Aircraft restrictions

[TrashMan]

Now that I attmpeted to mod the aircraft, I've hit a very big brick wall regarding the weapons loadout.

Only 2 weapon systems are allowed per aircraft (GUI restriction I wager), which is major downer.

You can't have an aircraft with 2 cannons. I mean, you can, but it won't be able to carry any missiles

You can't have 4 missiles and 1 cannon.

When normal aircraft have 10-11 missile hardpoints + cannons, it really feels restrictive ot be limited to jsut 2 weapon systems...

[Max_Caine]

Trashman, have you read this thread or this thread on other modders attempts to alter aircraft?

Have you considered what being able to mount and fire those 10-11 hardpoints you mention all at once would mean in air combat?

[TrashMan]

I didn't say to have 10-11 hardpoints. That was just an example

I'm jsut dissapointed that you cna't have more than 2 weaposn system, in whatever combo.

For example:

1 cannon, 2 normal 1 heavy missile..that's 4 weaposn total. You can't have it.

2 cannons nd 2 missiles? can't have it.

[Buzzles]

I didn't say to have 10-11 hardpoints. That was just an example

I'm jsut dissapointed that you cna't have more than 2 weaposn system, in whatever combo.

For example:

1 cannon, 2 normal 1 heavy missile..that's 4 weaposn total. You can't have it.

2 cannons nd 2 missiles? can't have it.

I might be wrong as I've not played, but have a look at row 5 in the original v15.1 aircrafts.xml. Looks like you can, especially considering the default setup of that aircraft doing just that.

[TrashMan]

Technicly you can, but unless you also tweak the UI, you will only see two cannons. (you won't have control over the missiles)

EDIT:

One improvement would be be to give missiles ammo.

So you can carry more missiles, but because of weapon liock time, you will almsot never use more than you normally use anyway - but it you will have extra if oyu have to divert to antoher mission or get attacked.

It already works if modded. You basicly carry twise the amount of missiles, but the weapon fire delay prevents you from spamming them.

[Andeerz]

Trashman, I love your mod. You caused me to waste so much of my time today looking at cold-war-era experimental aircraft, some of which were just recently declassified.

Anyway... I am all for being able to do whatever you want mod-wise. And I think it would be cool to be able to adjust how weapon loadout might affect range of aircraft. That would be a sweet detail to add that might make things more interesting!

Edited October 10, 2012 by Andeerz

[TrashMan]

Aicraft Mod isn't mine.

[HWP]

Have you considered what being able to mount and fire those 10-11 hardpoints you mention all at once would mean in air combat?

It would probably require a rebalance of how the game handles weapons.

In real life, firing 10 missiles at once (if you could - there are interference issues) won't do much, because they're all likely to miss together. Missiles have fairly low hit probabilities, but are very destructive if they do score a direct hit (usually it's proximity). So planes have to shoot two, turn around, fire two from another position, and so on.

TBH I find it hard to even imagine air combat with a UFO, and even harder to imagine it in a way that doesn't involve the UFO getting away scot free.

In the original XCOM, the problem was your planes getting shot down unless you had weapons to match. Quality mattered a lot more than quantity.

[Andeerz]

@Trashman

Oops... derp. It was SoloA. Stupid me.

@HWP

Ooooooo... that puts things in perspective. Good points.

[TrashMan]

As I said - simply having missiles come with 2X ammo makes aircraft more survivalbe and usable, without affecting encounter balance.

[StellarRat]

In real life, firing 10 missiles at once (if you could - there are interference issues) won't do much, because they're all likely to miss together. Missiles have fairly low hit probabilities, but are very destructive if they do score a direct hit (usually it's proximity). So planes have to shoot two, turn around, fire two from another position, and so on.

I think this is way generalized. Missiles have extremely variable hit/kill probabilities. You're right about firing 10 at once at the same target. Usually, pilots will fire two at a target if they have enough missiles onboard. The extra missile is in case there is a dud or other failure. However, the F-14 (a 70's AC) could lock on to six different targets at once and launch an AIM-54 against each of them in a big salvo.

