Whats up with missile Poh?? (after the update)

[thewood1]

Sure seems like the suggestion is that the devs should stop developing CMO.

[davedashftw]

44% is actually really good for a modern missile against a manoeuvring fighter.

The AIM-7 sparrow hit 7% of the time.

For your F-35 though you’ll want to use one F-35 with its radar on far back, and another up close with its radar OFF that fires the missile.

That should basically guarantee the kill unless the enemy fighter has some sort of advanced passive tracking system like the F-35.

I haven’t tested this yet, but I hope CMO takes this into consideration. It’s been documented that pilots in 4th Gen going up against the F-35 don’t even know they have a missile launched at them using this tactic until it’s too late.

Edit: I just tested this tactic and it doesn’t really seem to work. 4th Gen enemy fighters see the missiles early, engage defensive, and the PK with 120Ds drops to about 50% against novice pilots.

Sorry but I don’t agree with this.

[AndrewJ]

I was trying the "two F-35" method in a few scenarios recently, and found it worked quite well. A lead radar-silent F-35, trailed by an active radar F-35 using its OECM, can hide in the fuzz until within no-escape range of the enemy, bump up to afterburner, and launch and turn away, delivering a very effective strike.

[SchDerGrosse]

Wrong again. Kushan has painstakingly rebuilt all official scenarios (incl. all DLCs) so that AAW weapons by default use the No-Escape Zone range setting.

First of all, thank you Dimitris for the detailed explanation of the new mechanics. I will be sure to look into them and experiment with them.

On the other hand, the new system is a huge change that completely rewrites air to air engagements, i.e. the meat and bone of Command. All the scenarios have been created under the old regime, that is scenario length, unit availabilty and placement, ordenance allocation etc. have all been determined with the previous system in mind. Therefore I am kind of sceptical that simply going through the scenarios and setting the AI to fire at NEZ ranges is a sufficient measure to let the scenarios play out "as intented".

You cite the new tactics of flooding the enemy with missiles to burn up their energy and get that kill shot. In many of the campaign scenarios one has to be extremely deliberate about ordenance usage as the available stocks are pretty low. Therefore you cannot just spam amraams as the mission designer did not set up the circumstances to cater to the need to use such new tactics.

Another example. AA sites. I assume they had originally also been placed taking into account the previous effective engagement ranges. Again, I would presume that the new system would warrant looking into whether the surface to air missile coverage can still achive the effect the scenario designer had in mind.

Mission length. Even if I have the necessary ordencance to use more missiles, do I also have the the time to fly more sorties? As more sorties mean more time spent on the ground readying the aircraft. Does the corresponding scenario give the player enough time to do this? I assume the answer is "we dont know" as noone looked.

Oh and one more thing. Stealth aircraft (F-22s and F35s). So far these have been advertised that if you flick your radar off, you can approach enemies undetected, and fire your missiles at a more close distance while also remaining safe as the radar really needs to be used for that single second when you let the missiles go. I assume this is no longer a thing as AIM-120Ds for example will now have to be fired at point blank ranges and you get detected way before that regardless of "running silent". Is this intended? Many scenarios feature F-35s and F-22s, I would assume the map was calibrated with the mindset that the player can and should conduct their operations this way. If this is no longer feasable, does this break the scenario? Again, we dont know as noone looked.

As a summation, my main gripe with the changes (apart from the fuss of having the relearn the game) is that I am quite confident that scenarios no longer play out the way as their designer had originally intendid them.

I might be wrong. But at first glance (see the examples above) these are my impressions.

[blu3s]

I really like the new dynamics of the missile kinematics. But I don't know to what extent you can get good results just with WRA/Doctrine and mission settings. In the described tactics of the F-35 there is a lot of micromanagement.

[thewood1]

I would suggest actually playing out those older scenarios to see the difference. I am pretty sure they don't play that differently. I spend a lot of time up front on any scenario adjusting WRA and do almost no unit-based intervention in game play. I am also pretty sure some form of adjustments were made in CMO's official scenarios.

I think the biggest difference in CMO post-tiny is in scenario design. looking back at CMO's original toolset for making the AI behave properly seems like the stone age. Post-tiny AI tools can provide a completely different experience for the designer and the player. So I see the difference as the newer scenarios have a lot more depth and texture to them. This is especially true in mission generation.

The missile engagement changes add a great element to highlight the differences in missile design and philosophy. It highlights the decisions the USN has made over the last few years around comms-centric warfare and cooperative engagement. It also highlights the race to develop not just longer-ranged missiles, but missiles that maintain their energy at long range, even sacrificing speed to do it. Unfortunately a lot of gamers don't care about that. They want their favorite weapon system to dominate the space. The funny thing is that DCS is heading in exactly the same direction. In some ways, CMO has surpassed DCS in getting to more realistic BVR combat.

