Radar missiles

[GGTharos]

First of all, I never said there is nothing you can do - I said that you cannot possibly bleed away enough energy from the incoming missile for it to not kill you on kinematics alone. Good? ;)

 

You can't out-run it, that's for sure!

 

Secondly, since when was the NEZ is defined by one specific manouevre?

 

Since the day it was defined ;)

 

It wouldn't even be "no-escape" then - there are plenty of ways to bleed even more energy off the incoming missile aside from just turning around at 6-Gs and adding 300 kts. Dive to thicker air, weave a bit if it's a PN missile, a combination of the two, etc.

 

 

And this is precicely why it is now called Rtr (Range turn and run) isnteadof Rne (Range No Escape)

 

You're not looking to 'bleed off energy' ... you -cannot- do so head-on. You are trying to turn around and run away.

 

In general there's no much you can do once in the NEZ to make the missile have no energy to pursue you ... including diving into thicker air and so on and so forth - at all times in the NEZ you are trying to defeat the seeker. Alternatively, you may have an aircraft that can comfortably pull a 9g turn, maintain velocity, then add 300Kts ... and might be stealth too.

I think it exists ;)

 

In that case you can escape from inside NEZ.

[ViperEagle]

the F-15's radar is still a mishmash of many radars and less capable than it's real life representation.

 

Overall, the F-15's thrust is still porked.

[D-Scythe]

In general there's no much you can do once in the NEZ to make the missile have no energy to pursue you ... including diving into thicker air and so on and so forth - at all times in the NEZ you are trying to defeat the seeker.

 

Which brings us back to my main point - the NEZ is only significant in BVR combat because:

 

- outside of it, the target can evade it 100% of the time because a missile can't hit what it can't chase down

- and inside of it, Pk is high enough to make things start dying really quickly if NEZ's overlap

 

(For an overall Pk of about 60% for the AMRAAM in combat)

 

Now, if the target can defeat your missile virtually every time with a single manouevre due to a stupid seeker (so now Pk in NEZ is ~0%), then the NEZ (and all the the BVR manouvers you can do to expand it) loses its tactical significance doesn't it?

 

In LOMAC:

- 0% outside and ~0% inside

 

Quick, someone with a calculator - how do you get an overall Pk of 60% with two zeros?

[nscode]

I calculated that to get that PK, you send it out with your radar off and datalink guidance against a fighter who's radar is in such state that he can't even detect you, let alone lock you. Nice calculator :)

[Frostie]

Let's see,

 

The AMRAAM seeker sucks

All radar missiles' seekers suck

the AIM-9 damn sure sucks

All missiles kinematic modelling sucks

All airborne radars suck

chaff resistance sucks

F-15 thrust in the vertical realm sucks

 

What am I forgetting? :)

At least its a balanced game then, in a suckie sort of way.

[Pilotasso]

But its a wrong way. This is what seperates arcade games and SIM's.

[ViperEagle]

This may not get me alot of fans, but you know..if you're going to model an aircraft, you should do it as realistically as possible. If the F-15 is that good in real life, it should be that good in the game. If the F-15 can carry an ARH missile and the non SM Flankers cannot, then that is too bad.

 

If you want to balance the game, model the later version of the SU-27, instead of dumbing down the Eagle and it's weapons in order to "make it fair".

[GGTharos]

I disagree about the 'too bad' part. You might be right to some degree, but what happens if you make the F-15 'as good as in real life'? ... dead game.

 

Right now IMHO ED is proceeding the right way and they are paying heed to all sensibilities they can.

[D-Scythe]

There are other ways to balance a game besides porking advanced tech to balance it out with older tech. A big one: strength through numbers.

 

Moreover, this would also actually encourage TEAM play/tactics, and we'd probably see a decline in the solo spamming acts.

 

I disagree about the 'too bad' part. You might be right to some degree, but what happens if you make the F-15 'as good as in real life'? ... dead game.

 

Right now IMHO ED is proceeding the right way and they are paying heed to all sensibilities they can.

