, but fairly small and not much, to my knowledge, directly interacts with AA guns on trains. I'm looking through all descriptions to see if I can find a culprit but I hope someone else maybe had this issue and could speed me along. Or are trains dangerous because the AA crews are.... well-trained? 😎

 

 

I believe the train AAA guns use the vehicle turret definitions and therefore the same AI bot definitions as the usual AAA. So, no special AI.

 

However, that said I believe most or all of the AAA train carriages appear to be WW2 era and so use WW2 era weapons.  See pic below for train related units. The aaplatform strangely doesn't have any weapon definitions so I'm unsure how it works.

 

I'm happy to be corrected about the seeming lack of WW1 train AAA units.

 

You could perhaps try my AAA mod to see if that helps (it does cover WW1 AAA by the way) but I suspect that a WW1 aircraft low and slow versus WW2 light AAA is going to suffer badly.

 

 

 

Edited October 17 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

On 10/15/2025 at 2:45 AM, Von_Fontlebottom said:

directly interacts with AA guns on trains.

 

Not promising but I can probably make a WW1 train mod that alters the AAA to WW1 era weapons. Just have to find some spare time. Based on recent work with adding ships I could likely add new train units specifically for WW1 but that wouldn't get them into AQMB or PWCG without additional effort on my part so likely the simple approach of just giving the train AAA WW1 weapons is best.

[Stonehouse]

@Von_Fontlebottom

 

You'll have to be tester sorry as I am short of time. Add this mod last and replay your last mission (hoping you are saving your campaign missions) or alternatively start a new one or a AQMB train attack mission and see if the train AAA appears to look visually ok (I took some guesses) and works better in regard to the WW1 era. Please provide feedback either way. Wasn't a lot to choose from so you mainly are getting mg08s, hotchkissmle14s and Daimler77s as replacements for WW2 weapons. The Daimler77s are heavy AAA so may look odd.

 

 

WW1TrainAAA.zip

 

 

Edited October 17 by Stonehouse

[Von_Fontlebottom]

Thanks for this! I thought I had a mod of yours that covered AAA guns but maybe I'm thinking of mods for gunners on aircraft. 

I'm applying this mod now and I'll give feedback in a bit. I had an odd experience before seeing your response and applying the mod; I passed over the train station target area at least 6 times at 1000m and no guns responded to me at all. Eventually the trains opened up on me after my bombs were already on the way, so it was another suicidal attack, but I was able to land the aircraft as only the top wing sections were destroyed.

Let's see what behavior I get with this mod. 

[Von_Fontlebottom]

@StonehouseThank you again for the mod. This is working well so far, though I've only replayed the same mission a few times. The guns on the train cars are definitely not WWII now, and look much more reasonable for the period. Engagement distance seems pretty reasonable, but I wonder if the early dawn period of my mission is also having an impact. I'll play with this on a new British campaign and hopefully get some more varied examples, but I think this looks great!

[Stonehouse]

7 hours ago, Von_Fontlebottom said:

I thought I had a mod of yours that covered AAA guns

The AAA mod covers the accuracy of the AAA gunners. This one actually changes the guns from WW2 to WW1. Even so, their accuracy is covered by the other mod.

 

5 hours ago, Von_Fontlebottom said:

This is working well so far,

Good! If you continue to have no issues, I'll add this mod to the AAA related collection of mods over in the other thread where you found the AAA mod so there is a single location to find such mods and it can be kept up to date as the game is patched.

 

[Von_Fontlebottom]

@Stonehouse I'm quite happy with the outcome of this. The AA guns on the ground, so far, seem fair and like a better representation of what guns I would expect to see. I'm able to move with confidence for heights over 1500 or so feet with modest maneuvers, anything below that and it becomes necessary to weave quite often or I'm an easy target for an MG. 

 

I find it hard to believe anything large than an MG would be a good AA gun anyway, as the fire rate of most AAA is slow enough that it would be challenging to walk shots onto a target. So far the train snipers are diminished, though I think the train machine guns still seem accurate relative to ground crews; It does seem like the first shots of the enemy AI are nearly always on a critical component within their first few rounds. 

[Stonehouse]

On 10/23/2025 at 4:40 AM, Von_Fontlebottom said:

@Stonehouse I'm quite happy with the outcome of this. The AA guns on the ground, so far, seem fair and like a better representation of what guns I would expect to see. I'm able to move with confidence for heights over 1500 or so feet with modest maneuvers, anything below that and it becomes necessary to weave quite often or I'm an easy target for an MG. 

 

I find it hard to believe anything large than an MG would be a good AA gun anyway, as the fire rate of most AAA is slow enough that it would be challenging to walk shots onto a target. So far the train snipers are diminished, though I think the train machine guns still seem accurate relative to ground crews; It does seem like the first shots of the enemy AI are nearly always on a critical component within their first few rounds. 

 

Ok thank you for play testing it. I have a slightly modified version which I will publish in the main AAA mods thread. The difference between the one you tested and the latter one is just that I moved things around on the available carriages for AAA so that it was more feasible to get an Allied train and a German one. The biggest problem being the MG class AAA. Best I can find is MG08 for German and Hotchkiss MLE14 for Allied.

I've a bit more tweaking and experimenting to do to try and resolve this but it will still be WW1 weaponry in any case, so I believe it won't be functionally different from what you have tested. 

 

On the rate of fire, you would be surprised. The German Flak77cm L27 gun is a good representation in game and has a theoretical fire rate of 20-25 rpm. Unfortunately, the British QF13 6cwt we have is a gun that was pretty much obsolete at the start of the war and was replaced by the QF13 9cwt very quickly. The 6cwt was very slow to fire with a low muzzle velocity and ROF was around 6 rpm. By 1915 it was replaced by the 9cwt and any 6cwt left in service (<20 I understand) were quickly shuffled off to places like Egypt or Mesopotamia. The very, very few post war 6cwts were returned to the Royal Artillery to be used as field guns again. 9cwts still had a poor rate of fire at around 8 rpm but had a much better muzzle velocity. The QF13 20cwt was around in 1914 but was retained for home defence. It made it to the front lines around Nov 1916 and became pretty much the standard late war British heavy AA gun. It too had a theoretical rate of fire of around 20 rpm and a practical ROF of 16-18. It was also mounted on a Thornycroft truck as was the 9cwt. Visually all 3 look much the same except for mainly barrel differences. Really the in-game gun should have been either the 9cwt or the 20cwt version. Even better would have been the 20cwt and the 9cwt as the different FC volumes came out.

 

Low muzzle velocity was the main problem with these early guns not the rate of fire (ignoring the early British guns).

 

Pic from a US Army 1917 report on AAA guns used by different combatants at the time. It shows 20cwts in action in France

 

Edited October 24 by Stonehouse

[Stonehouse]

See here for release version and notes.

 

 

[JGr2/J34b_Matthias]

Would you please provide the files to Luke from 1C so that they can be rolled into the base game?  Most of us do not and will not use mods for multiplayer because it opens up client induced vulnerabilites into the game...

 

Thanks

Edited November 11 by JGr2/J34b_Matthias