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Flak - Rear Gunners Questions

G

Gonzo1177

Members +
Hello SOH,

Is it possible to alter the aggressiveness of the flak in CFS3? I'm referring primarily to the Quick Mission environment.
I'll have to check if there are skill levels when placing flak guns in the mission builder. It seems like I'm always getting
hammered by flack and having to restart the mission.

Also, can the rear gunner aspect of aircraft be modified as well? There have been several instances where I will shoot
down an enemy aircraft (it is completely in flames and descending, with text onscreen informing me I did), and the rear
gunner will still be able to snipe with several unrealistic shots (from its angle or even while spinning or rolling).

Thank you,
Gonzo1177
 
I recall that in CFS2 you could alter the DP of a plane to increase or decrease the distance they start shooting
at you. In CFS3 I don't see DP files, only XDP files.
 
In the individual aircraft folders, you will find the xdp file. Open this with notepad and in the gunstations section you will Find the RateLimit value. I think this is degrees per second, but it might be radians per second, I forget. Lowering this can make the gunners a bit less deadly by limiting their ability to track you. You can also do this same thing for vehicles and ships with anti-aircraft guns. You will also find the Type value. This points you to the xdp for the gun used in that position.

In the guns folder you will find xdps of the various guns referenced in aircraft, vehicle, and ship xdps. There are some values here you might find useful:
-Range -range of the gun in in meters. Reduce this to change the distance at which the AI will fire that gun.
-Rate -rate of fire in rounds per second. It is not realistic to adjust this on automatic weapons, but for manually loaded weapons like large AA guns, lowering this will reduce the volume of flak sent your way and might be reasonable if you think the crews are loading the guns too quickly.
-Noise -not sure what the unit of measure here is, but higher values give a broader spread of rounds off boresight. This will tend to spread out the stream of fire, making long range hits a lot less likely.

After making an edit to an xdp file, always delete the associated bdp file. It will regenerate the next time you run CFS3. If you don't, some of your edits may not be recognized by CFS3.

Edit: After a quick test, RateLimit appears to be in degrees per second.
 
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I was just playing around more with turrets, and made a discovery about tracers. Turrets with multiple guns have their guns grouped into a single entry in the gunstations section. This ensures they move and fire as a unit. The Tracer value dictates the percentage of rounds fired that will be tracers. For a single gun, a value of 100 means that 100% of the rounds it fires will be tracers. However, for a turret with multiple guns, this value is divided up among the guns. Thus a quad turret such as on a Lancaster or Defiant needs a value of 400 to have 100% of rounds to be tracers. I believe the standard tracer mix for these turrets was 1 in 3, or 33% (somebody correct me if I'm wrong here), and thus the correct value to achieve that ratio would not be 33 (rounding off the .33), but 4 x 33.33, i.e. 133 (rounded down).
 
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Gecko, this is just what I needed. Thanks a bunch for the in-depth reply. I'll start playing around with this.
I'm retuning to CFS3 after many years away. It's starting to grow on me. One big advantage I found out
recently it has over CFS2 is the support for 3rd party apps (Joystick Gremlin), to be able to use multiple
flight controllers.
Take are,
Gonzo1177
 
I think I've always changed my AI Lancasters and any other ones with rear guns especially to make the rate limit as Gecko suggested I think it was Gecko so yes Daniel's what I've been using for that for all AI bombers
 
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