I’m not new to the game, but I have got into naval recently and am enjoying it significantly more than before, got to tier III/IV in GER and USA. I’m now starting the Japan tech tree, using the Harukaze, and I tried using X-2 to make my AA gunners target someone while I stayed on main guns (8x40mm bofors is very fun), however they seemed to ignore me.
I had target ships turned on, I saw the icon over the target, but my gunners ignored me and kept firing at someone else! I was targeting a Destroyer for them to hit, but they were instead shooting a small AI boat.
It’s very frustrating, swapping between mains and AA guns is significantly less effective than being able to use both. If anyone has had the same issue and knows whats wrong, or what I’m missing, please let me know. Thanks for reading!
Ok I did a little test drive, a correction, that ships bofors are it’s secondaries and not AA. Sorry!
I did a test, my aux gunners only target aircraft and coastal vessels. even when I park next to a destroyer and spam target on it they still wouldn’t target it. Do destroyer’s aux gunner only target coastals and planes? is this a bug or a feature? thanks
Don’t think Gaijin ever published anything definitive on this, but I did a bit of testing myself with some higher tier ships, and my conclusion is that there is a line drawn somewhere in terms of gun caliber, where AI controlled guns smaller than this threshold will only fire at coastal ships, while those larger than this threshold can also automatically target bluewater ships. The ship type probably doesn’t matter; it’s just that destroyers typically have smaller caliber secondaries/AA.
I first tested my USS Cleveland (6 inch main, 5 inch secondary, 40 mm Bofors & 20 mm Oerlikon AA). The AA guns won’t fire at destroyers even at under 500 m, but if I switch manual control to AA (which puts the secondaries under AI control), the secondaries will automatically open fire at the nearest ships (or the targeted ship if you activated manual targeting), bluewater or not. Testing with the USS North Dakota and USS Arkansas confirmed this, as their 3 inch AA guns will happily open fire on destroyers even from over 4 km away, while the other smaller AA guns (like the 1.1 inch Mk.1 and the 20 mm Oerlikon on the Arkansas) won’t automatically fire at the same target.
My guess is that it is an intentional feature, where someone in Gaijin thought that small caliber autocannons won’t do anything to a bluewater ship and would just be a waste of ammo. That’s patently not true; my USS Mississippi can use it’s AA autocannons to laze down a destroyer frighteningly quickly even from over 4 km (and the tracers look really cool too). It would be nice if we could get a bit more customisation with these things, such as allowing AI gunners to target larger ships or binding them with the main and secondary gun controls.
Thanks for replying and thanks for testing! yes some kind of restrictions on AI gunners (like specified in your post) seems likely to me too. I would bet this kind of issue/feature would be low on their priority list, but I would like it seen to
Yes - small guns not shooting at larger vessels was a change that I recall seeing - it was quite deliberate and notified at the time I think.
There’s a bunch of posts like this one all over the net (reddit, but reports, old forum) from a year or more ago when people have “discovered the feature” but I haven’t been able to find the change notification sorry.