Matrix Games Forums

I have noticed that China's ASAT missiles in the Salvo scenario in Chains of Wars are slower than the satellites they want to shoot down.
Therefore the player can not get the points provided for them.

Now that I think of it, when I tried to play Salvo a while ago (before it overwhelmed my poor CPU), I never could get the Chinese ASAT weapons to open fire. This would explain why...

A couple things here:

1) I think there were issues with ASATs overall, but I might not be remembering correctly. It might have just been one unit.

2) Might want to check a more current database and see if it was changed.

0014514

Theoretically you don't need to be faster than your target, you just need to be at the same place and time. For satellites, interception should be possible by slower munitions as long as the trajectory and timing is accurate. Velocity matching is only necessary for docking, not destruction.

Think of a satellite with a highly eccentric orbit - probably the best place to intercept it would be its perigee (closest approach to Earth) but that's also when it's at its highest orbital velocity. Any missile ascending from the ground is unlikely to be as fast, it just has to reach that intercept point and detonate within close proximity.

OK that's IRL, not sure how that would apply in-game!

An ASAT typically would NOT be faster than the satellite it is targeting- you need a hefty booster with multiple stages to get to orbital velocity. Not really necessary.

It seems to me to be a DB issue; the "Target Speed" of 12000 kts seems arbitrary and low to me, as circular low earth orbits can easily be 15000 kts (7800 m/s).