Please fix AGM-84 Harpoon damage ASAP!!!

[FoxOne007]

Right now the Harpoon is pretty much useless, it does 0 damage to any Naval asset in DCS, which of course it shouldn't do, it should at the very least disable a ship to sail any further, while multiple should end up resulting in the sinking of a vessel (if hit in weak places around the hull).

To put it simple, it's broken, fix it asap please, to many people's anger it has been in this broken state for too long now, with the same BS excuse of dev rescources, meanwhile we see new module after new module.....

 

As detailed below you can see the damage a Harpoon does (and later on see the ship totally wrecked after multiple harpoon shots and a torpedo).

 

 

[Swift.]

And whilst we are at it, lets fix the flight profile. Skim means Skim, not just medium ish until about 5 miles and then skim.

[Tholozor]

The problem exists in the ship damage model, not the Harpoon's payload.

 

[Silver_Dragon]

No advanced ship damage mode build by ED.

[BIGNEWY]

Harpoon is correct, we are waiting for better damage models on the ships, this will take a long time however and I have no ETA for you currently. 

[FoxOne007]

8 hours ago, BIGNEWY said:

Harpoon is correct, we are waiting for better damage models on the ships, this will take a long time however and I have no ETA for you currently. 

Great….. even a basic update to the damage model will be better then the non-functioning thing we have now though… so as of now the Harpoon is still completely useless

 

9 hours ago, Swift. said:

And whilst we are at it, lets fix the flight profile. Skim means Skim, not just medium ish until about 5 miles and then skim.

And yes this too

Edited February 8, 2022 by FoxOne007

[MarcT-NL]

11 hours ago, Swift. said:

And whilst we are at it, lets fix the flight profile. Skim means Skim, not just medium ish until about 5 miles and then skim.

Well, this actually works correct.

When a Harpoon is fired, it travels to the target point at a set hight.

High = 25.000ft. Med = 15.000ft. Low = 5000ft.

When it detects a target (at about 20nm) it drops to 300ft and approaches that target.

When at 2nm it will either drop and head for the hull (skim) or pitch up and head for the deck (pop).

I have been told that POP is better for attacking warships, because of their hardened hull. Not shure if this is true/modelled in DCS.

Edited February 8, 2022 by MarcT-NL

[Northstar98]

3 minutes ago, MarcT-NL said:

Well, this actually works correct.

Source?

3 minutes ago, MarcT-NL said:

I have been told that POP is better for attacking warships, because of their hardened hull. Not shure if this is true/modelled in DCS.

Nearly all modern warships don't feature any armour at all (the most is kevlar around critical spaces), including every single naval unit in DCS World, Harpoon shouldn't have any difficulty going through them.

[Swift.]

7 hours ago, MarcT-NL said:

Well, this actually works correct.

When a Harpoon is fired, it travels to the target point at a set hight.

High = 25.000ft. Med = 15.000ft. Low = 5000ft.

When it detects a target (at about 20nm) it drops to 300ft and approaches that target.

When at 2nm it will either drop and head for the hull (skim) or pitch up and head for the deck (pop).

I have been told that POP is better for attacking warships, because of their hardened hull. Not shure if this is true/modelled in DCS.

 

The cruise height refers to the pre search cruise phase when using Pop. With Skim set, it should skim even in the pre search phase, and then fly up at the search range before descending back into the skim once it has acquired the target.

And FWIW, Skim means Skim, not 300ft kinda low-ish

[Ahmed]

Adding to this, this post added evidence that the Harpoon should cruise at 50-200ft in skim.

 

[Hotdognz]

Last night we did some hornet sticks against a small carrier group 3 ships 1 AC 1x DD 1x CC, it took over 96 harpoons to even get 1 ship sunk and some minor damage on the DD, then the Vigens came in and sunk the other 2 ships with 8 of their anti ship missiles.

All harpoons were on target at the ships, the ships defenses took nearly every Harpoon out even when we all fired at the same time, same mode, same distance and from multiple engagement angles.

 

[Hobel]

I always wondered about that,  even if the warhead is already very large

and yet it does much less damage than the RB15.

Left : 1 Harpoon   Right : 1 RB-15F

Edited July 3, 2022 by Hobel

[Hotdognz]

All our group are just getting Vigens now so we dont spend 6-8hrs with Harpoons trying to sink one carrier group in our missions that require it.

 

[Northstar98]

IIRC RB 15F has a massively overinflated warhead to get over the incredibly lackluster damage models of ships.

[Dragon1-1]

It's a "ships too good" problem. IRL, just one or two Harpoons is enough. It has a 221kg warhead, the Moskva was sunk with two hits from a Kh-35 derivative with a 150kg warhead. Sahand took two Harpoons (although it was also hit by four Skippers), and Sheffield was sunk with just one unexploded Exocet hit. Granted, none of those sank immediately, but damage was extensive enough to take them out of action, so they should be counted as kills.

Also, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but Harpoons don't seem to follow a sea-skimming profile even if set to fly at low altitude.

[Sonoda Umi]

Damage Mechanisms of Ships in DCS is extremely unrealistic.

[Northstar98]

33 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

It's a "ships too good" problem. IRL, just one or two Harpoons is enough.

It depends on where the ship is hit and exactly what happens - it's by no means a gaurantee and estimates can be wildly off.

