LWAMI decoy efficiency

[Fizanko]

I am not really new to Dangerous Waters, but i am totally new to mods made for it .

Here is the situation :
In the mission editor i made a simple meeting battle between me in a Seawolf and +/- at 25nm 2 chinese subs.

In original Dangerous Waters, i detect and engage the enemy subs by firing then diving under the thermal layer while changing direction and after +/- 5 mk48 both subs are history, they didn't launched a single torpedo.
In the replay i can see that while few of the 5 torpedoes were evaded thanks to some chinese decoys, but they could not stop all of them and so the 2 enemy subs ended being hit and sunk.
Usual behaviour and expected result .

With LWAMI, i start the same test mission, and the difference in AI reaction is obvious, as they don't let me sink them in peace, they fire back, making the battle a bit less slow paced. Fortunately i manage to evade their torpedoes , and they manage to evade mine. Not a problem, i have more in stock... that they evade as well ?
After more than 10 torpedoes as i ceased to count, always no single enemy sub explosion.
Then one new mk48 finally managed to reach one of the 2 subs.

All this time i was evading their own torpedoes, finding a bit strange to be honest that i was managing to evade that much of them in a single battle, anyways at that time i put that on my good luck.

As the remaining enemy sub was always moving, i quickly noticed that it ended floating at +/- 3000 nm from my Seawolf, i launched more mk48 as soon as i was sure it was really there, and one of the mk48 was a successfull hit.

It was pretty intense to see the AI getting that aggressive with LWAMI, i enjoyed that part.
But the amount of torpedoes that i launched without hitting anything was a bit more of a concern to me.

After watching the replay, i could see what happened : the decoys launched by the chinese subs were incredibly efficient, to a point i never saw in the original DW.
And to be honest, even my own decoys were surprising me, as in original DW there would have been no way some of the decoys i launched would have saved my hull for that long.

So is it normal that decoys (both player and enemy) are that much efficient in LWAMI 3.09, or have i installed the mod wrongly ?

[Molon Labe]

In both stock DW and LWAMI, active decoys have an ASL of 100 and an "effectiveness" of 50%. To be completely honest, I don't know if "effectiveness" in the DB has any effect on decoys, this is used to abstract the failure rate of SAMs and AAMs from being spoofed/jammed/outmanuevered. In any case, the only difference in the active decoy is that in stock DW you can have explosions on decoys if you set the .ini to have them, while in LWAMI the .ini effects only towed decoys, so explosions on expendable decoys never occur. So, it's not changes to the decoys that are causing what you've experienced.

There are 3 possible factors that are lowering your PK in LWAMI that I can think of:

You may be experiencing a greater rate of decoy acquisition if your target is relatively small, because ASLs for smaller subs are smaller in LWAMI 3.09 than they are in stock DW. This means it is more likely the torpedo will "see" the decoy first, especially if the sub is at bow/stern aspect. The Kilo is about the largest sub I would call "small" enough for this to happen.

Another thing to consider is that AI evasion doctrines have been significantly improved in earlier versions of LWAMI. This means your PK for torpedoes will be very low unless you continue to track your target during its evasion and resteer accordingly. AI subs can usually successfully evade an incoming torpedo that they hear coming that is not being resteered.

A third factor that may be influencing your PK is the smaller acquisition range of LWAMI torpedoes, especially for older or less advanced weapons. A smaller acquisition range means accuracy is more important, so "spray and pray" tactics are much less effective in LWAMI than they are in stock DW (where all torpedoes have an acquisition range of 2nm). You will be more successful with 1-2 torpedoes fired at an accurate solution and resteered during evasion than you will be with firing a "spread" of torpedoes and letting them run.

[Fizanko]

Ah i see and understand better, thank you for the explanation about this decoy puzzle.

The chinese (i never remember the exact name of this class) sub is indeed a small one, so it may enter in the 1st category you mention, as it may then have benefited more from the decoy for the torpedoes acquisition, explaining why it was so hard for my dozen of successive torpedoes to catch them over their decoy.

After posting the message, i tested a bit more and in the replay i noticed that the evasion manoeuvers from the AI subs are a lot more smarter than, instead of basically run away in the direction the torpedo was originally going like in original Dangerous Waters (and get killed easier), they mimic more the human-like sub by changing their direction. That's really a great job to have made the AI being able to do that.

For the 3rd possibility, i don't think it was the case there, because i set the torpedoes "enabling" myself to be sure it begin to ping around only when close to the location i believe the enemy sub really is, judging from the various TMA results.

