[Logged] Ships ignore EMCON to fire SARH missiles

[KnightHawk75]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

As an isolated option, yeah, its not a big deal. But look at a couple threads hanging around now from less experienced players and their inability to comprehend all the available options. There are tens of thousands of permutations just in ROEs. This game has grown in such switchology complexity that new players are failing to comprehend all the options available to them.

My opinion is that unless we can find some way to simplify how all the switches and options interact, if something that is not an every day issue for players and can be worked around simply, lets push back and even, good heavens, restrain ourselves from wanting every option under the sun to make play for very experienced players that much easier.

If you want to switch the option back to complete blackout, all the more power to you, but lets try to help simplify the game a little for new players.

I hear you, but this game has always been like that, nature of the beast, and part of it's power is the flexibility\complexity that comes with all the various options. I like your thoughts about templates btw.
But if the push back from devs is "too many options", then yes I would argue for the change to be reverted and passive to mean passive again, which I think I was already alluding too. Would love to accommodate "mr bug report user" too - but if it's chose one or the other, I'm definitely in favor of not accommodating it, as flipping on a specific sensor is far easier and clear than the reverse alternative.

[thewood1]

No, in 2013, the game was manageable. I learned from a background in Harpoon, it still it was tough. I wish I could find a pic of the ROE page back then. It has half the number of drop downs and no WRA, withdrawal, etc. Don't even start on missions. The mission editor was pretty limited.

Every single one of the new options was justified on its own and made the game better for people who know what WRA mean. But if you are new, even with the manual and the newer tutorials, there is investment in the game that someone buying the game just can't fathom when pushing the buy button. I actually suggested at one time that there be a warning to buyers that they won't like the game if they don't take the time to play small scenarios and learn from failing.

And back to this point. As the devs, I would put a moratorium on new options, menus, and switches until they can figure out a way to simplify the switchology. Of course the other option is to use it as a filter so only the strongest players survive.

[thewood1]

I'll beat the template thing to death. What if a new player had only to pick from three different CAPs? Maybe one with LR AAM, one with SR AAM, and one that has tanker support. All set up by a scenario designer to give more abstracted option. But it still allows the more experienced player to go into the mission like they do today and monkey around.

If you think about it, between ROE, WRA, mission settings, withdrawal, etc., the devs have you programming a very basic AI for each unit on a mission. The template suggestion would allow you to abstract up one level and hide all that from players who want a little guidance from the scenario designer.

[Battelman2]

Hey, I'm all for the template feature. I am in agreement with thewood1 regarding ease of use and the daunting learning curve. Templates could go a long way in abstraction and/or dimension reduction.

I just want to explicitly make it known that I made this thread because I sincerely think the players, both new and veteran, would be better off with a change to the EMCON system as of the time I posted this.

I see four paths forward from here, maybe there are more, but these are the most obvious to me:

1. Leave as-is, and have the player use existing mechanisms to achieve desired effect;

2. Change EMCON Passive behavior to deny FCR/illuminators and, subsequently, weapons release for those requiring them;

3. Add a third EMCON state, maybe called Silent or Restricted, that leaves Passive behavior as-is but allows the player to easily secure all emissions; or

4. Add a third EMCON state, maybe called Selective, that takes on the current behavior of Passive. Then, change Passive to truly mean "passive only - no exceptions"

Personally I'm most in favor of the fourth option, but I completely understand the desire for all other options- and would be content with all but the first. SeaQueen, while maybe a little pugnacious, isn't wrong that the current settings allow for desired behavior. thewood1 is also correct that the settings are already complicated as-is, and adding more willy-nilly for every request will harm the game overall. KnightHawk75 is also correct, I believe, regarding the confusion with EMCON Passive not truly being passive. That is, after all, why I made this thread in the first place thinking this was a bug. And let's not forget Dimitris, who spoke on similar lines about uninformed players making a ruckus over any game mechanic that isn't painfully obvious.

I'm happy to continue this discussion, so long as it's constructive. I just wanted to put forward what is my understanding of what people are feeling about this, and make my personal position on the matter clear.

[KnightHawk75]

@thewood1
I've only been playing since like late 2017 early 2018 so that's where my 'always been like that' perspective comes from. It's definitely true that the more you learn and understand the "switchology" and it's interactions, the better you can handle things in game for a positive\desired outcome\action as with any game as you learn the meta over time. Your tool\feature idea might help with that learning curve.


@Battelman2 - You are right we're getting kind of off-topic, good points in bringing us back.

I share your view that anything but the first is the path I would recommend, and that options 3 & 4 seems the most intuitive for a player, and also address both sides of the equation.

Also thinking about some of the more nuts and bolts stuff related to #3 & #4 sort of change, it should not affect existing SetEMCON() calls as today it takes a string value, so adding a new string identifier for a third option shouldn't? impact existing scripts. Looking around more at related things it shouldn't break anything, as you could never really query current EMCON state anyway (separate issue) only set it (and keep track of it yourself). Taking manual control of each sensor via script isn't affected as individually it would still be binary true|false for is_active on each sensor. So there should not be many if any compares in the wild with =='Active' or =='Passive' out there and to the extent there are similar uses out there for building strings to feed to SetEMCON() they should not break with a new addition. They might want to be enhanced to take advantage of the new option but existing behavior would not be affected (with option #4 anyway). Good thing they thought ahead and didn't make it a boolean originally otherwise it might be a breaking change.

I do wonder though, if one is taking "manual control" (ie 'unit obeys emcon' is unchecked), how should the game act? I would say not like today, but like in the past where it's assumed the user is going to turn on and off things that are user controllable without being over-ridden. I guess that's actually could be #5... if you want passive to be really passive take manual control and turn everything off and make it obey (today it does not).

[Dimitris]

ORIGINAL: KnightHawk75

Completely OT, but that screenshot indicates you have high-DPI issues. Can you try to run the 4KFix.exe tool ? (Located in the CMO installation folder). Cheers.

[KnightHawk75]

Yeah I've tried every fix for my desktop res of 2k +125% text scaling, including that tool, none have worked (other then just downing my res to 1080), as frustrating as it can be on occasion, I've chosen to just live with it.

[PN79]

ORIGINAL: Battelman2

...

2. Change EMCON Passive behavior to deny FCR/illuminators and, subsequently, weapons release for those requiring them;

...

It was already mentioned but this change would damage land based SAMs functions. EMCON passive with automatic fire when target is present is desired behaviour for SAMs.

Current setting allows to set EMCON individually for each unit and if totally passive EMCON without firing is requested it is possible to simply set passive EMCON and weapons on hold.

[Battelman2]

ORIGINAL: PN79

ORIGINAL: Battelman2

...

2. Change EMCON Passive behavior to deny FCR/illuminators and, subsequently, weapons release for those requiring them;

...

It was already mentioned but this change would damage land based SAMs functions. EMCON passive with automatic fire when target is present is desired behaviour for SAMs.

Current setting allows to set EMCON individually for each unit and if totally passive EMCON without firing is requested it is possible to simply set passive EMCON and weapons on hold.

Correct. However, what if I want to disable the primary SAM weapon but leave the MANPADS often found in those groups enabled? Then I would need to dig into WRA, because Weapons HOLD will disable all weapons. I agree that option 2 probably isn't the best, because it would solve my particular problem but replace it with another. That's why I'm more supportive of options three or four.

[PN79]

I agree that adding third EMCON passive - no exceptions would solve this problem. Setting MANPADS or guns to fire while main SAM don't can be done via WRA but it is quite complicated so own EMCON for this can be justified.