aaa Should AAA be more aggressive? I think so. And you?

[thy_]

In this post, I have used a scripted mission to show how just one German AA Flak 88mm behaves facing an enemy plane formation:

Nowadays (jan/2026), the AA looks absolutely inefficient against enemy planes, but I am not sure (yet) whether it's accurate or not.

 

Original IL2 behavior (version 6.107b):
Vanilla result: AA engaged the enemy formation just 3 times (planes 1.500m high)

 

Modded behavior (only AAA mod installed, 2026/jan)
Modded result: The same AA engages 12 times, even respecting the gun load cooldown, apparently.

That said, I am not saying something is wrong or right, but the modded demonstration looks more aligned with what I watch through old WWII footage out there. Of course, several explosions in the skies don't tell us how much AA was engaging. My only point - after all - is that this modded version is "more solid" with an AA team that wanna kill the target (saturating the target arounds).

Important: once I'm not looking at the code cost (to "loop" so many times more than the vanilla version), I am not allowed to say it's a smart move to performance.

What do you think?

Just thinking out loud here. 

Edited January 28 by 9od.thy_

[jokash]

I think so too,i dont have too much respect for this kind of flak ingame,maybe its should be more effective

[Artiglio]

Yes, in fact, the most realistic way to see how AAA works is in the second video! In the first one, they seem like rookies...

I agree, anti-aircraft guns should be more efficient than they are!

[thy_]

Great compilation about AA during WWII (no AI-generated here) with interviews about it

 

[Stonehouse]

Not disagreeing just fyi - part of the issue is mission design. Nearly all heavy flak guns in the stock game have a rotational speed of 9 deg/sec. So, if the gun is worst case facing directly away from the target it will take 20 sec to rotate to bear on the target. On top of that is skill-based target recognition times which simulate the time to identify and react to a target. Higher skills do it quicker. low = 30 sec hi =10 sec.   

So, in the worst-case scenario it will take between 30 and 50 secs for the gun to turn and aim at the target. 

So an aircraft doing 250 mph or about 400 km/h or 111 m/s will travel between 3330 and 5550 m in the time it takes to turn the gun. 

If the mission designer specifies a trigger radius of say 6000m (a very common choice from what I have seen) to activate the gun you can easily see the issue. The gun will not spawn until activated. So, it spawns when the target is 6000m away. By the time the gun has recognised it as enemy and turned to aim the aircraft will be between 450m and 2570m away still travelling at 111m/s.

The rate of fire of most of these guns is about 1 shell every 3 secs because the devs use theoretical fire rates rather than practical ones (usually slower). There is often a concept of a "clip or ready box" in play too. So eg the flak 37 has a ROF of 1 shell every 3 secs for 20 rounds and then a 10 sec delay while the ready box is replenished.

There is also fuse time. So, a Flak 37 for instance has a min fuse setting of 1.3 sec with a muzzle velocity of 800m/s. Therefore, the min range for the flak 37 is 1040m. In game it may still fire, but the explosion will be behind the target. This is why a German heavy AAA battery always had a 20mm light flak gun plus MGs attached for close in defense.

Anyway, just focusing on fire rate. Our gun now fires for the first time at the target somewhere between 450 and 2670m away. 3 secs later it is ready to fire again. The aircraft is now between 117m and 2367m away. Not much time to fire again, yes?

On top of this there is a max elevation for the gun eg 82 deg. This defines a "safe" area above the gun where the target cannot be engaged, and the gun must rotate again and fire as the target goes away. This is why AAA was hardly ever deployed as single guns but instead as 1 or more batteries where a battery was 3-6 guns depending on nationality and time period. Multiple guns allow overlapping hemispheres of fire where adjacent guns will cover another gun's no-fire zone.

 

Long story short - a mission designer wanting effective heavy AAA (or even light AAA and searchlights for that matter) must assign a sufficiently large trigger radius to allow the guns to recognise a threat, turn to aim and usefully engage the target. If possible, they should pre-orientate the facing of the gun towards the expected direction of threat (as per real life). I would suggest a trigger radius of around 16000m for a heavy AAA gun and probably at least a 10000m radius on the Attack area MCU and probably more than that. We don't have box or barrage flak in game nor the real density of gun deployment so we should compensate by allowing the guns to fire out to their max effective range - which for some guns is around 15000m. The attack area MCU actually limits the firing range regardless of the guns actual range.

If this does not happen then the gun is handicapped and degraded in effectiveness without having fired a single shot.

 

If simulated radar is used in the mission, then it probably should activate guns near (say 15-20 kms) the detected threat. I don't know how this would be done but there are people much better at mission building than me that could probably make it happen.

Edited February 6 by Stonehouse
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