Mine was simple curiosity.
I just didn't think that the adcap could hop over and under the layer automatically during search without somekind of continuos input from the submarine.
Seeing as the layer is input during launch (in the mod) i don't have any problems with it.
I just though that the adcap would go "intelligent mode" and determine itself where the layer was etc... Kind of too advanced, at least for me.
In any case thanks for clearing the issue Luftwolf.

I just sent the real final AI changes to Amizaur for him to look at... so that means the player torpedo doctrines can finally go on the fire.

Git'er done.

Cheers,
David

PS Since I've spent so much time getting the AI to do variable depth searches correctly, the sensor limits are going to be consistent between the AI and players, or at least that's the plan at this point. The AI should be almost as good at using weapons effectively in terms of the sensor mod as a human player, so I don't see a reason at this point to give them an advantage in this area. If they prove not to be as good as I expect, we can always increase their vertical aperatures somewhat, but it won't be necessary to keep their sensors with no vertical limits.

By making torp to make search at both sides of the layer, you practicly eliminated the layer as effective countermeasure... What is the layer "height" or "depth", I suspect that it may vary even when there is something you can clearly isolate as a layer itself, not only a depth of SSP change. I wonder if in real life someone would set torpedo to search at layer depth or as close as 100ft (30m) from layer depth. If the layer depth at place torpedo starts search was little different than layer depth at launch place, then your "cross layer" torp would effectively become one-layer sided and you even wouldn't know about it or know which side it is !!! Acoustic conditions around the layer depth are probably hard to determine and highly variable, and I suspect it isn't a good depth for torpedo search...
Can real submariners say if setting torpedo to search at or very close to layer depth is used in real life, or maybe depths clearly over or clearly below layer are used and depth changes to other side are only done by wire guidance ?
Of course torpedo as moder as ADCAP has it's own logic, and if it knew (entered before launch) the layer depth, and later locked and tracked a target which disappeared from seeker around the layer depth, it would probably make a check on the other side of the layer to see if it can reaquire it there. Or maybe programmed run when torpedo changes side of the layer (from clearly one side to clearly other side) every mile or so... but oscillating at layer depth 100ft over and below... I'm not sure... if something like that is used as real life tactic. In fact I have no idea if it is or not, so please anyone who know and can say, is it valid tactic or not ?
I have feeling that if layer was so simple to overcome for torpedo, then would not be so important to know on which side the target is or changing layer side wouldn't be valid evasion tactic...
If you really want this mode, then maybe after setting search depth = close to layer depth, the ADCAP would change layer side from let's say 200ft under to 200ft over (or even your 100ft, WE KNOW that layer in DW is a point event and you can set torp even to one meter over or under in DW... you can't in real life) each 30 or 60 seconds or so ? You don't need torp to point down or up for part of the time, to widen seeker depth band, it is very wide
anyway, you only need to change depth from time to time, so maybe better to make it by depth change command in periodic time intervals ?

And second question, what was effective (from point a to b) speed of ADCAP in this mode, such continuos depth changes would decrease effective speed in same way as snake pattern does. If the depth oscillations were quite wide and intense and effective speed reduced considerably, then this mode at least would have a drawback and was not used every time... in other case I suspect that nobody would ever launch an ADCAP in other mode than that against sub target and the layer would be effectively non-existing for torp and targeted sub...

Well, it IS called the ADCAP. :yep: :)

My experience tells me that the ADCAP would experience a loss of speed, in addition of course to the loss of speed caused by the depth increase.

I suppose we could do 200ft on each side of the layer, that of course, is easy to change once the mechanism is established.

I think once the full torpedo seekers are done, this mode will prove to have its drawbacks as well (in certain situations it would be easier to decoy, if you know is heading up and down, drop a decoy on one side and then make sure to get on the other side... when you don't hear the torpedo, you know have gotten away... etc.).

All these controls are great, but they will really be redunant if we don't get the seeker parameters in check. The whole point of these controls is to make a situation where the player gets rewarded for doing careful preparations on his shots, rather than just spraying ordinance around.

I am reminded of a statement by SeaQueen some time ago that the reason that salvoes of torpedoes typically aren't accounted for is that multiple weapons are often not more effective than a single well placed weapon.

We are hoping to make this the case in DW, so the changes to the sensors necessitate better control over weapons, for both the AI and the player. I think it makes sense to give the most advanced weapon modelled for the player in-game the most tools to overcome these limitations.

