Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: emsoy

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ORIGINAL: Airborne Rifles

Well, if the player decides to plot their own waypoints, then the achievement of a ToT is completely on them and their own planning, as it should be. The suggestion I'm making is about weapons for which the AI already automatically plots an off-axis attack without player input other than to assign the salvo to a target.

Hmm but then the missiles have two possible routes, one going left and one going right? Wouldn't me much spacing between weapons other than that?

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ORIGINAL: emsoy

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ORIGINAL: tango4

I guess it would solve the biggest things holding me (and I insist on the "me" as other people might have other views on this).
I understand that getting the equivalent of a real life planner would probably require as much dev time as cmano itself... So my point of view is that I would try to get a first version released with the most needed features, which are not necessarily the most complex to develop. Of course, the drawback of such an approach is that at a later point you might realise that you want to add feature x or y and that the way you started coding the planner in a simple version would not allow that and would require a complete redevelopement.
Two caveats to what I requested: I am not experienced in air to air refueling in cmano and it might be worth giving it some thought.
And when dealing with fast moving targets it might be difficult to implement a "perfect" tool (but I guess this is the same in real life).
Now in the list I would add a feature: ability to use pre planned attack profiles (another time saver).
Let me explain what I have in mind (this is a quick and dirty explanation, especially given that I am not home right now and don't have access to my computer).
Imagine I want to plan a strike of a static target.
-First I would select the target.
-Then I select participating aircraft (so at this point the planner knows the performance of the aircraft: for example if my target is 500Nm from the airbase and my aircraft radius with their current load out is 400Nm it will be able to give me a warning at a later point in planning).
-Now I would select the profile (of course the default profile for the loadout would be preselected). But the idea would be to use Hi Lo Hi or Lo Hi Lo on a list so that it generates initial altitudes and speeds on the waypoints consistent with that.
-Then you click "generate" and it creates a flight plan that you can visualize with preset altitudes and speeds consistent with the profile you entered.
-Next you would graphically edit the flight plan, repositioning and adding waypoints.
-Then you would look at TOT or things like this.
-In the list of waypoints, one of them could be identified as the "push" waypoint and could be shared with other missions.

I know I forgot lots of things to make it work and that my above list does not take into account averyrhing that is already part of the current mission editor that is already great. My intent was just to try and give you a feel of what I think would be a great help in most scenarii.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.

Charles.

You have some really good points, I must say

So getting a total overview of the desired functionality would be a good place to start, and then implement piecemeal.

What would the complete feature set be like?

Thanks for the suggestion on how to automate the job of generating flightplans. Loadouts already come with a default profile, would that work as a starting point?

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ORIGINAL: DrRansom

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I see, thanks

- Display a list of waypoints for each flight
- Ability to move waypoints
- Set speed and altitude
- Set times
- Set Rally points (aka Push Points)

Would this solve all your problems?

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- Time-on-target for missile strikes.

Those would cover almost everything I would want in an advanced strike planner.

The only thing I would add to the list is:
- Show on the map which targets have weapons/missions allocated. This came up a lot in planning the mission Hit Hard, Hit Fast. I had to juggle between 3 - 6 different missions when allocating airstrikes against an airbase. Each mission was given a target set (hangers, tarmac, runways) and I needed to keep flipping between different missions to make sure everything had the right number of aircraft. I would find it very helpful if that information was displayed transparently, maybe when zooming in on the target.

If there is time to go into more detail, here are some other suggestions:
- Ability to group missions into a single event. Again with the airbase strike, say I want to hit 4 different targets at the airbase (runway, hangers, fuel tanks, control tower). Give the strike planner the ability to view the four attacks as part of a single meta-mission; that meta-mission can be assigned shared escorts and route planning. The advances above will make it easy to control when those events happen, which is a big impact. But it would be nice to group those missions together for the purposes of allocating escorts. Instead of assigning escorts to individual strike missions, the escorts are allocated to the group of missions and the escorts work to cover each striking aircraft. Grouping missions could also facilitate ToT planning and weapons allocation.

- A radar shadow map, so you can plan breaking through an air defense. This would be a bunch of work, though, useful but hard to implement.

