The road to v1.10: Waypoints for cruise missiles

[Dimitris]

http://www.warfaresims.com/?p=4043

[Dysta]

Excellent work!

Ninja doctrine is just having much brighter future, and screw chivalrous and open assault a lot.

[Triode]

Very good work!
Really cool thing

[giantsquid]

Amazing work. Congratulations. We were wayting for this one!
Each missile chart will have a note like "waypoint/off axis capable"? If I'm right only the lastest versions of many anti-ship/cruise missiles have this options.

Francesco

[Vici Supreme]

Wow, I'm impressed! Keep up the good work!

[Zaslon]

Very interesting!

[magi]

Oh... Thank you very much…

[ultradave]

Yes!!!!!!!!

[wild_Willie2]

Nice.

May I suggest that you also implement a simple "time on target based on current course and speed" counter in the weapon allocation screen?

This would make strike planning for a "time on target attack" from multiple off axis directions much easier.

W.

[Dysta]

ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2

May I suggest that you also implement a simple "time on target based on current course and speed" counter in the weapon allocation screen?

This would make strike planning for a "time on target attack" from multiple off axis directions much easier.

x1

This is also a simple and temporary solution for planning a saturation strike as well. Seeing the time of missile arrival from the ship, or the launched en-route. With timer implemented, planer will feel much easier to plan it out.

[Death6]

This is going to do wonders for the scenario I am working on. Can't wait.

[anxiousbob]

Looks awesome! Can't wait for 1.10 now.

[HaughtKarl]

Way cool. Is this the first step towards crafting a new mission planner where the player can plot the waypoints with a time on target option?

[mikmykWS]

Yes

[FTBSS]

You guys are making me feel like a theater commander. Love the dedication of this development team just an awesome sim guys that you keep improving. Can't wait to sneak those Lrasms into those ICBM launchers in Iran.

[DrRansom]

This is exciting news for more advanced cruise missile attacks.

In response to this big jump in capability, are there plans to make air defenses more survivable in 1.10?

[NakedWeasel]

ORIGINAL: DrRansom

This is exciting news for more advanced cruise missile attacks.

In response to this big jump in capability, are there plans to make air defenses more survivable in 1.10?

Are you somehow suggesting that the fantastic Russian SAM's like the S-300+ and S-400 are in some way not capable enough?

[DrRansom]

ORIGINAL: NakedWeasel

ORIGINAL: DrRansom

This is exciting news for more advanced cruise missile attacks.

In response to this big jump in capability, are there plans to make air defenses more survivable in 1.10?

Are you somehow suggesting that the fantastic Russian SAM's like the S-300+ and S-400 are in some way not capable enough?

They are capable, but, there are ways for the game to make them more capable in a way which reflects their unique capabilities.

As you well know, the Russian SAM TELs have extremely short set-up / breakdown time, ~ 5 minutes, allowing them to redeploy within the response time of a SEAD mission. I would like to see a specialized mission for highly responsive TELs which reflects this capability.

To describe it further:
The mission would allow the player to assign a squadron of TELs (SAM, ballistic missile, cruise missile) to a specific task, e.g. air defense or surface warfare, but with the provision that only a fraction of the missiles will be emplaced at any time. The other missiles will move around randomly, then find a new hide. Maybe the mission divides the squadron into 3rds, 1/3rd ready to fire, 1/3rd moving, 1/3rd hiding. When a launcher fires, after a period of time it begins to move again.

This automated mission would make targeting modern SAM batteries appropriately hard, as it emphasizes the mobility defense that those systems have. By putting it into a mission, it makes it easy for scenario designers to assign that behavior to non-player ADNs.

But, it would require a ton of work and I don't know if anything like this is on the developers radar. I'd be nice to see it, but we have so much promising stuff coming along I'll be content to wait.

[Hongjian]

Nice feature. Will certain anti-ship missiles also feature that capability? IIRC the Klub-series are capable of waypoint, as well as later Harpoon AShMs and the C-602/YJ-62 etc.

As for SAM survivability; the strike could have been defeated by OTH capable air/cruise missile-detection assets, just like AWACS or radar-equipped blimps in combination with active radar homing/IIR guided SAM. So, the SAM's own capability or the lack of it wasnt the reason that it got struck in that example.

[Dysta]

ORIGINAL: Hongjian

As for SAM survivability; the strike could have been defeated by OTH capable air/cruise missile-detection assets, just like AWACS or radar-equipped blimps in combination with active radar homing/IIR guided SAM. So, the SAM's own capability or the lack of it wasnt the reason that it got struck in that example.

But they are still tricky, as long as it got range to navigate to another target, and/or use them as baits for hostile air defenses.

Like I said it is a good covert operation weapons, it doesn't need speed to attack critical target as fast as possible, but to make defensive side harder to react what these missiles intent to hit. They still can reach into the hostile air defense as long as they don't have enough time to intercept them, and let it turn course to bait them, or destroy second-priority targets instead. That is also a part of the 'peeling-an-onion' strategy, which much more flexible abilities.