Take command of air and naval assets from post-WW2 to the near future in tactical and operational scale, complete with historical and hypothetical scenarios and an integrated scenario editor.
While playing NI, my ballistic missile sub triggered a mine detonation at 1000 feet range (damaging nothing on board except wrecking my nuclear reactor for an instant mission kill (Yes, the irony). This got me thinking about all the other mine detonations which have occurred during my Command experience and I noticed that Magnetic and Sound detonated mines tend to go of a long distance from their target, often barely scratching the target (Obviously not this time, but this was a REALLY bad dice roll ). So now I am wondering if these triggers might not be to sensitive and that they could be in need of some fine tuning?
W.
In vinum illic est sapientia , in matera illic est vires , in aqua illic es bacteria.
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there are bacteria.
Ok, as it is obviously my job to play test this stuff, I ran some scenarios in which I ran 40 commercial Atlantic conveyors RO/RO into three types of minefields at 24 knots:
I tested the first three types of mines in the editor:
Minefield 1, I recorded 52 hits with an average trigger at 177 meter (standard deviation 142 meters).
Minefield 2, I recorded 38 hits with an average trigger at 192 meter (standard deviation 116 meters).
Minefield 3, I recorded 38 hits with an average trigger at 215 meter (standard deviation 103 meters).
So I can conclude that the average detonation distance of these three types of bottom mines is almost 200 meters and as these types of mines are intended to detonate UNDER a ship we can also conclude that the detonators are made in some third world hellhole without any form of quality control and that if I would have bought this batch that I would want to have my money back.
While I was at it, I also ran 50 MCM1 Avenger minesweepers (very small ships) through a Generic mine (Bottom pressure fuse & target discrimination) minefield at 12 knots.
I recorded 37 hits with an average trigger at 65 meter (standard deviation 27 meters).
I think that the detonation threshold of these mines needs to be tripled (average detonation within 30 meters for big targets and within 10 meters for smaller ones) to be considered approaching reality.
In vinum illic est sapientia , in matera illic est vires , in aqua illic es bacteria.
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there are bacteria.
lets see what kind of effect speed has on the Generic mine (Bottom pressure fuse & target discrimination), as one one would assume that higher speeds would produce a bigger pressure wave under water and would thus trigger these pressure mines earlier. We are back to using 40 commercial Atlantic conveyors RO/RO again, but this time at 5 knots instead of 24.
Minefield 3 again, I recorded 34 hits with an average trigger at 217 meter (standard deviation 117 meters).
Contrary to this idea, we see no statistical difference what so ever when we change the speed variable from 25 to 5 knots (215 to 217 meters with a standard deviation to cry about).
In vinum illic est sapientia , in matera illic est vires , in aqua illic es bacteria.
In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there are bacteria.
). So now I am wondering if these triggers might not be to sensitive and that they could be in need of some fine tuning?