RE: air warfare & close combat (Full Version)

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DrRansom -> RE: air warfare & close combat (12/30/2016 10:23:21 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Cik

it's hard to say exactly about that, the problem i think is that it retains energy too well. even at afterburner, many aircraft will struggle to retain altitude in a fight at 25,000+ feet. the aircraft in the game don't seem to. they do hug a low speed (.61 mach, or so) but many airplanes will be essentially falling out of the sky at that speed at high altitude, at least. forget fighting anything. just avoiding a lethal stall will take up most of your attention span.


From this, I take it that dogfights in CMANO take too long, relative to real life. Aircraft, especially at high altitude, should be pushed into a low-energy state much faster.

That would make multiple missile shots much more dangerous than now...



Cik -> RE: air warfare & close combat (12/30/2016 10:32:10 PM)

if they want to stay high, sure. no pilot in a normal 1 versus 1 would stay high, though. in many v many, it depends.

it used to be more viable than it is now, granted. back in the day (up until the beginning of the 60s?) probably the most important attribute of a fighter was maximum altitude, because the range and parameters of all A-A weapons simply could not deal with an opponent above you as long as you weren't directly behind them. now though the nature of HOB or even simple all-aspect semi-reliable SRMs means that being lower than the enemy doesn't matter so much. even better, when you are shooting from below it is harder for the enemy to see you.

that's not to say though that it's a good idea to just fly around on the deck all the time; there are lots of reasons to be high. better fuel economy, better range, better loiter, better view of the enemy (radar coverage) better positioning for BVR engagements, etc. just saying that once you're in close combat and the enemy are within SRM range there is no reason to hold onto altitude over energy and a few good reasons to hold onto energy rather than altitude.

quote:

I don't want to derail the thread but why is ejecting at high altitude bad? I thought emergency life support systems came with?


you're probably right about that. though it would be pretty chilly. might catch a cold.



Izgud -> RE: air warfare & close combat (12/30/2016 10:54:48 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Sunburn
This is in fact something we very much want to do as it ties-in with something else we have in the pipeline (you'll know it when you see it), and since you're interested in this you may be able to help us bring it to life.

We are leaning towards codifying the cockpit-visibility properties of different aircraft in discrete enumerable values. So you would have something like:
#1 - 1960s missile interceptor canopy (F-4, F-104, MiG-21/23/25 etc.) - good front coverage, average side + down coverage, poor rear coverage
#2 - 1970s Teen fighters canopy (F-14/15/16 etc.) - Excellent 360 coverage + strong down-look angle; also applies to Su-27, F-22 etc.
#3 - Typical airliner & derivatives - good frontal coverage, poor side coverage, abysmal down & rear

Having these enumerable values, and applying them to each aircraft individually, would then allow us to define spotting rules for each of them.

Would you be interested in undertaking this? (The data part, that is)

One other thing we want to model is the tendency of pilots to fixate on their primary target during a WVR engagement, leading to "tunnel vision". This would allow modelling both the surprise opportunities endemic in a dogfight ("the one you don't see is the one that kills you") also also magnify the benefit of a two-man crew, since the second pair of eyeballs would be available for scanning around the aircraft while still prosecuting the primary target.


Yes. Yes to all of this! There are some other great points in this thread, but this is an absolutely critical aspect of aerial warfare that I'd love to see you guys take a shot at. I'd also love to help out if you could use an extra hand!



David Clark -> RE: air warfare & close combat (12/31/2016 7:23:28 PM)

My thinking runs in the opposite direction to some of the discussion so far.

My opinion is that the CMANO engine has been optimized to depict position, direction, motion and time. These are considerations that dominate the operational level of combat. Trying to build too much tactical fidelity into an operational engine risks shoehorning a very difficult modeling problem (dogfighting) into a simulation that was never intended to go there. Inevitably you end up with not only an inadequate depiction of dogfighting, but an actively misleading one, and one that forces the players to try to micromanage turns and acceleration moment-to-moment.

I would like to see a recognition that the mechanics of dogfighting simply take place at a more tactical level than the game intends to model directly (or is really capable of doing so), and something more in line with Harpoon P&P's approach: opposing aircraft when in sufficiently close proximity with an intention to dogfight enter a 'dogfighting state'.

In this state, they:

- No longer display movement vector information
- Have reduced situational awareness regarding outside threats
- Lose altitude as they trade it for energy
- Struggle for advantageous position and take shots as they achieve it
- Continue until they run out of altitude or fuel, or are able to extend out of the dogfight if their enemy has no heatseakers

The dogfight itself would be an entity, and might move short distances randomly. I like the idea of eliminating vector information since it would no longer really accurately reflect what's going on, and more importantly, the lack of heading/speed information would signal to the player that the aircraft are no longer under their direct control.

The 'struggle for advantageous position' would be abstracted, and not determined by the geometry the engine normally uses. Instead it would be a statistical function with all the inputs you'd expect - off-boresight capability, pilot training, g-loading capacity, cornering speed, energy, etc etc. The goal is to acknowledge the limitations of an operational model, and use probability to resolve engagements that are necessarily outside the model's area of competence.

As for the mk-1 eyeball stuff, one enum you're missing in the list is multi-crew aircraft, such as bombers with tail gunners - 360 degree coverage, but with some ability to monitor multiple headings at once, and with some coordination problems.

