Game accuracy??

[Sea Dragon]

Okay, heres the situation. I have a T45 destroyer, 2 Adalaide class (by the way the helo needs fixing in the updated one!!), a Halifax class (once again the helo needs fixing, is a transport instead of an ASW) and a Te kahara class.

In the air i have a tanker and 3 Eurofighters plus a nimrod and a posedian. From a maximum firing range i have an oscar enaging with SS-N-19's. These are pressumably being guided in by the computer from the 2-3 Russian fleet submarines near my CAG.
They come in salvos of about 2-4. Despite having a partial radar lock on them throughout flight due to my nimrods and eurofighters and a solid lock when they approach aster 30 range from my ships. The ships will a) Not bloody fire when i tell them to, b) fire at too long a range well before the SS-N-19 is within missile envelop.
This is annoying but can be overcome, although watching 2 SS-N-19's penetrate a CAG which has a T45 AAD destroyer as well as 2 Adalaide with SM-1's because they don't fire a single SAM is rather annoying!

Finally once i do overcome this. Against 2 SS-N-19's i usually end up wasting 2-3 SM-1's, 2-4 Aster 30's and 2 aster 15's... Just to hit them? Your telling me in a senario where i have tracked the missile for hundreds of miles, possibly had a good enough lock to engage with the Euro fighters AAM's that i have a maximum of 33% accuracy and as low as 4.5 SAM's to 1 missile?? Understandable if your ships are being jammed, if the cloud cover is low, the weather bad and the sea rough and if there is 30 missiles coming in not 2! But with high altitude cloud cover, sea state 1 clear skies i find this entirely unlikely. I lost the Te Khara an Adaladie and the Halfiax was put to 90% damage from the Oscar because of this.

Not only that but when i had the nimrods and poseidans search for the OSCAR i couldn't locate it untill it had almost run out of missiles. That was over an hour, despite triangulating and ordering a circular search from the position of missile launch, taking into account a 30 mile radius of error from radar contact with the missiles??

Oh, for some reason russian fleet submarines, no matter the age seem to have a sonar contact with my Astute class and my corner brook class before i even know they are there?? I mean straight at the start of the senario. Given the ranges involved and that it is Mud and Surfact Duct sonar conditions i also find this somewhat frustrating.


I don't expect 100% accuracy from my assets, certainly not with my original senario. However having modified this senario to have perfect weather conditions and good hiding conditions for my subs i find i still have a 10% accuracy with my weapons if i am lucky. Despite this the computer happily seems to have 60% upwards. Thats 6 times as accurate... This is before my CAG engages a russian SAG which seems unlikely to happen now given the amount of ships wasted by a single SSGN at maximum range without the distraction from other missiles and torpedos.

[Mike D]

Okay, heres the situation. I have a T45 destroyer, 2 Adalaide class (by the way the helo needs fixing in the updated one!!)

You'll need to post information on this to the bugs thread and give more detail.




In the air i have a tanker and 3 Eurofighters plus a nimrod and a posedian. From a maximum firing range i have an oscar enaging with SS-N-19's. These are pressumably being guided in by the computer from the 2-3 Russian fleet submarines near my CAG.
They come in salvos of about 2-4. Despite having a partial radar lock on them throughout flight due to my nimrods and eurofighters and a solid lock when they approach aster 30 range from my ships. The ships will a) Not bloody fire when i tell them to, b) fire at too long a range well before the SS-N-19 is within missile envelop.


A few points;


for missiles like SM-X series and Asters that are SARH the ship launching the missile must have a radar lock. Radar lock by other platforms don't help, the launching ships radar is encoded to guide its own missiles. So Nimrod and Typhoon locks don't help the launching platform much.
Some of the newer Aegis based SM-X currently have and the Aster in the future is planed to have no-lock firing capability and other-platform guidance capability. We haven't gotten around to modeling that in NWP yet.
Platforms that have a solid radar lock on a missile and not just an ECM fix should launch when they have range, especially the Aster based ships as they are the most current and have the newest and most effective systems at this time. So if ships aren't launching in self defense post the specifics and the scenario (it could be a problem with the specific scenario) to the Bugs thread.
Most contacts like missiles are made via ESM not radar and ESM contacts are only accurate for bearing and very rough on range. So make sure the contacts are really via radar and not ECM.
There is a bug in the game engine that makes ESM contacts override all other contacts except visual. This can cause intermittent and flakey radar contacts that a ship might not fire on.



