Ships Defences too Potent..

[Semaphore]

The air defences of ships is too potent.. even AAA gun fire from ships is highly accurate and gives little chance for even multiple attacking aircraft to undertake a strike using dumb bombs..

I have read numerous books and even recent real life events illustrate that Ships are not invulnerable.. I am not saying i want to make it easier to attck ships... just more realistic.  For instance, the Falklands Campaign of 1982 (South Atlantic Map) the Royal Navy lost HMS Ardent, Antelope, Coventry and Sir Galahad  to dumb bombs.  HMS Shefield and Atlantic Conveyor were lost to Exocet Missiles.

Air defence systems failed due to malfunction due to weather conditions, salt encrusted micro-switches on Sea Dart and human error such other systems blocked out ships RADAR as was case with HMS Shefield.

My wish is that the option is that ships defence systems and accuracy should be 'randomised' to add the element of, with the 'luck of the gods' coming in to play to add realism.   

Edited June 10, 2022 by Semaphore

[Northstar98]

In general, ships are incredibly simplified in just about every conceivable area. From the damage model to the sensors, the fire-control systems, the physics, the AI etc and I can go on for ages about all of them.

There also aren't any randomised failures on weapons, which would be cool to see (perhaps a menu with all weapons present in the mission listed, perhaps differentiating them based on coalition).

It would also be nice to see the various AI skill levels have more of a practical effect on ships - right now I can't determine if there's much of a difference.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Northstar98

[rkk01]

Agreed - and not just for ships…

will be interesting to see how the 60s and 70s systems perform when the Raz assets join the map

FWIW, a former neighbour was on HMS Brilliant. After the then state of the art Sea Wolf malfunctioned he was tasked with improvising additional air defences for the ship… supposedly upside down office chairs attached to the guardrail with a GPMG attached to the legs swivel

[upyr1]

15 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

It would also be nice to see the various AI skill levels have more of a practical effect on ships - right now I can determine if there's much of a difference

At the minimum I would like it to affect the hit points to simulate damage control ability. We need a complete overhaul 

[upyr1]

2 hours ago, rkk01 said:

Agreed - and not just for ships…

will be interesting to see how the 60s and 70s systems perform when the Raz assets join the map

FWIW, a former neighbour was on HMS Brilliant. After the then state of the art Sea Wolf malfunctioned he was tasked with improvising additional air defences for the ship… supposedly upside down office chairs attached to the guardrail with a GPMG attached to the legs swivel

Same here one question I have with modern systems, is what is manually controlled and what is automated. Crew skills wouldn't matter if the aa guns are aimed by a computer in real life. However if you have a bunch of sailors  aiming the guns then the skill will matter.

[Northstar98]

11 hours ago, upyr1 said:

Same here one question I have with modern systems, is what is manually controlled and what is automated. Crew skills wouldn't matter if the aa guns are aimed by a computer in real life. However if you have a bunch of sailors  aiming the guns then the skill will matter.

What you can do though is increase the OODA time for readying these systems, or if they ready them at all (as a RL example, look at the USS Stark).

[upyr1]

48 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

What you can do though is increase the OODA time for readying these systems, or if they ready them at all (as a RL example, look at the USS Stark).

I don't believe the stark detected the missiles at all.

[Silver_Dragon]

On 6/10/2022 at 9:34 AM, Semaphore said:

The air defences of ships is too potent.. even AAA gun fire from ships is highly accurate and gives little chance for even multiple attacking aircraft to undertake a strike using dumb bombs..

I have read numerous books and even recent real life events illustrate that Ships are not invulnerable.. I am not saying i want to make it easier to attck ships... just more realistic.  For instance, the Falklands Campaign of 1982 (South Atlantic Map) the Royal Navy lost HMS Ardent, Antelope, Coventry and Sir Galahad  to dumb bombs.  HMS Shefield and Atlantic Conveyor were lost to Exocet Missiles.