Great game, fun discussion, thanks for reading.



DrRansom -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 3:30:28 PM)

I think I know what the missing item is! Aircraft in CMANO do not lose altitude unless it is a deliberate decision. A plane can fly at any altitude at any speed with any load-out for any period of time (fuel permitting). So you can have your lightweight MIG-21, loaded with the heaviest bomb load possible, flying at loiter at 36,000ft as long as the fuel holds out. (Which may or may not be realistic, but doesn't sound right?)

I suspect this is the major modeling limitation reducing the importance of energy in CMANO. If planes lost altitude or had a minimum speed to maintain altitude at a given weight fraction, then dynamics would change completely.

Here's another question for the CMANO dev team, is there a performance penalty for a missile firing upward as opposed to downward?

Edit: a thought, if aircraft are allowed to lose altitude, then airplane logic has to be improved to not allow the plane to energy a speed / energy state wherein it would fly into the ground.



Cik -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 4:53:08 PM)

well, loiter scales. your average military jet's "loiter" at sea level is nearly idle throttle, at 36,000 loiter and military might be the same thing (due to impossibility of flying without high throttle)

cruising in an aircraft is a little counter-intuitive, due to the interactions of drag/thrust/fuel consumption.

anyway, holding 36,000 feet at .61 mach or so is mostly impossible, and turning at that speed is probably less possible. dangerous even. but i'm not certain the fuel consumption is out of whack; even assuming that loiter throttle scales to a higher % of throttle at high altitude, it should still be more fuel efficient than sitting in the low atmosphere, regardless of throttle setting.

i'm not sure modelling it any further is actually possible without having a very complicated flight model for every single aircraft. the only thing i'd suggest is increasing the speed for fourth-gen fighters to .70~ mach at least as .61 seems very low to me. anything else though, hard to say.



mikmykWS -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 5:01:54 PM)

Interesting stuff guys.

Mike



DrRansom -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 5:10:42 PM)

Cik - I get the problem, the fuel consumption is a interplay between required thrust, life, and the engine performance curve. That could only really be given in a generic sense.

But for aircraft maneuvers, losing altitude might give some of the desired results. It would push dog-fights and heavily loaded aircraft into lower altitudes as planes lose height.



Cik -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 5:19:27 PM)

oh yeah, sure. i think it'd be good to have that sort of thing, even if it is a little more rounded than a full-blooded aircraft sim. it's why i started the thread.

i think the AI with a little coaching can handle it. sunburn's already stated that increased maneuverability at lower altitudes is modeled, so all that's left to be done is to teach the AI to use that, as far as i can tell.

piece of cake :^)



DrRansom -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 5:39:56 PM)

At a high level, I suspect what would be important is:

A. Increased fuel consumption during dogfights. Right now, the default is to use a loiter throttle profile to achieve minimum turning radius. In reality, it seems like aircraft have to run afterburner to keep the energy up to turn rapidly. This change would dramatically decrease aircraft endurance when engaging in dogfights, especially earlier generation fighter jets.

B. Loss of altitude during dogfights. This starts to make high energy aircraft (rapid climb and dive) dominant over low energy aircraft. That would also couple into the higher fuel burn due to afterburner.

The two would make dogfights more of a once-a-mission thing and decrease their duration, as both sides will run out of energy and be forced to disengage.



Cik -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 6:12:40 PM)

aye. it also means that new arrivals to the fight start with an advantage, as they should. as the duel continues and the first engaged planes descend, anybody who reinforces either side will start with a noticeable advantage; they will be out of parameters of most of the combatants and at a higher energy state (due to altitude)

unfortunately for the first combatants, this is a very bad situation to be in, as if they attempt to extend they will probably just be nailed by a heatseeker from any of engaged parties.

it's why dogfights in the strictest sense have long been a bad idea. you're at the mercy of anyone who happens by after the second turn or so. and who knows if it will be the enemy or friendly? especially in certain eras, dogfights are a vortex that are very, very hard to escape once things go south. it's why many doctrines emphasize not getting into them.

of course, if you play your cards right it's an advantage. making sure you have reinforcements close by and then pouncing descending enemies makes for easy kills, especially coupled with the restrictive cockpits of most early jet age fighters.



DrRansom -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/3/2017 6:38:13 PM)

These changes would also let early model aircraft more easily gang-up on any advanced plane which over-extends itself. E.g. a F-22 shouldn't get into a dogfight with MIG-21s, lest superior numbers allow the additional planes to catch the F-22 out and get an easy kill.



DrRansom -> RE: air warfare & close combat (1/10/2017 1:39:55 PM)

To add to this discussion, in this January's AIAA Sci-Tech conference, there is a paper out by AFRL researchers on the optimal evasion strategy for an aircraft against medium range air to air missiles. The optimum strategy for medium range engagements is a steep dive followed by a last-second hard turn. The steep dive decreases the energy height of the missile and, in the medium range case, leads to greatly increased miss distances.

For CMANO, the equations of motion for the simulation might be helpful for calculating missile energy burn. Specifically, they make the missile drag a quadratic function of the commanded acceleration. I don't know how CMANO accounts for drag (maybe fuel burn?), but this might be a way for the simulation to penalize hard maneuver commands, if that isn't already included.



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