There are a lot of factors that you'd have to look at. To say the chance is "low" is not correct. The type of missile, angle of attack, target type, speed, position of the firing and target aircraft, range, ECM use, targeting radar, weather, altitude, position of the sun, counter-measures (chaff, flares, maneuvers), etc... are all possible factors. Some missiles have close to 100% chance to hit if used correctly while others are abysmal no matter how they're used. During the Falklands War the AIM-9 had an 80% kill probability per launch.

It's quite possible that a UFO could very vulnerable missiles if they hadn't encountered a similar weapon before.

Edited October 10, 2012 by StellarRat

[HWP]

I think this is way generalized.

Certainly. Bogging things down to fine detail could be counterproductive, and I didn't expect it to be called for.

There are a lot of factors that you'd have to look at. To say the chance is "low" is not correct. The type of missile, angle of attack, target type, speed, position of the firing and target aircraft, range, ECM use, targeting radar, weather, altitude, position of the sun, counter-measures (chaff, flares, maneuvers), etc... are all possible factors.

Yes. Also, first thing first, dogfight missiles like Sidewinder have relatively very high Pk, in part because of their short range, so there's no time to defend against them. Change your course, time countermeasure deployment, try to outdo them in kinetic energy or maneuverability, and out of countermeasures all you have is flares, no jamming, no towed decoy.

Once you get into RF missiles at their preferred ranges, against an aircraft with similar level of technology, Pk drops and hitting your target becomes a key concern. RF missiles are susceptible to jamming, even AMRAAM only has a continuous wave radar, so it can be defeated at locking stage and particularly at transition from semi-active to active guidance. The Soviets have developed a tactic of using a pair of similar missiles, one with RF, another with IR seeker, but it only works in near-BVR to early medium range, otherwise the IR seeker won't lock.

Finally there's the narrow beam of missile radars or IR seekers with slow mechanical steering, so once a missile loses lock for a couple seconds, it has little chance of getting it back, especially if the target was maneuvering. Not a problem at short range, but at long range the defender has a few opportunities to get these couple seconds.

It's quite possible that a UFO could very vulnerable missiles if they hadn't encountered a similar weapon before.

Quite likely, and, conversely, UFOs could get nigh invulnerable to at least your standard mil-spec missiles once they've dealt with enough. You can study aliens' tech - who says they can't study yours?

I've actually suggested such a thing here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/3095-Aircarft-Squadron-Size?p=39234&viewfull=1#post39234

Electronic warfare learning curve is a very real thing. The French kept their Rafale's SPECTRA ECM suite turned off in NATO exercises, because they didn't want anyone to get a chance to study its emissions. Even their own allies, and it's not like they are the only ones to do it - that's just how precious this data is.

A gradual mitigation of your missiles' effectiveness as the invasion progresses could be good for gameplay too, I think. Instead of everything just getting bigger, it would show the improvement going both ways. Smaller UFOs could be viable for longer, big UFO spam wouldn't have to be so aggressive, and once it's in full swing, the fights are still getting harder unless you make progress.

[StellarRat]

I agree completely. You obviously have knowledge in this area. I'm sure Xeno will never get this level of detail and I don't think it needs to either. However, I REALLY wish they would allow us to select targets for the missiles. Maybe I'm not seeing something, but I don't see anyway to pick the target for your missiles. They always go after the closest UFO. Am I wrong? Did I miss something in the interface?

As far as the aliens studying the human tech I can see arguments for and against. If invasion fleet is large, has resource utilization ability, research equipment, and technical/research people on board I could see them adapting. On the other hand, if it's just a fleet far from home with just military types on board it's possible they wouldn't have said resources to modify anything ad hoc.

[Khall]

Right clicking on an enemy targets it for missiles (you can see what it's targeting in the top corner of the fighter's interface, right cilcking on empty space leaves it blank), left clicking targets it and sets an intercept course

[HWP]

I agree completely. You obviously have knowledge in this area. I'm sure Xeno will never get this level of detail and I don't think it needs to either.

