Shooting air target with gun

[Mau]

Hi all,

A little bit earlier (think last week) I heard that people tried to shoot their own helicopter to see if the 76mm can shoot air target. I think the results were negative.
Did anybody tried with an air target other than their own helicopter.
Ever been successful?
Now if that doesn't work, hopefully that can be fix, because that gun (even though not that effective) is suposed to shoot air target.

Thanks

[goldorak]

If you don't like the helo pilots you can allways resort to using the ciws.
Its quite effective. :rotfl:

[Dr.Sid]

Hi all,

A little bit earlier (think last week) I heard that people tried to shoot their own helicopter to see if the 76mm can shoot air target. I think the results were negative.
Did anybody tried with an air target other than their own helicopter.
Ever been successful?
Now if that doesn't work, hopefully that can be fix, because that gun (even though not that effective) is suposed to shoot air target.

Thanks

Yah .. that would be nice ..

[Dr.Sid]

If you don't like the helo pilots you can allways resort to using the ciws.
Its quite effective. :rotfl:

Manual guns are much more fun. Did you know you can actually kill whales with those ?

[Looney11]

You can kill whales without spending ammo, just use the sonar bulge in front of a frigate :up:

[GakunGak]

You can kill whales without spending ammo, just use the sonar bulge in front of a frigate :up:
And I thought that NAVY is concerned with biologics....:damn: :rotfl:

[Morts]

You can kill whales without spending ammo, just use the sonar bulge in front of a frigate :up:
And I thought that NAVY is concerned with biologics....:damn: :rotfl:
seems like you where wrong:rotfl:

[GakunGak]

Damn, I hate being right!!
Anyway, from which movie is your sig?:smug:

[Looney11]

Well, we're watching out for our little and bigger biological friends...

But as I found out that day, when the bulge of a whale appears 30 feet in front of a ship doing 15 knots, there's nothing you can do, even hard rudder to starboard wasn't enough to steer clear.. one loud BAM and one cracked polyester dome.. (hole roughly 6 feet in diameter).

When we got back to port, the hole had grown to almost 30 feet, transducers were broken by the salt water, we had to pump water out of the room abow the sonar dome continiously as the hatch was not sealing properly.. all in all, the sonar took a hit so to speak..

Never saw the whale again, we even did a 180.. nothing.. poor sod..

[GakunGak]

I read it somewhere that active sonar confuses their orientation and they end up on beaches....:cry:

[Looney11]

yeah, it's sad.

Halifax harbour has a designated sonar unit to keep whales from entering the harbour I heard. From my old shipmates I heard tales of horror trying to sleep onboard when the frigate a jetty away goes PING>>>>>..... <<<<<<<.......

Worse are some "advanced" sonars.. Ping..BRIEIREUEUEEEe....

I'm glad I never went through that experience :)

[GakunGak]

yeah, it's sad.

Halifax harbour has a designated sonar unit to keep whales from entering the harbour I heard. From my old shipmates I heard tales of horror trying to sleep onboard when the frigate a jetty away goes PING>>>>>..... <<<<<<<.......

Worse are some "advanced" sonars.. Ping..BRIEIREUEUEEEe....

I'm glad I never went through that experience :)
Poor creatures... Should't they stick to passive only, as active gives away position?

[Morts]

Damn, I hate being right!!
Anyway, from which movie is your sig?:smug:
my sig ?
its not from a movie
but from the "Chapelle's Show"

[Mau]

Ok now back to the topic I started.....

So I guess nobody tried to shoot an air target with gun (76MM) other than own helicopter.
If I have time then I will try to make a scenario with a slow mover coming on top of a frigate and try to shoot at it.

[Dr.Sid]

Ok now back to the topic I started.....

So I guess nobody tried to shoot an air target with gun (76MM) other than own helicopter.
If I have time then I will try to make a scenario with a slow mover coming on top of a frigate and try to shoot at it.
I tested it now .. it seems that 76mm does not take ballistic trajectory into account. And then it does not take projectile speed into account. That's why it can't hit.

CIWS seems to shoot in straight line, not parabola. It also has much much faster bullets. That's why it can hit. It's just my theory at the moment, I'm doing more tests.

Edit: I did some more test .. CIWS shoots nice ballistic curve .. and it leads the shot nicely .. so it just hits. I just can see the difference in the database.

[Dr.Sid]

So .. the parameter which controls trajectory is Object type for '0496: 76 mm shell' object. If it's 'shell' type, it uses high trajectory, shell itself is dark and leaves no trace. Such shell can't hit flying target. But if you change the object type to 'bullet', it uses much flatter trajectory (although speed is the same slow), there is a visible tracer (like CIWS) and it actually hits flying targets quite easily. It's not 100% effective even against hello if it moves fast. But once the hello is slow or close, it can be hit with no problem.

The tracer is really cool and this does not seem to affect ASuW capabilities. Nor it affects shell speed or damage.