Air defence systems failed due to malfunction due to weather conditions, salt encrusted micro-switches on Sea Dart and human error such other systems blocked out ships RADAR as was case with HMS Shefield.

My wish is that the option is that ships defence systems and accuracy should be 'randomised' to add the element of, with the 'luck of the gods' coming in to play to add realism.   

 

The ships defenses, always has too ponent, and need have more dangerous. The problem has be DCS has missing great quantities of systems and funtionalities, with affect to the naval environment.

The Atlantic conveyor was lost by a Exocet missile, distracted by chaffs with impact vs them. HMS Shefield was lost by crew errors, tactical problems and systems not propper used.

Other ships, has Missing by battle on a litoral combat environmet, no simulated on DCS, and other point, has none simulated as Crew on ships and vehicles, you cant "kill" them by put that out of service. That has always on "battle station"... no turn to other states.

Remember DCS Ship missing medium and high caliber AAA, ECM, ECCM, Jammers and Decoys.

[upyr1]

2 hours ago, Silver_Dragon said:

The ships defenses, always has too ponent, and need have more dangerous. The problem has be DCS has missing great quantities of systems and funtionalities, with affect to the naval environment.

The Atlantic conveyor was lost by a Exocet missile, distracted by chaffs with impact vs them. HMS Shefield was lost by crew errors, tactical problems and systems not propper used.

Other ships, has Missing by battle on a litoral combat environmet, no simulated on DCS, and other point, has none simulated as Crew on ships and vehicles, you cant "kill" them by put that out of service. That has always on "battle station"... no turn to other states.

Remember DCS Ship missing medium and high caliber AAA, ECM, ECCM, Jammers and Decoys.

Eagle needs to really work on land and naval units, which is the reason I want to see naval and land modules. 

[Silver_Dragon]

27 minutes ago, upyr1 said:

Eagle needs to really work on land and naval units, which is the reason I want to see naval and land modules. 

ED need build specific teams into land and other new teams on naval units, all permanent branchs to improve features and funtionality on the core to expand that environmets. That is not only put one or two programers to make "fixew". Has is the same as build a complete new game from scratch.

[Northstar98]

On 6/11/2022 at 2:10 PM, upyr1 said:

I don't believe the stark detected the missiles at all.

It didn't, but this is the kind of fidelity DCS just doesn't model (though you can kinda fake it with triggers), you've also got things like the CIWS being left in standby (again, DCS doesn't let you disable specific weapons or sensors, though it can kinda be faked with triggers).

Then again, regarding the OHP in DCS:

• The AN/SPS-49 isn't present at all (the ship can just detect everything within 150 km) - it's just eye candy.
• The Mk 92 CAS is modelled as an AN/MPQ-53 STR from the Patriot PAC-2
• The STIR isn't present at all (so it shouldn't have the Mk 13 GMLS either - why ED decided to do an OHP as it was right at the end of its life, I don't know).
• It fires a missile called "SM-2MR" - the OHPs had SM-1MR (though DCS models it with SM-1MR guidance, i.e. SARH all the way).
• The Mk 15 Phalanx Block 1B has none of its own sensors modelled, the AI just magically aims it. It also fires the wrong round and has the wrong dispersion.

Then onto the more general issues:

• Very crude damage model.
• Very crude sensor model.
• Very crude AI.
• Generic gun ammunition.
• Naval artillery that should be dual-purpose (i.e anti-surface and anti-air) IRL don't have dual-purpose capabilities in DCS.
• No ESM.
• No countermeasures.
• Crude physics.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Northstar98

[upyr1]

38 minutes ago, Silver_Dragon said:

ED need build specific teams into land and other new teams on naval units, all permanent branchs to improve features and funtionality on the core to expand that environmets. That is not only put one or two programers to make "fixew". Has is the same as build a complete new game from scratch.

