about late war flak: is dababes really better than stock?

[quertice]

Sometimes I read opinions about would be flak in late war ('44-'45) too strong, stronger than like it was in history.

I'm not saying about playing by having fun, but only regards having realistic results in combats, just on that I'm interested:
is flak in dababes strengthened in excessive way?

Not even in 1943 I've reached in years (my pbems always finished 42), so I can't have an opinion.

[Sardaukar]

Well, DaBabes team did best they could to achieve reasonable results. Because of hard-coded stuff and things depending on each other in code, it was difficult task.

[witpqs]

I've not read that it is stronger than historical. I do appreciate that some players don't like it as it does change the way things are played (because outcomes can be different). I have a Babes game (started >3 years ago) that is in June of '44. Flak is (both my opponent and I think) appropriately murderous.

[Trugrit]

You may already know this:

You can make your own comparisons. The editor can be opened twice.
That is how you can compare one to the other.
Scenario 006 is the Stock December 8 full campaign.
Scenario 027 is DaBabes Lite-B December 8 full campaign.

My Desktop cat gives it the evil eye:

[MrBlizzard]

You can read here how was murderous AA in late war;
It's a very interesting story on AA training and developement and Pacific war experience.
It also provides a first hand story on AA role in Okinawa japan air assault

from dam neck to okinawa

[witpqs]

One other thing to be aware of: while Babes did a re-calibration of all the flak devices on both sides, at some point an adjustment was made in the code so that land-based flak is (IIRC) more likely to fire.

[m10bob]

My dad in law, Al Brew,(a Coastie) served on the Callaway in the later years of the war as his second ship.
He told me the most frightened he ever was, was having to go on deck during air raids because the gun crews were using proximity fused shells, and in a convoy with an enemy flying low, the shrapnel sounded as loud and thick as a heavy hail storm.

Al was the Sr man on one of those quad 40mm gun mounts and to his dying day was proud of the brave crews who worked for him..

[Symon]

True, up to a point, Grit. We asked Michaelm to tweak the AA algorithm and he did so back a long time ago. It’s fully implemented in the official Comp Update 1108r9. At the same time he tweaked the device files so there are extra editable fields in the csv files (which do not show up in the editor). They are in columns V-AA of the Device csv file. This allows tailoring of guns that served two functions, to perform those two functions adequately.

For a DP gun, one can set an attribute and give it a full set of specific AAA combat specs. It will use its default specs when engaging in Naval combat.

For an AA gun, one can set an attribute and give it a full set of specific Naval combat specs. It will use its default specs when engaging in AA combat.

All of DBB uses these Alt_Specs. AndyMac’s updated Scens use these Alt_Specs. All games, everywhere use the AA code update.

If you play clean stock, you get AA-1. If you play Babes, any mod off of Babes, or AndyMac’s updates, you get AA-1 and AA-2. Chances are you are getting Babes AAA and don’t even know it.

[crsutton]

Yes, it is better in that flak was hardly a factor in stock. To the point where I did not bother much to buy out flak units or waste shipping to move them around. Much different in Da Babes.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: qwetry
is flak in dababes strengthened in excessive way?

Unfortunately this old link is dead, the US Navy document it used to point to showed that flak caused more losses to airframes during the war than air to air loss did. In fact if you factor in all the op losses that made it back to ship/base only to be written off by the crew chiefs due to flak damage, then it's probably safe to assume flak caused more than 2/3rds of all airframe losses during the war.

http://www.history.navy.mil/download/nasc.pdf

If anyone has a copy of this old document please link it here. It was a great resource and I’m alarmed that it has apparently disappeared from the web at this point. Hopefully it was just a site reorganization that killed the old link and we can find it again soon.

Edit: Searched around on the site and found it. Apparently it's been re-done a bit to make it easier to read in digital format. The old scanned version wasn’t as clearly defined as this version, so good news all around.

Here’s the new link:

http://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam ... s/nasc.pdf

Jim