VictorInThePacific
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I am reopening this discussion because I have recently created a test scenario to test this calculation. There are still some "bugs" to be worked out. I will provide the final version of the test scenario at a later time.
However, it is already clear that the calculation will need to be revised, because certain assumptions were wrong.
The most important discrepancy is that small ARMs generally do much less blast damage than their warhead would indicate.
In post 56, this thread, I showed that, under the conditions of this scenario, the ships would get 2 shots at the ARMs or 3 at the bigger ASM missiles. Any way you slice it, 10 ASMs would get through the SAMs, and I assumed that it would be the ARMs that would be allowed to penetrate. The ARMs were expected to do 126 damage points plus ARM specials to each of the 4 main ships. In fact the ARMs only do 18 damage points plus ARM specials.
A sleazy way to get around this would be to launch the ARMs in pairs, which would tend to generate much more (63) blast damage, but that would be purely sleazy, and besides, you won't be able to micromanage the attack that well.
A reasonable way around this problem is to force the ships to fire at the ARMs and get the bigger ASM missiles to hit the ship.
The present attack plan has the Flankers loitering at VL just below the radar horizon of the ships. As the YJ-83s sweep in and are engaged by the SAMs, the Flankers pop up to fire their Kryptons and duck back below the radar horizon.
It turns out that the Flankers can fire the ARMs from below the radar horizon, even though the Kryptons fly at high, because Harpoon allows you to do this. So you could fire the Kryptons before the YJ-83s are engaged, even though in real life, that might cost you the Flankers. I would consider this an abuse of a game defect, and I am not recommending it.
What I am now recommending is to split the YJ-83s, so that what each ship is engaged by is 10 x YJ-83, then 20 x Kh-31P, then 10 x YJ-83, in that sequence. As soon as the ship has engaged the first 10 ASMs, launch the next 20. The ship cannot ignore the first batch of ASMs, otherwise it will sink. The ship cannot ignore the ARMs, otherwise it will lose its defensive systems. Unfortunately, the SAMs will only be able to shoot at the ARMs once (see below). So each ship will be worked over by about 7 ARMs. After its defenses have been wrecked, you can shoot the remaining YJ-83s and expect to sink each ship.
The carrier needs to be treated separately. None of its SAMs can engage the ARMs. The screening ships could try to use their third intercept against the ARMs targeted on the carrier, but those SAMs will be pursuing ARMs that fly at the same speed, i.e. they won't catch them. There is no need to fire the initial 10 YJ-83s at the carrier. The carrier should get worked over by 17 ARMs.
At the conclusion of the first attack phase, all the SAMs will have been neutralized, and the attacking planes will still have 60 YJ-83s left.
Shoot 10 YJ-83s at each of the 4 air defence ships. 7 should hit, for 231 damage each (ship sunk). Shoot 20 YJ-83s at the carrier. 15 should hit, for 462 damage. Unfortunately, the carrier has about 1500 damage points, so it will still be in reasonably good health.
The best way to finish off the carrier would be to add 5 Su-30 MK2s (20 x Kh-59M), which should do a further 1,000 or so damage, but really, that's a detail once the air defence is gone.
The FF and AO can be bombed with cheapo bombs.
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Details of the first attack phase
In order to prevent the 4 main ships from protecting each other, all of them will be attacked simultaneously. The carrier will be attacked at the same time as well (with ARMs only). 5 Su-30MK2s (20 x ARM) and 5 H-6Ms (10 x YJ-83) will be allocated against each of these ships in the main attack.
Park the SU-30 MK2s 30 nm from their targets at VL, in such a way that all the other ships are as far away from the attack lines as possible. Park the H-6Ms 50 nm out at low in the same way. Make sure that you know which of your plane groups is targeted on what, because the weapons allocation dialog box doesn't let you access the map, and the following depends on proper timing. Launch half (40) of the YJ-83s. As these missiles pass the 25 nm barrier, the ships start firing, and the countdown clock starts. There are 90 s until these missiles hit.
T - 90 s: Each of the 4 main ships launches 20 x SM-2s. The SAM launchers are now unavailable for the next 30 s. Virtually bring all the SU-30MK2s up to low and launch all 100 YJ-91s. You don't actually have to move the Flankers, but we can imagine that we did. What happens next depends critically on how fast you can click the mouse. I am assuming that you can launch all these missiles in 15 s. After that, you would still have 15 s to bring all your Su-30 MK2s down to VL.
T - 75 s: The ARMs are at 30 nm (or closer).
T - 60 s: The ARMs are at 21.7 nm. They need 39 s to move this distance. At the time the next SAM launch will happen, the ARMS will be 9 s from impact (5 nm out). Since the SAMs move at the same speed, the intercept would happen 2.5 nm out, which is too close for the SAMs to be active. In fact, the ARMs would need to be 6 nm (10.8 s) out at T - 30 s for the third intercept to be able to target them, and since they need 43.2 s to travel the remaining 24 nm, they would have had to be launched at T - 72.2 s (17.8 s after the YJ-83 launch) OR LATER. So if you click the mouse rapidly when launching the ARMs, they can only be intercepted once, but if you are slow, they can be intercepted twice. Yes, we really are quibbling about fractions of a second here.
Those ships with Enhanced Sea Sparrows or RAMs could use them against ARMs in the third intercept, except that the Kryptons fly too high to be engaged by these SAMs!
T - 40.5 s: The second intercept happens, 10.8 nm out. The launcher needs 10.5 s to cycle.
T - 30 s: The ARMs are 9 s from impact (5 nm out). The YJ-83s are 8.3 nm out. Time to intercept time is 10 s, and it happens 5.5 nm out.
T - 21 s: Any remaining ARMs impact.
T = 0: Any remaining YJ-83s impact (except that they were all wiped out in the first intercept).
Before any ASMs impact, the anti-missile decoys fire. Each of the ships in question has 4 at 15-20 %. I will allocate one soft kill per ship for these. Just before impact, the ship's guns will fire. I will allocate one hard kill per ship for these. I will assume that the first ASM misses, but that would actually be unlikely. So, with the assumptions and calculations above, this would be 7 ARM hits on each of the 4 main ships, and 17 ARM hits on the carrier.
< Message edited by VictorInThePacific -- 7/30/2009 3:06:13 AM >
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