BurntFingers
Posts: 155
Joined: 6/28/2004 Status: offline
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Best of luck. Where does the data come from? Well, there's currently 3 broad approaches (VCDH, correct me if I'm wrong here). 1) There's the "ransack all known databases and through all the numbers together approach". PlayersDB is done on this level. Now, to be fair, Herman seems to have spent plenty of time weeding through this DB in terms of Sanity checking (making the values consistent with what Harpoon expects) but you still get some strange results in terms of contacts. 2) There's the "Use existing Harpoon Miniatures rules, ie generations of radars, jammers etc, and just let the dice roll". This is what Dale Hillier (aka VCDH) uses and while it's consistent, it's not really nailed to real world data. 3) Then there's the Ragner Emsoy "Start with known radar cross sections and play test it until it bleeds" approach. This is the slowest in terms of development but (arguably) you get best quality. Certainly you get results which seem to match up with known real world history (such as it is, because most data is classified). If you are going to use Ragner's work, let him know, talk with him, and exchange data. As a genius he doesn't have time for fools. But I've managed to get along pretty good with the guy. As to how the game engine works; the basics are that you have a radar emission output in terms of Watts (W power output) together with a Sensitivity factor (RB). There's a parallel scheme on each sensor for those which can track, ie missile directors for SAMs and other radar missiles. Now, there are hardware cutoff points (so much range set - no need to calculate if out of range) and also minimum and maximum heights (again so if out of parameters no calculation is done). The Sonar model is similar but MUCH more complex.
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