VictorInThePacific

Speaking as a physicist, I'd say that my experiment reported above is completely valid within the parameters stated, up to the quality of the statistics. The only necessary condition I did not state was the game version used: 2009-36, the highest available to me right now. I would expect similar results to be observed in ANY GIUK scenario. Not to repeat everything from my previous post, what conclusions can we draw? Over 40 trials, with the Lynx within the nominal (stated) Gecko range, the Geckos never fired at it. That looks pretty definite. Prior to running this experiment, I had claimed the opposite. Mea culpa. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because the Lynx is DANGEROUS. A Gecko travels at 2300 kn & it needs only about 12 s to cross 8 nm. The Lynx can't escape. Over 40 trials, half from the front, half from the back, the Geckos almost always shot at the Sea Skuas, 2 per ship. From this we learn that weapons arcs don't matter for area defence. This is what Brad said in "I suck" thread, post 77. Over 40 trials, half from the front, half from the back, the Sea Skuas achieved more than 3 x as many hits from the front. The only variable is the point defence, which faces the rear. The conclusion that the point defence never fired due to arc issues is consistent with what Brad said in "I suck" thread, post 77. The quality of the statistics looks to be pretty good, based on looking at the raw data. It seems unfortunate that experiments like this might produce different results for each implementation of the database and/or the game engine. I guess that is the price you pay for playing a game that is continually being improved.

Talking about the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario here. The only Vietnamese plane with the range to get more than 300 nm from its base is the MiG-17F, which happens to be the slowest of the lot: 400 kn cruise. The other ones travel at 600 kn cruise. The Hawkeye cruises at 300 kn. Some of the Vietnamese jets can travel much faster if they get out and push. (All numbers are approximate.) Here is a test result. Hawkeye 200 nm N of carrier (and 250 nm from RED base). It took 40 min for it to get there. 15 min later, we get company. "Show all" shows that these enemy planes are alone (except for a bunch of base formation planes). Since visibility now is only 26 nm at low, we can turn off the radar and run away. In this case, the fighters were MiG-21s, so maybe escape was a range issue. This is a typical result. Of course, if you get unlucky, a MiG-21 headed right for the Hawkeye at the start. Hawkeye goes 100 nm at 300 kn: 20 min. MiG-21 goes 300 nm at 600 kn: 30 min. The Hawkeye crew has just got on station, and the're brewing up coffee or whatever it is that they do out there when they get company. And by the way, it's a 2-D problem, not 1-D. Distances don't add directly. Another way of getting unlucky is that the visibility might be high enough that the interceptor can track you visually as you try to run away. I believe that maintaining a visual lock is easier than getting it in the first place. The main point is that the Vietnamese fighters are already headed toward the Hawkeye before it turns on its radar, as part of the base patrols. They never show up in the group window. Once they decide to intercept, they get a group window icon. They don't have to go very far; certainly they don't come from the base.

see game options (CTRL-K)

I meant to comment on this earlier. The USNI scenarios are challenging, I'd agree, but "insanely hard" or impossible to the point that anyone should refuse to play them? Nah, can't agree with that. I would be interested in hearing about others' experience with them. Are you getting your butt handed to you regularly in USNI? Maybe it depends on your definition of insanity. I don't have access to the USNI scenarios right now, but looking at my old AAR, I recall that there was a huge variation in the starting airpower. Playing as the Russians, I remember that I got the maximum number of Fencers, without which the USSR probably has zero chance of winning. In general, if you get a poor OB and the AI gets a good one, you won't have a chance. Besides, Brad, what's challenging for you may well be be impossible for a non-expert. http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1997503 Hasn't Joe been talking about being swarmed with 700-800 heavy bombers almost before he gets anything in the air in one scenario? He hasn't provided screenshots ... yet.

Nope, proper English mate, them birds in the garden that lay eggs and go boook boook boook, don't you have em? All local birds died due to radiactive fallout.

He ain't kidding. Sonar checks every 5 minutes. Kinda throws the statistics outta whack, huh? Moral of this story: Torpedoes are really mean. :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o

Look at it from the flip side, though --- suppose you have a sub that has only the torps with 13 nm range. That means an effective range of 10 nm or less, to allow for the target fleeing. If your sub and an OHP are heading directly toward each other at creep, you will have to pass through at least 5 nm of his sonar range. 5 nm @ 10 kts = 30 minutes. If the sonar was integrated every 30 seconds at 50% detection chance, what are the odds that your sub WON'T be getting a surprise visit from an SH-70? 2 ^ -60 = 1024 ^ -6 ~ 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 against. That's a Quintillion. But I would park my sub and kiss his passive sonar good-bye.