This is annoying but can be overcome, although watching 2 SS-N-19's penetrate a CAG which has a T45 AAD destroyer as well as 2 Adalaide with SM-1's because they don't fire a single SAM is rather annoying!

Finally once i do overcome this. Against 2 SS-N-19's i usually end up wasting 2-3 SM-1's, 2-4 Aster 30's and 2 aster 15's... Just to hit them?

Short answer, Yep! Welcome to the real world.


Your telling me in a senario where i have tracked the missile for hundreds of miles, possibly had a good enough lock to engage with the Euro fighters AAM's that i have a maximum of 33% accuracy and as low as 4.5 SAM's to 1 missile?? Understandable if your ships are being jammed, if the cloud cover is low, the weather bad and the sea rough and if there is 30 missiles coming in not 2! But with high altitude cloud cover, sea state 1 clear skies i find this entirely unlikely. I lost the Te Khara an Adaladie and the Halfiax was put to 90% damage from the Oscar because of this.

Long answer:


Remember what I said before, the launching ship has to have radar contact before it can launch. This can come almost too late on a fast missile like the Shipwreck. So the fact that you have tracked it a long way doesn't help the ship to launch its missiles.
The SS-N-19 is a bugger-all hard missile to kill. Its fast, it actually has some limited ECM capability, it has a fairly low RCS for a big missile and it even has some armor protecting several systems. Remember that most SAMs have proximity fuses and aren't contact-kill systems.
So if a missile is launched at a Sandbox it might not kill it for a number of reasons

The Sandbox just overran the missile and guidance radar
The SAM got spoofed by the ECM on the Sandbox
Even if a missile detonated near a Sandbox it could survive thanks to its armor over critical systems.
None of this counts in that the SAM has a failure of some sort, environmental factors or just shear random bad luck


The Sandbox is probably the deadliest and hardest missile to kill in the world of its class, the Yahkont may be even worse but there isn't allot of data on it yet.


Not only that but when i had the nimrods and poseidans search for the OSCAR i couldn't locate it untill it had almost run out of missiles. That was over an hour, despite triangulating and ordering a circular search from the position of missile launch, taking into account a 30 mile radius of error from radar contact with the missiles??

The Oscar, if it dove deep and is going slow is going to be a bugger to find and even harder to kill. Also I'm going to make a guess here. You saw the Sandboxes appear and you marked the area and you sent the Nimrod to the point where you first saw them assuming this is the launch point. Here is two tricks. The contact you first had was most likely via ESM and as I said before ESM is only trustworthy for bearing and gives only a rough range, I've actually seen the ESM off by over 100nm. (Yes this is real life.) Second thing, I set up a real-life dirty trick, the radar on the Sandboxes don't necessary come on at launch. It may wait till its part way to the target area. So if you saw the missiles via ESM then you had a good bearing but only a rough range, then add to that that that may have flown from 0-100nm with their radar off. So your first contact could be off the launch point by a huge amount.


Oh, for some reason russian fleet submarines, no matter the age seem to have a sonar contact with my Astute class and my corner brook class before i even know they are there?? I mean straight at the start of the senario. Given the ranges involved and that it is Mud and Surfact Duct sonar conditions i also find this somewhat frustrating.


I don't expect 100% accuracy from my assets, certainly not with my original senario. However having modified this senario to have perfect weather conditions and good hiding conditions for my subs i find i still have a 10% accuracy with my weapons if i am lucky. Despite this the computer happily seems to have 60% upwards. Thats 6 times as accurate... This is before my CAG engages a russian SAG which seems unlikely to happen now given the amount of ships wasted by a single SSGN at maximum range without the distraction from other missiles and torpedos.

You didn't say what what Russian subs you were up against but assuming an Akula II then could have a problem. The Astute had an excellent towed array and the Corner Brooks is roughly equivalent to the Skat-3 on the Akula. But remember about the dead zone in front of the sub. In real life there is a dead zone fore and aft of the shp for all towed-array sonars. Due to game engine limitation I had to chose one dead zone so there is about a 40 degree dead zone in front of subs and a 50-60 degree dead zone in front of ships. ( I may be a bit off, I'm not at home do I don't have the db to double check my numbers.) In this zone you only have the bow array active/passive sonar with much shorter range. So if your approaching an Akula II bow on using only your bow-array and the Akula is at an angle to you then you have a problem. The Akula towed-array will pick you up long before your passive bow-array will detect the Akula. So you have to go to slow speed and make some turns from time to time to get the towed-array into play. Also remember the thermal layer, if the Akula is on the opposite side of te thermal layer from your subs then you have a problem again. Another thing is that when the SCS version of FC came out it had some flaky issues with ESM and passive sonar so to get around this AI controlled subs generally define unidentified subs as hostile. Hence that will fire on almost any contact where you may wait to get a positive ID first.