 

While I agree with you, and I know ED is doing the best they can, I also sympathize with ViperEagle. Porking the F-15C is not the way to maintain balance - it's *just* as unrealistic as Su-27 pilots using R-77s.

 

If giving a weapon more capabilities than it should be considered cheating, what about intentionally decreasing the capabilities of the weapon? What makes the latter more acceptable than the former?

[Pilotasso]

I agree with Scythe.

I think ED tried to balance the game in some way but its also true that loose ends caused the F-15/AMRAAM to be more porked than ED supected it to be.

By no means I think it should be a death ray but only good enough to prevent obvious (rather enfuriating) unrealistic measures to avoid them. If you shoot an AMRAAM at 10 miles the very least you expect is the enemy to do his best to defeat the missile. WHo knows this game enough knows how skip this and give AA theories a complete mockery and let them just fly by while maintaining lock to get a heat seeker in your face even if you did everything right. This is not just about relative perfomance between missiles. It is a distortion of AA tactics. You sease to have a SIM and get a 3D shooter instead.

 

Have you also noticed that the faster you run away from a radar source be it a fighter, Ground radar, SAM or missile the better they track you and the better they hold the lock?

[ViperEagle]

I disagree about the 'too bad' part. You might be right to some degree, but what happens if you make the F-15 'as good as in real life'? ... dead game.

 

Right now IMHO ED is proceeding the right way and they are paying heed to all sensibilities they can.

 

 

Sorry if I came off snarky. What I mean is that it would be cheating to give the Eagle the Aim-120 Flying-beam-o-death with a 100% PK against everything between 10 and 45 miles, but it's also not exactly fair to limit the F-15 as well.

 

What I want is a true representation of the F-15. What we have now is an aircraft that looks like a F-15, talks like an F-15, but doesnt walk like one.

 

Trust me, I would be equally unhappy if MiG-29's and SU-27's were being dumbed down to straight-and-level-oops-we're dead" pilots and aircraft as well.

Just when I take off in a F-15 in the game, I want that feeling of massive power, and that the missiles I shoot will fly their designed Mach 3, keep their energy like we know they do and have a realistic PK. I know ED tries, and I thank them for that, but perhaps what is needed is the actual data and experiences, which are provided in the case of the F-15, not so in the AMRAAM. I know fully combat loaded F-15's dont accelerate in vertical climbs, but having seen combat simulated loads and the F-15's abilities, it's not modeled right. BUT, this is a thread about missiles.

 

From what I can see..the shape of the Aim-120 is right, so is it's destructive power, however, it's ability to maintain energy and speed, as well as its seeker ability is not accurate.

[SwingKid]

This discussion moves too quickly for me to thoroughly follow, but let me try another post, risking that someone has already posted the same thing I am about to write:

 

D-Scythe,

 

If I understand correctly, you continue to believe that in the real world, there exists a technology in the AIM-120 seeker that allows it to maintain track on a look-down beaming target. Further, that the lack of modeling this technology in Lock On is what causes it to have a Pk approaching zero.

 

If this were the whole explanation, then by extension, we should expect that any real-world missiles lacking this technology should also have a Pk approaching zero.

 

Are there any missiles in the real world that you feel were vulnerable to the look-down notch? If the answer is yes, and these older missiles were nevertheless able to score kills in the real world, then we should conclude that the problem is not so simple - a lack of look-down notch immunity does not on its own produce a Pk of zero. There must be other factors to consider, and this opens the possibility that the whole problem may be elsewhere.

 

IMHO, the problem is not mainly in the seeker, but rather in the way that the beaming/notching maneuver itself may be far more common in the sim than it is in real life. The AI may be too effective at performing a perfect notch, regardless of the skill level to which they are set. Human players might also have it too easy, with lag-free RWRs or on-screen labels giving them overly precise bearings to the threat. The RWR might stop beeping the moment the player has entered the notch, while the missile should still be illuminating in his general direction. Or, the permissible angular margins for entering a notch may be too lenient.

