One more thing to do for LwAmi 4.0
 

I would reccomend one more change that would make torpedo attacks much less trivial - proper torpedo seeker cone settings in elevation. I forget about this very simple but fundamental thing for a long time - that currently torpedo seeker cones are limited only in azimuth or horizontal plane. They are not limited in elevation (vertical) at all - can detect target straight up or down. The non-limited sekers have serious impact on torpedo working and gameplay, especially for air-dropped torpedos. Currently, in regard to torpedo seekers, we are playing effectively a 2D game... :-/

How could I forget about this for so long :cry: , this should be changed in LwAmi 2.0 at worst... :oops:

So let's add a third dimension to torpedo-target game.
What is needed to do:

In real life, vertical sensor coverage tends to be smaller than horizontal coverage, in older torps much smaller.

For example, for modern ASW torpedo like A-244S it is 80deg in azimuth and 40deg in elevation:

http://www.eurotorp.com/html/popa244.htm

State of the art MU-90 ASW torpedo has coverage of 120deg horizontal and 70deg vertical.

http://www.naval-technology.com/cont...iles/eurotorp/

Seems that vertical coverage is usually (for modern ones) about half of horizontal coverage.

This would mean for playable torps:

torpedo ........... current ConeAngleXY ....... new ConeAngleXY

ADCAP ...................... 45 ........................ 20-25
UGST ........................ 40 ........................ 20
Mk-50 ....................... 35 ........................ 15-20
the rest * .................. 30 ........................ 15

* (playable USET-80, TEST-71, UGMT-1, MPT-1UE)

(edit: also I would set ADCAPs cone angle to 50-55deg with a doctrine snake reduced to small 5-10deg pattern, to get 60deg effective search cone with barely noticeabe snake - just to see if it's searching or homing. Similar mod for UGST, 45-50deg cone and 10-15deg snake pattern. ConeAngleXY then could be 25-30deg for ADCAP and 25deg for UGST. Those two are the only really modern playable HWTs, the rest can be left with more narrow cones and normal snake pattern.
Non playable torps modified this way would be Spearfish (straight running would add a bit of effective speed to it), DM2A4, maybe Tigerfish... and possible future ones like Black Shark.

For bug related to higher torpedos speeds - the current 55kts limit is not neccesary absolute, in fact torpedo speeds up to 57kts are not bugged and it's possible to get little elevated but STABLE torp speed up to 68kts:

db spd..........result speed

55kts..........55kts ok, same as set
56kts..........56kts ok, same as set
57kts..........57kts ok, same as set

58kts..........59kts higher than set but stable
59kts..........61kts higher than set but stable
60kts..........63kts higher than set but stable
61kts..........66kts higher than set but stable
62kts..........68kts higher than set but stable

63kts..........46 - 69kts oscillation, totally bugged
64kts..........49 - 71kts oscillation, totally bugged
65kts..........55 - 73kts oscillation, totally bugged

(and all higher up to 145kts)

So 59-61kts for ADCAP is possible if needed, also up to 68kts stable speed for Spearfish, Type-89 and APR-3 is possible, just we have to remember that actual speed is higher than set when setting torp speeds in doctrine...

(is it true that Type-89 torp is electric one ? with SUCH speed ? then WOW :o)

(end of edit)


Player launched torps should get realistic seeker cones. Maybe helical search pattern (in place of current snake) could be implemented later... then "circle" switch could select between snake and helical search patterns ?


AI torps could get wide depth bands (wide depth coverage) seekers, or no limits at all (like now) but even AI launched torps should not see targets straight up/down IMO.



Of course it could take a while for us all to get used to this :-). One more thing to remeber while playing. One more factor in torpedo attack/defence.
But reward is once again more realistic and complex gameplay, with more real life tactics and creative tricks for both sides, attacking and defending.

Immediately torpedo depth settings become much more important, just as enable distance, and the best thing is that it would make work of AIR players more difficult - they would detect submarines just as before, but would be much harder to actually kill them, without good plan - just dropping torps on their heads would NOT work everytime :-D. Currently torpedos can detect sub even straight down - if torpedo is circling horizontally at 100ft and a target is
1000ft below - no problem, it sees it and dives. After change, it wouldn't see it as it would be outside it's seeker cone in vertical. To kill it, you'd have to know/guess at what depth it is or launch straight running torp at some distance to cover all depths bands by seeker... or use another tricks. ASW torpedo doctrine could be set to not circle at constant depth, but if target is not detected, slowly go down in a spiral pattern to check greater depths. I believe some ASW torpedo settings in real world does just this - search in a spiral going down. So torpedo dropped with shallow setting would eventually search deep too, but before it gets there spiraling it gives time for sub to get some distance... Or maybe to surface rapidly ABOVE torp search patter while it's turning away... (look at doppler to check this) ? :-) Many new tricks possible.

As a sub driver, you can be much more creative in evading dropped torps - as real life limits are put on torpedos, some real life tactics for getting out of their cone not only in azimuth but also in elevation (vertical) are working.