Question is .. do we really want it ? I say yes ! It would be more fun, and FFG could use some little more anti-missile protection (It must be tested against missiles yet). It would not affect the game anywhere else much, because you rarely shoot something airborne from FFG.

On the other hand .. the GunAttack doctrine uses 'shell' type ammo for attacking missiles. It seems to be used by some AI platforms. Have you ever seen these platforms really hit the missiles ? Because from what I know now it seems impossible.

[Mau]

Dr Sid,

Great!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you very much.
I think it would be great if we can implement it!

Like you are saying, it doesn't affect the ASuW cap of the gun.

I think LuftWolf should really look at it for the next installement of his superb MOD.

Can you tell me if there is a scenario at Subguru or anywhere else that deals with simple subsonic seaskimmers, FBA or slow moving aircraft.
We can test further the AAW side of the OHP (I know I know people will say that is an ASW sim, however an FFG is supposed to deal with all threat coming at her, especially in this game against all threat coming from subs and that include Sea Skimmer missiles).

What should be happening as well is that we should be able to pair the gun on a same FC Radar as one that has the SM-2 already assign (the one that we call CAS - the one that can use the gun as well). I know you can do this on most modern frigate (with the STIR 1.8 for exemple, which is very common). That allows the gun to be already assign and to be able to engage sea skimmer at very short range (inside minimum range of SM-2 for exemple)

Again waiting for feedback and thanks again!

Mau

[LuftWolf]

I'll look into it closely.

What I don't like upon first impression is how the tracer rounds seem to skate over the water when fired at long range... we don't want anti-gravity rounds!

If that turns out to be merely a cosmetic issue, then maybe it won't be such a biggie, but I don't want to turn the 76mm into a rail gun! :)

Also, and I want an honest answer, who here is REALLY going to say to themselves when they hear the VAMPIRE warning, "Wow I need to get my 76mm in action..." :arrgh!:

Cheers,
David

[Dr.Sid]

According to some sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otobreda_76_mm

it seems to be capable of anti-missile work (and designed for) and it has nice range. And having more options would be fun.

It is also far from railgun, because of slow speed. But yeah .. it looks wierd.

[Mau]

Yes I would like to know how weird it looks like but,

Why it would be great to have:

1- No more SM-2 left (at least you have this in addition to CIWS and Chaffs)
2- At short range (especially when coming inside minimum range of SM-2 i.e tip over)
3- In an ROE environment when we can't fire until fire upon and that FBA is buzzing around you (I know we hav the CIWS as well but...)

I think I understood from DR Sid that the AI sometimes are engaging succesfully (in DW) air targets with thier guns...is that correct. And is it shell or bullet?
In Fleet command the ships are using their guns against air targets quite successfully sometimes.

[Dr.Sid]

GunsAttack doctrine sugest that AI ships use only Shell guns (and CIWS).
So if anything shoots at missiles, and it is not CIWS, it is shell. Look for tracer. No tracer means shell. Shell means no hit, IMHO.

[LuftWolf]

From the GunsAttack Doctrine


var CMTimer
var chaffIdx
var SRShellIdx
var MRShellIdx

IF Init THEN {
chaffIdx = DBIdxFromRecNum 1416
SRShellIdx = DBIdxFromRecNum 1406
MRShellIdx = DBIdxFromRecNum 1407


In this case, SRShellIdx and MRShellIdx are just arbitrary variable names, and could be named anything, what is important is what DBIdx numbers are referenced by the variables.

In this case, changing the Object type of the 1406 and 1407 entity references would be sufficient to convert the Shells fired by ships to Bullets.

Cheers,
David

[sonar732]

Yes I would like to know how weird it looks like but,

Why it would be great to have:

1- No more SM-2 left (at least you have this in addition to CIWS and Chaffs)
2- At short range (especially when coming inside minimum range of SM-2 i.e tip over)
3- In an ROE environment when we can't fire until fire upon and that FBA is buzzing around you (I know we hav the CIWS as well but...)

I think I understood from DR Sid that the AI sometimes are engaging succesfully (in DW) air targets with thier guns...is that correct. And is it shell or bullet?
In Fleet command the ships are using their guns against air targets quite successfully sometimes.

Yeah...my planes always got caught drifting too close to an OPFOR in FC.:damn::damn::rotfl::rotfl:

[Dr.Sid]

From the GunsAttack Doctrine


var CMTimer
var chaffIdx
var SRShellIdx
var MRShellIdx

IF Init THEN {
chaffIdx = DBIdxFromRecNum 1416
SRShellIdx = DBIdxFromRecNum 1406
MRShellIdx = DBIdxFromRecNum 1407

In this case, SRShellIdx and MRShellIdx are just arbitrary variable names, and could be named anything, what is important is what DBIdx numbers are referenced by the variables.

In this case, changing the Object type of the 1406 and 1407 entity references would be sufficient to convert the Shells fired by ships to Bullets.

Cheers,
David

Yes .. I'm just not sure it really doesn't work now. I only think it does not. I sugest sending hello near one of those AI ships. It should be unable to hit it. I'm too busy today.