 

I think you need to try Flanker 2.0 to discover how incredibly boring a simulation can be when there are no consistent weaknesses to be exploited in an incoming enemy missile seeker. Until then, we're never going to be on the same page. The missiles are the way that they are today due to seven years of ED responding to user complaints about them. Your comments in this thread have a good intention behind them, but don't provide much reason for distinguishing themselves from angry rants of many others, including myself, over the past seven years. Too often we rely on our own opinions of how missiles "should" work or "must" work, sensing that our own intuition is superior. I feel that way too, posted my rant and have been waiting ever since. You seem to need a new thread about this topic every three months. What's your exit strategy?

 

Because I must say, removing notch susceptibility from the seeker sounds an awful lot like going back to square one - Flanker 2.0 missiles. For what, then, is any attention paid to us worth?

 

-SK

[GGTharos]

I think the problem isn't the notch - it's the ease with which a missile can be defeated head on - or by balooning at low altitudes, or by running around supersonic.

 

These are the main problems theygo like this:

 

Radar guided missiles are far too susceptible to chaff head-on.

Radar guided missiles cannot hit anything below 20m.

Corollary: Radars do not self-jam and engines do not ingest sticks, birds, stones and other such things at 20m.

Missile range is not affected by own velocity.

It is easy to enter the notch by balooning around at 150kts, and turning the nose away while -still- keeping a lock on target. Because missile range is not affected, you can do this all day and the other guy can't pick you up on radar.

Running around supersonic wreaks havoc ont he unoptimized missile guidance.

 

 

WAFM will take care of the problem of someone running around low and slow. Radar self-jamming will take care of that, plus running around low and fast.

 

Seeker fixing will get rid of barrel rolling along the missile axis to evade the missile.

 

Fixes to the sidewinder's motor power will close the notch gap some as the DLZ grows ...

 

Above all, fixes to the seekers will prevent head-on chaff use as being effective. This, together with other things will force realistic tactics.

 

And please, take away the 20m floor.

Use fuzes that will cause the missile to detonate on those missiles that are susceptible to it, and use fuzes that will have a much higher chance of detonating against their targets on smarter missiles.

 

An improvement of guidance algorithms will improve BVR shots and make 'energy draining' maneuvers less effective.

 

In other words, you will -really- have to fight that missile.

You could notch it, but now you're defensive and the next one won't be so easy.

You could run away, but you won't be turning around to shoot your opponent in the face, because your missile requires x amount of seconds to launch in addition to the acquisition time, and you're in the NEZ when you do this - so you won't be getting away.

 

And so on and so forth.

 

I'm probably being overly broad and vague here, but these things can and -will- force more realistic tactics.

 

And yeah, WAFM is a big part of this.

Seekers are a big part of this.

Guidance algos are a big part of this, too.

[D-Scythe]

Well, first of all, I just want to make it clear that I was just ranting - again, I have no problem with what ED is doing so far.

 

If I understand correctly, you continue to believe that in the real world, there exists a technology in the AIM-120 seeker that allows it to maintain track on a look-down beaming target. Further, that the lack of modeling this technology in Lock On is what causes it to have a Pk approaching zero.

 

Not quite - my position is that the information is classified, and there is no way to know. In the absence of such information, it's better to take the middle ground rather than an absolute; making missiles more vulnerable to chaff/clutter in the notch is a whole lot better than leaving it completely defenseless, IMO.

 

Are there any missiles in the real world that you feel were vulnerable to the look-down notch? If the answer is yes, and these older missiles were nevertheless able to score kills in the real world, then we should conclude that the problem is not so simple - a lack of look-down notch immunity does not on its own produce a Pk of zero. There must be other factors to consider, and this opens the possibility that the whole problem may be elsewhere.

 

And conversely, there could also be reasons why the target didn't execute a beam manouever which is why the older missiles scored kills despite having no immunity to look-down notching. Desert Storm was a turkey shoot for the AIM-7M, R-27s missed every single time in Ethiopia/Eritrea, Israelis won't give anything about the Bek'aa valley turkey shoot, the Iran-Iraq war is an information blackhole, etc.

 

The point is that everything is arguable, because the data we need is classified. A lack of look-down immunity may very well produce a Pk of zero, or it may not - we won't know until we're six feet under or close to it.