Do you use the message system (short cut F10)? When you know you need to do something in the future select the group you'll be giving orders to and hit F10, enter your reminder message then you get a 'time delay' window, select the time delay required. When the time count down has finished you'll get the reminder pop-up and a chance to select the group so you can issue your orders. The F10 can also be put in as an order in the course editor so as to get your reminder at a certain location. This is very handy for arranging IFRs, if you have all group tracks showing calculate approx where you want to meet and course tanker and receiver groups to that spot and for each group put in a F10 reminder to look for the refuel. That way you don't forget. If your refuel spot is within the formation patrol area of you tanker's base you can also put the tanker in patrol formation in the overlapping sector, put in a F10 reminder at an inserted spot in the receiver groups course and when you get there do a 'join' manoeuvre to get the tanker out of formation and into the receiver group, then do the Alt R for immediate refuelling. Hope this helps, Don (and your post # 6) I learn something new every day.

I witnessed something like this yesterday. Don't know how reproducible it is, but it's going into the defect tracking section. AI was launching torps at me. If this "weird" behaviour is "standard" for certain types of poor-detection launches, perhaps at a minimum the AI shouldn't be doing this.

Joe (post 7) & Donald (post 14): Thanks; those tactics sound useful. I guess it's pretty important to have superior numbers available. Maybe doing a surround as well will help. Maybe I will work out the "no-escape" distance of the Meteor vs. various AB speeds. Chook, what's that, Oz slang?

I believe the manual states that tankers can't refuel THEMSELVES.

A Warbird could never catch it, must have been a War Eagle. I'm guessing at least a few Harpoon players recognize where that comes from:-) Well, if you're talking about the SFB Warbird, it's sublight, but that still is much faster than any atmospheric craft, plus the plasma torp travels at Warp 3+. The "modern" Warbird is warp-capable.

The scenario is GIUK 2 Gauntlet. NATO has 2 FF, 2 merchants and must run the gauntlet of 1 sub, 2 x Nanuchka 3, and 6 attack jets. What's of interest here is how well the 2 Lynx available do against the Nanuchkas. Although it might have been simpler to set up a clean new scenario, I just ran this one down to the critical point, saved the file, and re-ran multiple times from that point. Now, there were several serious anomalies in that game, but the parts of interest seemed to run OK. There are 2 parts to this. First, I attacked from behind the Nanuchkas with one Lynx, and then from the front with the other one. The Nanuchkas are in column, about 5 nm apart, travelling at 5 kn. Radars are on and all the relevant units detect each other. The first question is at what range the Lynx get to fire. The Sea Skua has a nominal range of 8 nm. However, when you try to launch them, the staff assistant says you must close to 7 nm. This seemed to be about the same, front or back. Conclusion: Sea Skua effective range is 7 nm. This differs from Brad's previous result. The second question is when the Geckos get to fire. Nominal Gecko range is 8 nm, but they never shot at the helicopters, and only at the missiles at 5 nm or so. I re-ran the test 20 times from each side. In almost all cases, each ship launched 2 Geckos, but once only 3 were launched, once only 1, and once none at all! From the back, the Geckos hit about 50%; from the front, they hit about 44%. The nominal hit probabbility is 50%. From the back, 8 hits were obtained with 80 Sea Skua over 20 trials. From the front, 28 hits were obtained with 80 Sea Skua over 20 trials. Gecko weapons arc is front and sides, point defence weapons arc is rear and sides. Attacking from the front, PD probably did not fire. The difference of 20 Sea Skua hits, one per run, is consistent with the PD nominally getting one hit per target. Moral of the story: attack Nanuchka 3s from the front!

Go for it. done, see new thread

Please tell me you're kidding. A good ASW ship operating under the best of conditions has AT BEST a 75% chance of detecting a torpedo coming in at 45 kn over 10 min?

Tony, I am guessing that sonar logging doesn't help me for a past event? And I don't expect to ever see this again, so it doesn't help me for the future? Brad, I interpret your humour as that it wouldn't work anyway?

Brad and Warhorse, you are probably right. As you know, a Victor 2 carries 4 x Type 65s, and AI units launch whatever bears when it bears, so those torpedos almost certainly got launched early. Here's the catch: Using approximate figures (of course this can be improved): Type 65 travels at about 45 kn. It had to travel through 15 nm of OHP sonar. OHP is creeping at the time because detected torps are headed for the 22/2. Let's suppose the dozen or sonobuoys in play at the time are in the wrong place. OHP detection is 50% each 30s. Torp travel time through sonar zone is 1/3 h = 20 min = 40 tries Failing 40 consecutive 50% tries = 2 ^ -40 = 1024 ^ -4 = about a trillion to one against !!! Actually seeing that in a lifetime? Houston, I think we have a problem. We are assuming nukes were not used. Is there a significant flaw in my calculation? Is there anyone here who can say, yeah, happens to me all the time. 1,000,000,000,000 to 1 against !!! One more time: 1,000,000,000,000 to 1 against !!!