[Dr.Sid]

I tested the air-enabled 76mm quite a lot. It's pretty impossible to turn 76mm into anti-missile weapon. The projectile hits the watter just in front of the boat. As the missile gets closed (Harpoon), it shoots the water more and more far away from the ship. When the missile is about 5 nm, it finally manages to keep the bullets high enough. But it fails to hit the missile in most cases anyway.

What helps is to make the bullet faster. Default speed is 830. At 1500 it begins to be effective at about 3nm. At 2260 (speed of CIWS bullets) it does not hit water at all and it s effective at 5nm, and sometimes even more.

Bullet speed also seems to affect bullet max. range. All bullets seems to have fixed life-time. During that time they get more and more dark .. and then they vanish. It is not affected by bullet range from DB. If you make bullet faster, it will manage to travel more distance during this time.

Well .. I don't like making 76mm bullets faster too much, since it makes 76mm even better against surface targets. Even worse feature of this mod is that bullets travel in straight lines. If you fire on incoming missiles, even if the miss the missile, they will go on and hit the ship which launched the missiles.
Also you rarely detect vampires at such ranges. While you mostly have them on ESM, first range/bearing sensor which picks the is usually CIWS and in that time CIWS does much better job on those missiles.

On the other hand, modded 76mm is good on helos and slow flying airplanes. I'll do some more tests.

[Dr.Sid]

So after more testing I found that slow bullets does not vanish. They are still there, but invisible. They just have so little chance of hitting something.

Slow and high targets are easy to hit. Fast (even 300 kts) , low (under 100ft) and far (over 5000yds) targets are very hard to hit. Aiming is really bad, not based on projectile speed. High speed projectiles (like CIWS) can hit even fast moving target but they must be close and moving toward the gun (low angular speed). Even CIWS has problems hitting 300kts target moving at high angular speeds .. it will shoot too much ahead.

I also tried to hang in hello around Chinese PTG with AA guns. It can hit the hello, but it is really very very rare. You must be pretty close and circle around, so luckily even badly aimed shot hits you. Missiles or even straight moving target are out of reach of AA guns.

I also tried to use some different class of projectile, like missile with it's own doctrine in 76mm .. but game crashes anytime I use something different then bullet or shell, or even if I use some different ammo for the launcher.

All around I don't see much reasons to change 76mm. Ballistic ASuW is just fine, and other usages are really hard to achieve, except for shooting straight moving hellos above 100ft at ranges from roughly 5000 to 15000 yds. Under 5000 CIWS are better.

[kage]

Currently, the shells are more or less impact fused. This needs to change, as those targets are way too small. One of the weapon options in the db is to give a weapon a 'contact' on launch. If there is a doctrine attached to it, one could make it detonate as it passed the target - perhaps only if fired against air.

Impact on ASuW: None to slight.

If it won't lead targets, though, (air or sea) I'd say we have a useless and very unrealistic system. The CAS would (presumably) feed the computers with the exact location and movement, and they would direct the cannon so as to fire at a proper lead. Manual adjustment should be for wind and land only - and for land it's still very broken right now. Those are SCS issues though.

[Dr.Sid]

There is no doctrine attached to it. It cannot be .. it is ignored on shell and bullet object type. Object type can be changed to missile or anything else (what has doctrine) without game crashing. Ammo can't be changed in the launcher without game crashing. So nothing like proximity fusing seems to be possible.

Only things which affects 76mm gun are:

On 76mm shell object:
-shell/bullet object type - affects trajectory (line, ballistic) and tracer, bullets can actually hit airborne targets.
-projectile speed - faster is better. For bullet, default 830 won't hit anything, 1500 hits something, 2200 hits missiles quite nice (same as CIWS but at longer range).
For shell type speed change can make the shell travels faster, but is still unable to hit even stationary hello.

On launcher you can change fire rate, ammo amount, position on the boat and some other pretty minor stuff.
On CAS radar you can change some things too, but with even less effects.

Nothing else seems to have any effect.

[Mau]

Anything new on this??

[LuftWolf]

We pretty much figured that the guns will never be made effective enough to warrent partially breaking them by converting the shells to bullets, so it looks like we're stuck on this one.

Sorry... the good news is that you've got SM-2's, which the real FFG7 guys I'm sure would love when staring down the kind of nastiness we face in DW. :up:

So we're still ahead of the curve. :)

Cheers,
David

[Dr.Sid]

Maybe you could mod the AI platforms using Shell weapons for AAA .. I mean in case they really have such capability IRL. PTGs especially.

[Mau]

Agree with Dr Sid.

And hopefully in the near future we will see the 76mm with AA capability because in RL it has the capability.

[XabbaRus]

I also noticed in the db for the 76mm shell that the ballistic flag isn't checked. I checked it but It doesn't make a difference for AA but might make a difference when engaging land targets.

[Dr.Sid]

I didn't find any effect.

[SUBMAN1]

I've shot down my own Helo for fun many different ways. Not sure I ever tried the 76'r though