 

IMHO, the problem is not mainly in the seeker, but rather in the way that the beaming/notching maneuver itself may be far more common in the sim than it is in real life. The AI may be too effective at performing a perfect notch, regardless of the skill level to which they are set. Human players might also have it too easy, with lag-free RWRs or on-screen labels giving them overly precise bearings to the threat. The RWR might stop beeping the moment the player has entered the notch, while the missile should still be illuminating in his general direction. Or, the permissible angular margins for entering a notch may be too lenient.

 

If I was a real fighter pilot, I would practice beaming ALL the time if it gauranteed an instant escape like it does in Lock On, even with faulty RWR, etc. I'd imagine any pilot would get pretty good at it after a while if the case was that notching gaurantees your safety, and they actually flew fighter planes for a living.

 

I think you need to try Flanker 2.0 to discover how incredibly boring a simulation can be when there are no consistent weaknesses to be exploited in an incoming enemy missile seeker.

 

You ever hear of Falcon 4.0? It had super missiles, and it's STILL has strong community support (with none of the constant whining about missile performance too). Obviously, even having deathrays like in F4 does not a boring sim make.

 

Until then, we're never going to be on the same page. The missiles are the way that they are today due to seven years of ED responding to user complaints about them. Your comments in this thread have a good intention behind them, but don't provide much reason for distinguishing themselves from angry rants of many others, including myself, over the past seven years. Too often we rely on our own opinions of how missiles "should" work or "must" work, sensing that our own intuition is superior. I feel that way too, posted my rant and have been waiting ever since.

 

I made two. And no, I don't think my intuition is superior to anyone's - I'm just merely pointing out that it's simply not feasible to execute modern BVR tactics if the target has an "out" even in the NEZ.

 

IRL, I'm pretty sure target's caught in the NEZ won't have this "Get out of Jail Free" card they can play like in Lock On.

 

Because I must say, removing notch susceptibility from the seeker sounds an awful lot like going back to square one - Flanker 2.0 missiles. For what, then, is any attention paid to us worth?

 

You think that the attention paid to you rests solely on the ability to evade missiles 100% of the time by doing a simple break turn? There's more to Lock On's missile modelling than just the notch/lookdown element - even without it, the system ED modelled is still the most advanced of all modern flight sims, with or without the ability for perfect missile evasion.

 

If you're afraid that Lock On's missiles are going to turn into deathrays, I've got good news for you - even at 100% slider they aren't even close to that. Furthermore, you can also be assured that I value any attention paid by ED to its past customers a great deal.

 

What's your exit strategy?

 

Why, find the WMDs, build a free democratic nation from the rubble of a dictatorship and pull out the troops in 3 months of course.

[S77th-GOYA]

D-Scythe, one question out of curiosity.

 

Do you have your missile effectiveness slider at 50%?

[Pilotasso]

I dont notice much difference at 100%. I do the exact same procedures as with 50%.

[tflash]

From previous extremely long endurance threads I seem to remember that:

 

- the R-77 flies a lot faster than the Amraam in Lockon

- the R-77 has a better kill ratio than the Amraam in lockon

 

Am I correct to presume that, since the R-77 flies faster and thus closes in much faster on the target, the probability that the missiles seeker looses track of the target diminishes considerably and thus, that the R-77 by this simple fact of speed already:

 

- has more acceptable results

- seems to have a more logical flightpath, since it flies to the target whereas the more easily looses-the-target-out-of sight Amraam seems to be going nowhere half of the time?

 

If all this though reasoning holds a little together, the solution is *very* simple seems to me.

[GGTharos]

I didn't say anything was dumbed down to make things equal - it just happened this way.

 

I'm saying there's no point in making one aircraft vastly superior until others can also be addressed. Once you only have 'one side' complaining, you end up with a dead game.