But saying all that; If you feel you have a bug report it in the Bugs thread. One bug to a posting, makes it easier for me to keep track. And give me all the details you can, the more details the better. Include the scenario your having a problem with, if its one of your own then email it to me and let me see what your seeing.

[Sea Dragon]

You'll need to post information on this to the bugs thread and give more detail.




A few points;


for missiles like SM-X series and Asters that are SARH the ship launching the missile must have a radar lock. Radar lock by other platforms don't help, the launching ships radar is encoded to guide its own missiles. So Nimrod and Typhoon locks don't help the launching platform much.
Some of the newer Aegis based SM-X currently have and the Aster in the future is planed to have no-lock firing capability and other-platform guidance capability. We haven't gotten around to modeling that in NWP yet.
Platforms that have a solid radar lock on a missile and not just an ECM fix should launch when they have range, especially the Aster based ships as they are the most current and have the newest and most effective systems at this time. So if ships aren't launching in self defense post the specifics and the scenario (it could be a problem with the specific scenario) to the Bugs thread.
Most contacts like missiles are made via ESM not radar and ESM contacts are only accurate for bearing and very rough on range. So make sure the contacts are really via radar and not ECM.
There is a bug in the game engine that makes ESM contacts override all other contacts except visual. This can cause intermittent and flakey radar contacts that a ship might not fire on.


1)I can understand the valitity of some of these arguments, however. Slyver based aster's are SARH but would it not be possible for another unit to feed the data directly into the T45's computers to be uploaded into the aster missiles original trajectarory data, the missile could then use its own active seeker no?
2)Quite often i do indeed find that my T45 air search radars are overwritten by the ESM sensors. This is most annoying as i would guess thats what causes my SARH missiles to drpo from the sky before they activate their own sensors??
3)Is there no way to fix the ESM bug in the game?






Long answer:


Remember what I said before, the launching ship has to have radar contact before it can launch. This can come almost too late on a fast missile like the Shipwreck. So the fact that you have tracked it a long way doesn't help the ship to launch its missiles.
The SS-N-19 is a bugger-all hard missile to kill. Its fast, it actually has some limited ECM capability, it has a fairly low RCS for a big missile and it even has some armor protecting several systems. Remember that most SAMs have proximity fuses and aren't contact-kill systems.
So if a missile is launched at a Sandbox it might not kill it for a number of reasons

The Sandbox just overran the missile and guidance radar
The SAM got spoofed by the ECM on the Sandbox
Even if a missile detonated near a Sandbox it could survive thanks to its armor over critical systems.
None of this counts in that the SAM has a failure of some sort, environmental factors or just shear random bad luck

The Sandbox is probably the deadliest and hardest missile to kill in the world of its class, the Yahkont may be even worse but there isn't allot of data on it yet.



Ah, now i didn't know that. If it's that deadly now, a decade or two onwards it must have been a nightmare senario back when it original was designed? Especially considering the sheer amount that soviet SSGN's and ships seem to carry.
Being 20 i have a limited understanding of older weaponary out there. There is afterall a lot of seperate missile systems. Not to mention at 20 years old the stigma in the west is often "soviet stuff was cheap and rubbish"



The Oscar, if it dove deep and is going slow is going to be a bugger to find and even harder to kill. Also I'm going to make a guess here. You saw the Sandboxes appear and you marked the area and you sent the Nimrod to the point where you first saw them assuming this is the launch point. Here is two tricks. The contact you first had was most likely via ESM and as I said before ESM is only trustworthy for bearing and gives only a rough range, I've actually seen the ESM off by over 100nm. (Yes this is real life.) Second thing, I set up a real-life dirty trick, the radar on the Sandboxes don't necessary come on at launch. It may wait till its part way to the target area. So if you saw the missiles via ESM then you had a good bearing but only a rough range, then add to that that that may have flown from 0-100nm with their radar off. So your first contact could be off the launch point by a huge amount.