I believe making modules would be the best way to do that

[Silver_Dragon]

1 minute ago, upyr1 said:

I believe making modules would be the best way to do that

If you dont build the "construction blocks" you only have a CA vehicle without funtionality on land, and actually on ships, the near has the "Supercarrier" but the missing funtionality has abysmal to build a ship combatante, on facs, the Supercarrier has only centred on airborne operations, no on naval warfare.

[upyr1]

34 minutes ago, Silver_Dragon said:

If you dont build the "construction blocks" you only have a CA vehicle without funtionality on land, and actually on ships, the near has the "Supercarrier" but the missing funtionality has abysmal to build a ship combatante, on facs, the Supercarrier has only centred on airborne operations, no on naval warfare.

I won't argue there as I want eagle to alter the core as they build the modules. So they are as good as the aircraft modules 

[Semaphore]

On 6/11/2022 at 1:20 PM, Northstar98 said:

What you can do though is increase the OODA time for readying these systems, or if they ready them at all (as a RL example, look at the USS Stark).

What’s the OODA and how would one do this in Mission Editor ? 

[Northstar98]

44 minutes ago, Semaphore said:

What’s the OODA and how would one do this in Mission Editor ? 

OODA is an initialism for Observe -> Orient -> Decide -> Act.

There's many things you could apply it to, but in this context, it's the cycle that needs to be completed in order to perform an engagement: detecting a target -> classifying a target -> deciding how to engage the target and what with -> preparing weapons for engagement -> firing/launching weapons.

You can think of the OODA time as "reaction time", just a higher fidelity way of going about it and accounting for all the steps.

I'd recommend taking a look at this video, as he does a better job of explaining what it is. In the first he uses C:MO which separates between detecting a target and readying to fire, with the skill levels influencing the time to ready.

 

In DCS, looking here (though it looks like this concerns AI aircraft, not how much of it is true for ground and naval units), it seems that in this context, the only thing the skill level influences is the time and distance to detect a target by visual/optical means and the time (expressed as a coefficient of the scan-period) to detect a target.

That largely covers the first 2 'O's in OODA (with the main one missing being classification - determining the object type and the whether the object is hostile, friendly, neutral or ambiguous/unknown, which DCS doesn't consider - as far as I can tell the AI is always able to instantly classify everything that it can detect). However, the skill levels don't seem to cover the 'DA' part of the cycle.

However, we can kinda fake the 'DA' part of the cycle in the mission editor.

Here's how I'd go about doing it in the mission editor:

1. Set your ship to alarm state green and ROE to weapons hold
2. Set up a trigger zone
3. Set triggers for unit inside moving zone (with the zone unit being the ship) and have this trigger a flag
4. Set up a time since flag trigger, that changes the alarm state to red and the ROE to weapons free (or whatever you desire). The time in this case will be your OODA loop completion time (though you may have to account for how long the AI takes to go from alarm state red/weapons free to actually firing). If you wish to separate the D and the A part of the cycle, have a separate flag controlling the alarm state (which can stand-in for decide) and another for ROE (controlling the act part of the cycle).
5. Set up a trigger that resets the alarm state and ROE back to what it was at step 1. (so unit outside moving zone).

Ideally, we'd have a condition for [object] detected by [object], though I believe this is possible with .lua scripting, though I haven't used it myself.

If you want, I can whip up a worked example.

Edited June 14, 2022 by Northstar98

[upyr1]

4 hours ago, Semaphore said:

What’s the OODA and how would one do this in Mission Editor ? 

This would be the ai reaction time

[Semaphore]

22 hours ago, Northstar98 said:

OODA is an initialism for Observe -> Orient -> Decide -> Act.

There's many things you could apply it to, but in this context, it's the cycle that needs to be completed in order to perform an engagement: detecting a target -> classifying a target -> deciding how to engage the target and what with -> preparing weapons for engagement -> firing/launching weapons.

You can think of the OODA time as "reaction time", just a higher fidelity way of going about it and accounting for all the steps.

I'd recommend taking a look at this video, as he does a better job of explaining what it is. In the first he uses C:MO which separates between detecting a target and readying to fire, with the skill levels influencing the time to ready.