[GGTharos]

From previous extremely long endurance threads I seem to remember that:

 

- the R-77 flies a lot faster than the Amraam in Lockon

- the R-77 has a better kill ratio than the Amraam in lockon

 

Am I correct to presume that, since the R-77 flies faster and thus closes in much faster on the target, the probability that the missiles seeker looses track of the target diminishes considerably and thus, that the R-77 by this simple fact of speed already:

 

- has more acceptable results

- seems to have a more logical flightpath, since it flies to the target whereas the more easily looses-the-target-out-of sight Amraam seems to be going nowhere half of the time?

 

If all this though reasoning holds a little together, the solution is *very* simple seems to me.

 

Actually I did statistical counts from several online games, and to me it seems that the Pk of the 77 is in fact a little less than the 120 - but they're pretty close.

 

We're talking pure missiles launched vs. missiles hit computation here, no discrimination among shooting techniques.

[Pilotasso]

I usualy use half my AMRAAM load just to make my oponent go defensive for a point blank range shot when he starts running from a position of low and slow. Thats how I have gotten most of my kills. From the moment they come in high and jamming its all screwed up for the F-15. Theres no way to see whos comming and guess if I can swich for HOJ. Usualy burn through comes too late to do any usefull attack planning specialy if missiles are already in the air.

 

It also totaly prevents using the F-15's multi engagement capability forcing a guy going 1 on 1 leaving alot of room for taking an R-27ET in the face anytime during this whole story.

[Gripes]

On a slightly different note (although closely related to missile performance in game):

It would be very helpful for a shooter of any missile in lockon if ED tried to

eliminate these lag inducing tricks when playing online. I`ve seen it over and over... Starting the fight at high alt. TWS, descending, going STT,

getting tally, firing my last slammer and... seeing a target box jump 30 deg. Then, there are these "mods"... I`ve seen some weird stuff on

couple of servers recently. One that really cracked me up was an A50

moving at hypersonic speeds and changing directions in a radical way

(when I got close to it:joystick: ) and so on...

[GGTharos]

There's pretty much nothing ED can do about the lag ... it's just a basic feature of the networking protocols. ED can help eliminate issues up to a point, after that, there's nothing that can be done.

 

In addition this doesn't need to be them lagging, YOU might be lagging ... just because you see THEM lagging doesn't mean it -is- them lagging.

[Pilotasso]

Thats lag. happens when the server being running for a long time and low on system resourses or when someones connection or the servers is saturated by too numerous players or their high ping. The print screen cheat is a result of a bug ingame and serves no purpose actualy than to annoy people.

[GGTharos]

Why is there burn-through at all? :)

[GGTharos]

I don't need to fire a 120 - I have a pretty good idea of what it can do though (yes I know, a big claim) and there's plenty about it still that I don't know.

 

As for burn-through, this came about out of necessity to find a 'happy medium' between how jammers and HoJ/ECCM is simulated.

 

I'll give you a relatively simple scenario of how it -might- work instead, and why.

 

You cannot 'burn through' a main-lobe jammer, it is just too powerful, and burn-through range, while it does exist, is basically about gunzo distance - under 1nm.

 

Assuming your radar has some seriously spiffy ECCM, the jammer may in fact never affect it, at all - but we will not be making that assumption ;)

 

So anyway, here you are, flying about, some sucker's jamming you and you're not gonna get range until he's in your face.

 

So what do you do?

Most radar have a Kinematic Ranging function which you can use to get an approximate range and launch a BVR missile with HoJ capability against your target.

 

It doesn't take too long - fly target to gimbals on one side, reverse, do it again, and poof, you have a range. Your shot is low Pk because:

 

You can no target vector, so the missile will be forced to make more corrections in flight

You have no updated range, so the missile has to rely on time-to-go to release maneuvering restrictions (you want to restrict maneuver g etc at long ranges because pulling high-g's before you're within say 5km of the target is just a waste of energy).

The signal quality that the seeker is getting is degraded - jamming messes up guidance.

 

The whole idea behind a jammer is to make you come closer to get a kill, then.

 

Side-lobe jammers (angle jammers) /can/ be burnt-through because they are jamming only the relatively weak side-lobes.

 

 

As you can see, I called all this a 'simple scenario' and it is already fairly complex.