N. Atlantic Convoy help

[Rob86TA]

Alright... I've had the game for 2 months now, and I'm getting my butt kicked on this mission. No matter what I do, the Tu-22M gets me everytime.

I've tried full EMCON, but that leads to my crew screaming madly at the last second about being hit, and I quickly sink to the bottom.

I've tried with the Radar on, and can detect the incoming missiles, but even with CWIS at full auto, and launching 2 (sometimes 3) SM-2's at the incoming missiles, I never seem to hit them or stop them in time. I believe I'm at least hitting the first incoming, but its hard to tell... I'm normally sunk before I can tell what's happening.

I've got LwAmi's mod installed... does it shift the balance of power too much? Is a single OHP really this helpless against a lone TU-22?

[LuftWolf]

Thanks for using the mod!

In general, although I haven't tried this mission, I believe the consensus is that the OHP has very little chance of surviving the ASM barrage.

I'd say, if you have four or more incoming vampires, and no AEGIS ships in the area, you are going to get cooked more or less all the time.

Now about those missing missions you mentioned in your other thread... :hmm:

[LuftWolf]

The changes we've made in the mod, if having any effect on this situation, would help you to defeat the vampires, as we've marginally increased the effectiveness of anti-missile countermeasures.

I'm not sure about the design of this particular mission, perhaps others can give you more insight than me. :hmm:

[compressioncut]

Yeah, that mission is very difficult, and the only way I've had some success is by cheating. When the missile calls are made, I turn truth on and engage them from there, trying my best not to look where the subsurface threat is :oops:

You also kind of need to have aircraft quick launch on, so you can carry out the ASW action successfully. You don't really have half an hour to get your helo in the air.

If anyone has better ideas I'd sure like to hear them.

[Mau]

Well first we should have the AS-4 as a high diver like in Real Life. If you look in the database of Harpoon (the game), you will see that this weapon can be launch from a minimum altitude (i.e. 18000 feet). That means like in real life, you would be able to see the archer (TU-22M) and as well the weapon separation when it is firing the AS-4.

That means we would/should be able to see and track those fast missile coming at us from the start. Even that it is coming fast. But at least we would have better chances.

As well the AS-4 is a very old missile. it is being replaced by the AS-16.
So my recommendation is to change the database for the AS-4 so that it cannot be launch from 2000 feet (like in the North Atlantic convoy scenario

Mau

[LuftWolf]

That would be the best solution.

However, things like max-min launch altitude and depth cannot be changed in the database, as far as I know. The Max-Min altitudes listed in the database control either the max-min TARGET altitudes alone or both the max-min target and launch altitudes together, wrapped up into one variable.

So, I could set the minium operational altitude for the AS-4 at 18,000ft, but then it could only hit ships that are at an altitude above 18,000ft, in other words, we can't do it. :cry:

Things like launch conditions independant or target parameters can only be set by SCS in the engine itself.

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain of this.

[MaHuJa]

It's been a long while since I played this, but I managed without show truth. I had absolutely nothing radiating, and the missiles were launched to enable faaaar away - probably at launch. Between sams, pdc, and chaffs, only one missile hit, damaging but not killing me.

I held out until the helicopter was in the air by firing towards the submarine even though it wouldn't actually reach even its current position. The northern one was held off by an active buoy - they can get remarkably shy with those around.


I don't think I could ever redo the feat on request so to say, and I don't know just how I would fare with the lwami mod.

[MaHuJa]

The only way I can think of to give it a min launch alt is doctrines - either have those launching it launch only above that altitude (and perhaps climb to reach that altitude when conditions are otherwise right - might help mission creators figure out why it won't fire) or make the missile climb to that altitude and then drop. The latter is easier, but may be harder for a mission designer to figure out as well as being 'wrong' in terms of realism.

[Mau]

So we are saying here that it is not possible to have a missile fired from a different altitude (higher here) and going down to a ship?

The same is happening when that same AS-4 is launched from the TU-22M at 2000 ft? However is it going to lao altitude right away?

High diver are coming from the same angle (not going down to the deck).

That would be outstanding to see what we can do here!!
Mau

[LuftWolf]

There is always a balance between adding features that restrict object behavior in realistic ways and what mission designers and players can remember in terms of non-obvious restrictions that have significant effects on gameplay.

SCS appears to have taken the approach that giving everything other than the most important playable platforms and weapons a generic feel in terms of behavior was the way to go, so going back and giving everything specific behavior patterns asks a lot of both modders, players, and mission designers.

