In a previous discussion I was part of (Matrix Harpoon forum, Feb 18/09), I was given to understand that an Aegis cruiser was assigned a ROF of 20 and a control limit of 20 by Harpoon, that is, the ship is able to control 20 SAMs at a time, and can replenish them at the rate of 20 every 30 s. (In addition, I thought that the ship would normally fire 2 SAMs per target.)

 

More recently (Harpgamer forum, July 28/09), I was informed that this Aegis cruiser can fire up to 30 SAMs per 60 s.

 

There may be a typo here, or the rules may have changed in half a year, so I'm not going to worry about this discrepancy too much.

 

What does concern me at this time is that the actual fire rate seems to be rather higher.

 

I have provided a test scenario (see armtest.zip, attached). I have arranged to shoot some (40) Kh-31P Krypton ARMs at a Bunker Hill (CM) Aegis cruiser from 33 nm away. The ARMs travel at about 2000 kn = 2000/60 = 100 nm / 3 min, so the maximum flight time is just under 60 s. Depending on when exactly you shoot the ARMs (the cruiser can only detect them on the minute and half-minute), the ARMs will be closer when the first SAMs are launched. The SAM launchers should be able to fire twice.

 

In one test firing, the ARMs are 23 nm (42 s) away when the first batch of SAMs is fired. Since the SAMs travel at the same speed, the time and distance are split 50-50: the first batch of SAMs hits when the ARMs are 11 nm (20 s) from the ship. The message log tells me that there were 24 SAMs in that batch.

 

When the ARMs are 6 nm (11 s) from the ship, the SAMs fire again. Again, the time and distance are split 50-50: the second batch of SAMs hits when the ARMs are 4 nm (6 s) from the ship. The message log tells me that there were 30 SAMs in that batch.

 

Now I would expect the Phalanx CIWS to have a go, but actually the 5" guns are the only point defense to fire. And then the ship gets hit.

 

So there do appear to be some discrepancies.

 

1) What is the ROF of this ship? It appears to be at least 30 SAMs per 30 s.

 

2) Why were less SAMs fired in the first batch?

 

These results seem to be infinitely repeatable (except for the number of hits).

 

P.S. "Surface SAM fire rate" is set to "normal".

armtest.zip

In a previous discussion I was part of (Matrix Harpoon forum, Feb 18/09), I was given to understand that an Aegis cruiser was assigned a ROF of 20 and a control limit of 20 by Harpoon, that is, the ship is able to control 20 SAMs at a time, and can replenish them at the rate of 20 every 30 s. (In addition, I thought that the ship would normally fire 2 SAMs per target.) More recently (Harpgamer forum, July 28/09), I was informed that this Aegis cruiser can fire up to 30 SAMs per 60 s. There may be a typo here, or the rules may have changed in half a year, so I'm not going to worry about this discrepancy too much.

 

I think you need to be very careful not to confuse rates of fire, fire control director limits, and SAM allocation values between real life, Harpoon 4 paper rules, HCE, and for that matter, ANW. IIRC, all of these (excepting maybe ANW) were discussed in that Matrix thread back in February.

 

There are several flavours of Harpoon, and while they all strive to simulate real life, they each have their own limitations.

 

All of these factors or values may be different given different Harpoon sims and different databases, and furthermore, not all of them are actually modeled in HCE.

 

Keep in mind, as well, that database (DB) values will affect the behavior of the sim, particularly when it comes to an issue like SAM rate of fire. Whether ROF=15 or ROF=20 is going to affect your results significantly, obviously. And those DB values will vary between databases, sources, whether new info has emerged, and yes, whether there's a typo.

 

The bigger issue that I think you're driving at is that, from your observations, actual SAM rate of fire is higher than mandated by the DB value?

This is a wishlist item with many of us. The ROF on SAMs is a bit...heavy. I've seen ships empty their magazines shooting at helicoptors instead of saving them for real threats. More control over the SAM engagement routine would be nice.

The bigger issue that I think you're driving at is that, from your observations, actual SAM rate of fire is higher than mandated by the DB value?

 

I guess the main thing is, I want to be able to plan my actions.

 

Therefore, I need to know what the units do.

 

In principle, I could make up a test scenario for a situation where I want to know something and just determine what the game does.

 

So if an Aegis cruiser in Harpoon can pump out 15 SAMs per VLS every 30 s, and each missile is going for a separate target, then I can accept that that's the way it is. But I really should be able to find out that the cruiser can do this by accessing the information that comes with the game. The only number that may be relevant to this is the "target" number in the unit display. For the unit in question, I am told that 6 targets can be tracked per VLS. The online Help file tells me that "The number following the "/" is the number of Targets that the director can track concurrently."

 

The "target" number seems to have no relevance to what the units do.

 

The "help" file seems to contain meaningless statements (this is only one example).

 

I don't know what is correct. All I can do is point out the inconsistency.

 

Now, I'm pretty committed, so a certain amount of inconsistency isn't going to annoy me. But what if it's somebody who is a new player that wants to know these things? Such a person may not stick around very long if he has to put in too much effort.

______________________

 

Related question:

 

The CG being discussed is being attacked by 40 missiles. The SAM unmodified hit number is 70%. About 56 SAMs will need to be used. The SAMs can be launched 2 or 3 times.

 

Why were 24 launched in the first wave and 30 in the second wave?

 

Does the computer think 24 + 30 SAMs + point defense = I'm safe? Or perhaps, on the first round, only 24 of the missiles were detected?