[RESOLVED] Thank God, my aircraft are flying OVER the SAM Belt!!!!

[BeirutDude]

Hi Al

That's definitely an interesting set of examples.

If possible, can you please open a new thread for each of them, together with a suitable pre-action save, so that we can track and investigate them individually?

Sure, I'm about to head out for a week long conference but I can replay the scenario from my "Just before action" save and then Post some examples with a save from that time period. I have one or two saves from the above but not extensive.

Looking at the first example, it looks like what you would like to see is that friendly aircraft avoid AAW bubbles (not just 2D areas; it may be perfectly safe to fly over a SHORADS ceiling, for example) when their mission does not dictate it. However, presumably you want this rule to be flexible and toggable because in many cases you do want them to step into harm's way in order to do their job.

So not all "Bubbles" the SEAD/Strike aircraft certainly need to go into harms way to do their job, the frustration is loosing control of the aircraft at the stage when they "Engage Defensive/Offensive." I see a few things I think can be done for this...

1. I think this could be as simple as allowing the player to regain control of the aircraft by having a toggle button that allows the player to toggle off the algorithm and take direct control (In small scenarios or ones where the player is taking phased actions that may be enough). Just let the player control their aircraft rather than taking them away. Also I wouldn't do this for all time. a set timeframe, like five (5) minutes. Then the player has the best of both worlds, an automated evasion, but control when they need it.

2. For the algorithm, an evaluation of known SAM density (to the unit) when the "Engaged Defensive" algorithm kicks in. Currently, to avoid the SAMs the aircraft are corkscrewing toward the denser SAM areas to put the nose toward the SAMs. Now I do recognize you might have to place the nose toward a heat seeker to avoid a lock on but in general they should be flying away from the greatest SAM density.

3. Evaluation of nearby terrain. Once again in this example the aircraft flew OVER a mountain (Mount Herman!!!!) to avoid a SAM, again the opposite of what it should be doing. So it seems to me a tweak to have the aircraft seek out the lowest ground near the aircraft's location would improve the algorithm's performance.

So we are probably looking at a doctrine setting? Something like "Avoid AAW threat coverage" ?

Could be, but again, I think it could be as simple as just giving the player the toggle suggested above. I could have saved about 4 out of 6 aircraft shot down if I could have just gotten control of them for a short time.

And within it you would have a series of values:

1) "Never": This would be the default? In order to maintain backwards compatibility with existing behaviors & scenarios?

2) "As dictated by mission": So for example if the aircraft is tasked with destroying a certain SAM site, by necessity go for it. Or if it's on a supprot mission and one of the legs is inside the threat zone, go for it. Otherwise plot around it.

3) Always: No matter what you are tasked to do, always stay clear of danger. This would make sense for certain HVAs like tankers, C4ISTAR aircraft etc. But even in that case sometimes you do need a certain asset to remain in place regardless of the threat (hence the need to have this toggable).

4) Some other value?

In all cases a manual-plotted course (or strike logic-plotted course) would override this setting.

All of that sounds promising, BUT this is the next frustration. The loadout mission profile is an aircraft killer!!!!!! Again, I fly a SEAD mission up the Bekaa Valley, The F-16I with an AGM-88A HARM and SkyShield DECM Pod has a High-Medium-High profile, but that's not desirable for a flight pattern where I want to fly Low-Low-Low until I am out of the "Hot Zone" or "SAM Kill Zone" and then they can RTB at a waypoint. so some suggestions here

In Doctrine...
1. "Ignore Mission Profile" Yes/No. Default the no to Low-Low-Low and then let the player set up their strike profile using waypoints and altitudes.
2. Adding a few buttons on waypoints.
a. RTB (Flight Path), Keeps aircraft at waypoint designated flight path and course when it RTBs, I.e. no more popping up to 12 KFT or even 36 KFT right in front of the very SAMs you've flown in at 1 KFT to engage.
b. RTB (Mission Profile), Reinstates the default mission profile and takes the aircraft home as normal.
c. Launch Weapons/RTB, Launches weapons at targets from that waypoint and then RTBs to the mission profile set for the mission. So if "Ignore Mission Profile" is set to "YES" (off) the RTB defaults to the "Flight Path" but if it is set to "NO" it RTBs defaults to the Mission Profile altitude.

