[WAD] 1271.1-Amraam NEZ shots are occuring around 12nm

[thewood1]

Its not related to the NEZ discussion, as far as we know. But there is almost no real world data on hitting maneuvering targets BVR. Its a VERY rare occurrence. Iran-Iraq war is probably the closest, but even there, the few that happened were not maneuvering much because they were caught by surprise. The point is you can do an NEZ calculation, but its still a guess.

[LetMePickThat]

I'm one of CMANOs founding four and have published and sold lots of scenarios, a battleset and one game. I worked for AGSI and the Harpoons in the past as well. I definitely understand the complexity of the issue, but playability is important too. I think the whole rationale for WRAs on day one is so players who don't get the detail-level stuff can make reasonable choices.

Anyways just asking. I'm not heavily invested in this as I can just fix myself.

Mike

Just to be clear, I think that hard-set WRAs are the way to go. It seems too complicated to me to have variable WRAs based on the situation.

So IMO I think the motor burn time is actually WAD, the question is are we generating the correct loft plan for the missile - if you try to fire a missile at a target that's far away and is flying away from you the missile actually gets higher terminal speed when approaching the target, because the missile goes higher and stays at high altitude for a longer time. I think missiles in CMO descend toward the target earlier than that in those combat sims. Also seems that the missile is pulling too hard when the target is doing the maneuvers. Another thing is that the planes in CMO don't lose speed when making a hard turn and accelerate much faster than that in those flight sims like DCS or BMS. That's why you don't have those 20 25ish miles of NEZ in DCS or BMS.

I'm not familiar with BMS' implementation of the loft control laws for the AMRAAM, but in DCS it is vastly simplified. The only values the sim engine is working with are a loft duration, a loft max pitch angle and minimum/maximum distances to target. IRL, the guidance laws used will depend on the missile type, engagement geometry, etc. For instance, the AIM-7MH flies a max range loft that is designed to use at all time the best AoA for current speed while the Super 530D's loft uses a 0°AoA, full-ballistic autopilot to minimize drag and maintain a very high speed until the endgame. Using a generic, best-guess loft for all missiles in CMO seems to me to be the only solution, as we can't realistically expect the devs to do the research and implementation work for all missile types. On top of that, I don't think that tweaks to the loft guidance would yield much better results in terms of actual range.

I don't think that's very related to the NEZ. If you take a look at the hit probability calculation in game, you will see that even inside the NEZ against non-maneuvering targets, the chance to hit is still not 100%, this scenario is already modeled in game IMO. Also the missile could be malfunctioning.

Keep in mind that the NEZ doesn't mean that it's literally a no-escape zone. The NEZ is the max range at which the missile will be kinematically able to intercept, even if the target performs a given maneuver. The LLX, the french/european equivalent of the US NEZ, is defined as the max range at which the missile will intercept if the target goes 90°sideway after launch (notching) and performs a 7G evasive maneuver right before interception. I don't have the details on what the NEZ specifically covers, but it's probably the same kind of maneuver. If the target manages to make the interception more costly than what the NEZ is taking into account (e.g dropping in altitude to increase drag on the missile, while snaking cold), a missile fired at the NEZ higher bound will not be kinematically able to intercept.

[BDukes]

I'm one of CMANOs founding four and have published and sold lots of scenarios, a battleset and one game. I worked for AGSI and the Harpoons in the past as well. I definitely understand the complexity of the issue, but playability is important too. I think the whole rationale for WRAs on day one is so players who don't get the detail-level stuff can make reasonable choices.

Anyways just asking. I'm not heavily invested in this as I can just fix myself.

Mike

Just to be clear, I think that hard-set WRAs are the way to go. It seems too complicated to me to have variable WRAs based on the situation.

Yeah. My issue is the current default doesn't generally work at all with the model. Its is always a miss. Why would you want the default choice to always miss? What are you really showing the players by doing this? It costs them (designers especially) a lot of time.

I was hoping that NEZ would be that happy middle but it's the mathematical-instrumented no-escape-zone. There is some value in having it but most won't as in most cases it moves the shooter into more risk.

Anyhoo. I'm happy for any improvement I get and definitely appreciate all effort.

Mike