ACTUV Scoring Structure

[Gargamel]

From the Manual:

You LOSE a point for every 10 seconds you spend at full throttle. (This interval is scaled for progressively lower speeds. As speed decreases, the time between point deductions increases.)

From Neal's FAQ:

- fuel pts are decremented 1 point for every 10 seconds at max speed; the time to lose a point increases as the inverse of the square of the speed / max speed

I took this info and charted it out. I wanted to see which sub's were penalized the most for using higher speeds.

The following chart shows Pt's penalized per ten seconds of fuel usage vs ship speed. The lower the number, the less the penalty:



If you can't see it, the Remora and Gator have the same line.

Data:




As you can see, certain subs get a far greater fuel penalty at increasingly higher speeds.

Then from the manual:

• In most missions you RECEIVE 200 points for every minute you hold the SSK on MF /EO/IR/or Radar.
• In most missions you RECEIVE 300 points for every minute you hold the SSK on High Frequency Active Sonar (HF).
• If you hold the SSK on multiple sensors, you get the combined points for all sensors that hold the contact.

So then if we look at our Speed Penalty / minute vs type of Sensor, we get these charts:



This shows how many points per minute we get for various speed levels after taking the penalty/10 seconds into consideration.

So if you read the rules, You get the HF and MF bonuses for using both sensors. So (and I know this is making you nuc sim fan boys holding your head muttering obscenities) if you leave your Active sonar on after you have established contact, you will be practically doubling your score.

This does not take into consideration the pings per minute penalty (You get penalized 1 point per ping), but when you are getting a base of 200 pts for MF tracking, I can't imagine it would take more than 6-10 pings per minute to maintain contact. A fair trade in my opinion. I could get into speed vs MF bonus vs pings per minute, but the graphs would end up 3 dimensional and a real pain to describe here, so I decided to skip it and assume the amount of pings required to hold contact would be the same across all platforms, up to their maximum usable speed, so the differences would be negligible.

So looking at the most efficient ACTUV's, Remora and Gator, we discover that the Gator does not have an active MF system at all. So it looks like the Remora has the potential to be the highest scoring ACTUV.

But...

That's not considering the SSK's actions. If it reacts adversely to the active sonar, then you may end up losing more on the Remora since you will be running around at higher speeds, while the Gator usually just sits behind the SSK using its long range HF. If the Remora can keep the SSK in HF range and under it's usable speed cap (15 kts), I think the Remora would be the best ACTUV, based on the scoring system.

So what's all this mean? Well basically it shows that finding and holding contact is far more valuable than fuel conservation or EM stealth. Getting 200 points per minute for maintaining contact at long range is a far greater bonus than the 6 points per minute fuel penalty and the (guesstimating) 12 points per minute continuous sonar usage penalty. Even worse case scenario, you are earning about 182 pts/min for just maintaining contact, where as a quieter, more fuel efficient approach just accrues fuel penalties.

You start the game with 2000 Bonus points: 1000 bonus points for MF High Frequency Active Sonar (MF) and 1000 bonus points for fuel.

To be complete, this means you can actively ping 1000 times, assuming 12 pings a minute (1 every 5 seconds), or actively run your sonar for 83 minutes and 20 seconds before losing that bonus. You can then run at Full speed for 2 hours and 47 minutes before running out of fuel bonus.

[Molon Labe]

Thanks for that!

I'm a bit concerned about the MF active rule... It doesn't really give you an incentive not to use it a lot... I wonder if that's as intended.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

Thanks for that!

No prob. I love crunching numbers like this.

I'm a bit concerned about the MF active rule... It doesn't really give you an incentive not to use it a lot... I wonder if that's as intended.

I got thinking about that too. I wondered, like you, how accurate the scoring system is to the intended real world application of ACTUV. Google is my friend, Excerpts from the GAO website:

https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=2c...f8de5a09560d70

The Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program seeks to develop and demonstrate an independently deploying unmanned surface vessel optimized to provide continuous overt trail of threat submarines

Notice the highlighted part. That screams using your active sonar.

Also:

It is not intended as an ASW search capability. ACTUV relies on conventional force structure to provide a target cue, but then prevents those search assets from being tied up in intensive trail operations.

As the missions have been showing, the idea is for conventional assets (SOSUS, SSN, SSBN, ASW, etc) to make contact with the target, and then hand over control to the ACTUV platform. This explains why the active sonar penalty is so small. Since the asset has handed off to ACTUV, there is little threat to the original asset, so letting them know they've been found is of little concern. In the short term at least.

That also probably rules out the anti-narcosub (ANSW? ) theory we had before. Once a primary asset has contact with a narcosub, they are very unlikely to hand off to a drone for contact. Most likely they will either prosecute right then, or hand off to another asset to immediately prosecute. The only scenario I can think of where ACTUV would play a role in ANSW, is where a SSN sits off the the South American Coast, hands off to ACTUV, and let's the drone track the target till they get into waters that fall within US jurisdiction.

• Operations from a shore base
• High system reliability for long duration missions in the harsh maritime environment without opportunity for underway human maintenance or repair

......

• Sufficient range for independent theater or global deployment
• Extended loiter endurance to support forward operational prepositioning
• Speed, maneuverability, and endurance advantage over target set

So this also explains why the fuel penalty is so low. These things are supposed to be designed to have global range. I'm really curious as to the power plant now. Endurance over a SSK after deploying from half a world away? Impressive for a non-nuclear platform.