Cheers,
David

Hey I just thought of a way to have torpedoes have a doctrine specified chance of being decoyed by any single decoy... which means I can set different suseptibility to countermeasures for each weapon.

This is necessary because one consequence of having wide seekers and greater sensitivity, is that the torpedo can also pick up decoys much easier, which may have meant, practically, that the ADCAP would also be easier to decoy than say, an older torpedo...

I had been thinking about a doctrine mechanism to get around this, and I came up with a new conditional: IF Newtrack AND ( TgtName $= "Decoy" ) AND ( Spoofed > 75 ) THEN { SETTACTIC TorpedoHoming Spoofed = ( Rnd 100 ) } ELSEIF Newtrack AND ( TgtName $= "Decoy" ) THEN { Spoofed = ( Rnd 100 ) } ENDIF

The first spoofed value would be set when the torpedo is launched as a random integer between 0-100. When the torpedo detects it first decoy, the value would be checked against 75, and if it were greater, the torpedo would acknowledge the decoy like before and reset the value of Spoofed between 0-100 for the next decoy detected. If the value of Spoofed is less than 75, then the value of spoofed would simply get reset for the next decoy, and the torpedo would store that decoy as a decoy and not attempt to home on it, unless of course it looses the track and detects it again on another pass, in which case the process would start over again.

In order to manipulate the "decoyability" factor of the torpedo, I simply have to change the 75 to some other value.

Keep in mind, this would be *on top* of the 50% failure rate for decoys already in the database, so this is only necessary for the most modern torpedoes that supposedly do not really get spoofed much by decoys.

This is the fun of doing this kind of stuff. :up:

Cheers,
David

PS Don't worry, game balance is always in the front of my mind, but I can't help it if the ADCAP is one mean weapon to have coming your way... this was not really modelled well before in DW, it was simply "one more torpedo." The UGST and appropriate AI torpedoes are the only ones that will have this feature, oh and the Mk 50 and Mk 54, but they will be a bit easier to decoy than the ADCAP.

I finished the USET-80 and Yu-8 doctrines, so here are the actual *implimented* controls for these weapons. :)

The Circle and Snake buttons select for Circle and Snake search patterns, and the Passive and Active buttons select for passive and active mode like before. Now, however, upon enabling, regardless of the preenable speed set, the torpedo upon passive enabling will go to max passive speed 40kts and if set in active will go to max active speed at 50kts. The longest range setting for the USET-80 is 15.7nm, which can be achieved at 30kts, and the shortest range setting is 10nm, which is achieved at 50kts.

This has been amended as follows:
Ok, I've made the discussed corrections to the Yu-8 and USET-80. The torpedoes now function with two discrete speed settings. Choosing a Preset speed of 40kts or above will select the max speed setting for these weapons, and selecting below 40kts will select the maximum passive speeds for these weapons (also their long range setting). The Yu-8 and USET-80 will maintain a constant speed for the length of their entire run as determined by the preset and will not speed up or slow down when enabled.

The torpedoes have an ASuW safety that can be engaged by setting the Ceiling at a depth greater than 20m. If you set the ceiling at 20m or less, the torpedo ASuW safety will be disengaged. If you set the ASuW Safety On, the torpedo will ignore surface detections and submarines on the surface, if you set the safety off, all targets will be tracked regardless of depth.

These weapons also have a variable search function that works as follows. The Floor setting is the bottom of the search pattern, and the Ceiling is the top of the search pattern. If you set the Ceiling and the Floor to be greater than 60m apart, the torpedo will oscillate between those two depths when searching. If you set the Ceiling and the Floor to be closer than 60m, the torpedo will search at the set SearchDepth. ALSO, if you set the ASuW Off by setting the ceiling at 20m or less, the Search Depth will take over the position as the shallow search depth in the variable depth search (and just like with the ceiling and the floor when the ceiling is used to set the search top, if the Searchdepth and the Floor are closer than 60m, the torpedo will search at the search depth only, and not oscillate in depth).

So, practically, here are three situations in which you would use the weapons.

1) You are in water with surface traffic and need to fire against a submerged target with a layer at 150m. You set the floor of the torpedo to search at 200m and the ceiling of the torpedo to search at 100m. The search depth simply has to be set anywhere between the Floor and Ceiling and dicated by the interface. The ASuW Safety is ON because the Search Depth is deeper than 20m.