Killing subs from air platforms was just trivial in stock game. We made it a bit more realistic by setting more realistic parameters to sonobuoys and torpedo seekers. But it's still very easy, no art at all IMO, no skills needed, just drop a torp very close to target, best on it's head, and he's toast and his only defence are randomly working decoys... Now after setting limits to vertical field of view for torpedo seekers, we can bring it once again little closer to reality.


P.S. For people that like sources, here's one that is related:

http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/MONITO...-4/joseph.html

"Guidance

Although sound travels very great distances through water, its erratic path makes underwater warfare very difficult. Water is in fact a hostile medium, the surface of the sea acts as a mirror and in shallow water seabed can also reflect sound.
Active Torpedoes seekers operating near the surface or in shallow waters must therefore be designed to counter such effects. As active detection relies on the Doppler effect to distinguish the real target from surrounding clutter, it follows that a hovering submarine may almost be impossible to detect.
A submarine that detects the active "Pinging" of a torpedo seeker will normally try to escape at top speed, but increasing the speed of the torpedo causes noisy water flow over the acoustic head.
One way to get around this is to run a heavyweight torpedo out to the vicinity of the target at high speed (transit speed) and then carry out the final-attack phase at a speed low enough to make the active seeker effective.
This solution was chosen for the US Navy’s Mk 48 and the Royal Navy Spearfish. As these HWT are wire guided the seeker can transmit target data back down the wire to the parents submarine fire control system. In effect it becomes an off board sensor, and incase the wire breaks the torpedo can be programmed to switch to home on seeker-data only.
The maximum speed at which the sonar is usable has improved in recent years as a result of better signal processing and Dome shaping. A Torpedo acquisition range is set largely by its ping rate, while the aspect angle of the seeker defines the band depth which it "sees" at any moment.
Torpedoes with narrow depth-bands usually follows helical search path/patterns whereas those with broader depth bands will seek a greater volume at any fixed depth, usually following a Sinuous (snake like) pattern.
Against surface targets passive seekers can be used, because the ship emit considerable noise from propellers and bow-waves, but is no longer considered good enough to home onto modern diesel-electric submarines (SSK) even when they are snorkeling and therefore making maximum noise.
To improve detection it would be necessary to go to lower frequencies with long wavelengths, too long for torpedoes seeker, This reason led the US navy to believe that active seeking was the only way to counter SSK. Both active and passive seekers are limited to the higher frequencies and so have relative short ranges. Wire guidance is therefore necessary to extend the effective range by providing midcourse guidance.
In its simplest form the wire provides a one way link to allow the torpedo to be corrected, but most modern torpedoes uses a two way wire to allow the torpedo to feed back its own data to the fire control system. This allows the operator to defeat countermeasures such as bubble screens or noisemakers."

by the way, may be interesting read, but I don't have time know to try it:

http://www.its-noesis.com/publicatio...do_defense.pdf

also

http://www.its-noesis.com/publicatio...rwater_aaw.pdf

and maybe the rest?

http://www.its-noesis.com/publications/pdf/

Sweet, sweet music! :rock:

You guys are incredible... truly amazing mod-effort :up:


Cheers Porphy

Sounds great, and with the ATCM, it won't have a serious balance or playability tradeoff. :up:

I've got this "on the fire" guys. :cool:

Thanks, Ami.

I knew there was a reason I was waiting to do the final physics edit to the database. Wow... I've got a lot to do.

No problem, eh?

Cheers,
David

In terms of the snaking design, here is how I have it designed right now.

The ADCAP will not snake in active mode at all, and will have a wide aspect seeker. In passive mode, it will retain the wide seeker dimensions, but with a wide snake pattern of about 45 degrees.

The UGST, Spearfish, and DM 2A4 will have a reduced to 15 degrees. All other torpedoes will retain 30 degree snake.

In terms of modding the APR family function... I dunno, with the speed range bug in 1.03, I can't really have it loitering about, so it will probably have to be simply a very fast, very loud, deep diving torpedo, so it's good news about the extra speed we can get. In terms of the APR used in the Stallion mod, I like the idea of having it be a straight runner, if only to have it differentiate from the SS-N-27, and since it's all hypothetical anyway... I feel we can take this liscence.

The vertical limits on the torpedo seeker sounds like a wonderful change. I also like the idea of giving the AI a bit of a hand by not limiting it quite so much for them. However, this does raise one question, in which catagory do the torpedoes for the FFG AI MH60 and SUBROCS fall? If the torpedo seekers are reduced for these weapons, they will go from being marginally effective to not really effective at all (which of course is why they aren't really carried in a non-nuclear navy).

The torpedo seekers are the last thing to do on my list of torpedo changes... so we've got a bit of time to think about these issues.

Also, I am currently thinking about using the snake/circle selector button on the wireguided torpedoes to select between ASuW-only mode (under keel detonation fusing for the ADCAP and wakehoming mode for the UGST and 71nk). Other torpedoes will retain the snake and circle selection buttons.