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: Cik

TOT and WTOT is the real trick. coordinating between fast weapons and slow weapons is a real headache sometimes when the launch ranges are all different and the cruising / mil speeds of the A/C are all different.

actually being able to plan waypoints for the strikers that enable certain behavior subsets (loiter, push, group, split, fire, change your EMCON, change your altitude, fly a certain aspect to XYZ target etc) would also be real great.

setting up a coordinated strike (flight 1 loiters on steer for formup, then pushes to steer 2. at steer 2 pop down to 25,000 light up your jammer. at steer 3 fire decoys, at steer 4 begin flying abeam, at steer 5 go to tanker, once full on fuel RTB) with each flight having it's own semi-programmable behavior.

but i mean if we're just wishing even TOT/WTOT assuming mostly a straight-line ingress would be real handy.

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: Airborne Rifles

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ORIGINAL: emsoy

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ORIGINAL: Airborne Rifles

Well, if the player decides to plot their own waypoints, then the achievement of a ToT is completely on them and their own planning, as it should be. The suggestion I'm making is about weapons for which the AI already automatically plots an off-axis attack without player input other than to assign the salvo to a target.

Hmm but then the missiles have two possible routes, one going left and one going right? Wouldn't me much spacing between weapons other than that?

Basically the idea would be that the initial off-axis leg of the AI-plotted attack would be slightly shorter for each successive missile fired from a single unit. So a weapon travelling at 500 kts might travel 10 miles in one direction before turning onto its attack vector. the next weapon, launched say ten seconds later, would travel ten seconds' worth of distance less along the off-axis leg, and the next weapon another ten seconds less etc.. The key is for each weapon to travel the same distance to the point where it's terminal guidance kicks in minus the amount of distance traveled by the first weapon prior to the successive weapons' launches. A player can already do this manually by making sure that the (player-plotted) pre-planned off-axis attacks all travel approximately the same distance during their entire flights. Of course, maneuvers by the target throw off the ToT calculations, but hey, that's war . A variation of just a few seconds can mean the difference between overwhelming a modern ship's point defenses or not.

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: tango4

Clearly the default loadouts are a very good starting point (I knew that they are already part of the database which is why I was suggesting that). The idea of using a list with different loadouts is because it would be easier. Let's say a weapon has a Hi Lo Hi default profile. But for some reason I want to use it with a Lo Hi Lo (I know it is not very common, just for the argument's sake). Instead of modifying every single waypoint, it would be great to have a drop down list allowing me to select Lo Hi Lo. And next I will fine tune my waypoints data. But the starting point would be consistent with my goal.
Another thing you could imagine, on top of "generate" button (which would basically pre generate a flight plan like the off angle option already does) you could add a "validate "button. First you enter the data (aircraft, loadout,target, desired profile, you generate a flight plan, you edit it according to your needs, and at this point you click validate. It would tell you for example if you don't have enough fuel (perhaps the editor could be made aware of the fact that a tanker is assigned to the mission or not), or if your weapon are totally useless for such a target (that specific type of warning could be added at a later point in development if deemed doable).
I also feel the above post by DrRansom is very interesting.

Many thanks for your interest in this issue Ragnar.

Good night !

Charles

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: Gunner98

OK

Took a few min and jotted down what I think it should look like. Many points are repeated from some of the above posts and I may have missed other bits. Not sure it is all possible but it needs to be quick, intuitive and reliable:

Screen clip because of the formatting. This is pie in the sky stuff, a simple TOT function would be the basic requirement but this would be much more powerfull.

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: Gunner98

Yeah, those are fair points.

I'm thinking that the target priority should have some setting that issue the player warnings - or add munitions that the player hasn't

Eg.

5 targets. 1 is pri 1 a bunker, 1 is pri 2 a runway and the rest are pri 3 - hangers

Player assigns 10 TLAMS to his pri 1 target and lets the planner assign the rest say 20 TLAMS, 4xF-16 with 2 2KJDAMS penetrators each

When player hits 'calculate' he should get a message like:

1. weapons allocated to target #1 inappropriate need penetrator - recommend removing these weapons

meanwhile the planner has allocated
-2x F-16s to the bunker
-2x F-16s to the runway
-12x TLAM to the hangers (4 each)

8 TLAM unallocated as not requried

Player can change what he wants add extra TLAMS if he wants to use them anyway etc

The real trick is the planner adjusts the firing time and course of each TLAM to make sure it arrives at the right time and not produce the long train of Growler bait to get chewed up piecemiel.