The lock on wasn't ECM it was a positive identification with the nimrods Air search and Surface Search radar. Whats more i had a euro fighter fly to the zone and get a visual ID check on the missiles at that point. This had taken about 20 minutes because the Oscar was firing within an area that i had CAP up anyway. Overall i was lucky the Oscar fired in groups of 2-4 as oppossed to launching like 22 all at once.
I was still surprised that ships running blind untill they where fired on were detected. It was running deep and at about 4 knots though. So i can understand it being hard to find...



You didn't say what what Russian subs you were up against but assuming an Akula II then could have a problem. The Astute had an excellent towed array and the Corner Brooks is roughly equivalent to the Skat-3 on the Akula. But remember about the dead zone in front of the sub. In real life there is a dead zone fore and aft of the shp for all towed-array sonars. Due to game engine limitation I had to chose one dead zone so there is about a 40 degree dead zone in front of subs and a 50-60 degree dead zone in front of ships. ( I may be a bit off, I'm not at home do I don't have the db to double check my numbers.) In this zone you only have the bow array active/passive sonar with much shorter range. So if your approaching an Akula II bow on using only your bow-array and the Akula is at an angle to you then you have a problem. The Akula towed-array will pick you up long before your passive bow-array will detect the Akula. So you have to go to slow speed and make some turns from time to time to get the towed-array into play. Also remember the thermal layer, if the Akula is on the opposite side of te thermal layer from your subs then you have a problem again. Another thing is that when the SCS version of FC came out it had some flaky issues with ESM and passive sonar so to get around this AI controlled subs generally define unidentified subs as hostile. Hence that will fire on almost any contact where you may wait to get a positive ID first.


I don't understand a lot about sonar, we are doing vibrations and waves in a module in my degree at the moment but its quite general and doesn't cover sonar in depth (which isn't surprising as Sonar is but one application!), however the one proving a problem for my Corner Brook is a Siera II SSN.

Overall the Senario is of my own making, but i can never figure out how to balance a Russian, Brazillian and Argentinian force up against a Commonwealth force (Canadian, UK, New Zeland.) Its around the falklands. A surprise strike as a CAG and a SAG engage in a number of wargames. As such you have Maritime and Air support as well as a Astute and a Corner Brook.

I doubt it's a bug and more likely a bad senario on my behalf. I just don't know all that much about the Russian side of things.

[Mike D]

1)I can understand the valitity of some of these arguments, however. Slyver based aster's are SARH but would it not be possible for another unit to feed the data directly into the T45's computers to be uploaded into the aster missiles original trajectarory data, the missile could then use its own active seeker no?
2)Quite often i do indeed find that my T45 air search radars are overwritten by the ESM sensors. This is most annoying as i would guess thats what causes my SARH missiles to drpo from the sky before they activate their own sensors??
3)Is there no way to fix the ESM bug in the game?

Part of the design spec for the Asters was the capability for a different ship then the firing ship to guide the missile. But that would require both ships to have the same radar and targeting systems and software. Also they would need position, the guiding ship would have to be in position that its targeting radar energy would bounce back to the seeker head on the Aster, that eliminates an arc of over 200 degrees. Also the two ships would have to have data link and sharing for their targeting computers. Sounds like a mess to me.

I'm always thinking of the ESM problem but so far nothing has worked.



Ah, now i didn't know that. If it's that deadly now, a decade or two onwards it must have been a nightmare senario back when it original was designed? Especially considering the sheer amount that soviet SSGN's and ships seem to carry.
Being 20 i have a limited understanding of older weaponary out there. There is afterall a lot of seperate missile systems. Not to mention at 20 years old the stigma in the west is often "soviet stuff was cheap and rubbish"

The Russians were top notch when it came to super fast rockets.


I don't understand a lot about sonar, we are doing vibrations and waves in a module in my degree at the moment but its quite general and doesn't cover sonar in depth (which isn't surprising as Sonar is but one application!), however the one proving a problem for my Corner Brook is a Siera II SSN.

Physics is the same, wave propagation through a medium be it air or water. The medium provides for all the real variables.

[steel_selachian]

Engaging Russian SSMs is a very tough business; I seem to survive them in my engagements mainly because when playing as US I usually have at least 3 Aegis ships in formation armed with SM-2 Block IV. Even then having an Oscar-II uncork a massive salvo of Shipwrecks is a nail-biter; I usually maintain EMCON in those scenarios until my ESM picks up the inbounds and then light off everything. I've tried pitting a T45 (backed up by T22/23 FFGs) against a Russian SAG and an Akula armed with SS-N-27s and it hasn't gone well, to put it mildly.

