How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (Full Version)

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cmanouser1 -> How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/5/2021 7:27:48 AM)

Hello,

playing the excellent Spratly Spat scenario, I've been confronted with the following issue. See screenshot.
My taskforce is targeted by enemy missiles (circled in green). Those missiles have been aimed so badly they aren't threatening anything, the only unit I have downwards being two refuel planes (circled in red).
However, my task force (circled in red) is shooting a slew of missiles to counter the enemy missiles, wasting precious ammo and exposing themselves to future strikes (either due to lack of ammo, or being busy with the current missiles targeting).
[image]https://i.imgur.com/jifjdph.jpg[/image]

Questions:
1) is there any quick way to mark enemy weapons as non-targets, to prevent my units from shooting (apart from doctrine/WRA)?
2) I understand they're shooting because of the default WRA radius being quite large for some missiles, so I could reduce it to prevent such as situation... but this isn't desirable because it would affect any strike, including an actually threatening one well-aimed at my ships. Same for weapon control doctrine as Hold. Any way to do that cleanly?
4) Speaking of WRA, I'm noticing my task force won't shoot at enemy ships they could shoot because "targets of opportunity" is forbidden, and they're not part of a mission (such as an ASuW strike). This prevents from automatic shooting even if the WRA enables it. However, my task force still shoots at the enemy missiles. How come my ships shoot at the missiles then? Do enemy missiles override the doctrine in the sense that if they can be targeted by the WRA, they will be (even if not mission targets, and targets of opportunity are prevented)?
5) Does the fact that I have two airplanes down the path of the missile affect the AI decision to counter-shoot at the missiles?

Attached is a save.

Thanks!



thewood1 -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/5/2021 11:38:15 AM)

I believe ships will always fire in self defense. I am also fairly certain that any missile, no matter the orientation or target will drive self-defense behavior. You might be able to play around with WRA's self-defense settings. That's all I can think of right now.



p1t1o -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/5/2021 12:04:28 PM)

This is a topic that comes up quite regularly. There are three main points, 1) In general, the AI is quite good at defending a fleet with good usage of ammo. 2) In real life, it is difficult to know which missiles are a threat, even if they appear to be sailing on by. 3) It is true that the AI is not as smart as a human and therefore the most efficient way to defeat an attack is to set air RoE to HOLD and manually allocate appropriate missiles to appropriate targets, if you know what you are doing. Doing this does not always guarantee a better result than the AI or that you will use less ammo.

Bottom line is, in most situations, you cant really be 100.00% certain that those missiles are not a threat and so a "by the book" response would be to engage them anyway. Sometimes this means the AI engages missiles that are obviously not going to hit your fleet so yes its a weakness in the AI but one that is very hard to solve.

However, those missiles above are likely missing due to poor or out of date targeting data on launch - either caused by ECM or fleet movement. This does not mean that they cannot suddenly recieve updated targeting data or detect emissions from your ships. In most situations, the safest approach really would be to engage those missiles - Any missile your fleet is capable of engaging, is capable of engaging you, which appears to be the defence AIs operating logic.

Coupla answers:
1) Yes, weapon contacts can be "marked friendly" just like any other contact. Select and press "F".
2) Yup, write an AI that is as smart as a human ;)
4) Incoming missiles are always a "mission target" because survival is always a priority. Only way to prevent engagement is to set air RoE to HOLD.
5) Nope they are not affecting this situation.

What you have got in your screenshot is quite an exagerated case - the miss distance is quite high but still within engageable range, and those are supersonic ASMs, which are likely being allocated 2 missiles each. It doesnt often happen that obviously - just as often you will thank the AI for using so many missiles.



thewood1 -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/5/2021 12:30:38 PM)

I will say this though, one of the biggest planning aspects before hitting start is evaluating potential missile threats, taking inventory of available SAMs, and the a very detailed allocation plan through WRA of what threats receive what attentions. With US ships, you have ESSMs, SM-6s, and SM-2s of various marks. I spend a lot of time looking at which missiles are "waste-able" for situations similar to this. I'll even throw in some Lua to squash a few extreme cases where I know there is little threat to a fleet.

I do this for both the player side and the AI side. Its not easy and can be time-consuming for even medium-sized scenarios. And sometimes I just let it ride with only minimal adjustments to WRA.

The biggest change I have already requested is arcs on WRA and minimum ranges on WRA. Those changes would allow creation of defensive fire lanes and eliminates firing expensive and valuable SM-6s when an ESSM would do the trick. I use some lua for that now, and even then its only partially effective.



BDukes -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/5/2021 2:22:58 PM)

Tough one as weapons can have non-linear flight profiles waypoints in the modern age.

Maybe there should be a way to select a weapon contact and unassign it as a target. This might be useful in other cases too. If it's a bad call, then it's on the player.

Mike



p1t1o -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/5/2021 3:41:54 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: BDukes

Tough one as weapons can have non-linear flight profiles waypoints in the modern age.

Maybe there should be a way to select a weapon contact and unassign it as a target. This might be useful in other cases too. If it's a bad call, then it's on the player.

