[WAD] ADM-141A TALD not treated as hostile

[Knightpawn]

I have been playing Caribbean Fury 1, Hot Tamales (a great scenario by the way) and I noticed that the AI, when "weapons tight", does not treat incoming swarm of TALDs as threats (they remain unknown bogeys rather than Hostile) despite heading directly on their SAMs and installations. At the same time they treat Harms as hostile and attack them. This understandably renders TALDs utterly useless. See attached save events at western edge of Cuba

Maybe an exclusion zone around Cuba would do the trick?

[Kushan04]

From a game perspective this looks to be working as designed. The Cuban sensors don't have a way to tell they MALDs are hostile (no NCTR, FLIR, etc) and their rules of engagement prohibit them from engaging.

[Knightpawn]

From a game perspective this looks to be working as designed. The Cuban sensors don't have a way to tell they MALDs are hostile (no NCTR, FLIR, etc) and their rules of engagement prohibit them from engaging.

Thanks.

What I am debating is not whether it is working as designed, but rather that the particular "as designed design" seems to me unreasonable. All I am saying is that it does not make sense to have a swarm of projectiles launched from an airplane against military installations and these installations to remain completely nonchalant and indifferent to them despite seeing them approaching (they should classified as non cooperative targets par excellence). At the same time, when other projectiles (eg Harms) are launched from the same airplanes they are treated as hostile (and rightly so). In a nutshell, insofar as CMO intends to be a simulation of miliary operations, it seems to me that it does not simulate appropriately the reaction to TALDs

[Uzabit]

I think the problem lies more in how the scenario designer set up intercept/patrol missions and/or exclusion zones to make the AI ​​react to unknown bogeys.

[mikerohan]

I kind of agree with the OP. This has happened to me several times with TALDs

It's true that scenarios **could** have an area where everything that enters it is considered hostile. FINE. So I'm not saying it's a bug or even a bad design.

But I think that it's not unreasonable to think that a facility would try to defend itself if several unknown objects swarm towards it.
Truth is that I'm not a radar expert, but that same facility is able to identify a **real** incoming missile traveling with those TALDs. How does it tell them apart?
HARMs are faster... ok.. but standard cruise missiles that travel in the order of 500kts? And all of them travel "together"...

From Kushan04's response I understand that the logic is the other way around. Nothing is "hostile" unless identified as "hostile"... so TALDs are never going to be hostile... so they are "useless" unless the scenario provides "no cross areas"...

But the original reasoning remains. Would a facility, at least when the shooting has already started, not attempt to engage those incoming unidentified "things"?

[thewood1]

This is totally a scenario design issue. Every SAM site in the world has ROEs they are ordered and trained to follow. Decoys are built to take advantage of those ROEs. Its completely up to the designer to use the tools they have. If devs start forcing ROEs on units, no one will be happy. There are all kinds tools a designer can use to make decoys effective to the mission and SAMs to react to them. If they aren't using them, feed that back to the designer and not the devs.

I for one don't want to have to work around limitations the devs might have to put on decoys. Things like automatic hostile labels, fake X-sections, etc.

[Gunner98]

As the designer, although years ago so memory may be faulty, I can say that one of the effects I wanted to achieve was that the Cubans were as surprised by the start of this war as the Americans/NATO were.

IIRC The Cubans start with much more limited ROE than the Soviet side. The Cubans a) are unsure of what the Soviets are doing and are not supposed to be integrated (a plot in the story), and b)are unsure of what their Govt's actual position is in the conflict. I think that changes after a few hours (I cannot recall). The Soviet SAMs should be weapons free from the start, but the last thing the Cuban SAMs want to do is shoot down a Soviet aircraft or start a war with the US that their Govt doesn't want.

Like I said, its been years since I looked at the scenario so may have things mixed up a bit.

I'll have to crack it open to take a look.

B

[thewood1]

A point to make is that a lot of stuff has been added in intervening years to not only make the designers job easier, but more expansive as well.

[mikerohan]

There are all kinds tools a designer can use to make decoys effective to the mission and SAMs to react to them. If they aren't using them, feed that back to the designer and not the devs.

And that is why I said I was not calling it a bug!
I haven´t even asked for a different behavior, just wanted to understand the logic behind it, follow along the discussion and learn other people's thoughts. Maybe should have started another thread... well maybe...

As the designer, although years ago so memory may be faulty, I can say that one of the effects I wanted to achieve was that the Cubans were as surprised by the start of this war as the Americans/NATO were.

Fair enough. I've seen this behavior not only in that scenario but in several others, even unrelated to Fury series. The scenario was just an example.
I love the Fury series, and TALDs—'useless' or not—aren’t going to stop me from enjoying it.
In fact it's one of those thing I usually don't care about. I just thought the thread was a good opportunity to understand why it was working that way.

[thewood1]

"What I am debating is not whether it is working as designed, but rather that the particular "as designed design" seems to me unreasonable. All I am saying is that it does not make sense to have a swarm of projectiles launched from an airplane against military installations and these installations to remain completely nonchalant and indifferent to them despite seeing them approaching (they should classified as non cooperative targets par excellence). At the same time, when other projectiles (eg Harms) are launched from the same airplanes they are treated as hostile (and rightly so). In a nutshell, insofar as CMO intends to be a simulation of miliary operations, it seems to me that it does not simulate appropriately the reaction to TALDs"

This is what I was pointing out a counter to. Its a lack of understanding how scenarios are designed and the tools available today. Granted, some of those tools were not available when some scenarios were designed. But even back in CMNAO days you could still effectively use decoys close to real world capabilities in relation to SAM reactions,

[Zanthra]

I think this is the automatic classification of guided weapons when detected by radar. There is no ambiguity whether a contact is a weapon. If someone fires a missile, it will show up as a guided weapon on first contact. If TALDs were class identified as guided weapons the same as those missiles, the bases would auto defend themselves.

PS: The more realistic way to handle this would be to make weapon contacts just be unidentified contacts without further identification like TALDs (no more free information), making things more ambiguous all around. However that would require some AI refinement to handle self defense from unidentified air contacts that could be incoming missiles (which in turn might also solve the issue of not engaging the TALDs).

[thewood1]

Haven't watched the whole thing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trL6M6PdnMM

edit: There is also the "decoy" function in the scenario editor that lets you emulate any aircraft (or any other unit) exactly as a decoy. Its a little more complex than just throwing TALDs around, but can offer a lot of options. Of course lua lets you do even more, if you are into that sort of thing.

[Knightpawn]

There is no ambiguity whether a contact is a weapon. If someone fires a missile, it will show up as a guided weapon on first contact. If TALDs were class identified as guided weapons the same as those missiles, the bases would auto defend themselves.

PS: The more realistic way to handle this would be to make weapon contacts just be unidentified contacts without further identification like TALDs (no more free information), making things more ambiguous all around. However that would require some AI refinement to handle self defense from unidentified air contacts that could be incoming missiles (which in turn might also solve the issue of not engaging the TALDs).

That is my point exactly. The default classification of an item as "Bogey", "Vampire" or "Fireball" (or otherwise) is a design choice. The issue I take with the classification of TALDs as bogeys, is that when I start a scenario, I don't know if the designer has taken into account the possibility of my (the player) deploying TALDs. If yes, he might have created an exclusion zone, or simply set general ROE to "Free" when it comes to air targets. If not, it is pointless to consider use of TALDs in my plan. To answer this, I have to take a peak at the scenario editor. But doing so, spoils all the fun and the surprise factor.

I like the idea of "no classification" at all. The player should go and figure out. That would be great if PBEM would be implemented at some point.