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ORIGINAL: DavidRob

Some things he complains about are reasonably valid - but not necessarily in the way he means them to be detracting from the game. For instance, the players' inability to modify the database.

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ORIGINAL: Mgellis

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ORIGINAL: DavidRob

Some things he complains about are reasonably valid - but not necessarily in the way he means them to be detracting from the game. For instance, the players' inability to modify the database.

I laughed when I heard him say that. Herman is one of the reasons the Command database is locked. I'm sure he knows it, too. :)

Mind you, Herman has every right to prefer Harpoon to Command, or anything else that he prefers, but I suspect something else is going on here. I think one reason Herman dislikes Command is that he can't make his own database for it, so he can't be the center of attention. The more attention Commands get, the less he gets. While Harpoon was the only game in town, so to speak, Herman had some influence because there were a lot of scenarios written for the Players Database. Harpoon is still a great game, but Command gives people another option that's just as good, and in many ways better, and on top of it the Command community is a lot more active (more fun and interesting people to chat with, more scenarios being written, etc.) So Command has pretty much made Herman and his Players Database irrelevant. And I think he knows it.

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ORIGINAL: Gandalf

I made myself listen to the entire hour of his review. Though his manner of presentation is very grating, he made several valid complaints I'm sorry to say, especially when he showed the maximum afterburner speed to be the exact same (950 kts) for the great majority of the modern aircraft.

Due to the supposed accuracy of the DB as a sales pitch, I really didn't believe this... I thought he was just experiencing some sort of glitch in his way of running CMANO, BUT... if you check the DB for the maximum speed for these aircraft, it (i.e. the DB) does indeed specify 950 kts as the maximum afterburner speed for most of them. That is just plain lazy design.

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Nothing we do is lazy and we're 100 percent committed to supporting this product.

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ORIGINAL: emsoy
<snip>

As for Herman's '950kt thingie' I guess the quick answer is "Herman needs something negative to say". He's desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel and this is the best he could come up with. We used similar speeds in the material we created for Harpoon all those years ago, and we tried to explain this to him when he first appeared in 2003 or so. Ten years have passed and he still seems to lack even the most basic understanding of air operations, which suggest he's a lost (nut-) case.

Anyway, the reason for the max speeds is this (copy-paste from Mega-FAQ):
http://www.warfaresims.com/?page_id=2920#624

Warplanes never fly at their theoretic maximum speeds operationally. Over a fighter aircraft's 6000-8000hrs life span, less than 10% is spent at supersonic speeds. Most airframes will never even go beyond Mach 2, and certainly not while flying a combat sortie. Aircraft use a lot of fuel accelerating and maintaining those speeds, and going beyond 950kt is operationally impractical if not impossible simply due to the time and fuel needed to get there. Furthermore, in many cases getting to those speeds will be physically impossible due to weapon and drop tank drag, weapon release envelope limitations, and the possibility of damaging or even detonating external stores.

Command takes aim at simulating a modern battlefield and therefore uses practical operational aircraft speeds. Theoretical specs are left out. That means most modern combat aircraft will not fly faster than Mach 1.6 in the simulator. The fuel burn rates are adjusted accordingly, and for example the F-14D Tomcat can fly 230nm Deck Launched Intercept (DLI) missions at Mach 1.6 dash. There are of course numerous exceptions and fighters like F-22A Raptor, MiG-25 Foxbat and MiG-31 Foxhound can easily fly faster.

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If you still think these speed limitations are unreasonable please grab a flight simulator like Falcon 4.0 and attempt to fly combat sorties at 1400kt, 1200kt or even just 1000kt.

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Make sense now?

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ORIGINAL: mikmyk

Debate is fine but you're about one more personal attack from a ban.

Mike

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ORIGINAL: Gandalf
You are correct in stating that warplanes almost never fly at their theoretic max speeds, BUT they are capable of it and a scenario I WAS designing based on the novel "Fail Safe" has Soviet POV Migs attempting to keep up with and shoot down rogue supersonic B58 Hustlers, your database allows the B58 Hustler to fly at a "Military" max speed of 1800 kts, yet the POV Mig 23s which are capable of somewhere around 1553 mph, (1345 kts) are LIMITED to 950 kts (in game)!

Of course this is a fictional matchup, but isn't that what your game design is all about? Also in real life... if Russian POV Mig 23s had been indeed tasked to intercept B58 Hustlers making a nuclear target run on Moscow, I doubt very seriously that they would have limited themselves to a 950 kts pursuit/intercept. They would have opened up the afterburners to the max to try get within weapons launch parameters of their pathetic Air to Air missiles.

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Your analogy to Falcon 4.0 (a Flight Simulator at a different individual aircraft tactical play level) is not really a good excuse for your inaccurate DB flaws for a Theatre Tactical/Operational" scale of game. Incidentally, I have played ALL the versions of Falcon starting from Spectrum Holobyte's original/initial Falcon thru Falcon 3.0 and finally Microprose's Falcon 4.0 and even those games allowed for the theoretical mas speed to be attained, ussless though it may have been for most real life combat situations.

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NO, it's just an excuse to justify a DB inaccuracy.