[DHX]

Yeah those Russian missiles are a real challenge. A flight of backfires launching KH-22 Kitchen missiles at your SAG or CVBG is dangerous but you can deal with it. A flight of Backfires launching KH-15A Kickback missiles is another matter entirely.

Anyone know if any of the newer generation Russian missiles have ever been used against anything let alone a modern warship equipped with a top of the line SAM system?

I'd read somewhere that the Indians weren't entirely happy with the performance of their jointly developed missiles.

[Sea Dragon]

Engaging Russian SSMs is a very tough business; I seem to survive them in my engagements mainly because when playing as US I usually have at least 3 Aegis ships in formation armed with SM-2 Block IV. Even then having an Oscar-II uncork a massive salvo of Shipwrecks is a nail-biter; I usually maintain EMCON in those scenarios until my ESM picks up the inbounds and then light off everything. I've tried pitting a T45 (backed up by T22/23 FFGs) against a Russian SAG and an Akula armed with SS-N-27s and it hasn't gone well, to put it mildly.

So if you played that Senario with the US you would have 3 Burkes or a smiliar ship... In that case there is little surprise that you fair much better. The type 45 is the only one with comparable air defence abilities. The type 23 is more along the lines of an Oliver Hazard warship IMHO. Play the Senario with 1 Burke, 2 Oliver hazards and a Spruance. Then i'll play a comparable one with 1 T45, 2 T23's and a T22 and i rekon i can do reasonably well in comparisson to yourself? Unless you are already doing that in which case i will take my hate off to you and then eat it :p



Yeah those Russian missiles are a real challenge. A flight of backfires launching KH-22 Kitchen missiles at your SAG or CVBG is dangerous but you can deal with it. A flight of Backfires launching KH-15A Kickback missiles is another matter entirely.

Anyone know if any of the newer generation Russian missiles have ever been used against anything let alone a modern warship equipped with a top of the line SAM system?

I'd read somewhere that the Indians weren't entirely happy with the performance of their jointly developed missiles.


So what are peoples tactics for dealing with the Russian top of the line SSM's?? Any tactics that are particularly in depth for dealing with them?
DHX as far as i'm aware the Russians haven't had any engagements against modren ships with SAMs for there newer generation of SSM's. Also the Russian Navy isn't doing too great at the moment because of underfunding.

Did everyone here about the Akula II recently. They seem to have some major accidents the Russians.

[steel_selachian]

Well, who said I ever liked to fight fair? :p

The scenario I had using RN ships was one I cooked up placing a carrier group based around the QE (escorted by 1 T45, 1 T23, and 1 T22) in the western Med with a Russian group consisting of a Kirov, a Slava, two Sovs and a Udaloy approaching from the Atlantic at about 300 nm. I had EMCON enabled, but somehow the Russians seem to get wind of my forces (likely due to the Akula-I lurking near Gibraltar) and unload a salvo of Shipwrecks and Sandboxes. For good measure, the Akula usually tosses in a few SS-N-27s. I think on one run I made it out okay, but the first two times I tried it the cruisers got off multiple salvos and HMS Defender caught a leaker that sank her. A major factor was how quick HMS Ambush and HMS Triumph were at putting Spearfish into the cruisers (which was also tricky; the Admiral Nakhimov had some sonar whiz feeding near-perfect solutions to the SS-N-15s).

I think it's more a case of "would I want to be within 300 nm of a Russian SSM-armed SAG with anything less than three top-class SAM ships?" If I was commanding a carrier with a VLS Tico and two Burkes riding guard I might feel cocky about getting within that range and sending up a few waves of Harpoon-armed Hornets or Lightnings to return the favors. Otherwise, my anti-SSM advice would be to beat feet in the opposite direction and let the bubbleheads in the SSNs hog the glory :rolleyes:

EDIT: Yeah, the boat was the Nerpa, which is scheduled to be leased to India as INS Chakra next year. Between that and the problems finishing the ski-jump conversion of the Admiral Gorshkov, you have to wonder how good a bargain those ex-Russian systems are for India ...