2) You need to engage the same target, but there is no surface traffic and you are worried about him coming shallow to avoid the shot (he is a crafty player). So you set the Ceiling at 20m to disengage the ASuW Safety, and, to get the same search pattern as before, you set the Floor again at 200m and the Search Depth this time to 100m. The torpedo will recognize from the ceiling to disable the ASuW Safety and use the Floor and SearchDepth as the vertical parameters for its variable depth search.

3) You are engaging a surface target. You set the Ceiling to 20m or less to disengage the ASuW safety, then set the Search Depth to 30m to give the seeker a cleaner acoustic position. You can then set the floor anywhere between 30m and 90m and the torpedo will search in a horizontal search pattern only, without any vertical oscillation.

I think this will work well for most situations and players. Remember, this is all implimented and working great now. :up:

Now on to do the Mk54 and Mk50, which are very similar but have an extra trick or two up their sleeves.

Cheers,
David

PS And, of course, the Floor and Ceiling functions no longer represent hardcaps below and above which the torpedo will not go... eliminating this was a bit harder than I thought but I got it working correctly... no more automatically bottoming out every torpedo restlessly at the start of the mission. :smug:

And, for the record, the stats of the Yu-8 are as follows: 13.5nm @ 30kts, 9nm @ 45kts, with a max passive speed of 38kts and a maximum operational depth of 480m (USET-80 has a maximum operational depth of 500m).

For those of you not familar with LWAMI 3.xx, the Yu-8 is a hypothetical weapon that replaces the pathetic SET-53 on Chinese Kilos (player and non-player) as well as the USET-80 on other Chinese platforms. The idea here is that the Chinese aren't willing to pay the price for the USET-80 when they could build a similar version for much cheaper, as well as for the national pride. :)

Cheers,
David

Upon further review, the maximum passive speeds of both the Yu-8 and the USET-80 will be 35kts.

For comparsion, the maximum passive speed of the ADCAP will be 45kts, and the UGST, Mk 54, and Mk50 will be 40kts.

As always, I'm open to arguments on specific values, because, really, these are scaled off of general data.

Here are the implimented features of the Mk54.

The Mk54 is chemical fuel torpedo capable of 12nm @ 40kts and 8nm @ 50kts. It has a maximum operational depth of 2000ft, with a top speed of 45kts at 1000ft and 40kts at 2000ft. The maximum passive speed of the torpedo is 40kts, and if the torpedo is PassiveEnabled, the torpedo will maintain this speed automatically at all depths.

The torpedo has on-board decoy avoidance logic, and will, on average, be able to properly avoid 75% of active and passive decoys (this is the standard 50% database and sim determined failure rate for decoys with another 50% random factor in the doctrine).

The torpedo controls are as follows.

Snake and Circle set the horizontal search pattern of the torpedo, and Active and Passive set the acoustic mode, as before. However, the torpedo will go to maximum possible speed for depth in active mode when enabled and maintain maximum passive speed of 40kts when enabled in passive mode.

The weapon has a ASuW Safety that can be disabled by setting the Ceiling at 60ft or less. The vertical search parameters are set by the ceiling and floor, which are no longer hardcaps on weapon depth operation. If you set the ceiling and floor closer than 200ft, the weapon will search at its preset Search Depth. If you use the Ceiling to set the ASuW Safety Off, the top of the vertical search pattern will be set the Search Depth and the bottom will be the Floor, if the Search Depth and Floor are more than 200ft apart, otherwise the torpedo will go to the search depth when enabled.

The variable depth search functions allow you extra control over how the weapon behaves, depending on the situation in which you are engaging your target. Here are some situations where you might use these features.

1) You are directly over a submarine in deep water, there is a lot of surface traffic and you are concerned about the submarine trying to use the layer to spoof the torpedo. The layer is at 600ft, but you estimate the submarine is much deeper than that. Set the Floor at 1500ft and the Ceiling at 350ft, with the searchdepth anywhere in between. The Ceiling being set below 60ft will enable the ASuW Safety, and the torpedo will search with a *very* steep angle of attack, which is necessary since you are dropping the torpedo directly on his head. Should he avoid the first pass of the torpedo and come shallow above the layer, the torpedo will be coming up also with a very steep angle of attack. In this situation, if the torpedo homes on the submarine, the high angle of approach will make it very hard to decoy and very hard to out maneover.