 

In DCS, looking here (though it looks like this concerns AI aircraft, not how much of it is true for ground and naval units), it seems that in this context, the only thing the skill level influences is the time and distance to detect a target by visual/optical means and the time (expressed as a coefficient of the scan-period) to detect a target.

That largely covers the first 2 'O's in OODA (with the main one missing being classification - determining the object type and the whether the object is hostile, friendly, neutral or ambiguous/unknown, which DCS doesn't consider - as far as I can tell the AI is always able to instantly classify everything that it can detect). However, the skill levels don't seem to cover the 'DA' part of the cycle.

However, we can kinda fake the 'DA' part of the cycle in the mission editor.

Here's how I'd go about doing it in the mission editor:

1. Set your ship to alarm state green and ROE to weapons hold
2. Set up a trigger zone
3. Set triggers for unit inside moving zone (with the zone unit being the ship) and have this trigger a flag
4. Set up a time since flag trigger, that changes the alarm state to red and the ROE to weapons free (or whatever you desire). The time in this case will be your OODA loop completion time (though you may have to account for how long the AI takes to go from alarm state red/weapons free to actually firing). If you wish to separate the D and the A part of the cycle, have a separate flag controlling the alarm state (which can stand-in for decide) and another for ROE (controlling the act part of the cycle).
5. Set up a trigger that resets the alarm state and ROE back to what it was at step 1. (so unit outside moving zone).

Ideally, we'd have a condition for [object] detected by [object], though I believe this is possible with .lua scripting, though I haven't used it myself.

If you want, I can whip up a worked example.

 

A worked up example would be great - thank you.

I comprehend what you are saying and can follow the logic but a worked example would be very useful to reference. 

[Northstar98]

Sure thing, watch this space.

[Semaphore]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

Sure thing, watch this space.

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, Semaphore said:

Right, here's a very quick and barebones implementation.

The unit (in this case an SA-6) starts with the alarm state set to red (I know I said green up above, but I've set it to red in this case, as it needs to be set to red for the radars to be deployed) and with the ROE set to weapons hold. It has also been set with 2 triggered task; one to set the ROE to weapons free, and the other set to reset it back to weapons hold.

I've then made a trigger zone, just outside of its engagement range. How its supposed to work is that when the flight enters the trigger zone it triggers a flag to turn on, there's then a time since flag trigger which will represent our OODA loop timer.

Once the set timer has expired, the weapons free triggered task gets triggered and the system is free to engage as it would normally.

Once the aircraft have left the zone, the flags and tasks reset back to their default. If the target flight re-enters the zone, the whole thing starts again.

 

Note, that right now the delay doesn't factor the time for the AI to train and prepare the launchers, it seems there's a baked in delay for them. They also don't pre-ready the launchers, which would allow them to launch as soon as their in range. Right now, the delay essentially results in delaying getting the FCR on target.

Simple OODA delay example.miz

[Callsign112]

On 6/11/2022 at 1:50 PM, upyr1 said:

Eagle needs to really work on land and naval units, which is the reason I want to see naval and land modules. 

On 6/11/2022 at 2:20 PM, Silver_Dragon said:

ED need build specific teams into land and other new teams on naval units, all permanent branchs to improve features and funtionality on the core to expand that environmets. That is not only put one or two programers to make "fixew". Has is the same as build a complete new game from scratch.

Couldn't agree more with land/sea based modules and the need for dedicated teams that can get more accomplished then fixes/updates.

Shouldn't require making a whole new game from scratch though. Think of another WWII flight game that only had planes little more than 2 years ago. Today they have player controlled tanks.

But in the case of DCS, there is actually 2 ways they could go with this.

They could just keep adding more functionality to CA with each update, or make individual modules as add-ons. Personally, one of the main attractions to CA for me is the number of vehicles it includes, so I wouldn't mind seeing the improvements added to CA, but I would also very much support the addition of individual modules.

