B-17 Bomber Flak Dodging?

[First Spear]

Can anyone say if they actually ever really learn about dodged flak? I never got the feeling that I was able to avoid any, I would just see it and at later levels it seemed like the bottom of the place was getting hit and there really was no chance. 

[+DZ-Jay]

5 minutes ago, First Spear said:

Can anyone say if they actually ever really learn about dodged flak? I never got the feeling that I was able to avoid any, I would just see it and at later levels it seemed like the bottom of the place was getting hit and there really was no chance. 

If you fly higher and faster (which burns up fuel at a faster pace), you get a lot less Flak.

 

Also, when you are flying in the cockpit view (the one with the horizon), you can see the shots coming at you (very fast!), and you can -- sort of -- dodge some of it by changing your attitude.

 

I don't think there is any specific way to avoid Flak, but I know that if I just let things be and don't alter my attitude or speed, the damage gets a lot worse, a lot faster.

 

     dZ.

[mr_me]

The instructions say to fly evasive maneuvers to avoid flak, so thats what I did. It seemed to help but not sure, after a few missions nothing helps as the games ends from aircraft damage. 

[+DZ-Jay]

Just now, mr_me said:

The instructions say to fly evasive maneuvers to avoid flak, so thats what I did. It seemed to help but not sure, after a few missions nothing helps as the games ends from aircraft damage. 

That’s the thing:  I fly evasive maneuvers and it seems to help.  Sometimes I try to fly higher and faster, which seems to help also, but is more fraught, since it burns through the fuel rather quickly.

 

Ultimately, my games typically end when my aircraft crashes after an unsuccessful unpowered glide towards Allied territory, having run out of fuel.

 

I don’t know about the higher levels, for I’ve never play them.  I aim to at least have a chance of completing a mission. 😁

 

    dZ.

[mr_me]

I always played level four/disc. After a certain number of missions the game suddenly gets impossibly hard. The way this game ramps up difficulty isn't right. It might as well just end after x number of missions.

Edited April 9 by mr_me

[BSRSteve]

I don't remember the details about flak (I didn't actually work on that part). But I will comment here that one bug I found after release is that the damage counter can wrap back around to zero if you are flying high enough, allowing you to recover.

[+DZ-Jay]

13 minutes ago, BSRSteve said:

I don't remember the details about flak (I didn't actually work on that part). But I will comment here that one bug I found after release is that the damage counter can wrap back around to zero if you are flying high enough, allowing you to recover.

Oh, yes, I had forgotten reading that in Mr. Robinson’s history notes.

 

Unfortunately, I have never managed to have that happen to me.  Then again, I have never tried hard enough.

 

I do know that if I climb high enough when low on fuel, when I inevitably run out, I can manage to cross the channel in an un-powered glide and gently land my feathery Flying Fortress on the shores of Britain without much problem.

 

It becomes harder on higher levels because the increasing damage prevents me from maintaining a good attitude, which ultimately causes my plane to drop out of the sky rather sharply.

 

Did I ever mention that I love this game?  I still play it from time to time.

 

    dZ.

[intvdave]

On 4/11/2024 at 11:02 AM, DZ-Jay said:

Did I ever mention that I love this game?  I still play it from time to time.

 

Hopefully, you will enjoy Flying Fortress a bit more

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, intvdave said:

 

Hopefully, you will enjoy Flying Fortress a bit more

 

I'm looking forward to it.  Is it out yet?

 

     -dZ.

[intvdave]

On 4/14/2024 at 1:47 PM, DZ-Jay said:

 

I'm looking forward to it.  Is it out yet?

 

http://intellivision.us/roms.php

 

[+DZ-Jay]

50 minutes ago, intvdave said:

 

http://intellivision.us/roms.php

 

 

Ah, it's ROM only.  Boo! 😕

 

Are you planning on releasing it in cartridge format?

 

    -dZ.

[intvdave]

On 4/21/2024 at 1:15 PM, DZ-Jay said:

Are you planning on releasing it in cartridge format?

 

An Anthology cart of B-17, Bomb Squad, and Space Spartans is planned to be released. I just do not know when.