Just some thoughts

B

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: JPFisher55

Kind of like the patrol mission planner. The strike mission would be divided into the legs like now, but for each leg, you could specify an
altitude, like for patrol missions, whether to refuel on ingress leg and which tanker mission to use, and whether to refuel on egress leg and which
tanker mission to use.

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: tango4

Gunner98, there are lots of very interesting thoughts in your posts, and it looks like a target design for a final version of an advanced strike planner (I know, this is exactly what Emsoy asked).
Just a thought but perhaps it would be interesting to see if such an advanced tool could be developed in increments. The idea here would be to define a target version, but in the process making sure that it's development could be split in "bricks" so that we can get the basic functions in a reasonable timeframe.
Clearly you have given much thought into this (if I remember correctly you are the author of brilliant tutorials...).
These are just food for thought of course, as this is starting to go far beyond my level !

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: emsoy

1) This is tricky. It assumes pre-planned weapon allocation, and not dynamic 'target list + WRA' targeting which is used in the game today. How would that pre-planned weapon allocation work? UI-wise and also functionality-wise?

2) Meta-mission... I'm not entirely sure what that means... grouping flights into packages?

3) Can't you already display range rings in-game? Or do you mean the actual radar coverage at altitude X?

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You have a lot of good points. Care to elaborate on TOT intervals?

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Some questions: What if the targets disappears? Before take-off? After take-off? What to do with unspent ordnance?

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How shall aircraft be assigned to targets?

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How shall weapons be assigned to targets?

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How would ships coordinate with ground strikes in practice?

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How would tanker coordination work in detail?

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How would escorts work in detail? Would these have flightplans and waypoint times too?

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How would this work with large volumes of air strikes? Hundreds or possibly thousands of sorties spanning days or even weeks?

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ORIGINAL: DrRansom

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ORIGINAL: emsoy

1) This is tricky. It assumes pre-planned weapon allocation, and not dynamic 'target list + WRA' targeting which is used in the game today. How would that pre-planned weapon allocation work? UI-wise and also functionality-wise?

2) Meta-mission... I'm not entirely sure what that means... grouping flights into packages?

3) Can't you already display range rings in-game? Or do you mean the actual radar coverage at altitude X?

Answers, in no particular order:

1) To make it easier, label on the map which targets are in the targeting list of a strike mission. That let's the player understand what he has already allocated to a mission. Weapon level detail might be too much. UI level, when the mission planning window is up, put the mission name next to each unit which is a target in that mission.

3) Radar coverage at altitude X, incorporating Line of Sight blocking. I imagine that real planners have sufficiently detailed radar simulations to make educated guesses about radar effectiveness at certain ranges.

2) I realized this morning that I had been using the wrong term, instead of Meta-Mission, think of a Strike-Package. A Strike-Package would contain individual land/surface strike missions aimed at specific targets.

Workflow for a strike package:
- User creates a strike package, for example Airbase Strike
- In the strike package UI, user creates a separate mission which is part of that package, for example in one mission F-16s use iron bombs on the fuel dumps and another mission 2 F-111s use Durandels on the runways. On the map, the targets are labelled with text saying "Strike Package Name -- Mission Name"
- User creates support missions, tanking, escort, escort jamming, and SEAD mission. These missions work to support the all aircraft in the strike package.
- When all the missions are created, the user presses the Generate button. The strike package editor auto-creates route plans which ensure ToT / WTOT from the different flights on the target. The user can then modify the routes and, by pressing the recalculate button, ensure ToT/WToT. This step should include creating push-points and designating certain path segments as flexible speed segments, where flights can speed up / slow down to ensure ToT. Those flexible segments should make ToT calculations easier.

Strike-Packages gives the overarching structure for an advanced strike planner.

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: Gunner98

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You have a lot of good points. Care to elaborate on TOT intervals?

TOT interval, I think is needed because you don’t need or indeed don’t always want multiple targets hit at the exact second.

