[Der Teddy Bar]

Avon,
I think that you may have confused the issue with too many aircraft appearing in the Bay of Biscay that is possibly linked with the NYGM RUB Campaign Mod. Awaiting info from the users as no-one else on any board has mentioned any excessive aircraft occurrences, as such, it might be a AirStrike.cfg and Mod combination issue etc

I'll leave it to Berry to answer your question with a post he made In Sept 2005...

Originally Posted by Berry

Here's the problem: the AI can literally hit a gnat's whisker at a range of 2 miles. That means that (except for the first couple of rounds) every bullet fired from the time the AI open up until they stop (i.e. while the aircraft is in range) will hit the aircraft. It is impossible (as far as we know) to make the AI less accurate.

In RUb we tried making the aircraft armour plated to the maximum to offset this (this was the first thing we tried), but adding armour only goes so far, and after a while it starts to look ridiculous when you have aircraft taking thousands of FlAK hits without effect.

We also decreased the effectiveness of FlAK shells (this was the second thing we tried), but FlAK shells can only be made a little bit less effective otherwise players will have problems when using FlAK guns against other targets - PT boats etc.

The nerfs that we used up to this point began to affect the way the game looked because what was needed was a HUGE reduction in firepower to offset the AI's superhuman accuracy. The only alternative left to us was to reduce the range at which AI FlAK guns can fire. Even after doing all this, the FlAK guns are still uber.

It is still very possible to shoot down many more planes than was historically possible.

I quote from Waw...

Originally Posted by Reinhold Kruger

Ok, I now totally agree that with the NYGM ship damage mod over the RUb...it is WAY too easy to shoot down airplanes. After I took Jochen Mohr's advice about maneuvering at the right time...I shot down 9 planes without taking any real damage myself. I am disabling NYGM ship damage to see how it is with proper maneuvering and RUb's Uber-planes!

Originally Posted by Jochen Mohr

Funny, my experience was completely opposite with this. I dropped 8 planes in the space of an hour once. Even with RUb range, the guns seemed far too effective.

As you can see, the AI AA is able to shoot down planes at great distances like clay pigeons. A quick search on these boards will show as many instances with people getting double figure aircraft kills with the highest from my quick search being 25 aircraft shot down in 1 patrol.

Yet in real life only 120 were shot down for the entire war and most of those were from 1942 onwards.

So are you saying that Jace11 & RUB has it wrong as well?

The NYGM Aicraft Damage Mod will replace Jace11's great work and also do away with the RUB solution.

The Changes are...
1. AA HP value given a greater range
2. Aircraft Armour is now configure in relation the Armour Piercing value of the bullet in conjunction to the HP value of the shell in conjunction with the AP modifyer
3. The AA range will be back to default
4. The AI no longer can to use Berry's words "hit a gnat's whisker at a range of 2 miles"

NYGM Aircraft Damage Mod has used SHIII’s sophisticated random system. In some instances I have set the value of the armour so that it will only be penetrated by the maximum HP bullet when the random AP modifier is used. In other instances I have set the Armour & HP value to accept any bullet and totally fail, don’t get too excited, it is very very hard to hit. In essence, I have made the damage that a plane receives as totally random.

So it will now possible to bring down a plane with 1 bullet, yet more often then not it will take several too many bullets to do so.

And to top it all off, the AI AA will not be able to "hit a gnat's whisker at a range of 2 miles"

I hope that this answer goes some way to addressing your question and concern.