LuftWolf and Amizaur's Realism Mod Poll #9: The Mavpoon
 

I think we are all familiar with the issues that many of us have with the P-3 loadout options, so I'll cut right to the chase.

We can't have an ASuW capable version of the Harpoon on the P-3 at this time, sorry. The interface is completely wrong for converting the missile to a Harpoon and unless someone finds something that everyone else has missed, it's not ever going to happen.

The Maverick's ability to home and kill stuff underwater is gone, and that's really good. To make it less of a magic weapon (seeing as it's seeker still doesn't require a lock for the missile to home from launch, meaing the missile with 30nm range had Over the Horizon launch capability), and to bring the weapon more inline with it's actual usage constraints, we reduced the range of the missile in LWAMI 3.xx to 25km (as it turns out we actually shorted it a little over it's actual range, but this is fairly minor and will be corrected).

So, everything's good right? Nope.

Because people who I count on to give me good feedback from games are telling me that the P-3 now doesn't have proper ASuW capability, at least not against anything with proper SAM defenses... which is true, the P-3 must now put itself well within the kill radius of most ships equipped with any kind of missile defenses.

So the question is, now that the whole issue of killing submerged targets is out of the way, do you want the Maverick to be a Maverick or a Mavpoon?

A realistic Mav. I guess I just like realism. I think in real life the P-3 wouldn't be tasked with ASuW against a real powerful target, IIRC the only reason the P-3 was given the Harpoon was for use against surfaced subs (a possablity back in the days of the Echo II and Juliett). I think in real life a P-3 wouldn't be risked on an attack against a destroyer or something where they might get jumped by a couple of MiGs or Mirages, leave the ASuW strikes to the Fighter/Attack pilots.

I wonder if there will ever be a way to just include/make the Harpoon as a loadable weapon for P-3. :hmm:

At any rate, I vote Maverick performs as in real life.

Sea Demon

Even if you did get a harpoon on it, they're easy to shoot down, so the P-3 loses nothing by going with a Maverick.

If you can replace the SLAM with a Harpoon though, I'd still do it.

Well I voted for giving the Maverick a tad more range. That way you can at least attempt a shot against a vessel which has no SAMs (but is protected by SAM equipped ships) without exposing the Launching Platform to counter fire. The question if the Maverick makes it through is another one.

As far as Harpoon being useless ... well if the Missile would work as advertised ... i.e. sea-skimming, terminal pop-up maneuver I would think that it has a reasonable chance to actually hit something.

Bottom line, with the increasing of the range the Mav gets out of being totally useless except against the odd surfaced sub or totally unprotected ship (that means no SAM ships within 25nm of it) to at least giving you the ability to try a Surface attack without putting the launcher in a certain death situation.

P.S. : Having a real Harpoon would be great nevertheless ...

I think the changes have to be more extensive than merely increasing the range. I'm all for the maverick being "turned into" the harpoon, graphics or not, but not the half-assed thing SCS originally stuck us with. For that matter, I don't quite like the thing you've modded it to be either, though it's better.


I can live with no waypoints, I can live with a limited firing cone, I can live with them looking like mavericks, but then I want them to perform the rest quite exactly like the harpoon does. And I can leave strikes to the slam. (Not quite ER, is it?)

(This might affect strike configurations of some planes, e.g. F-16s)

The Maverick interface is not satisfactory.

1) You can't set a Launch Bearing

2) There is no way to set the enable and shut down points, the missile will just behave exactly like a Maverick with a longer range and a radar seeker, but a slower, seaskimmer with a slightly larger warhead. In other words, a Mavpoon but with the specs of a Harpoon behaving like a Maverick.

The SLAM-ER is not satisfactory either

3) You can't set an enable point, the missile will always shut down at the last waypoint

At this point, the choice is SLAM-ER and Maverick or SLAM-ER and Mavpoon.

I wish I could do something but unless I've missed something, I can't. :-?

I am all for having Harpoons as part of the loadout (since the P-3 carries them in real life) and for enhancing the performance of the missile (for example, by reducing its radar sig so that it isn't detected until it is very close)

Mavpoon, just to give the P3 a reasonable ASuW capability (gives more flexibility for mission design). Right now, even if the SAM doesn't kill you, the countermeasures autopilot probably will (or it will at least ensure that you can't get out of range of the ship).

I think it should be left as is. A Mavpoon would be a poor compromise.

This is supposed to be a realism mo, and if Harpoon isn't available, until SCS do something about it I think we shoudl just leave it alone.

The Maverick already has a 50 mile range. Leave it like that.

Just bombard SCS to change the loadout for the next patch. I would have thought that would have been the easiest of anything to change.

I thought the 50-mile Mav was the Mavpoon.

In the current mod, the range is only about 20nm....

Yeah, in the LwAmi Mod the Maverick has only a range of 25km (or was it 25nm) ... at least pretty close.

It's 25km right now... I want to make that a bit more for the next version at least.

The question is to give it unreasonably large range (given the missile itself) or leave it as more or less a modelling of the actual Maverick.

If its going to act like an Harpoon I say to give it the range of an Harpoon.
Ok maybe not the full range of the Harpoon but a 60-65% should be good.

Well, what if it behaves nothing at all like a Harpoon, and simply a Maverick with a long range and Seeker of All Seeing Wisdom? :-j

No matter what I do to the Maverick, it will probably never be anything but a Maverick. :(