[Sea Dragon]

Well, who said I ever liked to fight fair? :p

The scenario I had using RN ships was one I cooked up placing a carrier group based around the QE (escorted by 1 T45, 1 T23, and 1 T22) in the western Med with a Russian group consisting of a Kirov, a Slava, two Sovs and a Udaloy approaching from the Atlantic at about 300 nm. I had EMCON enabled, but somehow the Russians seem to get wind of my forces (likely due to the Akula-I lurking near Gibraltar) and unload a salvo of Shipwrecks and Sandboxes. For good measure, the Akula usually tosses in a few SS-N-27s. I think on one run I made it out okay, but the first two times I tried it the cruisers got off multiple salvos and HMS Defender caught a leaker that sank her. A major factor was how quick HMS Ambush and HMS Triumph were at putting Spearfish into the cruisers (which was also tricky; the Admiral Nakhimov had some sonar whiz feeding near-perfect solutions to the SS-N-15s).

I think it's more a case of "would I want to be within 300 nm of a Russian SSM-armed SAG with anything less than three top-class SAM ships?" If I was commanding a carrier with a VLS Tico and two Burkes riding guard I might feel cocky about getting within that range and sending up a few waves of Harpoon-armed Hornets or Lightnings to return the favors. Otherwise, my anti-SSM advice would be to beat feet in the opposite direction and let the bubbleheads in the SSNs hog the glory :rolleyes:

EDIT: Yeah, the boat was the Nerpa, which is scheduled to be leased to India as INS Chakra next year. Between that and the problems finishing the ski-jump conversion of the Admiral Gorshkov, you have to wonder how good a bargain those ex-Russian systems are for India ...

Your senario intrested me. I threw up a quick comparitive senario last night instead of sleeping, a bit sad but you know, the major problem i find with the T45 is the number of missiles in her inventory. She is capable enough and Aster are good enough missiles so long as you keep the incoming missiles tracked well. However 48 just isn't enough, and 32 Aster 30's certainly ain't enough.
I think its stupid they didn't have the Sylver A70 installed in the bow straight away. If they could find a way to dual pack that with Aster 15's. Then the A50 could be just filled with Aster 30's.
That would give 48 Aster 30's and a choice of 15 A70 cells. That could hold a large number of TLAM either via Tomahawk or Navalised Storm shadow, or as i said if the T45 is running goalkeeper for the Carrier then it can be armed with dual packed Aster 15's. 48 Aster 30's and 30 Aster 15's makes sure she won't run out of missiles. Add in the 2nd T45 on escort (with 6 ships its reasonable to assume 2 T45 on escort duty) and you'd suddenly have 156 SAM's that can defend the QE's. Put the 23 out front and have the 22 hanging back behind the Group so it can take advantage of the wide coverage and deal with any submarines lurking around and giving firing positions for the task force.


You have to wonder about the British government. It always screws over the navy. World war 2 it was in a bad shape before the start of the war. The Falklands. In Iraq and the middle east we in constant opperational deployment but the government won't give us extra funding. The Navy is being pulled apart.

I mean we have the lovely big ships. 2 QE class, 1 Ocean class, 2 Bay class, plenty of tankers and logistics ships. But we have what 13 T23 and 6 T45 to escort them. It's just not enough. The escort ships and the fleet tankers are what keeps a navy powerful. Add to the fact that the T45 shouldn't be used for deployments like in the gulf and i donno...

We need 'fighting' ships. A class like the old leander that is small, well armed and with moderate sensors. Something that can be lost and that can be built in numbers and can refit and resupply properly in most ports around the world. That way we free up the big frigates and destroyers for Task force duty, deep ocean patrol...

Anyways, look what you've done :P Made me ramble on...

[Havoc]

There's no major arguement against the fact that the current revision of NWP (19.0) has made the Russian ASM's more deadly now since the Shipwreck and Sandbox have a smaller RCS than before. With the right ships capable of defending against the Russian ASMs, but still a bigger threat now.

Keep in mind however we are dealing with AI forces. This tends to skew how we adapt and fight the enemy and also makes players complacent if and when they fight against human opponents. The convergence zone passive sonar contacts tend to magnify this point since the AI goes bonkers because of them.

One of the fundamental topics discussed when I train individuals to be highly skilled multiplayer Fleet Command players is untraining the tactics and strategies learned to fight and beat the AI.

Too often the single player scenario is designed to make the AI as an offensive monster that sometimes becomes unrealistically and something frustratingly difficult. Then after you start gaining the advantage, the enemy AI becomes a paper tiger shortly after you out-sortie and clobber the continuous push the AI does when searching and attacking.

Human opponents however will not grant you the ability to easily anticipate the method, size, or direction of attack. Highly skilled opponents will use just the right amount of ordinance to take out your forces and have plenty more available to continue the fight, thus making the most of your ship's defensive systems is vital.

