Missiles: Do they ever miss???

[DirectorTsaarx]

Star Fleet Battles had a means for jamming missile tracking systems; the "mod" below could be a way to emulate the effects, but may affect game balance. SFB also had a setup closer to SE3 in that a missile (well, drone was the SFB term, but I'll use missile to avoid confusion) had to be launched within a certain range, but the missile could continue following the ship for a much longer range (as long as the missile stayed within X distance of the ship).

[Will]

I don't think that the ECM as it is now in the game should affect seekers. As I imagine it now, ECM is basically a component that jams a ships scanners (like having a ground base jam the frequency used by enemy radar, making it fairly useless, and forcing fire by eye). The the analogy of a machine gun seems to be a favorite for having ECM affect seekers instead of direct-fire; my rebuttal is that this would be a machine gun firing at a moving target miles away, assisted by a tracking system.

Another thing is that missile jammers (at least currently) don't work that well, and have to work on one missile at a time. That said, the suggestion of Trachmyr is a realistic way to have "Anti-Missile ECM". Since all of you seem so hooked on realism (tell me, how realistic is it for people from a tiny world to move to a huge world, and NOT be crushed? or how one can make a RingWorld with only 20000kT of material? It's not realistic, could possibly be explained in terms of future technology if you streched it... the game isn't supposed to be real), how realistic is it for this missile jammer to effect 100 missiles the same as 1?

For all your complaints, there is a mod to be made to get around it. So quit complaining about how game coding should be changed, and mod the game to how you want it, or have someone else do it. Aaron's busy enough, and I don't think he's about to quit his day job (he does have a day job, if you all have forgotten).

[Aussie Gamer]

Well Will, That is an advanced tech for a Ring world, if you read the discription of the rind and Sphere worlds it says that they are the base structure for the worlds and the generator drags materials from in the system to make the world.

With direct fire you lead the shoots on to the target <machine gun>. True about the distance and thats why they are efected by ECM.

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As I imagine it now, ECM is basically a component that jams a ships scanners (like having a ground base jam the frequency used by enemy radar, making it fairly useless, and forcing fire by eye).

End Quote-

How do you think that the seeker is finding it's target?? Most likely either infra-red or by radar. Thus "jamming" by an ECM pod would effect it as well. If you know the missile type you can do a wide area burst to throw off all incominf missiles.

These chat area are for the discussion about the game and for players to view their opinions, if a lot of players like the idea then the author of the idea could send it off to MM for his consideration.

Your disapproval of the idea is noted, but it looks like more dislike the idea of 100% accuracy for missiles than find the idea OK.

I will be sending my opinion to MM asking him to change the coding if possible.

[nerfman]

Will:

"Another thing is that missile jammers (at least currently) don't work that well, and have to work on one missile at a time."

What missile jammer is that? Saying current ECM technology can only jam on missile at a time is pretty much dead wrong.

Seekers will home in four basic ways:
Passive Homing - Seeker listens for energy, like an IR signature and then follows it unitl it hits. These are best jammed w/ decoys like chaff or even turning your radar off/kicking freqs (if it is an ARM seeker).
Active Homing - each seeker has its own mini radar and finds the target by using it. Good except that if all the missiles are tuned to the same freq, their radars jam each other and they go splash. This can limit the number of missiles you can fire due to possible freq bandwidth limitations. These can be tough to jam for the same reason since you will need to radiate on different bands simultaniously.
Semi-Active Homing - A third party "paints" the target w/ energy like CW radar waves or laser and the seeker chases the energy reflected off the target. Hard to jam, but since all the missiles are looking for energy the same freq there is the chance to inact one counter measure against them all. Destructive interference or having a decoy re-emit the homing freq can be efective.
Command - The seeker is basically being remote controlled like a TOW missile or wire guided torpedo. Jam up the platform that is guiding and you jam the missile.

The above are simplified a bit, but are basically how modern seeker work.

Of course these can be mixed and matched. For instance, our Aegis ships fire SM-2's that are command guidance w/ terminal semi-active homing.

Different types of guidance are sometimes easier or harder to jam. There are ECM devices that can effect more than one seeker. The SRBOC/SLQ-32 offers soft kill protection for more than one missile at a time. An EA-6B can Jam many platforms at once.

BTW if you don't like our "complaints" then post on one of the Star Trek threads or something. We are simply trying to point out a few areas were the game design could be greatly enriched. And Last unless you are like an EWC in the navy or something, don't be trying to tell me what current electronic warfare capabilities are. Hope yall enjoyed the lecture. Later

[This message has been edited by nerfman (edited 02 May 2001).]

[Marty Ward]

If missiles were affected by the range (accuracy) modifier then you could tweak them to your liking. I don't know how hard it would be to change.

[dmm]

I would like to see missiles have a reasonable chance of missing (10%~20%) and be affected by ECM, BUT a missile that missed would keep trying until it ran out of fuel. So there would be an advantage to firing missiles from closer range. Also, maybe missile ECM should be different, forcing the defender to add yet another component to his ship.

However, having fooled with PDC for some time, I am not as unhappy with never-missing missiles as I once was.

[Suicide Junkie]

Since we are talking space combat distances here, and the distance from earth to moon is a half- light second and we see in SE4 that ships attack from at least that range, I see it this way.

Beams have to predict where their target will be one second from now. (150,000 KM at about range 4) If your enemy looks fuzzy due to ECM, you'll have a tougher time predicting which way he's facing and which way he'll go.

Seekers fly in the general direction of the enemy, so they can get hundreds of thousands of times closer than the ship's sensors before they have to make their final attack (at 1 KM from target) & explode.

At 100,000 times closer, your sensor power is up 10,000,000,000 times (r^2)
That's why missiles can see right through ECM & stealth.