??

Could you clear this a little for me ? :oops:

The Global Naval Strike Force (GNSF), of which I am a member, had their standard ROE set so that players could not use active intercept unless all players agreed to it before hand.

I'm glad they have agreed to this change and I'll be back to full participation, especially in my role as RD-DW, once LWAMI4 is released.

Cheers,
David

I kind of feel like some engineer standing at the crossroads of two engineering approaches, needing to decide between two radically different solutions to the same problem. :cool:

I have one more ace up my sleeve. I'll let you know. :hmm:

Cheers,
David

I'm now 85% sure I've got this one by the stones.

The method I am going to do with is the TIW method, and I've made it work for non-subroc missiles, even without using a sensor (since missiles are simply ignoring tracks until they are done with their semi-ballistic launch).

The subroc fix is to simply add a dummy torpedo to their existing launchers and a firebest conditional with a runonce variable switch, and they will automatically fire the dummy on launch and continue on with their ballistic tradjectory and fire their second torpedo.

The non-subroc fix is to make all underwater launched missiles "snapshot" weapons in the database, thus giving them a Newtrack immediately at launch upon which to fire their dummy torpedo. So far, the fix to make sure the missiles don't misbehave in other ways is to simply make sure they otherwise ignore newtracks if they are not enabled... and since the snapshot track is only fed once to the missile, by the time it is enabled, it is old news, so it should simply be ignored by the missile. In limited testing, this appears to be the case.

The theory and design is now in place. Of course, I could alway run into some kind of unexpected problem, but the underlying mechanics is actually much more straight forward and elegant than I had first thought they'd be.

As a side note, the Harpoon is not going to be set to give a TIW, since the Mod already simulates a "stealth" launch from a canister, I figure this is a nice feature to add/retain on the missile.

Glad I got this one worked out, back to the torpedoes. :know:

1. Would it be possible to have the SUBROC or other missiles produce a "Missile launch detected" message instead of a TIW?
I personally am very strict here, rather no message than an unexact message.

2. What do you think about moving those automatic messages into the sonar autocrew modus only? (both TIW and "Missile launch detected") ? Or better, add a switch somewhere stating "automatic launch warnings ON/OFF" ?

This would IMO be a excellent MOD ;)

At all ??? They don't hear active sonobuoys, incoming active torps and active pings of other players ? Or pings of surface ships ? Are they also to not use active sonar at all ? But what with sonobuoys ?

P.S. wait a moment, you can't DISABLE active intercept... what means "not use it" ??? Ignore it ?? Are we talking about AI autocrew maybe ??


P.S.2. LW, while changing all missiles to "snapshot" weapons, please triple try the SS-N-27 ASM if it works at all after the change, the initial version of doctrine worked with "snapshot" weapon and I had problems, then switched to non-snapshot (as original) with a different way of doctrine working (tgt bearing for example)... Please think twice before doing that and check if it doesn't have side effects...

I'd like to disagree with this last point. The way I see it, with this mod in place, the TIW warning is essentially a quasi-sonar autocrew that reports launch (or splash) transients. The firing of the missile cansiter makes the same noise as a torp launch, so it should be included.

@Amizaur: we meant active intercept autocrew

I'm pretty sure I can get around this like this:

IF NEWTRACK AND Enabled THEN { FireBest (the missile second stage) } ELSEIF Newtrack AND NOT MissileTIW THEN { FireBest MissileTIW = 1 (the torpedo, I think I can control the firebest logic using database parameters reliably) } ENDIF

or some modification along similar lines to what is there (I haven't checked the 54E doctrine recently, but it has been on my mind that this missile will require a change to the standard solution).