[Gizzmoe]

Kushan has painstakingly rebuilt all official scenarios (incl. all DLCs) so that AAW weapons by default use the No-Escape Zone range setting. This makes AI shooters far more "conservative" in their shots.
This has the dual effect of:
a) Making them shoot at generally lower ranges, which _can_ provide you a first-shot advantage if you risk shooting at longer range
b) Severely reducing (possibly altogether eliminating?) the gamey tactic of "dancing at the edge of the enemy's missile envelope" to make him deplete his missile inventory with kinematically-hopeless shots.

Imo, the NEZ setting currently makes the AI way too conservative to be a halfway worthwhile opponent for the player, and we can totally exploit the fact that AI shoots indeed very late when set to NEZ.

For example, a shooter with a 7F Sparrow III on a head-on attack against a non-maneuvering Foxbat actually closes in to around 2.3nm before firing, in the same test with a 120D it was 7nm. I've attached a scen with the 7F.

Would be great, if NEZ could be more "dynamic", that it gives the AI the chance to still fire longer-range shots on occasion.

[thewood1]

I just ran your test under a few different WRA scenarios. I moved the Migs out to 20nm to see how the AIM-7s performed with different settings.

1) Auto evasion off, WRA at max. F-15s fire four missiles at 13nm. The Migs keep flying fat dumb and happy. 50% hit rate at best.

2) Auto evasion on, WRA at max. Manually fire at 20nm. No hits. The Migs turn and burn within a couple nm of the launches. I've tried this six times and haven't gotten a single hit.

With evasion on, the Migs have to get pretty close to start recording hits. Well under 10nm firing four AIM-7s.

I am assuming that the NEZ is always considering that the target will go defensive and evade. As a scenario designer, thats how I want it to be as a default. But a scenario designer can set this any way they want. Even a player can do some of that if they don't like the set up of the scenario. There are times where it'll be a mission kill forcing even high-performance units to go defensive. The new BVR modeling is really only a factor with high performance smaller aircraft that can evade. Anything sized for more than a couple crew and can't get well over Mach 1, evading or not, will have a good PoH quite a ways out.

Of course, the big assumption is how far out can the F-15s ID the specific target type. I played around with dropping the contacts, but the Migs' radars and EC-130 IR give them away quickly.

[Tcao]

Kushan has painstakingly rebuilt all official scenarios (incl. all DLCs) so that AAW weapons by default use the No-Escape Zone range setting. This makes AI shooters far more "conservative" in their shots.
This has the dual effect of:
a) Making them shoot at generally lower ranges, which _can_ provide you a first-shot advantage if you risk shooting at longer range
b) Severely reducing (possibly altogether eliminating?) the gamey tactic of "dancing at the edge of the enemy's missile envelope" to make him deplete his missile inventory with kinematically-hopeless shots.

Imo, the NEZ setting currently makes the AI way too conservative to be a halfway worthwhile opponent for the player, and we can totally exploit the fact that AI shoots indeed very late when set to NEZ.

For example, a shooter with a 7F Sparrow III on a head-on attack against a non-maneuvering Foxbat actually closes in to around 2.3nm before firing, in the same test with a 120D it was 7nm. I've attached a scen with the 7F.

Would be great, if NEZ could be more "dynamic", that it gives the AI the chance to still fire longer-range shots on occasion.

Unfortunately NEZ is, NEZ. We cannot change the definition of it. But I agree NEZ is an overkill for most of the engagements in CMO. Usually either A/C will not begin evasion maneuver until missile get into certain range , or targeted A/C need time to finish OODA and begin evasion maneuver. IMHO, fire missile at 25% - 30% max range should be enough to achieve a hit.

What we would like to see in the future is a more diverse fire discipline/WRA. For example , "1 missile at max range , 1 missile at 50% max range, 1 round at 25% and 1 missile at NEZ."

[thewood1]

In some ways thats already available. Its the point of using ROE templates. I actually have built tests where, depending on some dynamic parameters of a mission and the target, a new ROE/WRA loads. Mine are very crude, but there is a lot you can do with it. You can do even more with lua or some hybrid of events limited lua.

[Gizzmoe]

I am assuming that the NEZ is always considering that the target will go defensive and evade.

Yes, most likely, I just think that the current NEZ engagement distances are brutally short and kinda useless when the enemy AI uses it

What we would like to see in the future is a more diverse fire discipline/WRA. For example , "1 missile at max range , 1 missile at 50% max range, 1 round at 25% and 1 missile at NEZ."

Something like that would be nice!

