A challenge to the experts: Win "Canary's Cage" w/o losing >4Hornets

[$trummer]

I'm a little frustrated that the Moroccan F-16s in this mission are able to splash the Spanish F/A-18s with such apparent ease. I think I have mastered AAW tactics in the game sufficiently yo be able to rule out gross user error, but perhaps the Hornet is programmed in the game to be a lot less capable in the A2A role than F-16s and Mirages (regardless of the fact that the Moroccan AF is unlikely to be this deadly IRL.)

I have set my Hornets on BARCAPS over the Spanish battlegroup and/or over the water north of the Moroccan coast. When an enemy fighter wanders into the exclusion zone I've placed around my fleet, fight's on and all non-friendly fighters are now combatants. The resulting confrontations are essentially games of rock-paper-scissors in which, after at least one day of mission-time, each air force has ground the other into the dust. We have each lost about 30 aircraft.

I do not like this kind of gameplay. I want planning and tactics to enable me to gain an edge which can allow me to prevail without the battle sinking into the mire of attrition. Now, I am prepared to acknowledge user error if it can be properly established (but see above). I am also following the weapons-cold brief faithfully and not attacking the Moroccan airbases preemptively in order to kill the enemy air threat on the ground.

Now, I have already scored a Major Victory (albeit with no points) even though my battle group has not reached its destination yet; this is another vexing scoring logic issue, a kind of binary limitation that, as an experienced wargame scenario designer, I've known to affect scoring in mission design before.

All of the above has been vexing me a little (along with a lot of crashing while playing this admittedly densely-populated mission). My main concern, for which I would love to get a response, is the first one mentioned here, which is that I'm finding the air combat in this mission, and possibly the model in general, disappointingly un-tactical. So much warfare today is aymmetrical, in either equipment or training, and, with basically sound tactics I would not expect a third-world air force like Morocco's to splash 19 Spanish Hornets and turn the battle into one of pure attrition. I have to deploy my air in this mission or enemy air will have free reign over my ships, yet, as I say, every encounter involves an apparent 50/50 dice-roll, which I would only expect in US vs Russia, Pakistan vs India and a few other scenarios; not this one.

[mikmykWS]

Can't speak for the editor's intent but you have a lot of control over what your air forces are doing. If you don't want them getting into dog fights makes sure Winchester logic is on so they RTB after their high value warshots are gone. You might consider fighter sweeps or traps. Lots you can do. If you do find specific issues though please do take a quick save and post them. We'll take a look.

Will ping the editor to look at the victory conditions. This scenario is marked as community content and we'll be happy to update as the various editors learn more about the game and have updates. I think at this point its probably more productive to help them out. Feel free to beat on us if we make mistakes though. We're paid.[;)]

Thanks!

Mike

[jomni]

ORIGINAL: mikmyk

Can't speak for the editor's intent but you have a lot of control over what your air forces are doing. If you don't want them getting into dog fights makes sure Winchester logic is on so they RTB after their high value warshots are gone. You might consider fighter sweeps or traps. Lots you can do. If you do find specific issues though please do take a quick save and post them. We'll take a look.

Will ping the editor to look at the victory conditions. This scenario is marked as community content and we'll be happy to update as the various editors learn more about the game and have updates. I think at this point its probably more productive to help them out. Feel free to beat on us if we make mistakes though. We're paid.[;)]

Thanks!

Mike

That said it is easier if we have a BVR only ROE where the jets automatically head home once BVR weapons are expended. Maintain Standoff is useful mostly with slow ships (more time to react and micro manage). For jets, they still close in hoping to shoot things down with heat seekers but fall prey to other BVR missiles.

Or a specific weapon hold fire option.

[Primarchx]

These appear to be Egyptian F-16C Block42s, firing AIM-7M. You want to make sure you get your Hornets' shots off first and make the Vipers evade incoming Slammers, as that breaks their SARH lock and self-destructs their Sparrows. You can also go AB speed behind your AMRAAMs to get in close for an IRM shot.