Well, complex concepts can often be reduced to a very simple form, like air combat in general has already been.

I imagine it could fit within the existing system almost seamlessly. If the UFO applies jamming, and succeeds at that, all fighters trying to get a lock have it reset and frozen till it ends. Missiles already in flight might stop tracking the UFO altogether, or track it in a less effective way (tail-chasing rather than intercept course), or the UFO will simply get a considerably improved chance of evading them.

As far as the aliens studying the human tech I can see arguments for and against. If invasion fleet is large, has resource utilization ability, research equipment, and technical/research people on board I could see them adapting. On the other hand, if it's just a fleet far from home with just military types on board it's possible they wouldn't have said resources to modify anything ad hoc.

Probably the former. They aren't even mostly military... giving you a chance against them. I imagine pure military UFOs would have much smaller, cramped interior spaces, in favor of armor and weapons, and you'd have a very hard time against them. In original X-COM you could see tons of evidence that they were concerned with studying humans.

The most basic form of jamming is just to emit a broadband radio signal. It works like shining a flashlight in the night, announcing your presence, but concealing your exact range and speed. I'm sure the aliens can figure out how to do that. Of course it will only work against tier 1 missiles, but that's all it needs to work against.

In return missiles themselves could perform better (when not jammed), so that you don't need a lot of them.

[StellarRat]

The most basic form of jamming is just to emit a broadband radio signal. It works like shining a flashlight in the night, announcing your presence, but concealing your exact range and speed. I'm sure the aliens can figure out how to do that. Of course it will only work against tier 1 missiles, but that's all it needs to work against.

In return missiles themselves could perform better (when not jammed), so that you don't need a lot of them.

Or you could deploy anti-radiation missiles to make said jammers miserable. Forget it, we'll end up stuck in an infinite loop of competing technologies. LOL.

[StellarRat]

Probably the former. They aren't even mostly military... giving you a chance against them. I imagine pure military UFOs would have much smaller, cramped interior spaces, in favor of armor and weapons, and you'd have a very hard time against them. In original X-COM you could see tons of evidence that they were concerned with studying humans.

The background story indicates invasion. Why bother with all sorts of fluff and just not go for a knock punch? It seems to me straight military is the way to go. After all, these aliens aren't the benign exploring Star Trek types to me.

[StellarRat]

Right clicking on an enemy targets it for missiles (you can see what it's targeting in the top corner of the fighter's interface, right cilcking on empty space leaves it blank), left clicking targets it and sets an intercept course

Thanks for that info! That will be most helpful next time I play. I was doing amazingly well without this little tidbit.

[TrashMan]

A good adition to the game would be to get rid of heavy and normal missile slots and jsut have a missile slot. BUT, in addition, either have a list of mountable missiles in the aircraft entry, or a light of aircraft a missile can be mounted to in the missile entry.

Example:

<Cell><Data ss:Type="String">AV.AIM9D;AV.AIM7E;AV.AAMRAM120</Data></Cell>

This basicly allows you to be very granular with restrictions and allow for finer fine-tuning and balancing, as well as a greater weapon loadout.

This, combined with missile ammo, and the ability for fighter crat & missiles to multi-lanch/multi-lock (a special feature) would make the game much more awesome.

Edited October 10, 2012 by TrashMan

[ooey]

60s & 70s air-to-air missiles were actually quite rubbish (Vietnam era) when compared to today. IR missiles like the sidewinder B were short range (2-4 miles) and had to be fired @ close to 12 O'clock to the enemy to have a reasonable chance of downing it (around 20%effective). The accuracy rates of soviet A-A missiles (Foxbat/R23 Apex missiles) of that era are unknown in combat conditions - thank goodness, but considering they copied most US tech must be similar (worse probably, as their equivalent missiles were very large compared with the sidewinder).

The Foxbat and its missiles were designed as bomber killers though, so didn't need to be manoverable. I think the Soviet equiv. of the Aim-9 was rubbish though.

