Airpower & Flak

[Adrian Taylor]

In the original game it was usually the case that you could not use your planes until you had flattened all teh flak guns.

Both planes and the power of flak have now been heavily modified. You will find that most planes are alot faster, apart from the poor old Po-2, and are thus harder to hit. They have also had their base Hit points increased and some armour applied, thus making them more survivable. To balance this most of the bombers have had a drastic reduction in their bombload and their guns are less accurate.

In-line with most other weapons flak is now less accurate, so not only is it harder to damage planes but they will find it harder to hit them. However, the effective range of flak both horizontal and vertical has been increased.

Adrian

[Silvio]

is there any wayt of making the recce planes less vulnerable, cuz in real life any of those planes pilots' would have realized they would have been toast and would likely have flown lower or higher or around trees and used some pretty loco flying to avoid getting shot down

[Adrian Taylor]

Unfortunately not. Until BK 2 comes out when we are supposed to have direct control over planes, This is a no, no.

Recce planes were incredilbly vulnerable so its upto you where you send them. You will find that the Fw189 has a greater sight range but is not so good at spotting units, while the Po-2 has a less sight (it flies lower) but greater chance at spotting.


Adrian

[Adrian Taylor]

activegaming.org/images/Yak Strike.jpg[/img]

This is a computer controlled Yak fighter doing a strafing run on German Panzers while fighting a random generated battle.

Adrian

[Bogan]

will a plane called in as a "fighter" be able to carry out strafing runs?
or will it be a modded fighter aircraft called in as a "ground attack" aircraft for strafing?
any plane with cannon would be a good companion to stuka, after bombs are dropped, it can only machinegun troops.

if it is a fighter that can carry out random strafing within its target area that would be awesome, because it's possible to choose 4 or more waypoints for fighters by using the shift key, whereas ground attack only go to one zone.

[Adrian Taylor]

I am still playing around with fighters in the ground attack role. I have tried both, unmodified and modified. What I am trying to get is the fighter main priority is to strafe but if an enemy plane appears will it attack it.

Also when using un-modified fighters it has no sight range so it will only attack targets it can see through its own spotting or through shared sight from other units.

I am also trying to find out when the AI will call them. This has only happened once so far with a modified Yak (Gave it 30 sight range and 2 bombs).


Adrian

[Bogan]

also, is it possible to make ground attack aircraft attack AA as a priority? they are strange things
machinegunning troops instead of bombing tanks, targeting artillery while they are blown to pieces by visible AA positions, etc.

a prime example is when attacking artillery positions in Hornets Nest... i get shot down 50% of the time.

in bk2, that will be a good feature, able to control aircraft in the same way as other units, and knock out the AA first!

[Adrian Taylor]

Hmm, in my playtesting they seem to go for the Ack Ack first, thats if they see them.

See what they are like with the Beta.


Adrian

[foxy]

In my observation on ground attack planes so far they differ.

But they go for the supply truck first if no Flak guns are around.

[Adrian Taylor]

I have recently found out that the Silhouette rating not only applies to vehicles but also to planes. I will thus be making various adjustments to this rating to reflect individual planes ability to dodge/absorb fire.

The orginal rating for all planes is 0.65


Adrian

[(GD) Silvio]

my opinion in regards to this;

how would the ground attack plane know what to hit first? unless a radio operator or HQ unit gave them instructions. and in the early part of the war, was there much coordination between ground and air forces to the likes which appeared late on?

[Adrian Taylor]

Strafing runs by fighters was carried out by all sides early on in the war. Targets of opportunity was the order of the day.

The Russians equiped their fighters quite early with both light bombs and rockets.

The Yak seen above has no ability to sight itself. So it is just attacking targets which are within the shared sight of other AI units (effectively, being called down by an Officer with a radio).


Adrian

[Boli]

Hi all!!

I have already played the german campaign through. But one thing belonging to dive and heavy bombers disturbed me very much. When I was sending dive bombers in the fight into a target area and they were nearly always two bombers coming, the first bomber was mostly finding and destroying a ground target at the place, but the second dive bomber mostly left the target area and was flying far beside it without mostly finding nothing to attack and flying back without doing its job. What I found good is that the Stukas were leaving the area after throwing the bombs and I guess at that time they had now attack-machine gun or Pak canons on board. What I also miss is the diving sound siren of the stuka when attacking a target. The heavy bombers are mostly throwing their bombs left and right to the target point what is making it difficult for a more exact hit. But thats not so bad. Only the bombs themselves could be more powerfull in killing standing soldiers with its bomb splinters around but not canons or other armoured vehicles, so some kind of a splinter effect would be cool even damaging a little bit beside of the hit area trucks and stuff but not destroying them by splinters. The hunter planes are no more finding enemy planes on the whole map. Thats ok, but the hunters are also often doing their job not so good inside the area they have to protect so happened it to often that one russian dive bomber was able to attack ground targets without being disturbed by the german hunters and thats not so good. Also for the time between 1939 to 1943 the available of hunters to protect the dive bombers, heavy bombers or reconaisance planes was not present in the campaign because the time periods between the available of new air support was to long to do that, so the diving bombers where always unprotected by hunters. For that I believe that the time periods have only to be shorter for hunters so for example when you are sending dive bombers after about 5 sec it must be able to send hunters behind or also when you send a dive bomber, recon plane or heavy bomber first that after 5 sec it must be possible to send hunters as a protection. The now existing time periods inbetween are only ok for available from on diving bomber group to the next or to send recon planes or heavy bombers. In the one singleplayer map of the map pack 1 it was made good with the time periods. Maybe you can patch that tings for the Ostfront Mod campaign?

Bye

Boli

[foxy]

All sounds good Boli mate, but the Stuka dive bombers work better in loose formation, sometimes you will get one doing nothing, but most times it finds targets and gets home quickly.

There are many things that cannot be altered because of the deep AI, so we have to live with them'well for now'.

But you must admit this way of working gets better results.