[jomni]

ORIGINAL: $trummer

I would not expect a third-world air force like Morocco's to splash 19 Spanish Hornets and turn the battle into one of pure attrition. I have to deploy my air in this mission or enemy air will have free reign over my ships, yet, as I say, every encounter involves an apparent 50/50 dice-roll, which I would only expect in US vs Russia, Pakistan vs India and a few other scenarios; not this one.

The game just models aircraft / weapons capabilities and not the quality of the users.
I would comment about the "first world trumps third world" bias but would rather not elaborate much about it.
That said, there are real wars where the 3rd world won even in conventional warfare.
First world planners should never underestimate their third-world counterparts. They should plan the mission taking into consideration that their adversary is just as good as themselves.

But having a skill modifier in the game would make it more dynamic.

[$trummer]

Right, Jomni. In this mission, the Hornets all get jumped while RTB because their base is very close to the enemy CAP. I suppose I could re-route them but my point is that I'm not keen on the dice-roll here between air forces of a different caliber. I thought Turkey and Egypt were the only Muslim nation with Vipers anyway.

Thanks for the attention, Mike. I realise that this is a player-made scenario (albeit released with the official update.)

ORIGINAL: jomni

ORIGINAL: mikmyk

Can't speak for the editor's intent but you have a lot of control over what your air forces are doing. If you don't want them getting into dog fights makes sure Winchester logic is on so they RTB after their high value warshots are gone. You might consider fighter sweeps or traps. Lots you can do. If you do find specific issues though please do take a quick save and post them. We'll take a look.

Will ping the editor to look at the victory conditions. This scenario is marked as community content and we'll be happy to update as the various editors learn more about the game and have updates. I think at this point its probably more productive to help them out. Feel free to beat on us if we make mistakes though. We're paid.[;)]

Thanks!

Mike

That said it is easier if we have a BVR only ROE where the jets automatically head home once BVR weapons are expended. Maintain Standoff is useful mostly with slow ships. For jets, they still close in hoping to shoot things down with heat seekers but fall prey to other BVR missiles.

Or a specific weapon hold fire option.

[$trummer]

ORIGINAL: Primarchx

These appear to be Egyptian F-16C Block42s, firing AIM-7M. You want to make sure you get your Hornets' shots off first and make the Vipers evade incoming Slammers, as that breaks their SARH lock and self-destructs their Sparrows. You can also go AB speed behind your AMRAAMs to get in close for an IRM shot.

Valid points, Primarchx, which I understand as a veteran flight simmer but the fact is that you cannot micromanage individual A2A encounters into the merge with so much going on in a scenario of this size. There has to be some form of tactical AI that recognises assymetry.

[Primarchx]

If you want to keep your aircraft alive, I recommend you manage those fights. While the AI can handle mismatched encounters, tight ones like these need the human touch.

ORIGINAL: $trummer

ORIGINAL: Primarchx

These appear to be Egyptian F-16C Block42s, firing AIM-7M. You want to make sure you get your Hornets' shots off first and make the Vipers evade incoming Slammers, as that breaks their SARH lock and self-destructs their Sparrows. You can also go AB speed behind your AMRAAMs to get in close for an IRM shot.

Valid points, Primarchx, which I understand as a veteran flight simmer but the fact is that you cannot micromanage individual A2A encounters into the merge with so much going on in a scenario of this size. There has to be some form of tactical AI that recognises assymetry.

[mikmykWS]

Just ran some tests of the Spanish F/A-18A vs. the Egyptian F-16C Block 32.

Pay attention to Primarchx's point its important. Amraam shooters will have first shot and will force the Sparrow armed F-16's to turn away which breaks their Sparrow locks. Falcon's do have a high agility but the ratio was still over 3 to 1 fighting this way. Now if I choose to knife fight with them the ratio gets far worse..almost 1:1. That tells a tale.

In terms of national training etc. the Moroccan's and Egyptians Viper pilots would likely be good enough to not suffer a penalty if we had the modifier. I mentioned this in Baloogan's interview but these kinds of things are so subjective its not good for a developer to get into it but instead create a way for the scenario editor to do it.

[Primarchx]

I'm making my first priority to knock out the E-2C over northern Morocco. This will significantly degrade the enemy's situational awareness.

