I have the following questions:

 

SAMs: The AI handles the air defense for the units. What is the protocol for the air defense? I have had some games where the area defense ships seem not to fire at incoming asms. Or, the targeted unit will wait to fire short range sams and not fire the long-range sams. (I may be mistaken, so if anyone has had similar experiences....)

 

Torpedoes: I've just had a game where an AI Russian sub fired a torpedo with no chance of getting hit. It was apparently a short-range torpedo. If the sub had fired a long-range wake-following torpedo it might of had a chance. Is their a weapons hierarchy? Is the AI set to fire at maximum range instead of 1/2 range, for example.

 

How do these procedures work?

 

Thanks

 

SM

SAMs: The AI handles the air defense for the units. What is the protocol for the air defense? I have had some games where the area defense ships seem not to fire at incoming asms. Or, the targeted unit will wait to fire short range sams and not fire the long-range sams. (I may be mistaken, so if anyone has had similar experiences....)

 

Torpedoes: I've just had a game where an AI Russian sub fired a torpedo with no chance of getting hit. It was apparently a short-range torpedo. If the sub had fired a long-range wake-following torpedo it might of had a chance. Is their a weapons hierarchy? Is the AI set to fire at maximum range instead of 1/2 range, for example.

 

How do these procedures work? Thanks

 

There's a tie-in here with how the platform (ship, submarine) is created in the DB. The AI will look to the Mounts and find the first valid weapon, and not necessarily the optimal weapon. So, if the AI controlled ship detects an incoming antiship missile, it will look through its mounts to find the first valid 'anti-air' weapon that is capable of engaging the target. The same is true for torpedoes. So, if the AI has more than one valid weapon type available, it will simply pick the first in the list.

 

For units in the HCDB, I've made the effort to put the longest ranged weapon mounts first and foremost into a ship entry, but this may not be the case in all entries. If you find one or more of these, please bring it to my attention in the HCDB requests thread.

 

Re torpedoes, IIRC, quite a while ago (prior to HCE) we introduced a '50% of max range' behavior into the code. This prevented AI submarines from shooting their torpedoes at maximum engagement range, and thus, in many cases, guaranteeing a miss. (Because a target ship or submarine could detect the torpedo and run away).

 

Since then, but again prior to HCE, the behavior has been adjusted again, so that, with submarines, they may shoot at '75% of max range'. Here, weapons allocation adheres to a 'risk' consideration, in that:

 

--> There is a 50% chance that no weapon will be fired unless the target is in the 'no escape' zone.

--> The remaining 50% is a random engagement range, between 'no escape' and '75% of max range', in which case the sub will shoot.

If there are multiple mounts, like the MK41 VLS on the Arleigh Burke class, and assuming both mounts will be able to fire at a target, will the AI pick the longest ranged weapon from both mounts? Or, will it go to the first mount listed and deplete the weapons in that mount before going to the second mount? Thus if you have 24 Standard IIIBs, 48 ESSMs in the both mounts will the AI empty the first mount before going to the second or will it fire all 48 Standard IIIBs before it fires the Evolved Sea Sparrow missiles?

Or, will it go to the first mount listed and deplete the weapons in that mount before going to the second mount?

 

That one, assuming the first mount has SAMs in range. and assuming you don't go over the mount's ROF.