IMHO, this gives the player the best of both worlds If you're launching a stand off strike and want to save fuel the mission profile is it, but if you need to get in close to launch with limited OPFOR reaction time then a tailored mission would work. So let the players tailor those strike profiles they want to and let the game do the rest.

I think some of this is the "Mission Planner" I've seen players asking for.

I can quickly imagine a few issues with having this logic:

1) Each individual aircraft would need to regularly re-evaluate their entire flight paths for bingo/joker considerations, both the ingress and egress routes. If you thought navigation/pathfinding is currently CPU-taxing, imagine a 100x increase. (Also: Your tankers now need to be a lot closer to the front line)

Yes, I can see this might cause more CPU calculations, but maybe not if we just leave some of these critical issues to the player.

2) You have to consider the effect on carefully planned air operations. That complex strike you are putting together? Disrupted. That "wall of Eagles" you are putting up in order to sweep the air opposition? Thrown all over the place. Some players already complain when their aicraft scatter right and left because of an incoming missile; now picture the same scattering happening merely upon stepping into an estimated AAW ring.

Agreed the scattering is an issue I brought up, but I've seen "groups" where one aircraft decides to engage and is 100-120 km from their wingman(men). Keeping aircraft together is an issue. I've had to break up groups in flight because of this.

3) How do you define the threat bubble for enemy aircraft? SAMs are fairly simple; draw the AAW max-range ring and "DO NOT STEP IN". What about the equivalent ring for an enemy aircraft? If you simply copy the SAM logic, your orbiting AWACS can be ambushed by a fast incoming fighter.
OTOH, if you counter this by saying "consider the AAW threat bubble to be 1.5x or 2x of the AAW range ring" (to give your planes enough slack to run away), you can very easily find yourself in the situation that the enemy effectively paralyzes your airforce by having just a few widely-distanced fighters in the air, and "blanketing" the theater with their AAW bubbles.

So aircraft are a bit easier as the player's aircraft will, many times, get the opportunity to engage the other aircraft. With SAMs the total loss of control of the aircraft doesn't even allow the aircraft the opportunity to engage the same sites with their munitions as you are our of the weapons tolerances, or the OODA loop doesn't allow it. I hope others chime in here, but I see the helplessness of the player with SAMs to be the most egregious issue. I'm not sure the aircraft engagements are as much of an issue.

Plenty of food for thought, to be sure. Comments welcome.

So thanks for hearing me out! Sorry about the tone of some of the posts above but I was in a snaky mood yesterday, not all of which had to do with C:MO. Two daughters and Prom Night with a hyped up wife contributed!!!!!

Now that I've gotten out of design, I would love to help here! IMHO this would really help the community out

[boogabooga]

I think that it might help (a lot) just to have a doctrine setting to add some more choices for the aircraft auto evasion logic. Some thing like:

Notch and dive (what it does now)
Notch to the left only (stay away from a threat on the right)
Notch to the right only
Notch alternating left/right (try to average out the notching so you don't get displaced so much)
Dive, but keep going straight
Radial evasion and dive at max speed (put the missile on your six o'clock and try to buy time to get under radar horizon)
Radial evasion maintain altitude at max speed (put missile on your six and try to outrun it)
Radial evasion and climb (anti-MANPADS maneuver)

New auto-evasion logic shouldn't break too many saves?

I'll echo Al that the loadout-based mission profile is too inflexible. However, I think that the easiest thing to do would be do make the strike missions behave more like the patrol and support missions with user-specified transit vs target area throttle/ altitude settings. Still would need to figure out what to do if the player sets the target area inappropriate for the weapons release parameters.

[thephalanx1453]

I've noticed that auto-evasion only engages when the incoming missile gets within a certain distance, even when the incoming missile is already detected mile away. Is there a setting to get the pilot to "Engage Defensive" as soon as a missile is detected heading towards him?

[Twistedpretzel]

Is it possible to simulate a threat vector, similar to RWR in the real world so the simulated pilot can make bearing based decisions?