[$trummer]

Good points, many thanks.

I will experiment with routes to and from CAPs that do not put the Hornets directly in the path of the Moroccan F-16s. Instead of making a CAP mission area and leaving them to find their own way there and back, I will launch them as groups and make waypoints both ways.

Knocking out the E2C is sound tactics but bad politics as the brief specifies no preemptive action. However, no harm in having a couple of F/A-18s loiter there, huh? The mission designer should have anticipated this airspace incursion by making a no-fly zone over Morocco, though…

I reckon this good scenario would be better if I got into the editor and gave Morocco third-generation, not fourth-generation fighters. This would help simulate the technological and training asymmetry that probably exists IRL

[Dimitris]

And now you know why we're treading so carefully on the proficiency thing.

If Spain-vs-Marocco generates such passion, imagine what will happen once we get into the hardcore stuff (e.g. Greece-vs-Turkey).

[Meroka37]

In this scenario points are not used to evaluate victory o defeat. The mission is clear for Spanish side, he needs to land the amph force at the designated area while preventing NAIL amph group doing the same, other any outcome is a defeat no matter the amount of losses taken by each side.

[$trummer]

ORIGINAL: Sunburn

And now you know why we're treading so carefully on the proficiency thing.

If Spain-vs-Marocco generates such passion, imagine what will happen once we get into the hardcore stuff (e.g. Greece-vs-Turkey).

Fair point, Sunburn. However, I'd like to crank out missions for Command, but cannot imagine, for example, how to game out the '73 war between Israel and and its neighbors without being able to recreate the decisive advantage in training and discipline enjoyed by the IAF and IDF. Israel won the tank battles of that war because the IDF tank commanders rode with their heads out of their turrets, which gave them a decisive tactical edge against buttoned-up enemy tanks. The Israelis were outnumbered and outgunned in this war and the equipment ranged against them was not inferior to their own. It's difficult to imagine how to recreate this scenario with any possibility of a historically accurate outcome in Command if the right equipment in the right quantities was given to each side. Israel would get hammered. I can see no alternative but to downgrade the Egyptian and Syrian equipment.

[$trummer]

ORIGINAL: Meroka37

In this scenario points are not used to evaluate victory o defeat. The mission is clear for Spanish side, he needs to land the amph force at the designated area while preventing NAIL amph group doing the same, other any outcome is a defeat no matter the amount of losses taken by each side.

Then why is a "Major Victory" awarded to the player long before either his battle group or the enemy's, reaches the island?

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a terrific scenario but I'm troubled by the attritional nature of the air battle when I am reasonably confident that it would not play out this way IRL and it bothers me a little that, in a large air/sea battle with many claims on the player's attention, individual encounters between fighter aircraft with parity can only be resolved accurately by close individual management. That's tactical not operational-level simming. I think the AI, left to its own devices, would play out quite accurately a Cold War air battle, or, for example, India vs. Pakistan, but the game will create anomalous outcomes when unequal nations are given equal equipment, even when the OOB is accurate (which is my assumption about Morocco's F-16s.) Here's the salient point: in these situations, player skill determines the outcome, even when it is highly implausible. If I were building a Spain vs. Morocco scenario, I'd feel I'd have to weight it heavily in favor of Spain but reward the player for force preservation. In those circumstances, you'd get an accurate outcome without micromanaging air units, yet with insufficient skill you might still lose too much of your force to be awarded a Major Victory.

If you are the designer of "Canary's Cage" would you allow mw to teak the force ratios and scoring conditions, if possible, as per the above?

[Dimitris]

ORIGINAL: $trummer
Fair point, Sunburn. However, I'd like to crank out missions for Command, but cannot imagine, for example, how to game out the '73 war between Israel and and its neighbors without being able to recreate the decisive advantage in training and discipline enjoyed by the IAF and IDF. Israel won the tank battles of that war because the IDF tank commanders rode with their heads out of their turrets, which gave them a decisive tactical edge against buttoned-up enemy tanks. The Israelis were outnumbered and outgunned in this war and the equipment ranged against them was not inferior to their own. It's difficult to imagine how to recreate this scenario with any possibility of a historically accurate outcome in Command if the right equipment in the right quantities was given to each side. Israel would get hammered. I can see no alternative but to downgrade the Egyptian and Syrian equipment.