That is why a project such as SCX is such an achievement, not only because they were able to do it, but because of the wide understanding and acceptance in the community of the vast new repetoir of behaviors that they need to learn.

MaHuJa, good suggestion about the doctrines, I wasn't thinking about the abiliity to specific object behavior by using specific object names or object numbers in the first part of the IF conditional statements. Of course, every time you do that, you make the doctrine much more complicated, even for one platform/object, unless you go the route of creating different doctrines for each individual object, but that creates complexity/workload issues of its own.

[Mau]

Understand Luftwolf, and I appreciate everything you are doing for this game so far. I think this simulator has a lot of potential.

I am in the Navy , and I had great expectation on this game.
But the idea of having let say some High diver and some sea skimmer flight profile would be great.

Some High diver: Pretty much everything that is starting with AS.
I am not sure which ones are in the game, but for sure the AS-4/AS-16 are two of those.

Having let say something like a 18000 ft as a minimum lauch would at least give us some little bit more chance against them. I think it would be still really hard like it is supposed and would happen in the real life (against a MK-13 anyway)

In your MOD, how`s the RAM effectiveness against the worst missiles of the game now?

thanks

Mau

[LuftWolf]

According to Molon Labe, the RAM is knocking down missiles like flies.

We based the adjustment on the real-world data that says the RAM is 90% effective against the best supersonic testing drones we can throw against it.

The missiles already do have different trajectories, seaskimming ASM missiles follow the MissileSkim doctrine and other ASM missiles follow the Missile doctrine.

The issue of max-min launching altitudes is different than the issue of trajectory. We can't hard-set a minimum launch altitude in the database, as far as I know, only in the doctrines, but doing that causes a whole set of parameters to be introduced that mission designers would have to abide by, and right now, we aren't at the point where introducing such a thing is really desirable, given the relative infancy of the mission designing (no offense to mission designers, but there are plenty of missions out there that already don't work right, in terms of triggers and specific platform behavior etc, and adding new things that designers have to deal with at this point can only make the situation worse).

[LuftWolf]

In terms of a correction that could be done very easily to the N. Atlantic Convoy mission or any other mission with planes launching High Divers, if the altitude of the platforms launching the missile were set to 18,000ft or above it should work exactly the way it would if we hard-set the minimum launch altitude to that value. That is, the missiles would get launched at that altitude and dive down towards their targets.

So, in many ways, getting the gameplay correct is a dance between what we can do with the database and doctrines, and what the mission designers do in terms of assigning AI platforms realistic behaviors and parameters for given situations.

[Amizaur]

Well once I have written a separate doctrine for AS-4 with dedicated flight profile (very high cruise and 30 deg dive attack like the real thing). I was happy with it until I saw that result was SM-2 efectiveness reduced to 20% or less because current missile guidance alghoritms are laggy (missile is late at interception point) and vs diving targets produce such great miss distance that even current VERY forgiving hit-detection rules can't classify them as hits... Pk vs diving targets goes to the floor... So I clamped my teeth and returned standard doctrine (500ft cruise) :down:
Maybe will give it another try but have no time lately :/. I tried also simultaneous ingerention into AS-4 flight profile and SAM interception profile but didn't finish it then... I tried to make long range SM-2 shots climb-high cruise-dive to the target like in reality but this reduced efectivenes because of flawed game terminal ballistics... and vs divers caused interceptions almost impossible. But maybe if SAM profile was dependant on atacking missile type... :hmm:

[Mau]

Continue with your good work on this Amizaur!

What about the doctrine of the missiles in Fleet Command?
Would it be applicable to DW.

Do they have differeent flight profile as well
I think they had. No?

Just a thought

[TLAM Strike]

I survived without cheating. When the Vamps start coming in launch as much Chaff/Flares as possible, launch as many SM-2s as possible then pray. :o

EDIT: This was not with the Realism Mod. Just normal V1.01.

[MaHuJa]

I just did this mission with the realism mod. I played three games under freegamecam (http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=43831&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=), that being the last one. Total emcon (including keeping the ciws to hold) and he didn't know where to shoot. I got an ew contact on him, and used that as my clue to launch chaffs and activate radars - more or less in that order. I got off one sm2 at each of his three missiles, and the rest went for the chaff.

Enemy losses: 1 Improved Kilo (positioned southeast, where the convoy would ultimately go)
Friendly losses: -

I kept him running by launching torpedoes at him, although they would not quite reach him. After 4 torpedoes, my helicopter got airborne and dropped the fifth within effective range. Boom.

The northern kilo chickened out, perhaps because of the dicass I placed and activated early on.