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flaws and inaccuracy's on the weapons in the demo.

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  • Naval War: Arctic Circle
I have played the demo through several times, and I am going to buy the full game as soon as I have some money to spare again..... but I found a few inaccurate points that are quite irritating for an naval war enthousiast like me. being an shipbuilding student who wants to work in naval shipdesign in the future, I have studied quite a few of the NATO weapon systems available in the game.

first of all, the oto melara 76mm is in the game as an ASuW only weapon. this is quite inaccurate, seeing that italy used basically the same gun since the audace class and similar ships as AA and CIWS weapon. it seems very unlikely that the stealth turret variant has lost this ability, especially considering the SR variant was developed especially for this AA role. on the skjold class I might be able to understand the surface mode only, as the direction is quite limited on those vessels, but on the nansen class it should be able to fire AA targets for certain.

second: there is a lot said about ship defences against sea skimming missiles. the fact that guns are often overpowered here, seems part of the fact that the missiles sometimes launch in very close groups, making that when one is hit, half of them is gone in one shot. setting an setting that missiles can not be fired at the same time from the same canister, but have some time (at those speeds, a quarter of a second helps a lot) between the launches. this would add to both realism and would help a bit against this problem

another thing that made me wonder (but I am unsure about this) is ESSM. ESSM was developed partially to be better in taking out sea skimming missiles, so why is it's ability to take them out so bad? against an full salvo of anti - ship missiles my absalon didn't stand an chance without help of the 57mm bofors of the hamina or the visby. another point is the range matter, but I saw this mentioned elsewhere so I won't go in detail here ( I mean the fact that the missile range is not the same as the range at which it is fired... have not checked this though)
another note on ESSM is that ESSM has an surface mode. while it does not much damage compared with an anti-ship missile, against small craft and FAC's it is an potent weapon. as you have implemented the surface mode on the phalanx block 1B, I don't see why you can't put the ESSM one on ;)

the last thing that might be interesting to add is the fact that some ASM's (I am only certain of harpoons, but others might as well) can take ANY surface target, including surfaced submarines. this is something that, if I saw it correctly, is not possible in the game. while this is not something necessary, it might be interesting to add (also for surface guns, if possible, but this might be the case as I have not yet tested that)

it might be that you fixed these points already in the full game, so I put demo in the title.... in that case, I have the only comment that I can't wait till I can play the full game, especially since there are hints at dutch ships seen in the demo :D

I hope you can do something about this, or explain to me the reason why. I of course understand full realism cannot be expected from an game, so it might be you had your reasons ;)
 
Thanks for your feedback, acelanceloet.

Good points all. We're continuously working on improving the accuracy and realism of the simulation, and that kind of feedback you provide is very valuable. We've already fixed some similar issues based on feedback from you guys, and will continue to work on this.

I was not aware the ESSM has an anti-ship mode, actually. Noted.
 
the ESSM surface mode....
I have this of the predecessor NSSM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcvzkmyidKA
as ESSM can engage sea skimming missiles, an surface target is just an very slow and low air target for them. it is only software that differs.
if you google ESSM surface mode you find a lot, I currently don't have the time to look up official sources though.

and for the bunching missiles, even if that's so, it is for example impossible to launch all 4 (or even 2) harpoons from the same canister at the same time due to the unfolding fins. this also influences the possibilities of the use of CIWS, so IMO it would be worth it to simulate for the sake of realism.
 
You really have to evaluate the ESSM's effect when the target knows it is being attacked. If you target the platform when it is unaware, it doesn't matter how good its missiles are, because there is always a lag between detection and interception.

When you play Tutorial 3, and launch a full load of Harpoons against the two surface ships, how many of the missiles is the Nansen's ESSM killing? I tried right now, and it got 5. The CIWS on the two ships got a further 3. Soft kill got 1, all without any micro. Two surface ships, one with decent medium range SAMs (Nansen) and one with pretty bad AA defense (Type 23), took out 9 incoming Harpoons. That's not bad. I doubt it is much better in RL, even on the best of days.

From a game play perspective: if this type of SAM defense gets much better, a big task force, or even a carrier group, with long-range SAMs like Standard or S300/S400, in addition to ESSMs and all the other defenses, becomes darned near invincible.
 
hmm. true, if that amount of 'kills' is doable, then the ESSM is capable enough, it might just be the autofiring or anything like that. when I shot missiles at the targets manually the ability to hit is a lot better indeed.
still, missiles are going straight and can't defend themselves really, so you should be able to have something like an maximum of 2 ESSM per downed missile. I do not know if this is achieved in game, not a lot of time on my hands currently to test it myself.
 
JanH said:
You really have to evaluate the ESSM's effect when the target knows it is being attacked. If you target the platform when it is unaware, it doesn't matter how good its missiles are, because there is always a lag between detection and interception.

When you play Tutorial 3, and launch a full load of Harpoons against the two surface ships, how many of the missiles is the Nansen's ESSM killing? I tried right now, and it got 5. The CIWS on the two ships got a further 3. Soft kill got 1, all without any micro. Two surface ships, one with decent medium range SAMs (Nansen) and one with pretty bad AA defense (Type 23), took out 9 incoming Harpoons. That's not bad. I doubt it is much better in RL, even on the best of days.

From a game play perspective: if this type of SAM defense gets much better, a big task force, or even a carrier group, with long-range SAMs like Standard or S300/S400, in addition to ESSMs and all the other defenses, becomes darned near invincible.
Click to expand...

Jan a carrier group is as invincible as its gets today :) that's why there are so expensive to build and maintain.
 
JanH said:
Well, nobody knows that, do they?

The history of naval warfare should tell us that new weapons and tactics most often are far less effective than expected at first contact with the enemy.
Click to expand...

I think with the advanced processing power available today,they can simulate as many scenarios as they can think off, but there will always be a certain random element in warfare, you cannot think of everything from the beginning.
 
another idea I came up with.... phalanxes (and I suppose all CIWS systems) are set to manually target in the game. so you have to click an missile when it is in range. wouldn't it be good to give these weapons the ability to target missiles before they are in range, or even better, like in real life, to set the CIWS from 'manual/off' to 'standby/autofire'. when in the first setting, the unit would only fire on targets that are given by the player, like it is now, in second setting it would fire on any cleared target that gets in range.
 
claudiucojo said:
I think with the advanced processing power available today,they can simulate as many scenarios as they can think off, but there will always be a certain random element in warfare, you cannot think of everything from the beginning.
Click to expand...

That's as dangerous as the current thinking reported by the British MOD and Government when they said we had no contingency for ships lost because "we weren't going to lose any". A computer is still designed and programed by a human, a human still inputs the variables for that program even if it is at the base level of programing. Furthermore that computer can only respond to the scenarios a human can think of....

We won't have thought of everything and I'd be willing to bet that CBG's and Naval warfare isn't as well mapped or as predictible as we think it is.
 
brutoni here has an point. we do not know what will happen when there really will be an all out war with naval battles, but it is certain ships will be lost. we only have to look at the falklands, or at the fact that dutch walrus class submarines are known to have penetrated CBG's during naval exercises, and even 'sunk' nimitz class carriers

also, all ships have weaknesses. for example, larry bond, the creator of the harpoon series games, describes in one of his books that an spruance class destroyer is sunk by an submarine in it's weak point: shallow water. similarly, in his book 'cauldron' describes larry bond how an mighty ticonderoga class is destroyed by distracting it, (with nuclear missiles armed at the carrier) after which the perry must take out the sea skimming missiles armed at the tico. of course it's SM-1 missiles fail to take out the enemy ASM's.


now, I have just tested the oto 76 AA mode on the newest update on the demo..... and failed to hit even a single missile with it. it might be because it was the skjold class, with only limited guidance, or it might just have been bad luck, but I suspect one thing is part of it:
rate of fire.
this is the oto 76 firing
navweaps gives me these numbers:
Compact and Mark 75: 80 - 85 rounds per minute (in automatic mode)
Compact with retrofit kit: 100 rounds per minute
SR: 120 rounds per minute (139 achieved on trials)
Click to expand...

also, the ammunition. with the above rate of fire, the gun can empty the magazine in less then a minute, as the compact has 80 rounds on the ready-use magazine and the SR 85. because of this, most warships carry an additional load of ammunition, sometimes below the waterline, sometimes in a small room next to the reload room......

so the point is, why has the skjold 60 rounds, while she should have at least 85, (an oto 76 SR gun) and the nansen 80? the 80 is understandable, seeing that you only incorporated the ready use magazine..... but as the gun can be reloaded in the cooldown period during 2 , not entirely realistic.
Source

PS last minute fix: during the making of this post I left the mission running, and the nansen also had no large impact with the gun on the missiles. the ESSM works perfect now though (if she didn't already before) I read elsewhere on this forum that the gun 'power' was being decreased, which is not too bad, but if the abovedescribed is because of that, I think the balance went a bit too far on that.

well, that's it for now :p
 
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