Very true.

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Yes I second this, ive hardly played in the ffg, it seems so alien to me. A manual would be ace, and tempt me to the surface, any takers?

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Yes I second this, ive hardly played in the ffg, it seems so alien to me. A manual would be ace, and tempt me to the surface, any takers?

I'm slowly working something out. I agree, though, the FFG is the most different of all the platforms in the game. It's easily the most complicated. It's one of the most potentially powerful too, except that it's also very difficult partly because of complications, but also because how to do things like stay stealthy while finding the enemy are not as straight forward as in submarines. Sometimes you just can't expect to remain undetected. What do you do then? There's a lot more thinking to be done, and typically a lot less time to do it. :-)

I think it's actually one of the most interesting platforms though, because you can do so much with it. It's where the graphics in DW really pay off too.

Um, the CZs are 25-30 miles in the game, unless you mean multiple CZs, which I haven't seen (but haven't tested, either). Beyond one CZ detection is rare to begin with, and completely unlikely in real life using a TACTAS these days.

But you're right, CZ prosecutions with the helo are ideal. I made a couple of simple CZ scenarios and have no problem carrying the prosecution to destruction. Textbook standoff ASW.

Yeah... I made some like that too, then took the same scenario, moved things around and made the environment bottom limited, or surface duct, just to see the difference in performance.

Something I'm still trying to figure out is the DW sonar model. I think it'd be nice to have a little TDA that would allow me to predict sonar performance given a few inputs (target type, SSP, bottom type...).

There's a sort of prediction model in the mission builder, although I don't know how accurate it is or how dependent it is on conditions. I think it may even be called "show predicted sensor range," although I've kinda set DW aside till the AAW/ASuW with the frigate gets sorted (which is why I checked this thread), and can't say for sure.

No full field displays showing TLs and PODs, but a useful circle around the selected unit in the building screen is there.

And as for the original question, the AAW side of the game is really not very good, or at least a lot more difficult than it should be. It would be much more playable with only a few things added (like the autocrew classifying radar/EW contacts).

"Popup bearing 136!"

"TWEEEEEEEEEEEET. Zippo one based on Exocet!!"

rather than the fairly unuseful "Vampire inbound!"

If I'm the combat officer, I don't busy myself with classifying EW/radar/sonar contacts. I make decisions based on what the combat team has classified them as that allow me to effectively fight the ship.

By the same token, if I'm the ASW director, I don't really worry about what's going on with the AAW guys. It would be great if they took care of their own stuff in the game, too.

I haven't been able to come to grips with it satisfactorily, especially in multi-threat environments.

I don't think that would require major changes to the game, but I obviously just don't know.

We talked about that in the Mission Designer's forum, actually, about the potential of using it as a TDA. The thing is I'm not really clear what the circle really means. I suspect it's maximum range, but only rarely do I ever get a signal out that far. I wish it was mean detection range or sweep width instead. It'd be more useful.

When I get some free time I'm thinking about making a little ray tracer spreadsheet so that you could put the SSP in and estimate the range of CZs. It wouldn't be too hard to do. Predicting signal excess would be more complicated. I'm not sure I could do that accurately without knowing exactly how their sonar model works.

There was an article in the Harpoon HQ about how the Harpoon sonar model worked. I used that to create a little spreadsheet that was pretty useful. I want to create a similar thing for DW, but so far nobody has given me the info.

I think this might be one area where Harpoon is probably the superior simulator. There, you take the role of an over-all decision maker while the computer takes responsibility for classifying targets, etc. etc. DW tries to strike a balance between different positions on the ship, and does a better job on some of them than others.

Honestly, I think naval warfare is really hard to make a super-accurate simulator for, if you're going to have just one person playing it. So much of it is about the crew working together ya know? So... I think DW is good for what it captures, but it's not by any means a complete sim, in the sense that it faithfully duplicates how everything works.

there is no vampire report on EW
but it could be effective on ASM detection
As it is a passive sensor, EW must always be on
On a real ship, an operator always manage this hardware, and is able to report as soon as a new contact appear.
so, you can use the AC here, with EW always on
You will need anyway to classify it manually on EW.

where is it usefull against ASM ?
if it is always on, and you made the good job merging previous contact to declutter your NAV screen, a new contact will pop clearly here, you just have to jump to EW to see if its a XXXmissile
then you will saw every seeskimmer opening their seeker too early.

but your best protection agaisnt missile is the radar/SM2 ...
your radars, or the helo's one in REMRO, the best way to remain steath (for the FFG) with a clear picture of the theatre.

I've never gotten a vampire on the remro. Have you, or are you speaking from theory? (I've seen it -vs- It should appear)

I've seen it. Both my SPS-55 surface search and SPS-49(V)5 were not radiating at the time. Only radiating radar around the helo's. Got a vampire call, two C801s inbound. The mission was East Timor NEO. I'm going to go back to try again and see if it wasn't just some fluke.

Good Question. I'll have to test this out myself later. :up:

Sea Demon

I'm afraid I may have been mistaken.

I was using the Alert 5 helo as a standoff sensor, as such it was radiating. Vampire detection was made as previously noted, but I realized it was at short range, very, very close to visual.