2) Same situation, however, there is no surface traffic, and you feel him trying to emergency surface is a significant possibility, thus giving him an opportunity to take a missile shot, so you need to kill him with the first weapon. Set the Ceiling at 60ft, and the ASuW Safety will be disabled. Set the Floor at 1500ft and the SearchDepth at 350ft to get the same search pattern as in Situation #1.

3) You are in an FFG. You have detected a Kilo at about 8nm in bad sonar conditions... by the sound of his TIW's. The water depth is about 300ft. You need to get some fire back in his direction to give him something to think about while you regroup. You set two Mk54's with a preenable speed of 40kts to fire back at about 5-6 degrees off his bearing and a runtoenable distance at 6.5nm. You are concerned about surface neutrals and you don't want an vertical search pattern in the shallow water, so you set the Floor at 250ft, the Search Depth at 200ft, and the Ceiling at 100ft. The Ceiling and the Floor being closer than 200ft will disable the vertical search, so the torpedo will run along just under the surface when fired, which allows the torpedo to run most efficiently to get the most benefit from the longer range and lower speed setting, and then enable and go to the Preset Search Depth of 200ft. The torpedoes will speed up to the maximum possible speed and go to 200ft when enabled.

Now to do the Mk50 doctrine, which would actually be simplier than the Mk54 doctrine, however, I have to combine the player features on this weapon with the AI features because the AI MH60 has to share it with the player, for interface reasons on the FFG ASTAC station. I think I've got it under control. :)

In terms of the Mk50 vs. Mk54, they share the same controls and seeker parameters, including anti-decoy logic. The only significant difference (modelled in LWAMI4) is that the Mk50 is an electric torpedo with a constant 55kts speed at depth and a very deep depth of 3600ft and the Mk54 is a chemical torpedo with a 2000ft depth and speed loss at depth, and a bit slower over all in top speed, but also with a greater range. In general, the Mk50 is the best weapon to use in deep waters, and the Mk 54 is a better weapon to use in the littorals, where there is more of need for a "stand-off" weapon for aircraft and surface craft. The FFG AI MH60 now uses ASW to select three Mk50's for use in deep water, and ASuW to select two Mk54's for shallow water and Penguin ASM capable of targeting surfaced subs in case it catches one shallow.

NOTE: Mission designers have to be aware that AI MH60's won't engage submarines with their MK54's in ASuW mode, this is a consequence of the loadout fix. If you intend to have an AI controlled MH60 in one of your missions, be sure to have it launched with the ASW loadout. However, players controlling the FFG commanding their helo won't be affected by this at all, the Mk54 works fine on torpedo drop points as well as with the menu engage commands if you aren't controlling the helo or don't feel like using a waypoint, although using a waypoint is recommended. The AI helo pilot will properly use the presets to get sensible search behaviors in terms of depth with the torpedo for both the Mk50 and Mk54. (So in short, this is only an issue if the MH60 is FULLY AI controlled... or the player is not paying attention to the helo at all... )

Cheers,
David

One more idea on the topic of decoy avoidance logic. :sunny:

I'm going to give the wireguided torpedoes a significantly decreased chance of being decoyed if on the wire, and a bit more of chance to be decoyed if they are off the wire... it simulate the ability of the torpedo in coordination with ownship sensors and torpedo operators to overcome decoys.

All of the actual values need to be tested in game, keep this in mind, but I personally like these kinds of features, since we are limited in some other ways, and there IS a lot of automatic processing done in these weapons and their associated fire control systems.

Cheers,
David

Is anyone getting the idea that modern ASW is a pretty lethal affair? :hmm:

Anyone who goes deep in a submarine has some stones.

so when do we get a test version to scrimmage with???

Hi there! :cool:

As soon as I finish all the player torpedo doctrines. :yep: :know:

Give me a couple more days...

Cheers,
David

Think it's a very good idea ! We had to disable sensor feedback for torps, but this would be some kind of "bonus" for being "on the wire" as weapon operators really can help in rejectiong false targets.