In response to your previous query on TOT accuracy – generally/doctrinally there is no tolerance for error, it’s down to the exact second; in reality the variation can be up to 15-20 seconds and that is good enough.

Because it is both impractical and often unsafe to have multiple targets hit at the exact second you need to set in effect another TOT for each target. I think game wise it could be handled with an interval based on the one TOT. Perhaps a default interval of 20 seconds, which the player can adjust. If you combine the two ideas (TOT accuracy tolerance and interval) the default interval should be at least twice the accuracy tolerance you set.

If you take a situation where one platform has a lot of ordinance, say a B-2 with 40 JDAMS. I think (don’t know for sure) it is theoretically possible for all 40 to strike at once, but if you did that the effects of one bomb would cause other bombs problems: Shrapnel causing duds in bombs that are a few milliseconds slow, blast throwing off guidance, slow bombs detonating on impact with debris etc. Plus, it makes BDA assessment and any investigation a nightmare. If you set an interval of even 5 seconds for 40 individual DMPI (Designated Mean Point of Impact – or sub target) the entire strike if over in just about 3 min, the intelligence guys get good video of each strike, each bomb is free and clear of all the others, and the bad guys still don’t have time to react.

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Some questions: What if the targets disappears? Before take-off? After take-off? What to do with unspent ordnance?

That’s what the target priorities are for. If a target disappears because it was destroyed the asset shifts to the next priority target until there are none left and they RTB, so theoretically you will have AC RTBing with ordnance. If the target is lost because you no longer have a decent target location, that’s a bigger problem. Perhaps the mission planner needs a switch so the player can select to stay on the target no matter what and hope the resolution improves as the strike gets closer to the target.

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How shall aircraft be assigned to targets?

Either by the player in the first instance or if s/he does not, then the planner does it automatically, and the player has a chance to change that after the ‘calculate’ option shows him what the planner has done. I think this could certainly be evolutionary, and may be a bridge too far for the first cut at the planner.

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How shall weapons be assigned to targets?

Same as above. Player first then planner, then adjust.

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How would ships coordinate with ground strikes in practice?

By time and airspace. The game makes it simpler than in real life as airspace is not really an issue – so time. Gets back to the TOT planner.

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How would tanker coordination work in detail?

I think the tanker feature you have in the current mission planner is quite powerful and would suffice. In an ideal world, a routine would run during the calculate phase, do a distance, volume and fuel usage calculation - and tell the player ‘Mission XXX has been set up at these RPs and these tankers assigned to it. They need to depart at XXX time’. That is probably beyond the scope right now I think, but not sure.

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How would escorts work in detail? Would these have flightplans and waypoint times too?

The same way they work now, I don’t think you need to change that at all.

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How would this work with large volumes of air strikes? Hundreds or possibly thousands of sorties spanning days or even weeks?

This would rapidly become unmanageable. In real life an ATO (Air Tasking Order) would cover a 24-hour period for an entire theatre. So based on that you shouldn’t even consider anything more than 24 hrs.
A mission planner should be designed to plan missions – not air campaigns. So you need geographical, or time based or number of target based limits. Exceed those and you need another mission.
To me a strike mission would be aimed at a concentration of similar or supporting targets, an airbase, a port, several key targets in an area the size of a city, that sort of thing

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: tango4

Excellent question...and a tricky one.
Let's imagine the "Excel spreasheet" I mentioned in my post above. You could add a tickbox "refueling needed" which would force you to select (at least) one of your waypoints as a refueling one. On your spreadsheet it would add an option to specify a refueling delay for that waypoint (which could be auto populated by a default value) which would be taken into account for the "time on waypoint" feature for all subsequent waypoints; and it would assume the aircraft is full of fuel again for the fuel validation of the flight plan.
This is obviously a quick and dirty way, but as I said above I think you should keep it simple enough given the complexity of the topic, at least in version 1.
Now for more refined suggestions I am certain many other people here are way more knowledgeable than I am on such a tricky matter.

Cheers.

Charles.

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!

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ORIGINAL: tango4
I did not specify it either, but I would have no problem paying for an advanced strike planner as a DLC given the work it would require from the dev team.
More than that, it's THE thing I would pay for without hesitation !

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!