Flak effectiveness

This new stand alone release based on the legendary War in the Pacific from 2 by 3 Games adds significant improvements and changes to enhance game play, improve realism, and increase historical accuracy. With dozens of new features, new art, and engine improvements, War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition brings you the most realistic and immersive WWII Pacific Theater wargame ever!

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Blind Sniper
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Flak effectiveness

Post by Blind Sniper »

Hello guys,

quick question for the expert players out there about flak effectiveness.

I'm playing the scenario 1 as Allied (started after the lastest patch) and we have played 19 turns so far, the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack has been devastating, all BBs hit (4 torpedoes each one at least) and 100+ aircraft destroyed, opponent's losses: 3 aircrafts destroyed and 9 damaged.
I thought it was the first turn, a lot of malus involved and simply I have been very unlucky, fair go ahead.

Now after 19 days where Japanese aircrafts bombard my bases continuously the losses for flak are only 9!!!
Rarely I see the aircraft name highlighted in yellow or red during the combat replay and almost all his attacks come from 10000ft. There is the FOW but it seems too low anyway...

What is your experience about flak effectiveness?
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pompack
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by pompack »

Allied flak is only so-so but I find the Japanese flak to be very punishing. A couple of raids by mediums suffer enough losses that I have to rest 2-5 days for replacements to catch up. I have raised the raid altitude to 10k-11-k; it's much worse lower.
Dili
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Dili »

Well below you'll get all the tiny machine guns firing .
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CaptBeefheart
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by CaptBeefheart »

You can search using "flak" as the keyword and probably find 20 threads on this topic. However, the consensus among a lot of players is that Allied flak (not sure about IJN) is less effective in the game than it was in real life. That's been my experience as well. The DaBabes scenario mods apparently handle flak in such a way that will get you more realistic results.

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Jeremy105
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Jeremy105 »

Well below you'll get all the tiny machine guns firingImage
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foliveti
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by foliveti »

I also just started a new game scenario 1 and was appalled by the lack of Japanese losses on PH raid. It was three planes. The Flak is pretty bad.
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crsutton
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by crsutton »

Allied flak may be a little weak but don't forget that in the first few months of the war it was not very good in general. Old weapons, old ammo, and lots of green troops. Don't expect too much from it in 1942 either naval or land. It may be a bit underpowered but it does get better with time-as it should.
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Shark7
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Shark7 »

I've done a little experiment and with 2 simple changes to each AAA gun and its gone from what it is stock to completely deadly, even for Japan. Of course it messes with the game balance so in the end, best to leave it be.
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Rob Brennan UK
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Rob Brennan UK »

ORIGINAL: Shark7

I've done a little experiment and with 2 simple changes to each AAA gun and its gone from what it is stock to completely deadly, even for Japan. Of course it messes with the game balance so in the end, best to leave it be.


Tweaking stuff without knowing the formula is an exercise in guesswork at best. Personally I find allied flak to
be utter Anaemic on naval vessels. This is ofc just one opinion. If/When or even should this be addressed, I leave
to others.

TTFN.



sorry for the spelling . English is my main language , I just can't type . and i'm too lazy to edit :)
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Shark7
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Shark7 »

ORIGINAL: Rob Brennan UK

ORIGINAL: Shark7

I've done a little experiment and with 2 simple changes to each AAA gun and its gone from what it is stock to completely deadly, even for Japan. Of course it messes with the game balance so in the end, best to leave it be.


Tweaking stuff without knowing the formula is an exercise in guesswork at best. Personally I find allied flak to
be utter Anaemic on naval vessels. This is ofc just one opinion. If/When or even should this be addressed, I leave
to others.

TTFN.




Hence why I came up with it being better to leave it be. The two things I did was to increase the ceiling to the max listed for the guns, and also increased ammo capacity. The changes were very noticable, but had unintended consequences. Then again, never know till you try, right? If you are interested, you could try it yourself.
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mike scholl 1
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by mike scholl 1 »

ORIGINAL: foliveti

I also just started a new game scenario 1 and was appalled by the lack of Japanese losses on PH raid. It was three planes. The Flak is pretty bad.
Allied flak may be a little weak but don't forget that in the first few months of the war it was not very good in general. Old weapons, old ammo, and lots of green troops. Don't expect too much from it in 1942 either naval or land. It may be a bit underpowered but it does get better with time-as it should.