[+DZ-Jay]

49 minutes ago, intvdave said:

 

An Anthology cart of B-17, Bomb Squad, and Space Spartans is planned to be released. I just do not know when.

Well, I look forward to that eagerly.  I was afraid that I may have missed it.

 

     dZ.

[Walter Ives]

On 4/7/2024 at 5:54 AM, DZ-Jay said:

I don't think there is any specific way to avoid Flak, but I know that if I just let things be and don't alter my attitude or speed, the damage gets a lot worse, a lot faster.

Well, the specific way to avoid flak is to fly higher, change your altitude and vary your speed.

 

This was realistic. The 88mm Flugabwehrkanone (FLAK) couldn't actually hit an airplane five miles up and traveling at 200 mph; it was designed to fire a round that burst somewhere near the targets and hope that some of the shrapnel would randomly damage them enough to bring them down. Bombers couldn't dodge a specific projectile, all they could do was avoid a flak field.

 

Flak projectiles took 15-30 seconds to get to the target area, so gun crews couldn't just aim at the airplanes, they had to aim where the airplanes were going to be, which would be a mile or more away. Flak batteries had a computer to help with aiming (one of those analog things made of gears and cams). Also, the fuses were timed fuses that had to be set for the proper projectile flight time. In all, preparing a Flak battery to fire took two-three minutes. So flights of bombers would do something every two or three minutes to make sure they wouldn't be where the flak was going to arrive. In practice that mostly involved changing direction, because fully loaded B-17s could only climb at about 100 feet per minute at altitude and the range of flying speeds wasn't wide enough to be all that useful.

 

There were multiple people on the Intellivision team who had some idea of this. Sohl/Fisher could have gotten the exact details by asking one of the WWII vets in their midst. Maybe even a parent.

 

WJI

 

[+DZ-Jay]

1 hour ago, Walter Ives said:

Well, the specific way to avoid flak is to fly higher, change your altitude and vary your speed.

 

This was realistic. The 88mm Flugabwehrkanone (FLAK) couldn't actually hit an airplane five miles up and traveling at 200 mph; it was designed to fire a round that burst somewhere near the targets and hope that some of the shrapnel would randomly damage them enough to bring them down. Bombers couldn't dodge a specific projectile, all they could do was avoid a flak field.

 

Flak projectiles took 15-30 seconds to get to the target area, so gun crews couldn't just aim at the airplanes, they had to aim where the airplanes were going to be, which would be a mile or more away. Flak batteries had a computer to help with aiming (one of those analog things made of gears and cams). Also, the fuses were timed fuses that had to be set for the proper projectile flight time. In all, preparing a Flak battery to fire took two-three minutes. So flights of bombers would do something every two or three minutes to make sure they wouldn't be where the flak was going to arrive. In practice that mostly involved changing direction, because fully loaded B-17s could only climb at about 100 feet per minute at altitude and the range of flying speeds wasn't wide enough to be all that useful.

 

There were multiple people on the Intellivision team who had some idea of this. Sohl/Fisher could have gotten the exact details by asking one of the WWII vets in their midst. Maybe even a parent.

 

WJI

 

Thank you for that confirmation -- and I will say that the simulation in the game works rather well in practice.

 

Like I said, I didn't know how it was implemented in the game, but I played B-17 Bomber a lot with my father, a WWII history buff, who explained to me precisely what you said above about FLAK.  And so, we changed directions, climbed to high altitude in between targets, raised and lowered our speed as necessary, and basically tried (blindly) to maneuver through the FLAK field as best we could.

 

And it worked for the most part.  As I grew older and thought back about those times,  I couldn't help but consider that perhaps it was all random, and that we were just maintaining the tradition of a cargo cult in which none of what we did actually mattered; and that the occasional random win was enough to bolster our belief.

 

However, those thoughts never sat well because re-playing the game always gave the impression that my actions actually did tend to result in less FLAK hits.  So, there definitely seems to be some agency in the player's controls.

 

I'm glad to hear that it wasn't just fake memories or cargo-cultism, and it makes the game even more impressive to know that such depth was deliberately included.

 

     dZ.