[CCIP]

In that case it does make the Shark's design rather odd, since it doesn't exactly have an MF setup that would facilitate constant tracking. It's almost impossible for it to keep a target locked up with the MF. The others that possess an MF sonar, though, certainly do seem like constant-ping platforms, especially given the limited (and probably realistic) HF capability.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by CCIP

especially given the limited (and probably realistic) HF capability.

Yeah, I wondered about the gator's HF range. 3k? I know I don't know a lot about the systems, but I would have to imagine it's something revolutionary, akin to the AEGIS radar system in it's power output. Slapping on even a 90' or 120' forward looking MF active, while even reducing the HF to 2k would make that the ideal platform.

[CCIP]

Hm, by the way, I'm not seeing a multiple sensor bonus for maintaining both HF and MF at the same time while playing with the Remora here. I do get points for establishing MF contact, but continuous pinging only takes away the 1 point per ping. Are you sure that actually counts as continuous contact? My understanding is that sonar pings are treated as "snapshots", which they are, and will only give you points provided you don't have the sub on HF...

[Gargamel]

Doing some work on a sprint and drift strategy, I came up with this interesting chart.



Assuming you have maximum sensor contact on a target (Sensor angle was not considered), it gives you how many points, based on our recent 5 minute findings (and not the written scoring rules), you will earn in the next five minutes given your current speed.

One major note, We have shown that MF scoring continues into the red zone, but that gets really complicated to model in this simple chart, so it assumes that when your speeding, you have lost contact.

Green Indicates maximum scoring with both (or only) sensor, yellow is one sensor, and Red is no sensors.


Couple quick observations from this chart:

1) Once a Gator or Triton locks onto the SSK, it should be practically impossible to shake it off. The maximum sensor speed is greater than the max SSK speed.

2) The Remora is a true sprint and drift boat for intial acquisition, but once locked, it will be difficult to shake. Even if the SSK goes Flank, the Remora can chug along at 7-8 knots tracking it until it too can sprint to keep up.

3) For the Remora and Seahorse, it is imperative to regain HF ASAP, as they cannot be competitive for long with only MF.

4) The triton should be the hands down winner here, from this chart at least, as it can score max points at any speed the SSK can go. But looking at the sensor profile, it requires a deft hand to keep it locked down the whole time.


EDIT: PIC Fixed, had wrong Triton Sensor speeds input. math was right, I was just using bad data. chart is now fixed.

[Gargamel]

So, taking the above data, I compared Speed vs Range and it's effects on the score per 5 minutes for the Seahorse Platform. I will also do Triton and Remora, but I won't do Gator and Shark. Gator is either in the zone or not, and Shark's ranges depend on which way your pointing so it won't be accurate.

And while some may find this chart very intuitive, and ask why we even need it, I did it just to do it. Some may find it useful as It helps them visual the scoring 'bubble' each platform can operate in.

And to be honest, it was kinda fun, trying to work out the following formula was interesting. This had to go in each cell you see:

=IF(CP$2<=$B$33; IF($A14 <= $B$32;1500-(30/(($B$29/$A14)^2)); IF($A14 <=$B$30 ; 500-(30/(($B$29/$A14)^2)); -30/(($B$29/$A14)^2) ));IF(CP$2 <=$B$31;IF($A14 <= $B$30 ; 500-(30/(($B$29/$A14)^2)); -30/(($B$29/$A14)^2) );-30/(($B$29/$A14)^2)))

So for seahorse we get:



Each box is 50 yds, upto 7500 yds out. Sorry bout the hash marks, but when you shrink a number to less than it can show, you get a #, hence why it looks darkened.



Please comment on these, if anybody wants, I can email them the spreadsheet I've been playing with so they can mess around with my numbers.

[Molon Labe]

Gargamel, I think you're right about MF, IR, EO, and Radar not stacking. See this from the debrief file:

Goals
Critical
ACTUV contact on SSK for 30min,Complete,0
Non-Critical
HF contact - 1 minute,Complete,14700
MF/RDR/EO contact - 1 minute,Complete,12000
MF Active Bonus,Complete,986
Fuel Bonus,Complete,918

What we see here is that the scoring triggers are Event Triggers that fire every minute they return True, and that MF, Radar, and EO are all part of the same trigger.

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by Molon Labe

Gargamel, I think you're right about MF, IR, EO, and Radar not stacking. See this from the debrief file:



What we see here is that the scoring triggers are Event Triggers that fire every minute they return True, and that MF, Radar, and EO are all part of the same trigger.

Hmm.. then yeah... forcing them to the surface is actually a disadvantage to you, as you cn no longer get the stacked HF + MF score, but just the MF/IR/EO/RDR score.

Not sure how forcing them to the surface is an option anyways

[Molon Labe]

Well, I think I've pretty much done as well as I'm going to do on all of these (except Gator, I've only played it once and I'm not going back). And it's left me a bit disappointed with the scoring structure.

As was pointed out earlier in this thread, the points given for maintaining contact on both HF and MF are so high in comparison to the fuel and pinging penalties that the decision-making "flowchart" is very straightforward. If you don't have contact on both sensors, getting contact is always your highest priority (other than avoiding proximity to surface traffic), so you never need to concern yourself with speed settings or MF sonar use until you have continuous contact on both sensors. From a gaming point of view, the lack of tradeoffs make it rather uninteresting. From a tactical research point of view, it makes me wonder what DARPA needs us for.... why use crowdsourcing to discover "optimal" tactics when the optimal approach is so obvious?