Looking forward to the derisive responses from the people intimately familiar with how the game logic is written. Thanks in advance.

[thewood1]

What would be connected to that threat vector? What would the aircraft do?

[Twistedpretzel]

What would be connected to that threat vector? What would the aircraft do?

Evade away from the threat instead of towards the threat.

I'm sure there are tons of reasons to evade a threat by going towards it and you'll make a case for that in a reasonable manner.

In my dumb peasant mind I think it would be easy to write the logic so the pilot doesn't evade on a bearing less than 90 degrees of a threat. Then we get into multiple threats etc. I'm sure the coding doesn't support that type of decision making in the simulation and I'm an idiot for not knowing that too.

[thewood1]

I think the main issue, from a realistic reaction standpoint, is what an individual unit knows about vs a player.

[Twistedpretzel]

I think the main issue, from a realistic reaction standpoint, is what an individual unit knows about vs a player.

Would only make sense for units that have some type of indicating device inside their cockpit that shows what type of radar is hitting their plane and the bearing. Some type of radar device, that warns when receiving radar reflection and indicates bearing of that radar.

[thewood1]

You mean an RWR? It would also depend on the sophistication of the RWR. It would have to be a little detailed analysis on what kind of reaction would be appropriate.

[boogabooga]

What would be connected to that threat vector? What would the aircraft do?

Evade away from the threat instead of towards the threat.

I'm sure there are tons of reasons to evade a threat by going towards it and you'll make a case for that in a reasonable manner.

In my dumb peasant mind I think it would be easy to write the logic so the pilot doesn't evade on a bearing less than 90 degrees of a threat. Then we get into multiple threats etc. I'm sure the coding doesn't support that type of decision making in the simulation and I'm an idiot for not knowing that too.

I think the problem is notching 90 degrees toward a NEW threat, allowing more shots to be taken against you, and then again and again in a "death spiral" until the unit is inevitably destroyed.

[CLMP80Kts]

Wanted to contribute something that has been bugging me lately. Facing several SHORAD systems that have a max engagement altitude of less than 25000' my typical strategy has been to send aircraft in at 36000' to drop a JDAM on them. Typically, since the aircraft are above the engagement altitude, they are not shot down or even engaged by these systems. However, once in a while a SAM is launched and causes the aircraft to dive towards the ground which then brings it into the range of these system which are easily able to engage them.

Would be good if the aircraft recognized this and instead stayed at altitude or climbed back above the engagement altitude. Would also be good to have control to get the aircraft to turn and fly away from the shorter range threats. Have had several instances where my aircraft is engaged at the edge of a SAM system's range and could have easily flown away from it and let the SAM run out of steam but instead, notches and dives and stays within the range envelope only to be shot down.

[Dimitris]

This will be improved soon.

[Dimitris]

I'd be curious to hear feedback on this under B1243.X .

[boogabooga]

I'd be curious to hear feedback on this under B1243.X .

On the right track, I think.

I think that the anti-air missiles should have a doctrine for kinetic range vs. practical range like the torpedoes already do, for the same reason. Most current scenarios are set up to fire missiles to maximum range, and that does not work so well in the new model.

Missiles that are not specifically cruise missile should have a way to die from low energy. CV60 has a good example of the problem in the Tech Support. How much lift could missiles that only have stabilizers generate at lower speed; should they really hold their altitude through an extended tail chase?

Are you sure that all of your sources for missile ranges are referencing "kinetic range" and not practical range, and do you know what criteria "practical" and "kinetic" are judged by? (i.e. what should the speed of the missile be at the edge of its range in CMO?)

[Dimitris]

Okay, but this thread is about missile avoidance logics, not the revised kinematics model.

[boogabooga]

Okay, but this thread is about missile avoidance logics, not the revised kinematics model.

Yes, I understand.

The two effects are tied together now so much that I don't think that they can be dis-entangled regarding the overall effect on gameplay. Thus the radial evasion logic combined with energy falloff in missiles makes the missiles about worthless at their max kinetic range- while at the same time you might see AMRAAMs chasing planes around in circles.