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ORIGINAL: Gandalf

For the sake of my honest attempt at real debate... Let's take the 950 DB issue and apply it to modern day scenarios. The F-22 just made it's official debute (sp?). In game it's limited to 1000 kts (it's approx. supercruise speed). It was introduced in Syria... Now granted this plane is a 5th generation air to air fighter, but let's suppose it's in a situation where it is totally Winchester and knows it's meeting up with one of the most common 4th generation fighters in the world, a Mig-29, which might be equipped with the latest and greatest HMD and agile missile systems. Of course the F-22 is not going to get in that fight... It's fight or flight... Since it's completely Winchester, it's a Flight decision..., so it makes a break and begins it's "Flight", however the Mig-29 is capable of approx., 1294 kts, considerably more than the 950 kts limit in the DB. In CMANO, he probably will never get within weapon's parameters, but in RL it's quite possible this scenario could play out to a real intercept/merge, if the conditions are there.

Also, it's already been demonstrated that a capable 4th generation fighter such as the EuroFighter can actually beat an F-22 in a Furball, so a smart F-22 pilot is going to attempt Flight when Winchester and a capable 4th generation fighter is going to do all he can to effect a merge, afterburner max speed may indeed come into the equation.

see: http://www.wired.com/2012/07/f-22-germans/

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ORIGINAL: emsoy

There is a range issue though. The R-29-300 engine is credited with 12501kg static thrust at sea level and a SFC of 2.0. Adjusting for mach speed and altitude at 1350kt and 36000ft, the aircraft will burn ca 255kg of fuel per minute. With 3970kg internal fuel and 640kg external that's roughly 18 minutes of max afterburner which won't take you very far. As such the MiG-23 was not very well suited for the job of intercepting these bombers. In any case the B-58 Hustler left service in 1970 while production MiG-23s didn't enter service until 1973.

But all that is just theory. Do you have any sources that suggest the PVO trained to use Mach 2.35 intercept speeds? That's the data we're after.

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NO, it's just an excuse to justify a DB inaccuracy.

Okay, in that case could you please point to reliable sources?

Thanks [8D]

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ORIGINAL: Gandalf

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ORIGINAL: mikmyk

Debate is fine but you're about one more personal attack from a ban.

Mike

My RL name is Mike, so I'm assuming this is directed towards me?...

I'm sorry? Explain to me where there might be a personal attack in my debate remarks above?

There was a final remark regarding the game design excuse to justify a DB inaccuracy. This is my own personal opinion about this design decision not directed at anyone in particular. The wording of emsoy's Falcon 4.0 argument is almost a direct quote from the Mega FAQ to which I'm responding.

Good name. Hi Mike!

From your post above

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That is just plain lazy design.

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NO, it's just an excuse to justify a DB inaccuracy.

So not only are we lazy but we make excuses about it.

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For the sake of my honest attempt at real debate...

Let's take the 950 DB issue and apply it to modern day scenarios. The F-22 just made it's official debute (sp?). In game it's limited to 1000 kts (it's approx. supercruise speed). It was introduced in Syria... Now granted this plane is a 5th generation air to air fighter, but let's suppose it's in a situation where it is totally Winchester and knows it's meeting up with one of the most common 4th generation fighters in the world, a Mig-29, which might be equipped with the latest and greatest HMD and agile missile systems. Of course the F-22 is not going to get in that fight... It's fight or flight... Since it's completely Winchester, it's a Flight decision..., so it makes a break and begins it's "Flight", however the Mig-29 is capable of approx., 1294 kts, considerably more than the 950 kts limit in the DB. In CMANO, he probably will never get within weapon's parameters, but in RL it's quite possible this scenario could play out to a real intercept/merge, if the conditions are there.

Also, it's already been demonstrated that a capable 4th generation fighter such as the EuroFighter can actually beat an F-22 in a Furball, so a smart F-22 pilot is going to attempt Flight when Winchester and a capable 4th generation fighter is going to do all he can to effect a merge, afterburner max speed may indeed come into the equation.

see: http://www.wired.com/2012/07/f-22-germans/

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ORIGINAL: mikmyk
<snip>

We do have this game model in place for many good reasons and it is not inaccurate mostly because the goal isn't to match the high speed but to make the aircraft speed model work within the context of modern air operations. As Ragnar mention this often means finding the top of the curve and not the fringes or edge cases. I do think though its fair to say that we do look at different cases and do address them (Mig-25 etc).

So that being said post some info and we'll take a look.

Thanks!

Mike

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gandalf

quote:

ORIGINAL: mikmyk
<snip>

We do have this game model in place for many good reasons and it is not inaccurate mostly because the goal isn't to match the high speed but to make the aircraft speed model work within the context of modern air operations. As Ragnar mention this often means finding the top of the curve and not the fringes or edge cases. I do think though its fair to say that we do look at different cases and do address them (Mig-25 etc).

So that being said post some info and we'll take a look.

Thanks!

Mike

Sorry, With all due respect, supposedly your game is designed for users to put together "What if?" scenarios, using a DB that is suppose to reflect real world Platform/Sensors/Weapons capabilities. If the example I put forth above regarding F-22s and Mig-29s didn't convince you of the irrationality of the 950 kt limit for a "What if?" game of this sort, there is no info available that will change your opinion of this same design irrationality.

With that, we will just have to agree to disagree and let the rest of your user community decide whether the 950 kt limit is rational design and the design reasoning justified or not. [:)]

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ORIGINAL: Gandalf

The web is full of sources, reliable or not is up for debate, BUT, as Herman pointed out in his rather disgruntled review, it is blatantly obvious that so many fighters CAPPED at the same max speed of 950 kts could not be based on reliable sources either.

edit> Here's a smiley to convey I'm not trying to be personal in any way, just trying to get you guys to see the irrationality of your 950 kt speed cap. [:)]