From my many years of multiplayer FC experience, I've successfully defended against several instances of almost impossible odds ASM/SSM and torpedo attacks in multiplayer I thought never possible in single player before. Micromanging the air defense systems on all the ships usually is required to increase air defense capability.

If you want a more involving, enjoyable, and realistic experience, then definitely play a lot of multiplayer FC matches.

In short, its how you use your ship based air defenses and sensors that matters. Sometimes you can get your ships to do amazing things if you practice enough with them.

[steel_selachian]

You've got a point - admittedly while most of my scenarios feature a well-armed and numerous enemy group, I've also got things well-rigged my way. A good example was one I designed recently that pitted a Russian group consisting of the Kuznetsov, Pyotr Veliky, 1 Slava, 1 Udaloy-II, 2 Sovs, and a Neustrashimy against a CSG consisting of the Enterprise and my standard escort package of 1 Tico VLS, 1 Flight-IIA Burke, and 1 Flight-I/II Burke. On paper, decently even match ...

... except when you consider that there's a Seawolf and a Virginia idling under a thermocline directly straddling the Russian fleet's route and I have a full alpha strike of F/A-18E AAW, F-35C SUW, and EA-18G EW in the air at the start. While it requires more than a bit of micromanaging, the usual result is the total destruction of the Russian force for zero losses on my part. While it would be tough for a human opponent to counter that kind of onslaught, I'd bet somebody could screw up my intricate little attack plan and make me pay a few planes and subs.

If nothing else, I'd expect them to turn around afterwards and hand me the short end of the stick with an equally rigged scenario.

[Sea Dragon]

There's no major arguement against the fact that the current revision of NWP (19.0) has made the Russian ASM's more deadly now since the Shipwreck and Sandbox have a smaller RCS than before. With the right ships capable of defending against the Russian ASMs, but still a bigger threat now.

Keep in mind however we are dealing with AI forces. This tends to skew how we adapt and fight the enemy and also makes players complacent if and when they fight against human opponents. The convergence zone passive sonar contacts tend to magnify this point since the AI goes bonkers because of them.

One of the fundamental topics discussed when I train individuals to be highly skilled multiplayer Fleet Command players is untraining the tactics and strategies learned to fight and beat the AI.

Too often the single player scenario is designed to make the AI as an offensive monster that sometimes becomes unrealistically and something frustratingly difficult. Then after you start gaining the advantage, the enemy AI becomes a paper tiger shortly after you out-sortie and clobber the continuous push the AI does when searching and attacking.

Human opponents however will not grant you the ability to easily anticipate the method, size, or direction of attack. Highly skilled opponents will use just the right amount of ordinance to take out your forces and have plenty more available to continue the fight, thus making the most of your ship's defensive systems is vital.

From my many years of multiplayer FC experience, I've successfully defended against several instances of almost impossible odds ASM/SSM and torpedo attacks in multiplayer I thought never possible in single player before. Micromanging the air defense systems on all the ships usually is required to increase air defense capability.

If you want a more involving, enjoyable, and realistic experience, then definitely play a lot of multiplayer FC matches.

In short, its how you use your ship based air defenses and sensors that matters. Sometimes you can get your ships to do amazing things if you practice enough with them.


I have no one to play multiplayer with. That and i was under the impression the community at large didn't play multiplayer. Also over an internet connection i can imagine that it is difficult to play multiplayer no? Fleet command is real time and cannot be minimized so a game could theoretically take more than 3-4 hours of play time. In one go as multiplayer would require this is a lot?

If however you know of a way around this i would be more than interested in playing multiplayer with people. I rekon it would be great fun!

[Sea Dragon]

You've got a point - admittedly while most of my scenarios feature a well-armed and numerous enemy group, I've also got things well-rigged my way. A good example was one I designed recently that pitted a Russian group consisting of the Kuznetsov, Pyotr Veliky, 1 Slava, 1 Udaloy-II, 2 Sovs, and a Neustrashimy against a CSG consisting of the Enterprise and my standard escort package of 1 Tico VLS, 1 Flight-IIA Burke, and 1 Flight-I/II Burke. On paper, decently even match ...

... except when you consider that there's a Seawolf and a Virginia idling under a thermocline directly straddling the Russian fleet's route and I have a full alpha strike of F/A-18E AAW, F-35C SUW, and EA-18G EW in the air at the start. While it requires more than a bit of micromanaging, the usual result is the total destruction of the Russian force for zero losses on my part. While it would be tough for a human opponent to counter that kind of onslaught, I'd bet somebody could screw up my intricate little attack plan and make me pay a few planes and subs.