[thewood1]

"Yes, most likely, I just think that the current NEZ engagement distances are brutally short and kinda useless when the enemy AI uses it"

Thats really an over generalization. From what you are saying, its only an issue in certain circumstances. Not every A2A engagement is between high-performance fighters.

[Gizzmoe]

Thats really an over generalization. From what you are saying, its only an issue in certain circumstances. Not every A2A engagement is between high-performance fighters.

Fair enough. I haven't tested NEZ with Vietnam-era stuff or older yet, have you?

[thewood1]

I'm not talking Vietnam specifically. I'm talking a fighter intercept of incoming bombers, support aircraft, etc. As far as Vietnam goes, its probably not a good example to use. The majority of Sparrow engagements were well within WVR. From Promise and Reality... Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-To-Air Combat by Lt. Col. Patrick Higby in 2005...https://www.scribd.com/document/2285841 ... Air-Combat

Screenshot 2023-01-27 211921.jpg (94.65 KiB) Viewed 1413 times

Thats from the Scribd copy. I don't have a standalone PDF. But you can see that there isn't much point in looking at anything before Desert Storm. If you can, you should read that full article. It completely changed my perspective on anything BVR before the 1990s.

One interesting side note is in the Gulf War, one engagement with a single Iraqi Mig-23 took five separate AIM-7 shots to kill. The Mig-23 kept maneuvering at longer range and escaping from the missiles. There were some reports the missiles never hit and the Mig crashed into the ground out of energy from maneuvering.

[Gizzmoe]

I'm not talking Vietnam specifically. I'm talking a fighter intercept of incoming bombers, support aircraft, etc.

Ok, yes, the NEZ setting is most likely ok against such type of aircraft.

As far as Vietnam goes, its probably not a good example to use. The majority of Sparrow engagements were well within WVR. From Promise and Reality... Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-To-Air Combat by Lt. Col. Patrick Higby in 2005...

Thanks for the source, I will try to find it somewhere on the Internet Those Sparrow engagements you mentioned, what's "well within WVR" in nm? I, as a non-pro, consider anything less than 10nm as "WVR-like", especially in situations where I have AAW that has theoretically a max range of 30+ nm.

[thewood1]

In that article, its stated that 5nm is generally considered WVR. But there is no set definition.

btw, reading through that article and about specific engagements in the Osprey books, I have not found a single engagement out of over a dozen documented engagements that happened at more than 15 km. Thats true for even early AMRAAM engagements. If you read up on Desert Storm engagements, the far majority of AIM-7 engagements were measured in feet not miles. There were three Mig-23 shoot downs where AIM-7 launches were 3k to 5k feet, estimated.

With that said, it explicitly stated that firing at long range was not done with hope for a kill. It was done to force a target on the defensive and force the engagement into a more favorable range. I'm not sure the AI, with or without lua, will ever be able to handle that nuance. It would require very detailed and predictable set ups or manual intervention.

[Gizzmoe]

With that said, it explicitly stated that firing at long range was not done with hope for a kill. It was done to force a target on the defensive and force the engagement into a more favorable range. I'm not sure the AI, with or without lua, will ever be able to handle that nuance. It would require very detailed and predictable set ups or manual intervention.

Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make in this thread, but you put it in better words. That "nuance" is vital imo. The devs gave us much more realism, but the AI isn't up to the challenge yet. As Tcao has mentioned, a more diverse WRA would be very helpful.

[Eboreg]

I'm not talking Vietnam specifically. I'm talking a fighter intercept of incoming bombers, support aircraft, etc. As far as Vietnam goes, its probably not a good example to use. The majority of Sparrow engagements were well within WVR. From Promise and Reality... Beyond Visual Range (BVR) Air-To-Air Combat by Lt. Col. Patrick Higby in 2005...https://www.scribd.com/document/2285841 ... Air-Combat


Screenshot 2023-01-27 211921.jpg

Honestly, those Pks and BVR Pks pretty much lined up with what I saw in game for each of those conflicts. In the Desert Storm campaign, my fighters would get into WVR quite regularly but the constant Sparrow shots at enemy fighters would still prove very useful at making sure they didn't get any meaningful shots off at my fighters.

[thewood1]

If you read those accounts I'm talking about, they typically never fired at BVR. They had limited missiles and wanted a better chance. In only one engagement did they fire BVR and it was because they were surprised at the actions of the target to getting spiked. The interviews and reports from the Iraqi side stated similar reluctance to go BVR even in clear skies. It was also interesting to note that when the sparrow got between 500 and 600 knots, it was non-maneuverable and basically fell out of the sky.

We as players have a better theater-wide perspective and insight into some of the details pilots can't see or get.

[Gizzmoe]

It was also interesting to note that when the sparrow got between 500 and 600 knots, it was non-maneuverable and basically fell out of the sky.

Wow, that sucks...