But anyways, that's a fantastic job LWAMI has done to improved the aggressivity and combat skill of the AI in such a believable way.

I will have to modify my usual tactics now, as it seems with the changes from LWAMI they are no more as efficient as before, that's great as it feels like a new sim.

Can't believe i have not tried LWAMI earlier instead of staying a whole year since i bought Dangerous Waters with the stock game database and settings.

[Fizanko]

A bit more testing about this, and i think there is a real problem of gameplay.

A 2 on 2 with me as a seaworlf and another AI seawolf versus 2 chinese HAN SSN.

I was able to catch the first HAN on my waterfall and other sonars , track it and destroyed it after i fired 4 torpedoes (not counting the ones fired by the other AI seawolf that the HAN evaded) to it .

Moving around i detected the second HAN and tracked it perfectly (as in the replay it was always exactly where i pinpointed it in my sonars), while my seawolf ally was useless this time and never launched anything to it.
And i sunk it after no less than 13 torpedoes from my seawolf !

Luckily for me, the HAN never detected me apparently or never bothered to launch a single torpedo to me for some reason.

Watching the replay , each time the HAN launched a decoy, everytime a torpedo decided to go for it even when the HAN was not apparently out of the torpedoe tracking cone.

I believe the 13th torpedo finally got it because it may have run out either out of decoy or out of luck. But i frankly believe 13 torpedoes to sink a single HAN is a bit too much, even if the HAN is a small sub and according to what you mentionned it has a small ASL, it "feels" wrong for such a sub to evade that much torpedoes that are launched to the correctly pinpointed position of such sub.

[goldorak]

Man those mark 48 adcaps have steering capability. Use it !!!!!
Launching a torpedo and hoping for the best is not the best tactics.
You have to look at broadband and narrowband to see when and where the HAN launches the countermesures, eventually you will triangulate the position of the countermesure so has to have a precise fix on the HAN. Before the torpedo enters a zone plenty with countermeasures, disable the sensors so that the mk 48 won't be spoofed. Once the cm are behind the torpedo, reenable it. In the meantime you'll continue to refine your TMA and steer the torpedo on the most currrent solution.

Ps: 2 torpedoes should be more than enough to sink the HAN.
Expending 13 torpedoes is just preposterous. What are you going to do when instead of the HAN you'll go up against an Akula 2 ?

[Molon Labe]

Originally Posted by Fizanko

A bit more testing about this, and i think there is a real problem of gameplay.

A 2 on 2 with me as a seaworlf and another AI seawolf versus 2 chinese HAN SSN.

I was able to catch the first HAN on my waterfall and other sonars , track it and destroyed it after i fired 4 torpedoes (not counting the ones fired by the other AI seawolf that the HAN evaded) to it .

Moving around i detected the second HAN and tracked it perfectly (as in the replay it was always exactly where i pinpointed it in my sonars), while my seawolf ally was useless this time and never launched anything to it.
And i sunk it after no less than 13 torpedoes from my seawolf !

Luckily for me, the HAN never detected me apparently or never bothered to launch a single torpedo to me for some reason.

Watching the replay , each time the HAN launched a decoy, everytime a torpedo decided to go for it even when the HAN was not apparently out of the torpedoe tracking cone.

I believe the 13th torpedo finally got it because it may have run out either out of decoy or out of luck. But i frankly believe 13 torpedoes to sink a single HAN is a bit too much, even if the HAN is a small sub and according to what you mentionned it has a small ASL, it "feels" wrong for such a sub to evade that much torpedoes that are launched to the correctly pinpointed position of such sub.

I'd like to run a test later to make absolutely sure this isn't a 3.09 issue. What acoustic conditions did you have?

[Molon Labe]

I just ran a test, using surface duct conditions, my SW vs. 2 Han SSNs. Fired one two-torp salvoes at each, and killed both. The torps did do some decoy chasing, but managed to acquire the real target within about 1nm and in one case ignored a decoy in front of it when the target was off to the side, at side aspect. I don't think anything's broken.

Initial evasion began at about 4.5nm. Torps enabled shortly after. I did a better job with the initial resteer on the southern group, I would consider the late reaction in the north to be an error on my part:


this is the northern sub after acquisition. The torp picked him up after passing the previous decoy, ignoring the decoy just released:


Here's the southern sub. The sub manages to break the lock briefly with the nearest decoy, because the torp had to sweep over the decoy to follow the sub through the turn. But the torp snaps the sub back up immediately on the other side of the decoy: