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Playing 'Damn the Torpedos' and loving it.

Lost the USS Pharris but was otherwise going ok until Task Group/convoy was detected. Had three Backfires inbound - shot down two but two AS-4 Kitchens were fired at near max range.

Question relates to anti-air defences. Even though the inbound Kitchens came into range of the TG SM-1s, I was unable to fire as I was told the maximum velocity of the Kitchen's exceeded the maximum velocity of the SM-1. As a result I was only left with the 'soft kill' option via decoys or jamming.

Is the behaviour correct? I could understand the max velocity being an issue if it was a tail chase but in this case the SM-1s would have been intercepting (head-on) the incoming missiles so I would have thought the respective max. velocities are irrelevant.

Thanks and hope that makes sense...

Hi ridgeback68

The max target speed is very important. In a head-on engagement, the closing speed is very high.
The max target speed is determined by the processing speed of the missiles guidance system, the agility of the missile, the accuracy of the homing system and a lot of other factors.

Put simply. If the closing speed is too high for the interceptor missile to react to changes to the targets course, it´s gonna miss.

Hope this helped.

Søren

Thanks Søren. Makes sense.

I know the probability of a kill would be low given an incoming 2300 kt AS-4 and an outgoing 1700+ kt SM-1 but I thought they may have at least had a go rather than waving at the missile as it went whistling by.

Even a small probability of a kill gives some chance rather than doing nothing. It would have been nice to at least been able to fire, even though it may have been futile.

ORIGINAL: ridgeback68
I know the probability of a kill would be low given an incoming 2300 kt AS-4 and an outgoing 1700+ kt SM-1 but I thought they may have at least had a go rather than waving at the missile as it went whistling by.

Even a small probability of a kill gives some chance rather than doing nothing. It would have been nice to at least been able to fire, even though it may have been futile.

So let's say we allow practically hopeless shots against very fast targets. Then the very next bug report will be: "My stupid ship is taking hopeless shots against these very fast targets, and then later there is an incoming raid of aircraft and now my ship doesn't have any SAM to shoot at them."

Balance.