[Semaphore]

1 hour ago, Northstar98 said:

Right, here's a very quick and barebones implementation.

The unit (in this case an SA-6) starts with the alarm state set to red (I know I said green up above, but I've set it to red in this case, as it needs to be set to red for the radars to be deployed) and with the ROE set to weapons hold. It has also been set with 2 triggered task; one to set the ROE to weapons free, and the other set to reset it back to weapons hold.

I've then made a trigger zone, just outside of its engagement range. How its supposed to work is that when the flight enters the trigger zone it triggers a flag to turn on, there's then a time since flag trigger which will represent our OODA loop timer.

Once the set timer has expired, the weapons free triggered task gets triggered and the system is free to engage as it would normally.

Once the aircraft have left the zone, the flags and tasks reset back to their default. If the target flight re-enters the zone, the whole thing starts again.

 

Note, that right now the delay doesn't factor the time for the AI to train and prepare the launchers, it seems there's a baked in delay for them. They also don't pre-ready the launchers, which would allow them to launch as soon as their in range. Right now, the delay essentially results in delaying getting the FCR on target.

Simple OODA delay example.miz 10.23 kB · 0 downloads

This is great, many thanks and i can follow it all up to a point... 

In the Switched Condition (SAM ROE  Weapons Free) Trigger the Action AI TASK SET is AI TASK drop down menu 'SAM Group/1. ROE + WEAPONS FREE SAM_ROE_free'

Where does that come from or is it a free form statement we have to write ourselves?

Thanks in advance

[Northstar98]

1 hour ago, Semaphore said:

This is great, many thanks and i can follow it all up to a point... 

In the Switched Condition (SAM ROE  Weapons Free) Trigger the Action AI TASK SET is AI TASK drop down menu 'SAM Group/1. ROE + WEAPONS FREE SAM_ROE_free'

Where does that come from or is it a free form statement we have to write ourselves?

Thanks in advance

That's a triggered action, which are almost exactly like the tasks found in "ADVANCED (WAYPOINT ACTIONS)" just they can be directly triggered from the triggers menu (which I find to be more convenient).

In this case I've used the "AI TASK SET" action to enable them. (I actually should've used AI TASK PUSH - I've attached a corrected mission file below). If I wanted to use advanced waypoint actions, all I would need to do is create a flag for each of them.

The "SAM_ROE_free" is just a name I've given the triggered action. You don't have to do this, but if you have a large number of triggered actions it definitely helps with finding the one you want.

Simple OODA delay example.miz

Edited June 15, 2022 by Northstar98

[upyr1]

1 hour ago, Callsign112 said:

Couldn't agree more with land/sea based modules and the need for dedicated teams that can get more accomplished then fixes/updates.

Shouldn't require making a whole new game from scratch though. Think of another WWII flight game that only had planes little more than 2 years ago. Today they have player controlled tanks.

But in the case of DCS, there is actually 2 ways they could go with this.

They could just keep adding more functionality to CA with each update, or make individual modules as add-ons. Personally, one of the main attractions to CA for me is the number of vehicles it includes, so I wouldn't mind seeing the improvements added to CA, but I would also very much support the addition of individual modules.

I don't see any techincal reasons to do a new game though there might be a marketing reason to do so. On the marketing side, it might make sense to spin Combined Arms off into it's own game and leave DCS for full fidelity modules. If eagle did that, I would want cross game play unless someone running a server says no. 

Anyway with Combined Arms, I'm not sure if it would be cost effective for Eagle to fix everything via free updates, so I would rather see Combined Arms II or the spin off with a discount for people who already own combined arms, than nothing at all. 

As for ships, as think naval modules would have the most limits on what we can do I figure do things from the captain's perspective.

In both cases with Combined Arms and Fleet Ops, they should be a serise of era/ location themed modules that take the place of asset packs. For example, Fleet ops: Gulf of Tonkin Yacht Club,   would be a better way to get Vietnam era Naval assets than a dedicated Vietnam asset pack.