Thanks for bringing up this example, as it allows me to elaborate on some of the complications of introducing the proficiency factor.

One of the items we were discussing some nights ago was the concrete implementation of this factor in the game. A popular suggestion is to simply apply a proficiency modifier on the side-level. This is quite easy to implement and easy for the scenario author to use. Another way, much more complex to implement, is to have a side-level value and then have the ability to override this at the unit level.

Let's take the Egyptian armed forces in '73 and see how this would be applied. In Yom Kippur, you can very broadly separate the Egyptian forces into 3 categories:

* Forces with mediocre-to-decent equipment and average proficiency: This would apply to the bulk of the Egyptian armored and mechanized forces. Most of the Egyptian air assets would also fit this bill. These were defeated by superior Israeli tech & proficiency/tactics.

* Specialist ground units with decent-to-modern equipment and good-to-high proficiency: The engineers who made the breaching of the Bar Lev line possible, the anti-tank troops that savaged Israeli armor the first few days etc.

* SAM/AAA units and select air units (hand-picked Egyptian crews and Soviet 'advisors'), with modern equipment and high proficiency: These are the folks who practically deadlocked the IAF at the beginning and were eventually defeated only by the arrival of more modern tech (e.g. CW jammers) and brute-force logistics (e.g. near-complete replacement of IAF losses by USAF deliveries).

So how do you model this?

If we simply use a single side-level proficiency level, this makes things easier for us (as devs) and you will have it in your hands sooner. However, to model the differences in proficiency faithfully, you will have to break upo the Egyptian side into separate sub-sides in order to apply the different skill level to each. So more hoops for the scne author to jump through.

OTOH if we go for side-level value with unit-level overrides, this will take us longer to develop/test/debug and thus you will get it later, but you will be able to keep the Egyptian side intact and simply assign skill values to each of the subordinate units as relevant.

One other way we could go would be to first release the side-level-only implementation (to get this feature 'in the wild' ASAP) and then follow-up with the unit-level overrides. However this would result in a larger testing effort overall and would also force scen authors to re-write any scenarios they've created under the initial implementation if they want them to benefit from the subsequent new functionality.

So as you can see, there a lot of options and consequences to consider.

[$trummer]

Fantastic that you are working on it, Sunburn, thank you!

It might be interesting to give the player proficiency "points" that he can award to enemy groups during a planning phase. This way, he could either game out the battle historically by awarding them as above, or ahistorically, i.e. if he decides to make the Egyptian SAM units weak but the air force strong. Perhaps you could implement a halfway solution between one-side fits all and granular unit level, i.e. by using categories grouped by mission (AD, fighter aviation, attack aviation, submarines, surface shipping). I know there's no planning phase per se right now, and that it's done on the fly as the enemy disposition reveals itself but perhaps this system could be enacted in a pre-battle unit display screen similar to the mission editor interface.

Either way, I'm confident that you'll nail it and I'm thrilled that you are working on it.

[sneekyzeke]

These are fascinating considerations; really looking forward to watching this game evolve and being along for the ride!

[Mac Linehan]

Sunburn -

I am really excited about your work on the "side proficiency" factor. I very much appreciate you explanation of the difficulties and challenges involved; but have absolute trust that the Team will make it happen - and it will be good.

Gents, we are in this for the long haul; the Dev's will give it their best effort.

My respect and appreciation for the level of support and commitment that the Team (and players!) have shown for Command. That is what will keep Command on the cutting edge.

Mac

[Primarchx]

Good ideas, D!

I'm more attracted to unit-level, rather than side-level proficiencies, especially if I can clone those qualities once a 'base set' of units has been set up. Units would be created from scratch at AVERAGE proficiency and manipulated by the scenario author from there. This allows a scenario author who has NO INTEREST in implementing this feature to ignore it when they place units. Having unit-level settings means you can still set up games playable from multiple sides that use proficiency info, too.

Any ideas how you want to handle morale/aggressiveness?