How not to flak?

[Rimne]

So apparently any carrier player worth their salt and with an IQ above 75 knows how to avoid flak. Which makes me feel a little bad since I haven't a clue. How do I pull off this obvious trick and render flak failware?

[SirAmra]

4 minutes ago, Rimne said:

So apparently any carrier player worth their salt and with an IQ above 75 knows how to avoid flak. Which makes me feel a little bad since I haven't a clue. How do I pull off this obvious trick and render flak failware?

wasd, speed controll and not attacking the massive clusters of ships

But @El2aZeR and the other unicums might have more tricks up their sleeves.

[Rimne]

13 minutes ago, SirAmra said:

wasd, speed controll and not attacking the massive clusters of ships

But @El2aZeR and the other unicums might have more tricks up their sleeves.

 

I'd made 2 assumptions before I wrote this post.

1. Flak is the product of pressing the O-button, not just normal anti-AA.

2. Anti-AA is an AOE, ie not dodgeable by weaving and adjusting speed just an area-specific DOT that ends once one leaves the range of AA.

 

Were these assumptions wrong?

[SirAmra]

11 minutes ago, Rimne said:

 

I'd made 2 assumptions before I wrote this post.

1. Flak is the product of pressing the O-button, not just normal anti-AA.

2. Anti-AA is an AOE, ie not dodgeable by weaving and adjusting speed just an area-specific DOT that ends once one leaves the range of AA.

 

Were these assumptions wrong?

1: The O button gives u more AA to that side. More focus

2: The Dots can be dodged, but the continous AA is the one killing u off.

 

But I found out that mixing my speed +/- and going boost on my torp runs helped me a bit more.

But El2aZeR is waaaaay more experienced with CVs than me. He got haxes.....sry....skills.

[El2aZeR]

Flak always spawns in fixed intervals (about every 2 seconds) at a fixed time to impact and direction relative to your current speed and direction.

That means the time it takes for you to hit a flak wall always remains the same no matter how fast or slow you go. With this you can control the distance at which flak spawns.

Speed also controls how wide a flak wall can possibly be. The faster you go, the wider it is going to be. If the flak concentration isn't high enough this can cause gaps to appear which you can exploit. Regardless though the maximum width isn't big enough to compensate for your maneuverability, so even a max saturated flak wall remains dodgeable.

Flak also compensates for turns and, if necessary, altitude. However, again, it does so at a fixed interval and only checks your direction (and speed) the moment it spawns. It won't continuously compensate for the entirety of its lifespan. You can abuse this by actively misdirecting flak into spawning where you don't actually want to go.

And keep in mind that flak of a ship stops spawning once you're 3.5km or closer to it. On single or tight groups of ships this enables you to concentrate completely on your attack run once you're close.

You can also dodge flak via attacking exactly once as it changes the altitude of your planes. Flak however can still hit you if you're within an attack run, but it will target your reserve planes and not your attacking ones.

 

Alright, here's where it gets weird.

The damage zone of flak is server side, while the actual flak animation (aka the part you see) is client side. Due to the slight delay in communication between your client and the server this means flak will always spawn with a delay. How heavy that delay is is dependent on your connection and RNG. There will be times when it will not spawn at all, leading to this:

Spoiler

 

 

Flak has a lifespan of 3 seconds. It is always tuned in a way that you're hitting it towards the end of its lifespan depending on your current speed and direction. This lifespan is determined by the server, NOT the client. The animation has a delay of at least half a second.

And because flak always spawns in a way so you take the same time to hit it regardless of your speed, that means you can effectively fly through flak unharmed if you go fast, let flak spawn far away from you then slow down. Tends to work better with IJN and RN planes since they bleed speed a lot faster than USN ones. This is also demonstrated in the video above at about 0:05.

On the other hand it means speeding up while flak can still spawn is a very bad idea as you'll hit the damage zone before the animation renders.

 

EDIT 2021: It would appear that WG fixed the speed exploit by simply lengthening the lifespan of flak. It is now roughly 5-6 seconds, as such speed juking as described above is not as reliable as before but can still be done. Likewise ofc with the boost adjustments awhile back almost all planes now have the same acceleration and deceleration so national differences between planes no longer apply.

[Captain_Mackerel]

On 9/27/2019 at 9:28 PM, El2aZeR said:

Flak always spawns in fixed intervals (about every 2 seconds) at a fixed time to impact and direction relative to your current speed and direction.

That means the time it takes for you to hit a flak wall always remains the same no matter how fast or slow you go. With this you can control the distance at which flak spawns.

Speed also controls how wide a flak wall can possibly be. The faster you go, the wider it is going to be. If the flak concentration isn't high enough this can cause gaps to appear which you can exploit. Regardless though the maximum width isn't big enough to compensate for your maneuverability, so even a max saturated flak wall remains dodgeable.

Flak also compensates for turns and, if necessary, altitude. However, again, it does so at a fixed interval and only checks your direction (and speed) the moment it spawns. It won't continuously compensate for the entirety of its lifespan. You can abuse this by actively misdirecting flak into spawning where you don't actually want to go.

And keep in mind that flak of a ship stops spawning once you're 3.5km or closer to it. On single or tight groups of ships this enables you to concentrate completely on your attack run once you're close.

You can also dodge flak via attacking exactly once as it changes the altitude of your planes. Flak however can still hit you if you're within an attack run, but it will target your reserve planes and not your attacking ones.

 

Alright, here's where it gets weird.

The damage zone of flak is server side, while the actual flak animation (aka the part you see) is client side. Due to the slight delay in communication between your client and the server this means flak will always spawn with a delay. How heavy that delay is is dependent on your connection and RNG. There will be times when it will not spawn at all, leading to this:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Flak has a lifespan of 3 seconds. It is always tuned in a way that you're hitting it towards the end of its lifespan depending on your current speed and direction. This lifespan is determined by the server, NOT the client. The animation has a delay of at least half a second.

And because flak always spawns in a way so you take the same time to hit it regardless of your speed, that means you can effectively fly through flak unharmed if you go fast, let flak spawn far away from you then slow down. Tends to work better with IJN and RN planes since they bleed speed a lot faster than USN ones. This is also demonstrated in the video above at about 0:05.

On the other hand it means speeding up while flak can still spawn is a very bad idea as you'll hit the damage zone before the animation renders.

Seriously man I have just copied most of the tips and tricks you give (very kind of you to do so too)  in a word document, hell you could write a book, many thanks as just like the OP I too cannot fathom out Flak avoidance, just cannot seem to get the hang of it, and as for hunting DD's thats just plain fanciful for me to try

[Nirkrae]

aren't planes flak (clouds not aura) immune while in attackmode?

[Johnny_Moneto]

Am 30.4.2020 um 06:14, Nirkrae sagte:

aren't planes flak (clouds not aura) immune while in attackmode?

 

El2aZer was kind enough to cover also this:

Zitat

Flak however can still hit you if you're within an attack run, but it will target your reserve planes and not your attacking ones.