Mike


I just tested the "setting contact to Friendly" on some incoming Sizzlers. 6 missiles incoming, selected the first three and marked them as "Friendly". Only the last 3 were engaged, the first 3 were let through and impacted the fleet.



BDukes -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/5/2021 10:06:49 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: p1t1o


quote:

ORIGINAL: BDukes

Tough one as weapons can have non-linear flight profiles waypoints in the modern age.

Maybe there should be a way to select a weapon contact and unassign it as a target. This might be useful in other cases too. If it's a bad call, then it's on the player.

Mike


I just tested the "setting contact to Friendly" on some incoming Sizzlers. 6 missiles incoming, selected the first three and marked them as "Friendly". Only the last 3 were engaged, the first 3 were let through and impacted the fleet.


Concur although with longer detections you have to define them friendly more than once to keep them from firing. Suspect there is a check or something along the way that evaluates that again. In this case, fired Kelt AS-5s and was able to prevent SAM shots by defining as friendly right off the bat. SAMS then fired about half-way to target. Started it again and kept defining as friendly and was able to prevent an engagement.

So looks like holding SAM shots isn't exactly as designed but it is definitely doable. I'll take it.

Mike



magi -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/6/2021 8:45:49 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: thewood1


"The biggest change I have already requested is arcs on WRA and minimum ranges on WRA. Those changes would allow creation of defensive fire lanes and eliminates firing expensive and valuable SM-6s when an ESSM would do the trick."


agreed.... this would be a meaningful adjustment....



SeaQueen -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/7/2021 1:44:15 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: thewood1
The biggest change I have already requested is arcs on WRA and minimum ranges on WRA. Those changes would allow creation of defensive fire lanes and eliminates firing expensive and valuable SM-6s when an ESSM would do the trick. I use some lua for that now, and even then its only partially effective.


Something to consider:

The US Navy frequently practices "command by negation." Subordinates announce their intent and wait a few seconds before pushing the button. The commander then has the opportunity to negate that intention, or the missile flies. It might be nice, in certain scenarios to have that as an option as a pop up box. That way you could negate a low Pk crossing shot.



thewood1 -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/7/2021 1:49:08 PM)

Unfortunately, that is not really a systemic solution. The AI would not have the capability to do that. I thin a better systemic solution is maybe in WRA put in a capability to for hi/med/lo probability adjustments for missiles and guns. While range is one way to sort of do that, not letting the AI fire off all its SM-6s at low probability crossing shots would be a solution for both player and the AI.



BDukes -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/7/2021 2:04:27 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: thewood1

Unfortunately, that is not really a systemic solution. The AI would not have the capability to do that. I thin a better systemic solution is maybe in WRA put in a capability to for hi/med/lo probability adjustments for missiles and guns. While range is one way to sort of do that, not letting the AI fire off all its SM-6s at low probability crossing shots would be a solution for both player and the AI.


Agree. Need to document what a hi/med/low percentage is though. The reason why is many newer SSM's are designed have flight paths that make them hard to hit so may be hi/med/low percentage moment to moment. The other thing I'm a little worried about is from memory AAA was given a lower hit percentage to accommodate for a higher volume of fire. This needs to be explained fully in that description if it is still the case.


Mike



thewood1 -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/7/2021 2:25:26 PM)

Its not an easy change to make and probably way overcomplicates WRA for the majority of players. But most experienced players already have a gut feeing on it and most likely use range as a stand-in for that type of engagement now. I know that's why I spend so much time in the WRA screen. If I were the devs, I would just say that, like WRA overall, its for experienced player and should be left to defaults until you have a feel for what your weapons are capable of.

Currently, this is mostly a USN issue. Navies with a limited variety of missiles can somewhat use range. But when you start sending ships out with 3-4 missile types and you have multiple multi-role missiles, it becomes very much like work trying to use range to sort out firing priorities.

edit: I'll again make a plug for combat templates. Being able to set up templates that take into account all the WRA settings for different missions, threats, and geometries is probably the only way to manage it.



1nutworld -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/9/2021 8:59:43 PM)

Just wondering if any of the Devs want to comment on this....specifically since they just announced the new updated Command PE version.

Curious how the PE deals with this type of situation, I mean proprietary AI is important, but it makes me wonder if PE would launch off missiles that truthfully have little chance of hitting their intended target, as they are "X" degrees/nm off course to impact.

Remember, I just posed a similar question about this very thing in this thread myself not long ago. And here it comes up again.


https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4942671



SeaQueen -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/10/2021 1:22:29 AM)

CPE is exactly the same as CMANO in these respects. The biggest differences are data collection and visualization.



thewood1 -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/10/2021 1:26:18 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

CPE is exactly the same as CMANO in these respects. The biggest differences are data collection and visualization.


Thats what I always thought. You can easily see the progression of CPE and CMO, as well as CMNAO, if you just read through the warfaresims site.



1nutworld -> RE: How to prevent waste of defensive missiles in this situation? (3/10/2021 1:27:58 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: SeaQueen

CPE is exactly the same as CMANO in these respects. The biggest differences are data collection and visualization.


ok, thanks for sharing! I thought maybe there were some features that weren't released in the consumer edition.



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