For your examples, IRIS Sahand (1100 - 1500 ton frigate) took 3 Harpoons, 4 Skippers and 2 Rockeyes and even after all that, only sank when the fire caused a magazine explosion. However, even if it was still afloat, the Sahand was destroyed.

Moskva on the other hand (9400 - 11500 ton guided missile cruiser) only took 2 R-360s (equivalent to 1.35 Harpoons) and sank.

33 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Sheffield was sunk with just one unexploded Exocet hit.

True, though it sank under tow in heavy seas. Regardless, the ship was basically a destroyed hulk, just still afloat.

All 3 examples show how there are just so many factors that simply don't get considered for in DCS, leading to results that are wildly off. I'm dreaming, but having a damage model anything like this (or hell, just 1 part of it) would be a god send.

33 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Granted, none of those sank immediately, but damage was extensive enough to take them out of action, so they should be counted as kills.

Agreed.

33 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Also, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but Harpoons don't seem to follow a sea-skimming profile even if set to fly at low altitude.

Yeah, something is up with it, though information on what precisely it's supposed to do is very sparse. Suffice to say, it's a sea-skimming anti-ship missile, the whole reason why they exist is that they can delay being detected by hiding in the radar shadow caused by the curvature of the Earth.

[Hobel]

vor 8 Stunden schrieb Dragon1-1:

It's a "ships too good" problem. IRL, just one or two Harpoons is enough. It has a 221kg warhead, the Moskva was sunk with two hits from a Kh-35 derivative with a 150kg warhead. Sahand took two Harpoons (although it was also hit by four Skippers), and Sheffield was sunk with just one unexploded Exocet hit. Granted, none of those sank immediately, but damage was extensive enough to take them out of action, so they should be counted as kills.

Also, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but Harpoons don't seem to follow a sea-skimming profile even if set to fly at low altitude.

Okay, and why did the RB-15F in DCS achieve exactly what the Kh-35 did in real life?

I think the problem here lies more with the weapon.

even if I agree that the DM of the ships should be revised

[Dragon1-1]

18 minutes ago, Hobel said:

Okay, and why did the RB-15F in DCS achieve exactly what the Kh-35 did in real life?

Because RB-15F is adjusted to compensate for inadequate simulation. If used against land targets (fortunately, this isn't feasible), it would explode like a small nuke. The true issue is with the ships, increasing the missile's explosive power is just a workaround. 

Ships might be big and impressive-looking, but modern warships aren't really armored like WWII ones were. As such, it doesn't take as much to sink one as one might think. They now have hulls thick enough so that they won't sink when something sneezes at them (some time ago not even that, which caused some embarrassment), but they still would be easily penetrated by a decent sized WWII-era shell. A missile like the Harpoon will punch right through, and the explosion will more likely than not start a fire. Even if the crew can put it out (not a given), they'll still be left with a hole in the hull uncomfortably close to the waterline. This is why many ships hit by ASMs sink under tow, a hole like this isn't conductive to staying afloat when the waves start hitting it. Temporary patch jobs on holes this big rarely last long and are dangerous to implement to boot, since going to where the hole is means going deep below decks, a bad place to be should the ship decide to capsize.

[Hobel]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Dragon1-1:

Because RB-15F is adjusted to compensate for inadequate simulation. If used against land targets (fortunately, this isn't feasible), it would explode like a small nuke. The true issue is with the ships, increasing the missile's explosive power is just a workaround. 

I doubt it, because I have seen the missile hit many times near ground targets and I think the damage is still reasonable and not too big

Here is an example video

And apart from that, other weapons in the DCS context do plausible damage against ships.

Otherwise, weapons like GBU31 and many others would do little or no damage against ships, but the weapons do reasonable damage.

so I think it's the Harpoon that's wrong here.

 

 

[Tholozor]

This has been discussed before. The harpoon has the correct warhead, it's the ships that have too much health/armor/lack of modular damage models.

 

[BIGNEWY]

Posts merged

[Hobel]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb Tholozor:

This has been discussed before. The harpoon has the correct warhead, it's the ships that have too much health/armor/lack of modular damage models.

 

Yes I was probably not quite right, the damage that different ships take is very different

 

Am 8.2.2022 um 01:20 schrieb BIGNEWY:

Harpoon is correct, we are waiting for better damage models on the ships, this will take a long time however and I have no ETA for you currently. 

Then one more question. 

You say yourself that it will be a long time before the ships dm ready.

  Until then, can't the harpoon be adapted in the same way as the anti-ship missiles on the Viggen, so that it can be used more effectively? 

Adjusting the warhead shouldn't take much time, and similar adjustments have been made elsewhere because dcs isn't ready yet.

[Northstar98]

14 hours ago, Hobel said:

Okay, and why did the RB-15F in DCS achieve exactly what the Kh-35 did in real life?

I think the problem here lies more with the weapon.

even if I agree that the DM of the ships should be revised

Yeah, a temporary over-inflation of the warhead for existing anti-ship missiles would IMO, be a worthwhile (and easy to implement) workaround until ships receives an appropriate damage model.

[Minijohn]

There is a way to impliment a temporary fix to this problem in your missions by using the ME and setting up "unit hits=2" and the "explode unit 1000" this will then mean if you hit the target twice a very big explosion takes place and sinks the ship, of course depending on the size of the ship you can increase or decrease number of hits