Edited October 10, 2012 by ooey

[StellarRat]

close to 12 O'clock to the enemy to have a reasonable chance of downing it (around 20%effective)

I think you mean six o'clock right? The missiles were much better in the late 70's than the 60's (Vietnam). The Sidewinder in particular was quite good by then. I agree that most of radar homing missiles were crap in the 60's and most of the 70's. The Sparrow was notoriously unreliable, difficult to deploy, and likely to do nothing but scare the enemy and AIM-54 really had/has no combat history to judge on. I don't know much about Soviet AA missiles, but I can only imagine they were less capable. However, the 20mm Vulcan was hard to complain about! I thought the game was set in the late 70's?? Edited October 10, 2012 by StellarRat

[ooey]

the firing pilots 12 (enemys 6). I think you are right about the Falklands (1982) though - the 9L was a vast improvement on older models, and the Falklands was really the only war of note the new-era missiles could be tested in (I remember they were rushed from the US to the Harrier fleet as soon as the war started).

[Andeerz]

OMG... this thread is awesome...

And I would love to see this game be very mod friendly so that ideas like those presented by HWP and others could be developed and implemented at whatever level of detail. I would LOVE to see this kind of stuff be more realistically represented, allowing for a more nuanced air combat system and gameplay overall. And the stuff about aliens learning to deal with our stuff as we learn to deal with theirs is a great idea... You guys are thinking in a great direction, methinks. And this discussion is hella-educational.

Also:

The background story indicates invasion. Why bother with all sorts of fluff and just not go for a knock punch? It seems to me straight military is the way to go. After all, these aliens aren't the benign exploring Star Trek types to me.

We can speculate as to the intentions of the aliens and stuff, but I think we can't make any assumptions about what they originally came to Earth for and what they were expecting. They may have decided to invade, but that may not have been their original purpose. I like that this is left up to you, the player to decide! And I hope the game leaves this all a mystery. As for me, I like to think they came here for colonization or something and didn't expect to find us, and had very little military equipment and aircraft to begin with or preparation, having to jerry rig stuff. ...at least, that's how I'm able to sleep at night.

[StellarRat]

OMG... this thread is awesome...

And I would love to see this game be very mod friendly so that ideas like those presented by HWP and others could be developed and implemented at whatever level of detail. I would LOVE to see this kind of stuff be more realistically represented, allowing for a more nuanced air combat system and gameplay overall. And the stuff about aliens learning to deal with our stuff as we learn to deal with theirs is a great idea... You guys are thinking in a great direction, methinks. And this discussion is hella-educational.

I wouldn't get your hopes very high on any of this stuff showing up in the game. I think it's too far along now and there is a deadline looming. That doesn't mean that SOME of it couldn't be modded in though. We'll have to see how much flexibility we end up with. I'm glad your enjoying the little tidbits of missile lore though. It's a pretty esoteric subject. I've gathered a lot of it through years of reading, wargaming and air combat sims. You'd be amazed at what you can find if you look around hard enough.

[Andeerz]

Oh, my hopes for videogames are typically low to nonexistent, though this game has surpassed all my expectations. I just hope the creators make the game extremely moddable.

And the tidbits about missile lore are awesome. You guys have gotten me to research a whole bunch of stuff for funsies... and think of plausible, balanced ways to implement some of you guys' suggestions. I think some of them could be done even with the game having limited moddability.

How much can we mod so far in terms of properties of equipped stuff on aircraft? Are there accessible parameters for hit chances for weapons, as well as parameters for how(if) weapons modify the stats of the aircraft (like range) they are equipped to?

The main suggestions I see as requiring probably more access to the inner gutty-works of the game than the creators want people to have are HWP's suggestions of having aliens increase jamming capabilities with time and adding to the alien AI the capability of using jamming during combat.

In those cases regardless of proposed mod... I wonder if a modder were to submit a generalized framework for the coding involved and how it would integrate with what is likely already in the code if they would consider giving implementation of it (as a specialized mod, of course) to an intern or something...