Why there's not many anti-ship missions

[Shibbyland]

I'm beginning to realise why there aren't many anti-ship missions.

 

I'm working on a mission where 2 flight of Hornets must depart from the carrier, overfly Guam and attack 3 enemy ships (2 Destroyers and a Chinese support vessel). 

 

I've dialed the enemy ships' intercept range back to 10% to give my initial 16 harpoons a chance to get through. Most still don't but the few that do and hit one of the enemy ships cause only about 50% damage to one of the 3 ships.

 

Other than turning off the enemy ship ability to shoot down my missiles, how else can I improve this mission?

 

I'd like to add more flights which I can command through the 'Other' menu in the comms menu but I don't know how to do that. Alternatively, the enemy ships don't engage until I am very close if I stay under 200ft. Can I get my AI flights to do that?

[Kang]

Probably would need more flights, maybe some F-14s launching radar decoys. If all that fails, you can add naval assets to help saturate the defences.

 

In my opinion the reason most of us don't do a lot of anti-ship is that the Harpoon, even if it manages to get through, leaves a lot to be desired. Feels like you ding those ships' paint a bit.

[cfrag]

Another issue with anti-ship missions is that there is next to no damage modelling for ships. To whit: you hit a ship with some anti-radiation missiles, and although you may impart some damage to the ship, the radar and missile launchers stay intact, and she happily keeps launching missiles at you until you've put enough damage into the hull so that she sinks. Even rudimentary damage modelling in addition to simple hit points could improve this (e.g. modelling damage to radar, electrical, propulsion, hull separately), and I'm hopeful that some day we'll see improvements. Right now a single frigate can nix any attempts to ship missions unless you bring along a room full of buddies armed with gobs of phoenixes each, and you are you prepared that only one of you will be able to limp back.

[peachmonkey]

Is there any way in ME to script the initial ship damage? I.e. have it spawn with 90% destroyed so then it's only a single bomb/missile that takes it out?

 

I've been trying to figure this out to no avail.

[Bogey Jammer]

You can set an tunable explosion placed by a zone and triggered at the start of the mission. But above 80% damage approximately, flames appear on the ship.

[jacobs]

Because hey are boring, you just takeoff, point the aircraft in general direction of the target, release missile and go home...