One more thing I forgot to mention - if you make some missiles high flying and diving attack, not only the for FFG but even for Ticos and Burkes they will be almost impossible to hit... Long time ago I did a nice doctrine emulating real AS-4 flight and attack profiles, only to see that vertical part of intercept trajectory used by DW (go to target alt immediately) combined with intercept trajectory lag bug makes diving AS-4s almost impossible to hit by SM-2s... Miss distance was so big that even large blast radius didn't help and most of missiles missed by large distance... :-(

(edit: don't know if both intercept and terminalhome trajectories do the same (go to tgt alt right away), have you compared them ? maybe setting intercept instead of terminalhome would help? and switch to term only in last second? I don't know...)

So I dumped this doctrine and returned to standard one... High flying missiles would be normal targets while cruising high, but when diving they become almost impossible target in DW... :down: And AEGIS + SM-2 was designed just to counter such threats like Kitchens and Kingfishes so I don't think they should be hard targets and that few (sometimes even one!) big old Kitchens should make a threat for AEGIS ship... SS-N-27s ASM should, but not Kitchens - if not in quantity of two digit number at once...

About sonar bearing errors - I think first increase it by one for both sphere and towed (setting from 3 to 2) and we'll see what this change does to gameplay and TMA... It's minimum possible change and although momentary bearing errors are few degrees, on TMA station they are minimised to less than that. I hoped to find some info about sphere sonar bearing error (or bearing scatter) in Ehime Maru accident raport, but I found nothing... :( Anyone knows something about this and can say it ? Any link ?

And PLEASE tell me (on the priv if you need ;) ) how do you plan to make under-keel detonations ?? How they would work ? From all I know, under-keel det only result in smaller tgt damage, and has side effects too...
In SCX they were commanded just by specific ceiling setting, I understand that because of new "ceiling" definition you need a separate switch for it - to attack surface tgt, 0ft ceiling must be set and then only switch can force under-keel mode ? Or swich will enable surface as valid target even for negative ceiling, and ceiling depth would determine under-target pass depth (you set it larger for CV than for small craft) ?
Well, there is always a possibility that under-keel could be default... :) just find a depth at which even small patrol crraft would be detected and proximity fuse triggered ?

Hopefully we can do something about the missile flight profile.
Like I was saying, Fleet Command has now 3 to 4 different flight profile (one is actually a high diving one).
I know it is not the same game but may be.....

I really hope we can improve the above water side of it

Wasn't FC relased before SC ? Because in SC missile intercepts were just fine, only in DW are broken... :(

But Amizaur, I am a bit confused here. In SC there was no platform from where we can launched missile to intercept another one (SC was just Subs unless you meant the AI ships in SC).

If it is the case, and if it was working in SC, then why it is not working in DW??

Thanks

Adding the underkeel detonation should be easy.

All have I have to is enable a mode on the player adcap that sets the torpedo to fire a large mine under the ship that immediately explodes, and so even with the proximity detonation, the fact that the mine is so large, will cause greater damage to the ship than the ADCAP hitting the hull.

I tested the basic concept of torpedoes firing mines, and it works nicely.

Well, in terms of the different flight profiles, I was simply going to add cruising altitudes of 2000 and 1000 feet, so the missiles would work just like now, but only fly higher. This ought to be "good enough" to give a change for older missiles but not break the game engine. Plus, it's really really easy to do. :)

Cheers,
David

And I suppose for really old missiles I could even do 5000ft and it wouldn't break anything.

We really ought to do new radar seekers for the old missiles too... and increase their radar signature. A AS-4 ought to be damn easy to detect for the SPY-1.

If I combine that with an increase in the FCR range for the AEGIS vessels, which is LONG overdue in LWAMI to be honest, then they should really be no threat anymore except to a lonely FFG or two.

Cheers,
David

So... just how far away can a modern ASM missile detect a medium size warship from the side? :cool:

I will go just in a general kind of response to that (I'M sure you understand)

It all depends when the seeker of a specific missile will turn on.

Let just say that if you want to go with a generic one, a missile to have is seeker on and to COMMIT will be between 12-8 miles and then lock on(again will depend of the target size, aspect but on the side with this last one will be fine) and of course the rain.

Hope this help

Thank you, this is very helpful.