I think about the idea that passive weapon on enable hit's max passive speed... I know we have this for ADCAP. But you can enable and disable it again when on the wire. When you use very slow speed you aim for max range. When you enable active then, target knows it is targeted and will run, so staying slow is not an option, even though you shrink your remaining torp range. But when you enable passive torp, enemy don't know about this. And with quiet torp you can have as good chances to hitting it at slow.
When torp goes to maxpassive speed at enable, it shrinks it's range below the max figure at set slow speed. But on the other hand, for USET-80, with passive speed of 35 and minimum speed of something like 30kts, the difference in true range would be not much... and you can recognise that torpedo had enabled by speed change ! So overall, I think you are right and keep it this way, at passive enable speed up to maxpassivespeed.

I would strongly advice for you, to keep the values I set for min speed and ranges. I didn't take them from the air.
For example, USET-80 is electrical torpedo. With a really very good max speed of nearly 50kts it has reportedly less than 10nm range at that speed. With electrical propulsion, it would benefit greatly when run at very slow speeds and would get max range at something like 25kts (look at tigerfish or older european electric torps). It would be quite long range, something like around 20nm probably. BUT. The USET-80 is reported to have only two hard set speed settings! One is max, and second is medium (not aimed at max range). Probably electric motor and it's control unit limitation. Other sources says that it is single variable speed but setting speed is troublesome (maybe by technicans before loading into tube) so they keep them set to single speed, and it can't change speed during run.
In first case minimum speed can't be set down to 25kts to allow player get extra range. Min speed would be the second torp speed setting, in medium speed range (don't remmber now what it was). Of course max passive speed has to be no lower than that. In second case... would be effectively single speed torpedo - something like 10.5nm/45kts ot 9.7nm/48kts. But then where passive mode here... only if set to slow run all the way... before loading into tube.
In my doctrines I set TorpMinSpeed equal to SpeedLong = 30kts (and it was probably a trade-off to give it good range in game...) and left max passive speed at 40kts only because I didn't plan then to force maxpassive speed at passive enable. Just wanted to reduce it to common used value (40kts) from higher speeds - if someone send 50kts passive torp, it would slow down to 40 at enable.
If you set maxpassivespeed for USET to 35kts (which is ok, it's not that modern, probably REAL passive speed for USET is even lower) then the min speed have to be little lower, to allow player recognise that weapon enabled. 30kts is best I think, trade-off between realism and game.
If we aimed for full realism, it should be variable but single speed all the way. So active/passive only (it doesn't have wire anyway) and no speed-up or automatic slow-down at enable. Who send 50kts passive torp, wasted it.
If it was my mod, I would go for that ;-), first thing for me realism = cool, and I find real life weapon/sensors constraints cool too - something you have to remember when choosing attack method and torp settings.

And ADCAP max passive speed - I would left it at 40kts. To get good performance, it can't go too fast. It's not the most modern weapon with advanced hydrodynamic shape developed in CFD simulations, like newest european designs. And from playability poin of view, having in game 45kts passive torpedo isn't best thing too I think... And the last argument - with this setting, the weapon will never reach it's max range - range will be always little shorter after passive enable... The fact that in the game passive seeker was washing out at 45kts, as you mentioned yourself to Molon Labe, needed washout speed correction, not passive speed correction :-) And I think the same.

edit:

Where is that data from ? MK-54 is Mk-46 propulsion with Mk-50 warhead, right ? Shouldn't have max speed and diving ability greater than those of Mk-46, depth speed reduction too (significant for Mk-46 - it has half of range at max depth of 1500ft which probably means half of max speed at max depth too). Range... is fuel amount same like for Mk-46 or greater ?

So max speed = 45kts near surface, not more than 25kts kts at 1500ft. The ranges I have for Mk-46 are about half of your values !! I have 12000yd/8000yd and you have 12nm/8nm :huh: Where is this from ??

I'll respond to the rest later, but regarding the Mk54.

The MK54 is being developed as a low cost alternative to the Mk50, as a replacement for the Mk46.

However, there is no cost factor in DW. Players can always use the best weapon avaible.

Thus, if I replaced the MK46 with a Mk54 with Mk46 capabilites, I would have accomplished nothing.

Keep in mind also, that the MK54 Lightweight Hybrid Torpedo program as first envisioned, as the front of a mk50 stuck on the back of a mk46, is reported to be in trouble. The assumption here is that the US has some money to invest in Mk54 research to improve the 40+ year old propulsion of the Mk46 before fielding the new weapon.

So, I made the numbers up.

Cheers,
David