Simulating sub comms diifficulty

[thewood1]

Yeah, but this game goes from the 50's up...so there is not magic bullet.

[AlanChan]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

Did you read anything I wrote...it is exactly the opposite of that. You can create one of the most realistic commercial-grade naval comms sims if you want. SO you are basically saying that unless every comm situation is modelled for every unit, its not worth using as a simulator?

If you want realistic, start the game and use only the message window with most of the messages turned off to run it. Or better yet, sit in a dark and hot room and just have a friend print out messages and deliver them to you.

I remember one line from manual of Falcon 4.0. Something like, "Don't ask what they want, ask what they need to learn. If you want to build a simulator without any compromise, you end up building the aircraft itself". I like it very much. It is almost impossible to simulate all comm situation in combat, but some modifications may make the BEHAVIORS of units more realistic. For example, you could increase the range penalty for BVR AAMs so a blind shot at Rmax2 would miss most of time. That will force the players drop the idea of BVR hit and run at max range. Slight change of AI doctrine would force AI unit to engage air target at closer range, thus ensure they break lock only after the BVR missile go autonomous. Of course, you could leave the “maintain stand off” doctrine as it is, in this case, the air unit would not try to close in and shoot BVR missiles easily. If both sides maintained stand off, they won’t easily sprint in and pick a fight but monitor their opponents at a distance.

For EMCON problem, it is hard to limit players have overpowering SA, at least until CO-OP function is introduced. But the EMCON simulation for AI unit could be simulated without major restructuring. Every time computer assign a task to a sub or AI unit in EMCON, just check if the target could be detected with its own passive sensors, and drop the task if it can’t. In this way, the AI unit still “see” the target that should be invisible but behaves in a realistic way. And if the player forced the unit to attack a unit that it cannot see, a message could be displayed suggesting he did something unrealistic and be recorded for further analysis.

Because this game is not about micro-management, such AI behavior change might greatly improve realism. Of course, players still can force unit do certain things to gain advantages from over powering SA, but at least they have a choice to not to.

[thewood1]

I suspect you aren't understanding anything I am saying.

[magi]

Really fun thread......

[AlanChan]

ORIGINAL: thewood1

I suspect you aren't understanding anything I am saying.

Now, I got what you mean. You are meaning that I should suggest the professor to buy several games, plus three Lua software engineer to write code to micromanage every unit so they do behave realistically? That is really prohibitive for the academic setting, they don't have a lot funding to spare on extra programmers! It seems not possible to mod CMANO, so the same logic of realisitic behavior need to be adapted for every mission. It is very labour intensive, and the fact that CMANO comes without IDE or other proper development tools will only slow it down more.