So I think it's safe to assume that an AS-4 is probably limited to something closer to 4-6nm, possibly even less?

I'll check parameters of russian missiles for you tonight, I have few good books for it :-). For SS-N-27 ASM you can find advertised seeker range, for od missiles I will check. AS-4 was huge missile and had space for huge radar seeker :-) but of course old. I wouldn't be surprised if all what you need is ECM to render it useless and miss target... On the other hand, if you fired it against civilian ship in a convoy, then it would work just fine and be untouchable for small ships like Knox or Type-22 with their point defence missiles. AS-4 was rather convoy killer in 80's than CV killer.

Yes, 5000ft flight with medium speed should make no problem at all for SAMs. Targets are only untouchable when diving hard and fast, like AS-4. When diving slow they would be probably still possible to hit, and with 5000ft flight profile (compared to my 60000ft) it would start diving only very close to target, after many missile intercepts and inside of Phalanx range probably. So 5000ft should be no problem. I though about 30-60 thousands feets or so :-) or very fast dives. Well a cruise missile (500kts) diving from high alt at 30deg angle could be problem to hit maybe... check it, but at lower angle or slower should be ok.

About under-keel explosions - yep, I hit the same idea today's night, before falling asleep, if you can't regulate torpedo's hit points, it could spawn another object with greater blast... :-). Nice idea unfortunately spoiled by fact than you will damage every ship/sub/torp close vicinity of target, for example this det would kill other torpedos from salvo, if you fired more than one on target (against CV for example). Type-65 warhead alone sunk 3 ships and damaged the rest in a convoy :/.
This is caused by fact, that explosion blast radius in DW is enormously big, and secondly that when weapon auto-detonates when hits the target, the DP are transferred fully only to targeted object. Your sub or other ships can be 10m from it and will be not affected. But when detonation is caused by doctrine order (like in case of proximity fuse) then there is no specific tgt linked to it and blast affects all objects around... And it would be GOOD thing, realistic, only if the blast radius was not so LARGE... :-(

Check the blast effects against other close targets and other weapons and see if you can live with it...

Hmmmm to avoid this, you'd have to make this spawned mine detonate in contact of target, not by proximity fuse. Then it should work, damage the target only. Hm maybe fire it at high speed vertically (from launcher pointing vertically) while torpedo passed underneth tgt hull ? This way the mine would directly hit target's hull and detonate in contact, without proximity fuse.

P.S. I even wondered it wouldn't be good to divide all ships and warheads damage point values in database by factor of ten... this should reduce blast radius to more acceptable values... but damage points for small warheads would single points and probably all collisions (with land or other ships) would be 10x more lethal... :/. Or maybe collision DP are calculated as % of vessel's DP value ?

Yeah, I think the easiest way to go would be to have the torpedo launch a "torp" sim object that has a very high speed and no model (this also has the advantage of not having the launching torpedo start homing on the underkeel mine), that simply goes right at the target ship for greater damage.

I could still have the torpedo proximity fuse...

There is a lot that can be done, actually, balancing what works best from an engineering standpoint and what "looks right" to the player.

I'm confident that I can make *something* work. :)

I am also going to change over all the mine and proximity torpedo sensors in the game from "visual" type sensors to MAD sensors.

For one, I'm not sure why they are visual sensors anyway... I mean, MAD sensors DO work for proximity fuses, the Squal already has a MAD sensor. I just tested the wakehomers using a MAD sensor for their final homing and it works fine.

So, from the player and mission designer perspective, this now means that, combined with changes to the MAD signatures of various boats, some boats that are reputed to have either no mad or very low mad signatures (I will probably make sure that all ships and subs have SOME MAD signature, but some of the british t-boats for example will have very low mad signature) will actually be somewhat unaffected by mines and proximity fusing torpedoes like the ADCAP in underkeel mode and wakehomers, although a dead on shot will still mean a hit.

All through this part of it I'm going to be wondering why SCS made them visual sensors in the first place...? :hmm: