Interrogation?

[Mgellis]

I noticed in some of the recent videos for the upcoming Sea Power game that you can "interrogate" a contact, basically sending it a message and sometimes getting a response like "oh, yes, I'm so and so."

I wonder if there are any plans to add something like this to Command. If an unknown contact (yellow) shows up, you can click on it, use some kind of command to indicate you've sent it a message, and depending on what side it is, it will now show you what side it belongs to to. (Sides hostile to you would not respond and would remain unknown until your own sensors identified them. Not sure what unfriendly sides should do...not identifying yourself is arguably a hostile act so it's a good way to get yourself marked as hostile...of course, if you're trying to provoke an attack, maybe that's what you want...")

This might eventually be expanded to being able to send other messages to other units like "surrender/change side" or "leave this area/return to base."

Any thoughts about this?

[Broccy]

I'm not sure of the point of this in a 'real' war situation (which is what most scenarios in the game are) would be. Are you going to take the word of an unidientified contact that they're a friendly? Is a hostile contact always going to reply truthfully?

It would be very sporting of them to do so of course.

In his book 100 days, Admiral Woodward (of Falklands fame) talks of an exercise he conducted with the US Navy in the Arabian sea. He had the destroyer HMS Glamorgan and 3 frigates, and his job was to 'attack' a US Taskforce centred on the USS Coral Sea. The US force was aware it would be attacked and were hunting the attackers.

Starting from a position 200 miles away at 12 noon on a clear day, he split his force and managed to avoid detection with Glamorgan all day by maintaining his distance (though the 3 frigates were picked off one by one). As night came Glamorgan lit every light aboard the ship and turned straight for the carrier, they were overflown by US aircraft and then spotted by a US destroyer and interrogated by radio - to which they replied that they were a Cruise Liner (the 'Rawalpindi' - whose radio officer unfortunately spoke appallingly bad English) making innnocent passage...

The US force was under peacetime rules of engagement so this got them past the first escorts before anyone realised anything was wrong, and then in the resulting confusion as they continued straight in to the Coral Sea they were able to get within 11 miles of her, lock on, and simulate 4 exocet missile launches from what was effectively point blank range. Also in the confusion two of the US escorts managed to lock on to and 'fire' at each other (incidentally this is something that Command doesn't simulate all that well? Usually your tactical picture is a bit too clear?)

Now he does admit that the US carrier group might have been distracted by other events going on at the time, and yeah it's just an exercise, but still. In a 'real' situation the escorting force blindly accepting a 'friendly' radio call from an unknown contact coud have led to the loss of a Midway class carrier, two destroyers, and 60 odd jets.

[kahta]

I can understand why this might be an interesting feature, but it seems like a shift in the game dynamic away from what the development efforts appear to be pretty focused on. With that being said, I think there is some low hanging fruit to make the game more user friendly in adding flavor that can be accomplished with lua scripts but would be more more user friendly as scenario features - for example adding random false contacts, auto populating civilian shipping, randomizing weather/storms, etc.

[thewood1]

"random false contacts, auto populating civilian shipping, randomizing weather/storms"

All three doable today...by the scenario author. In fact, all three of those are not that difficult with no to limited lua. btw, random weather should be used VERY sparsely. We have a pretty good view of the weather and its state in the timeframe of the majority of scenarios after 1970.

[tylerblakebrandon]

Just my $0.02 but interrogation as a specific sim actions seems a bit too granular for CMO. Something that we would assume to be occurring in game that is abstracted from the Commanders perspective.

I think the various following on would be properly modeled using LUA to simulate the various actions, such as a flight of OPFOR fighters bugging out when challenged a la the Iranian F-4s v F-22 incident.

[thewood1]

Don't even need lua. Just a couple simple events would do it.

A version of the interrogation function is that I build warning zone around any task force or facility that warns off any flight or ship. It can get complicated, but works fairly well to manage contacts.

[CV60]

Just my $0.02 but interrogation as a specific sim actions seems a bit too granular for CMO. Something that we would assume to be occurring in game that is abstracted from the Commanders perspective.

I think the various following on would be properly modeled using LUA to simulate the various actions, such as a flight of OPFOR fighters bugging out when challenged a la the Iranian F-4s v F-22 incident.

My guess is that the "interrogation" is simply an interrogation of the Mode 4 or Mode 5 IFF. IMHO, this is too granular for CMO, and is effectively being handled automatically. This is something that even the CO of a ship isn't ordering-it is being done automatically by the systems and/or crew.

[thewood1]

I suspect, from the videos out now, that is the main line of Sea Power. Its going to require a lot of micromanagement. A lot of players of CMO have moved well beyond that type of micromanagement. It immediately limits the scale and scope to a manageable number of units. I think Sea Power's main strength will follow DCS in being a platform to make realistic looking videos. Not the planning and decision-making that a CMO game offers.

Maybe as the game matures, those planning-like features will work their way in.

[Kushan04]

btw, random weather should be used VERY sparsely. We have a pretty good view of the weather and its state in the timeframe of the majority of scenarios after 1970.

Don't want to detail the thread, I am working on updates to the original weather scripts from the CMO standalone scenarios that I'll eventually make available and implement into the official scenarios as applicable. The changes should allow a clever scenario designer to do random or predicable weather drift. The functions to change weather globally and within CEZs are done but I need to update the weather report. Weather report will include current weather as well as predicted weather in the next interval. Hoping to include predicted CEZ weather in the new weather report function as well.

I suspect, from the videos out now, that is the main line of Sea Power. Its going to require a lot of micromanagement. A lot of players of CMO have moved well beyond that type of micromanagement. It immediately limits the scale and scope to a manageable number of units. I think Sea Power's main strength will follow DCS in being a platform to make realistic looking videos. Not the planning and decision-making that a CMO game offers.

Maybe as the game matures, those planning-like features will work their way in.

My feeling so far on Sea Power is it's Cold Waters but with the option to have more units under your control. So far I've seen a lot of micromanagement and clicking. I haven't seen anything like Commands missions. I'm curious, and a little afraid, of how managing a full carrier deck alfa strike will be.