The loss of the preset circle function will be compensated for by the ability to select reattack features using the enable button when the torpedo is on the wire. I'm trying to design this mod to pack as many features into the available interface space as possible to account for 85% of the way these weapons are used in game (or I hope will be when LWAMI4 is released), so my assumption here is that long range shots are done predominately using the straightrunning/snake function.

In all my time playing DW, I've never fired anything other than a airdropped torpedo using the circle search, then again, I don't fire torpedoes unless I know where they are going and what I want them to do when they get there, which is 100% of the time kill something (missiles are a different thing, however...).

Ah, I'll add the helical search pattern!

Ok, I'm going to replace the circle search pattern with a helical pattern that oscillates between 200-400ft below the set search depth (limited by the floor of the torpedo) and 200-400ft above the set search pattern (limited by the ceiling).

This fix, along with the verticle limits to the seeker cones will be for any weapon employed by the player either directly or indirectly (FFG AI MH60 or SUBROC).

Only the helical search pattern will be applied to strictly AI torpedoes (although some kind of broad limit on the AI verticle seeker dimensions may be employed).

Cheers,
David

Thanks guys. Mind boggling how many small changes that imrpove gameplay can be made. Will 4.0 include new platforms also?

PD

Ok, I've done the helix search pattern. That was easy. :cool:

Cheers,
David

I do like the idea in principle. However from an Airedale point of view I have some minor objections/problems to mention.

Since MAD/SAD are not able (unlike in Reality) to give you a pretty good clue how deep the sub is and since the GRAMs for the buoys are pretty small and all that, the only way of having at least a rough estimate where the sub is, would be by utilizing a layer. Means you can either say it is above or below the layer - and thats it.

If you reduce the seeker cones for the airborne torps you might render the platform ineffective or at least cripple it seriously. For example the Helo can carry as much as 3 torps (at max) - now given an area without a layer the helo might drop all 3 torps on one sub and still miss because he has absolutly no clue about the depth of the sub. And rearming takes one hell of a time. The P-3 is slightly better off in the torps load department, but restricted in other ways.

Anyway, bottom line for me ... the introduction of a vertical limit sounds like an interesting addition, however I would vote for a more expanded seeker cone on the air dropped torpedos (hey they are already at a disadvantage because you never have a wire) to keep the balance and avoid rendering the platforms ineffective.

Cheers
OS

I've already got the Helix search function done.

The torpedo will search the searchdepth +/- 400ft, unless you limit it with the ceiling and floor functions, which you can also do if you feel that you have the depth of the contact more dialed in.

The snake function for all torpedoes will remain the same (in case you REALLY think you have the depth dialed in, this is the most direct and efficient way to attack).

The APR-3 that is dropped by the Stallion in LWAMI 4 will feature a *verticle* snake only, but will run straight along its initial bearing.

Cheers,
David

PS Due to the physics engine, some of the faster torpedoes have trouble changing depth and sometimes fight to get their depth control at the extremes of the oscillation, but this is probably realistic, and it works itself out... a 55kts mk50 has very small control surfaces for the speed and mass of the weapon (at least it appears to me). However, it works out that the torpedoes spend more time around the extremes of the oscillation, so it would probably be in the players best interest to dial the floor and ceiling for the search in as well as possible (at this point, other than to use the ceiling function to set the ASuW safety, I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave it so that the ceiling and floor only affect the search and not target tracking, so you can use them to dial in the helix search pattern and not worry that the target will go above or below that depth on evasion, other than surface, which would engage the ASuW safety).

Well DW just steped to another level! Good work!:up:

Only one thing bother me! How to improve that strange sub movement while surfacing, etc.

Pray to the Executive Management of Sonalysts. :damn: :lol: :p

One nice side effect of the helix pattern is that when the torpedoes start to home on their targets, they tend to be at a very high angle of attack, which gives the advantage of maximizing the surface area of the submarine explosed to their seekers when searching as well as giving them better attack geometry to avoid countermeasures.

This effect is even greater in faster torpedoes that tend to make their ascents and descents rapidly and then "coast" into their minimum or maximum depth before changing direction.

Interestingly, the Mk50, when it is very near the surface, will take a small movement upward before diving down very steeply... not at all intentional, and probably not something I can get rid of, but potentially actually useful.

Also, I'm convinced the changes to the physics model necessary for 1.04 will address this, so for the time being I am no too concerned, and will make changes as the patches come out, especially because the lighter and slightly slower Mk 54 makes a very smooth transition in a near perfect oscillation when moving in the helix pattern. I have tried to swap out doctrines and different combinations of things to no avail... so I think there is some parameters in the physics different between the torpedoes in the database I didn't check like drag, etc.

In any case, the actual depth transitions are probably about the same, its just the angles of attack for the torpedoes are noticably different, leading it to appear their transitional movements are more dissimilar than they really are.

Both are extremely lethal it would appear if used properly, so I think you airdales will be fine, Oneshot. :) :know: