Joe K

OK, I just finished a replay of the Middleweights scenario in the WestPac battleset, under the 2009.042 version, and although it wasn't exactly the same situation of a single "invincible" AI air group, there was a rather bizarre - and consistent (and annoying) - situation where many of the AI's air groups were impervious to air-to-air attack by any of my air groups. Specifically, the AI was using four primary fighter types, the Golden Eagles, F-15K Slam Eagles, F-16 Block 52s, and Rafale C4s. Although the latter three of these types were all very difficult to engage successfully, even when using the F-15J Plus, the F-16 Block 52's were almost totally impervious to my AA missiles. Although both sides were armed with the same AIM-120A/B missiles, the kill rate of the AI's missiles were near 100%, while the the kill rate of my missiles against the F-16s was only approximately 7% (six planes hit out of shots at 93 F-16s), and actually less because I was firing more missiles than there were targets in each volley... so my hit rate was really more like maybe only 3-4%!! This was really annoying - not to mention catastrophic! My hit rates on the F-15K Slam Eagles also were rather frustrating, yet at least better at a 40-50% hit rate (still consistently below the specified hit rate for the AIM-120A/B), while hit rates on other AI a/c types - even on the Rafales - were more in line with the specified hit rate percentages of the missiles. So, although it was not really the same as the "invincible air group" scenario, the AI's F-16s here were almost indestructable, and even the AI's F-15Ks were suspiciously tough to kill. Meanwhile, literally the only way for my own planes to avoid being missile fodder was when the "turn and burn" tactic actually worked - because when the AI missiles were able to catch my planes, the kill rate was 100%. Is there any "explanation" for this seemingly lop-sided behavior? Another thing that was rather annoying - because it also didn't seem to make sense - was that the AI groups were always able to immediately detect my AA missile launches (as evidenced by the AI groups immediately returning fire, and reversing their courses). By itself, this may not seem sigificant, but placed in the context where the AI groups quite often could launch their AA missiles totally unseen (even by my nearby AWACS and/or the target group's own radar), and often hit my groups without the AI missiles ever being detected, just seems to be totally inconsistent with the AI's ability to consistently detect and react to my AA missiles at maximum range. Is there any "explanation" for this seemingly lop-sided behavior? And the "last straw" to the AI's "unfair advantage" was that the AI groups could out-run my missiles simply by turning (without "burning"), for example, quite frequently, a pair of my F-15J Pluses would engage an AI group of three or four F-16 Block 52s; I would allow the attack to proceed "automatically" to the point that the GE presented my missile allocation popup (usually at about 75-80% of the range of my AIM-120s). Immediately upon my firing my missiles, the AI group would launch its own AIM-120s, and reverse its course... but it would maintain its 533 knot cruising speed. Meanwhile, I'd manually reverse the course of my F-15J Plus group, and then set it to full afterburners (1338 knots). Yet, while my 1338 knot group could barely out-run the AI missiles (well, most of the time, anyway ), the AI groups could always out-run my missiles at only their 533 knot cruise speed... and even if the speed display of the AI group was incorrect for some reason, and the F-16s were actually flying at their maximum speed (of about 200 knots slower than the F-15s), they shouldn't have been able to consistently out-run my AIM-120's... should they?? So, I've come away from this scenario puzzled, frustrated, and annoyed... Is there any good explanation(s) to soothe my sense of unfairness about this?

I've tried using using the non-textured maps during course lay-down, and it does help quite a bit (although it's still difficult to guage the position of formation members relative to the baseline course, which often leads to running units aground anyway, especially in the areas between waypoints). I still have trouble plotting sub courses, though, because there is no direct way to tell depth along the course, so I rather frequently have subs being forced to shallower depths somewhere along their courses, which is typically undesirable in a "hot" environment - especially if they get forced to surface! Is there any good way around this?

As I mentioned, I'm not debating capabilities... but I am most certainly challenging the idea that reliability is improving. More importantly, in the situations that I'm thinking of, few of these "advanced capabilities" are needed, yet robustness is a requirement... so, it's not a good trade-off to buy unneeded capability at the cost of sacrificing urgently needed reliability. Even if it were entirely true that hardware robustness has improved (in some ways, it has; in other ways, it has gotten worse), hardware is only part of the issue - and probably the smaller part as compared to software issues. (Or, don't you believe those Mac/PC commercials?? ) You must have a different statistician than I do... or perhaps we're speaking of different situations. As I mentioned, if accidents now need to be much more serious in order to be considered noteworthy, then perhaps the recorded accident rate is decreasing. But, in my industry, we've seen a lot more systems failures in recent years than in the "old days", that were traceable to operational failures in the control computers or even in microcontrollers (which is the really scarey situation). It's not that the "brave new world" of computer control is inherently bad, but rather that reliance on inherently unreliable computer systems is dangerous. And many -if not most- of today's mainstream commercial and industrial computers/controllers are inherently less robust than their predecessors - due in no small part to their "enhanced capabilities". My whole point here is that "advancement" (i.e. - being more modern & more capable) doesn't necessarily imply "improvement" in all respects, and the decrease in computer robustness is one big example.

Um... did I miss something here? What analysis? What's the Show All for? What are hotkey sheet downloads? Yeah, that's what's bothering me... My SOP for all non-recon/AEW air patrols is to send them out at Low altitude, and remain at Low when loitering (which requires manual alteration of each course after launch), leave their sensors off (although I've also tried using intermittant in an attempt to get an early warning on the attackers), and whenever possible I keep them within the umbrella of an AWACs, or at least a P-3 or similar, as available... or within the coverage of a surface group or base... or within the coverage of some other (radiating) air patrol in certain cases. And I make every attempt to stay well clear of any AI platform whenever practical. So, I thought that I was taking every available precaution... yet the AI often knows where to find my groups, and zeros in for the kill - without either the attacking aircraft nor their AA missiles ever showing up! In earlier versions of the game, these precautions would have been entirely adequate against older-generation a/c types (although perhaps not against the more stealthy and lower-flying Eurofighters or Rafales), but in recent times, I frequently have cases of "spontaneously destructing" a/c groups... even sometimes the AWACs themselves! On the other side of the coin, I am totally unable to sneak up on the AI's groups - even when they have no radar on and no AEW around - even with F-22s, flying at lowest possible altitudes, etc. Of course, without radar, I'm unable to get a fix on the target groups, and if my a/c are using radar-guided missiles, I have to turn on my radars in order to fire - which allows the AI groups to shoot back... bottom line is that it's almost impossible to be undetected by the AI. I have noticed that certain scenarios (or perhaps just game sessions - not sure) seem to have a lot more liklihood of this detectability situation than others, but in general it is more frequent overall than in earlier versions. Is this to be expected? If so, what's the reason? Thanks!

There is a distinct change in the behavior or characteristics of AI air groups and AA missiles between HCGold (and early versions of the HCE demo) and the more recent versions of the HCE Demo, and I'm trying to get my head around the reasons or rationale for all of this. The first (and most flustering) difference is that my air patrol groups often can just blow up without warning for no apparent reason, even when at extreme distances from any enemy detection platforms. It turns out that the reason is that they were attacked by (an) AI air group(s) - apparently - but this revelation just lead to more puzzlement because when I found out what the culprits were, the results made even less sense to me: As it turned out, the apparent attackers were groups of "older generation" aircraft types (MiG-21's and MiG-23s), which are not particularly stealthy, yet they were able to sneak up on my low-altitude air groups, totally undetected (even by nearby AWACs). This didn't seem particularly plausible to begin with, but was further complicated by the fact that these AI MiG groups aren't VLow-capable, and should need to get fairly close in order to use their relatively short-ranged AA missiles, and those missiles are radar-guided, yet the attackers used them without turning on their guidance radars! And the last straw was that the missiles themselves were never detected. This all seemed to violate plausible detectability. This contrasts sharply with the "old" behavior where non-stealthy a/c could be detected - although not necessarily with a "fix" - at distances typically beyond the missile range of my own groups, and definitely would show up when they fired missiles - due to activation of their guidance radars, I assume. Plus, the missiles themselves generally would be detectable at fair distances, but at least before they made the kills. So, I'm curious what explains this recent lack of detectability of AI air and missile groups - and what tactics can compensate for this new lack of ability to detect AI units? The other thing is the new ability of the AI to detect my own low-altitude, radar-quiet air groups, apparently at great distances, allowing them to initate such attacks, and to be able to "fix" my air groups - without using radar - in order to prosecute the attacks and target their missiles. This contrasts substantially from the "old" behavior where the AI pretty much limited its attacks to my air groups that were detected by some obvious means - such as being in range of AI AEW aircraft, air or ship-based radar, or by enemy units within visual range. So, the new situation is that the AI appears to have a considerably superior ability to detect the player's groups at all distances, as well as an inexplicable "stealth capability" for its a/c, targeting radars, and even AA missiles... This all leaves me wondering what's going on with all this, is this actually realistic (and why), and how does the player employ an expectedly comparable stealthiness against the AI aircraft? On the surface, it seems that the AI has considerable advantage over the player in all of these respects... is this "correct"... and if so, what are the "reasons"? And are there any tactical hints for the player to employ in order to level the field? Thanks!

a. I think that would be suboptimal since aircraft may be in enemy territory when their base is destroyed. I'd rather have them try to RTB if not on an active mission than loiter say within enemy anti-aircraft defenses. Good point! Although, I was thinking in terms of Loitering versus "heading north", as opposed to Loitering versus RTB. (Personally, I'd lean towards immediate RTB in such cases, anyway). Actually, the heading north action could put them into enemy territory, too - depending on the circumstances. I recall an instance where some helos from several sunken AI ships did their northward treks - right into one of my SAGs - which promptly dispatched them!

Which topic(s) is best to track in order to keep abreast of the latest Demo releases? (I'm currently at 2009.042 of the Demo). BTW, I'm curious whether I'm invoking the eMail-notification-of-replies feature properly, because sometimes I get no notifications at all of replies to a topic thread, and in some other cases, I get notifications of replies by some people, but not for others. (In particular, I've noticed that I don't get notifications of replies by CV32, Tony E, and a few others - so I'm thinking it might have something to do with group membership or something). Anyway, I just cleck the option to receive eMail notification of replies when I post a reply... so is there something else that I need to do in order to get the notifications? PS - In another "operational" question relating to the forum, any idea why, occasionally, it won't allow me to post a reply and returns an error message stating that I'm not logged in - even though it shows me as being logged in and has allowed me to post other replies previously in the session? Weird! Thanks.

Hehe, thanks for the kind words guys. As you recognized, I don't, couldn't, and wouldn't do it alone. Now if someone would just provide me a smart, rich, attractive (real) woman to marry we could really build a nifty wargame. Would she need to be a programmer, too??? But, a word of caution: I hear tell that marrying ain't all that it's cracked up to be... What if they just went into loiter mode (until BINGO time)? At least that would keep 'em in the game, so to speak. Just curious, though: Do such "orphaned" a/c retain their normal lethality - like, will they still go after targets of opportunity, etc.? (In the cases that I've seen, it seemed more like they just sort of ambled along aimlessly, waiting for the player to knock 'em off).

Heh, hogwash. The old stuff wasn't more reliable at the same point in their lifecycle... I wasn't speaking to military hardware in general, nor even to militarized computers... I was speaking specifically about the reliability of commercially-available computer systems for industrial, business, and personal use. And I'm not disputing raw performance - although performance means squat if the system is down due to reliability issues - or even worse, if it is "working", but is merrily doing something that is totally bogus or even dangerous! In the not-so-distant past, it wasn't necessary to buy any high-priced or "hardened" computer in order to have ultra-reliable operations out of an "ordinary" computer system; but today, it is virtually impossible to buy a robust modern system - at any price. It's really surprizing that we don't have more "industrial accidents" or financial melt-downs than we do - considering the high level of reliance on computerized control systems throughout the manufacturing and business sectors. Of course, as the frequency of failures or accidents increases, the "tolerance threshold" goes up as well - so it now takes a more major incident to become "worthy" of notice, while all the "little" screw-ups and minor "accidents" are just seen as the norm - and as "acceptable trade-offs" for "higher performance". This sort of trade-off isn't a fact of life - but it can be (and sometimes is) a matter of life and death. Is human life now being sacrificed on the altar of high-tech and high-performance? Seems like it is...

I'd like to lobby hard for something to solve this problem... because it's gotten to the point for me that I lose nearly as many aircraft to unreported fuel exhaustion as I do to any "legitimate" causes. I know what you mean I cat my vote with you. Seems to be a few conditions that can cause problems, if I'm in doubt instead of just ordering return to base I set a course to a point next to the base then insert the land command in the course. A bit fiddly but I have to make a lot less cap in hand visits to next of kin. Don Does that actually make the BINGO message come up when it's appropriate? I was thinking that I tried to do that awhile back, but it appeared that any course which included a return-to-base leg would cause the BINGO report not to come up (and the planes would crash), regardless of whether there were course legs other than the return-to-base, or if that was the only leg. I know for sure that the warning doesn't occur if the return-to-base is the only leg, and I'm pretty sure that it also does not appear if a multi-leg course includes a return-to-base leg... so I just assumed that the presence of any return-to-base command in the path would suppress the warning. (?)

That's for sure! But in the case of computer systems available to the public, the old stuff was more reliable. The recent generations have evolved in such a highly-competitive enviroment that robustness often has been sacrificed to the gods of complexity, "capability", and sale-ability. If it can be touted as having better features, higher technology, and/or higher speed, or simply being more in vogue, than the competing brand, then it's unleased upon the market - despite often being ill-tested, bug-ridden, improperly integrated, and/or having a really marginal design that's prone to failures, especially when "stressed". I (somewhat fondly) recall the days when the only headaches one had with computers were the result of one's own faulty programming logic. Nowdays, even perfect programming seldom guarantees proper performance - because of faults hidden elsewhere in all the not-so-robust layers of complexity.

Nope, no relationship. I have a reputation for not 'holding hands' with the player, as far as my scenarios go. Hehe, and often Brad ties hands by starting the scenario with planes carrying useless loadouts, giving the opposition a chance to pressure the player early on. It can instill a bit of panic! Yeah, it reminds me of the first time that I tried to play one of the first couple of scenarios in the USNI set (Blue side) under the HCE demo: I had just started the game, and was still checking the loadouts of my aircraft when numerous groups of long-range bombers were detected... and moments later wave after wave of Kingfish and so forth rained down on the surface group, eventually overwhelming the defenses and obliterating the entire carrier group and giving the Reds total victory - only about 20 minutes of game time into the scenario! Astonished, I checked the reports for the Red airfields and found there were a total of several hundred bombers still parked at the fields - in addition to the airborne masses that had just released armageddon upon my carrier group, right out of the gate! My reaction was, "How in the h___ can it be possible to play this scenario, let alone win it, when there isn't even time to re-arm my aircraft with any significant air-to-air weapons before the reign of terror begins???" Well, it turns out that game was some sort of aberration, because (thankfully ) a re-play of the scenario presented a much more managable number of Red bombers - plus I knew to expect the immediate attacks, so right away I put an "alpha strike" of air patrols with whatever starting AA loads they had, and was able to fend off enough of the Red missiles to survive that initial onslaught! I never did find out how the Reds were able to detect and target the carrier group, though... never found any subs nearby, nor detected any patrol aircraft or surface stuff. Oh, well...

Here is where the AI has one of its few advantages over you. It checks every game second to see if the weapons are in range, a human player rarely does the same. Engagements at such short ranges demand lots of attention in the current builds. With other types of groups (aircraft particularly), the GE manages when to release the first volley of an attacking player's group, usually in time for the player to start micro-managing the engagement before the AI "plasters" the aircraft. I notice that armor groups do not have this same behavior (because they cannot be ordered to attack a target unless they are already in range). This certainly lends itself to the situation that you describe... so I'm curious why armor groups don't have this "close-and-attack" function like most other types of groups have? In a related matter, why is it that the "end behavior" of sub groups on an attack mission differs from that of aircraft and surface groups? At least in my case, a sub group that has been ordered to close and attack will go through all the normal motions of closing, adjusting speed if needed, and so forth - but then it doesn't commence the attack. Instead, it just does nothing until eventually the "lack of course" notification occurs, at which time it may or may not still be possible to commence the attack manually from the resulting position. I have always wondered why the sub groups work this way. Even though I'm aware of this behavior, I still tend to "forget" about the sub attacks, due to being distracted to other activities while the subs are closing their range. This is no doubt due to my being accustomed to getting the attack notification in the cases of other group types, which I have to deal with much more often. Anyway, just wondering why the subs work differently...

That's good to know... I'll take a crack at laying the tight courses with the texturing disabled and see if that helps. Thanks.

Hmmm... Well, constantly isn't really accurate... but, it does seem to happen frequently - if the course takes things anywhere near land. As do I - unfortunately, even that doesn't always help me! Achievable... but extremely time-consuming, at least given the techniques that I'm aware of. :-} I notice the snap-to-grid behavior at least at mags of 64x or more - about the same point that the pixels become really noticable. The "over land" issue relates to the course line between the waypoints, not at the waypoints themselves. What I mean is that when attempting to lay a course among islands (like in the Phillipines area, for example), I may have to plot a highly-zig-zagged course in the attempt to avoid the obstacles. If these waypoints aren't far enough apart, then the course between them can tend to bring the unit too close to the "pylon". If I can see this condition, then I can correct it by adding an intermediate waypoint... otherwise, I have no way of knowing there is a conflict until it "bites" me. FWIW, I've gotten into trouble even at max mag and placing waypoints at the corners of each pixel - although this doesn't seem to be so much an issue of the connecting lines as it is a function of the graphics not necessarily being "aligned" with the GE's data. Looking at it a different way, it's sort of like the problem of trying to use the graphics to figure out which way to move a grounded unit in order to get it back into "the channel". Not recalling for sure, but it seems like I've run into that in the past in mid-ocean in the Atlantic Convoy scenarios, and more recently in the Oubliette scenario, where I hit something in the open area about halfway across the large open basin that's generally to the East of the boomer's designated destination.

I think something is getting lost in the translation here... Can't say I agree with that. I don't have a problem with formations. Um, you commented previously about the steps necessary to avoid having problems with groups around land... I was only agreeing with that. Single ship/sub formations are certainly easier. For more on why units in other formation zones behave the way they do, I suggest you read the Tactics 101: Naval Formations tutorial. Well, I generally understand why the units in formation behave the way they do... here, I was only expressing that I don't really see much benefit in placing the single unit of a formation anywhere other than in the center ring - especially not in the context of trying to lay its winding course among islands, etc. Seems like that'd be just asking for more troubles. In real life, water depths would be considerably more complex than they are represented here. Here, it is a very simple function of how far from land you are. A few clicks of a mouse can tell you what to expect from what part of the map. It doesn't get any simpler than that. So, I have to say that I don't really understand why you're having trouble and I'm not sure I could do anything to explain it to you any better. Harpoon Classic has been this way for 20 years now. Are you sure you're even playing the same game as the rest of us? No offense, but I'm honestly just as baffled, but not about the same thing. Again, my point is that I know of no way to "know" where the land actually exists. The map gives you an idea that land is nearby, but reportedly cannot be relied on as far as determining exactly where the land is... so if you plot a course based on the map graphics, it's very likely that it will hit something. This is further complicated by the difficulty in placing waypoints exactly where you'd like them (they "snap to" certain grid locations instead), so the course line between points may shift enough from the desired path that it will cause a conflict. Attempts to place more waypoints more closely together can help in some cases, but since you're placing them based on the map graphics, it's often the case that you don't even know that another waypoint is needed - in other words, the course line between waypoints may look fine on the map, but may actually pass over land as far as the GE is concerned. As an aside, I've even had cases where I'd plotted a course through "blue water", and had a ship run aground as the group traversed! Apparently, there was a shallow that did not show on the map at all, but doing "soundings" around the area of the grounded ship did report "Sea Level" in the immediate area where the ship was stuck. The whole point is the question of what to use for references when laying out the courses - due to not being able to use the map features for this purpose. As far as playing the same game as everyone else, yeah, I've wondered about that myself! I have seen a fair number of unexpected behaviors that either don't exist for others - or at least, that they've never noticed. I do tend to "stress" the system, though: I use most of the range circles; I'm ansey if I don't have every available a/c in flight, and often with many groups having complex couses laid in... I task the ASW a/c especially hard in that regard, often having extensive search courses plotted concurrently for every available ASW a/c. And when launching missile attacks, I often send successive volleys before being prompted to do so - meaning there can be lots of missile groups in the air at times... along with everything else that's going on. So, I suppose it's possible that something is running out of memory, or getting "stomped", or whatever... FWIW, most of such "oddities" turn up only after I've been playing a game for several days... so perhaps it's some sort of "progressive" gremlin. On the other hand, maybe it's just me: At work, I always ended up being tasked with testing stuff - because I could always manage to find the unexpected ways of doing things that caused the prototypes to "break".

Yeah, all bets are off when it comes to any groups of ships coming close to land... it's almost a foregone conclusion that something is going to hit bottom. But, in this case, I was referring to single-sub or single-ship "formations", where the unit was in the center ring. (I've noticed that such one-unit "formations" tend to have more problems when the unit is placed in one of the other rings (although I never really understood the reasoning for doing that anyway ) In any event, I'm trying to look at the simplest case here, where there is only one unit, in the center ring. So, I'm still baffled: Since the map does not reflect actual depths, even zooming it isn't going to help that situation. So, it seems that you're really flying blind, as far as setting near-land courses goes - 'cause there really is no reliable reference to go by?

I'd like to lobby hard for something to solve this problem... because it's gotten to the point for me that I lose nearly as many aircraft to unreported fuel exhaustion as I do to any "legitimate" causes.

Probably because that generation of computers was more reliable!

Getting back to the question, it sounds like you guys are saying that the "extra" damaged or destroyed units listed in the Status summary are actually correct, and are due to damages that occurred "in the background", that were not due to player action, and therefore were not reported during the game... is this correct? If so, do these non-player-inflicted losses to the AI forces get counted towards the victory conditions? (That would be nice, because sometimes I need all the help I can get towards achieving the victory conditons, so if the AI self-destructs some of its own units, all the better for me! ) I'm still a bit puzzled, though, because I'm pretty sure -in that one case at least- that the sum of the AI units reported as damaged or destroyed actually exceeded the total number of units present... or at least, I somehow failed to detect the remaining units that were damaged only. Oh, well...

If you are aware of the limitations, the process is actually very easy. And the 'scenario analysis' tool still exists in the SE. Could you elaborate on the "very easy" process a bit? I guess I'm missing something there. The analysis tool in the Scenario Editor is fine for the Scenario Editor, but what I'm needing is a way to lay out safe courses while actually playing - that is, if I'm in a game and needing to set a course, say, in the Phillipines - without crashing my ships and subs into the bottom all (er, well, any) of the time. Since the map features are not reliable references, and the depth reports (apparently) are only available in "normal mode", I guess I'm just not seeing how one can easily lay out an unobstructed course near land while in Course-entry mode... I don't know what to use as depth references in that mode. (?)

You'll simply have to be careful when plotting courses that take ships or submarines into shallow waters or close to land. Especially where there are formation of multiple ships or submarines are involved. Apparently so... yet it's kind of like shooting in the dark. The only method that I can think of would be to click on the map (in normal mode) numerous times in order to take "soundings", and somehow remember all those so that when I switch to course input mode, I can (hopefully) lay the course over the actual open water... but, boy, would that be a time-consuming process! I recall back in the old days in the Scenario Editor, that you could run an analysis on the courses, and it would report any conflicts. Too bad that analysis isn't available in the GE; if it was, then at least the player would have the opportunity to detect and correct any "overland" course legs.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking, too... Only thing that puzzles me about that is, does it apply only to the player's gun ranges? If not, then I'm still scratching my head over why they can shoot me, but I can't shoot them. (It ain't fair!! <sounds of rampant foot-stomping>) Seriously, though, if this is the case, is it even possible to use player armor groups to attack comparable AI armor groups? Or, are they pretty much only defensive units - or in my case, just "tank fodder"?

Only the orders for USS Chicago, which is acting as escort for USS Tennessee in this scenario, references it being 'expendable'. You need to be reading your orders more closely, grasshopper. In any event, losing one submarine is going to cost you your commission. Losing two submarines is going to put you in a bad TV movie. Ah, but the situation implied that the boomer had to get through at all costs, so I assumed.... By the way, don't I get any credit for the three subs, a Kiev, and four other ships and a couple a/c that the subs took out along the way...?

Every month or so, I run into a situation where an AI air group is impervious to any manner of attack, and proceeds to walk right through my formation(s), wrecking havoc on everything in sight! This happens quite rarely, yet I've encountered it a number of times. Typically, the "super group" will appear to be a normal AI group, say a pair of Flankers. Other pairs of Flankers will have attacked (or approached) my formation(s), and have engaged in dogfights or intercepts in a typical manner, being downed or fended off with the occasional loss inflicted on my defenders. But the one "invincible" group will run in, and will absorb everything that I can throw at it - including group after group of interceptors - and it will fly right through my AAW missiles and/or SAMs, fly directly over AAA platforms without flinching, and so forth. Meanwhile, it is shooting down every one of my aircraft that's along its path! The odd thing is that I can throw all types of AA missiles (Phoenix, AMRAAMs, Sparrows, Sidewinders) at it, but volley after volley will simply "disappear" near the target, with no effect. Similarly, AAW and SAMs will simply "disappear" near the target, with no effect. Even realizing that AA missiles are way less than 100% effective, this just doesn't make sense - especially in comparison with the effects on other comparable AI air groups. So, I'm wondering if this is some sort of quirk - or if the occasional invincible AI air group is a "feature". I mean, they're totally impossible to defend against, so it just seems really bizarre. It also raises the question that I've always wondered about: It seems like if the AI's air groups have been relatively successful compared to my own air groups during the game, that they become even "tougher" later on; and conversely, if my air groups acheive even a slight dominence early, then subsequent AI air groups seem to be "weaker" or more susceptible to succumbing to my intercepts. This has led me to speculate that there is some sort of "morale factor" or "pilot experience factor" built in, that "weights" the probability of subsequent effectiveness. If so, that's kind of kool! On the other hand, I'm also wondering if the mechanism gets out of whack every so often, thus accounting for the "invicible" air group? Any thoughts?