If nothing else, I'd expect them to turn around afterwards and hand me the short end of the stick with an equally rigged scenario.

I find against the AI it can be frustrating, a decently even match isn't so because they unleash every little weapon on you at maximum range even if you are an unknown contact!! :rolleyes: So you end up having to have nerves of steel. Especially when playing with Sea wolf armed ships. All radar off, keep planes on the ground. Move to within the estimated area of the enemy and then light up like theres no tomorrow. Have everything possible on Alert 5 and hit him so hard that he can't survive. Coordinate everything in strike, torpedos, sub launched harpoon, ship launched harpoon, planes and then bring him to gun range as well....

Its good fun but a little chaotic. The AI does funny things when you get within gun range sometimes... They don't always pick the most logical target but instead the closest :p. Go sacrificial Type 22 at 30+ knots pulling very heavy evasive manouvers.

[Havoc]

Virtual navies specifically designed many of its Fleet Command multiplayer scenarios to be strategy and tactics focused without requiring a massive number of units. There are also several FC multiplayer scenarios which are bandwidth intensive, but I tend to not play those ones when I play against my multiplayer FC friends.

Most of Seawolves MP Fleet Command scenarios typically last 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours max unless all sides agree on a time extension. However, I've had players surrender as quickly as 18 minutes flat after getting royally stomped good.

The multiplayer scenario must be designed for a resolution to come within 2 hours, any bigger or longer then it becomes a high probability that the game might not finish and crash. Seawolves MP scenarios are NOT like Korea Burning, Baltic Sea Magic, or any other large theatre sized scenario.

For someone who has a Core Duo 2.4 ghz with 2 gig of RAM and a nice video card, guess what I'm still stick in dialup land. However, except for about a little more than a dozen MP FC scenarios that are dialup killers, the rest I can fully battle in multiplayer FC.

It is very far from impossible to play multiplayer FC on a dialup connection (I've done it for 2 years), you just have to avoid playing certain scenarios that are too bandwidth heavy.

Dangerous Waters however is a much much bigger bandwidth hogger than FC is, due to the large amounts of technical data that has to be transmitted to and from the host. I've learned to dislike that game very much on dialup when more than 3 players.

If you need little bit of insight on this by playing a MP FC match, contact me via E-mail regarding this and I'll try to work something out. I have a Yahoo IM contact, but I only use ICQ. ICQ number is #91310176

Ask PJB here at the NWP team about how different MP FC is from SP FC, its like a whole new experience.

[steel_selachian]

So you end up having to have nerves of steel. Especially when playing with Sea wolf armed ships. All radar off, keep planes on the ground. Move to within the estimated area of the enemy and then light up like theres no tomorrow. Have everything possible on Alert 5 and hit him so hard that he can't survive. Coordinate everything in strike, torpedos, sub launched harpoon, ship launched harpoon, planes and then bring him to gun range as well....

Its good fun but a little chaotic. The AI does funny things when you get within gun range sometimes... They don't always pick the most logical target but instead the closest :p. Go sacrificial Type 22 at 30+ knots pulling very heavy evasive manouvers.

That latter bit is why when playing as the Brits I have my T45 out front and my T22/23's flanking my QE/Invincible. When playing as the US my 2 Burkes are usually out front with the Tico playing close guard.

I get my best results from using AEW aircraft to fix the location of the enemy - the best they can do is send fighters after it, and I usually have my own CAP up to counter that. Better yet, F/A-18Es and F-35s have LPI radar, so that makes them harder to counterdetect. If I'm not lucky enough to have a carrier, helos are a good alternative method (especially since the MH-60 has LPI radar). I have an antipiracy scenario that requires a lot of helo scouting since the blasted patrol boats are almost impossible to detect on sensors (in an embarrassing incident one strafed up my Nimitz CVN and blew up four Hornets on the catapults).

Of course, when I'm designing the scenario my favorite trick is to put an SSN or two right by the enemy. A spread of Mk.48s or Spearfish does pretty well for surprise offensive firepower (and a salvo of SSMs and Type-65s from Russian boats is something to fear). Sure I could be more realistic and put it farther away ... but a) I have Sub Command for that sort of mission and b) creeping an SSN towards and enemy SAG at a dead crawl sounds like a fun way to gather cobwebs, and I waste enough time on NWP as is.