ALT-R forces the tamker to dump its fuel immediately (or at least within 1 min). If no plane nearby can accept that fuel, then Whoosh! Joe, I sent you a PM. Did you get it?

Sub is stationary, so that's not it. Message Log is gone, but it doesn't give that information anyway. MessageLog file gone, too? I'm not real familar with the message logging in regards to torpedo hits, but it reports a lot of stuff about missile hits and such, so I just assumed it would do the same for other hits. Message Log file still exists, but it's empty ( I didn't think to save it, and I've been running other tests). Some of them involved driving my other ship at top speed over the sub. My ship died, but I got no information. Then I sent my remaining helos to sink the sub, but no information was recorded in the message log.

Sub is stationary, so that's not it. Message Log is gone, but it doesn't give that information anyway.

There's 2 types of refueling. One happens automatically if you put the right planes in the right situation. I believe that tankers do not dump fuel in this case. The other is when you force refueling using ALT-R. This is you (the superior officer) telling the tanker crew to REFUEL THAT PLANE RIGHT NOW! But Sir, it can't ... DO IT !!! Sir, Yes, Sir! Whoosh! I presume that what you're describing here is the second case. I can address this point, and you are right that, for playability purposes, it should be easily available in the unit display, but it would involve an addition beyond what exists now, and therefore may not be relistically possible. There is a fairly simple workaround. Select an airbase in the group window. Order a launch (patrol). Click on a remote location in the group window. Select the plane you are testing. As you try to launch the plane, you will get one of 2 error messages. One of them tells you that that unit can't ifr. If you get the other one, that plane CAN ifr. Remember that for that scenario. This is not the first time refueling questions have been asked. Read this thread, for example: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2109971 and in it, there are references to another thread. Of course, someone fairly new to these forums can have no reasonable way of knowing about that thread. I do, because I participated in it and it was important to me, so I remember it.

Joe, can you (or anyone else) suggest any physically possible mechanism for my situation? I can think of exactly one, but I am not going to release that information yet. Incidentally, I do have a savegame from just after the event, and I wonder if it is possible to see what weapons have been fired.

Running tests on GIUK 2 Gauntlet. An old familiar scenario. NATO has an OHP frigate + a Type 22/2 FF + 2 merchants. Included are 2 x Lynx + 2 x Seahawk. Russians get 1 x Victor 2, 2 x Nanuchka, 6 x MiG-23. So my ships are driving along, minding their own business, at 15 kn. Suddenly we detect a bunch of torpedos incoming. The 22/2 is the target. It detaches and runs away at 30 kn. The OHP slows down to 5 kn. We launch 2 helos and start searching. Good sonar circle on the OHP (15 nm radius at this speed), lotta sonobuoys in play. When the torps are 4 nm away from the OHP, and fully detected, and still headed for the 22/2, suddenly the OHP just sinks!!! Show all! Floggers back at base, not part of this. Nanuchkas 100 nm away, out of range. Torps are Type 53-65 (13 nm range). Sub is 16 nm away from OHP. And the 6 million $ question is, what sunk the OHP? ____________________ So then I reloaded the scenario (show all on) and re-ran it about 10 times. Each time, my ships cruised right by the sub at 18 kn, which never did anything at all (stationary)! Closest approach = 24 nm.

Well, I think that there are at the minimum miscommunications here. So I am trying to get to the bottom of it. But as long as we talk about generalities, then you and I can talk at each other forever, and there can never be any resolution. So we need to talk about very narrow issues, and then we should be able to figure out what is the basis of the miscommunication. The reason I keep talking about the Thanh Hoa Bridge scenario is because I have analyzed that scenario in detail. Not played, not played many times. Analyzed in detail. Take advantage of it. A specific example of what is at least a miscommunication is your statement that your airborne assets were outside the range of the Vietnamese radar. I can tell you definitely that they were not. So you and I are making incompatible statements. We could simply keep shouting these statements at each other. I will not. There is a clear and specific process for resolving this. If you wish to participate, then we will resolve it (and move on, and maybe you will stop losing planes to invisible enemies). If you refuse to participate, then it becomes clear that we do not have a simple miscommunication, but rather that you are deliberately miscommunicating. Harsh words, perhaps, but I never claimed to be a nice guy. Joe, I asked you 2 specific questions in my post 86, this thread (in bold). Please answer these questions.

If I'm lucky enough to pick up a Rafale by esm, I turn and run, (but usually I just get shot down)....that's how I deal with them. Don Thomas Not helpful, Donald. Not helpful at all! At least you could have suggested something like "small animals that eat the eggs". That way I would have something to work with.