In dozens of starts I have never ONCE seen Japanese air losses even begin to approach the historical 29 aircrews and 40 A/C. A "little weak" doesn't come close to the situation...
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by jmalter »

i agree w/ crsutton - allied troops at start are generally weak in morale, exp, & TOE. often they're not gonna have as much effect on 7.12.41 as they will after 3 months training/replacing/upgrading.

also i'll mention that flak often causes lots of 'damage' results, of which a certain %age will end up as ops losses or write-offs. these results won't show as kills in the flak column, can you use Tracker to check on IJN CV plane ops losses?

i wonder if the Dec. 8th start-date scenarios accurately reflect the IJN plane losses, as well as using the historical USN ship losses at PH.

lately i've been playing DBB_B vs. the IJ AI, i gather that DBB has alterations that increase flak effectiveness. IJ ops losses have been really high, & i see lots of damages when IJ bombers attack. thing is, lots of these damages occur when IJ raids an un-occupied Allied base! 30 IJA bombers will raid an empty base in the DEI, hitting oil and refineries (har-har sez i, it's down to you to repair them once you conquer the hex), and as many as 8 bombers will be damaged.

of those 8, mebbe 1 or 2 are likely to wipe out on landing or be written off. but what is causing the damage? does the DBB alteration give an 'inherent' flak ability to production centers?
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HansBolter
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by HansBolter »

Seems strange how long this has been debated and documented by players with almost no nod whatsoever from the devs.

If they chose to castrate Allied AA as a play balance item to make playing Japan more attractive to those who would otherwise not be inclined to play the historically losing side then I truly do wish they would at least come forward and acknowledge it.
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Grfin Zeppelin
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Grfin Zeppelin »

No doubt here I think, allied flak needs a buff. Maybe a small one first and then see how it works.

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Bullwinkle58
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: jmalter

of those 8, mebbe 1 or 2 are likely to wipe out on landing or be written off. but what is causing the damage?

I blame palm fronds.
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Bullwinkle58
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

In dozens of starts I have never ONCE seen Japanese air losses even begin to approach the historical 29 aircrews and 40 A/C. A "little weak" doesn't come close to the situation...

OTOH I've never seen US aircraft losses on the ground come close to historical either (200+.) Usualy in the 30-40 range, maybe. Also, in my current game, total ground LCU losses at PH were five (5) squads. So, I don't complain about the other direction.
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Bullwinkle58
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Seems strange how long this has been debated and documented by players with almost no nod whatsoever from the devs.

If they chose to castrate Allied AA as a play balance item to make playing Japan more attractive to those who would otherwise not be inclined to play the historically losing side then I truly do wish they would at least come forward and acknowledge it.

This has been addressed in DaBabes and spoken of with great frequency. The biggest change as I understand it was making the USN's 5-in DP gun truly dual-purpose. In stock it is NOT dual-purpose. michaelm modified or opened the exec file to the DaBabes team to make code hooks available so the game can execute different paths with this device depending on whether it's firing AA or anti-ship. This is a big change; the 5-in gun was the core foundation of TF AA protection, particularly after mid-war.

Alfred posted a long, well-reasoned and argued post several days ago about the future of the game development-wise. There are no plans right now, so far as has been announced, to backward integrate the DaBabes changes to AA and ASW to stock scenarios. That's a Matrix/Slitherine decision, and since it's not free I personally doubt it'll happen. If you want much better AA, play the DaBabes family of scenarios, currently under expansion with a Guadalcanal version.
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Blind Sniper
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Blind Sniper »

Thanks for the feedbacks, now the situation is more clear and I can live with this.

Anyhow I still have some perplexity about first turn, Japanese attack is too effective, with 100+ aircrafts destroyed and 40 ships hit/sunk a second day attack would have meaning no more BBs, CAs, CLs and maybe DDs alive...
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Blind Sniper
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Blind Sniper »

That's a Matrix/Slitherine decision, and since it's not free I personally doubt it'll happen. If you want much better AA, play the DaBabes family of scenarios, currently under expansion with a Guadalcanal version.

Thanks for the info, my next game will be this one.
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Puhis
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RE: Flak effectiveness

Post by Puhis »

It's 28th January 1943. Japanese flak have shot down 35 planes. Tens of allied bombers are almost daily bombing bases with flak concentrations, flying at 10000 feet. But nothing, not even operational losses.

Stupid.

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