Aircraft restrictions

[HWP]

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.

Well, I'm not trying to think for them, just observing what happens in-game. And they aren't doing it. If they were, you'd have a strike force of capital ships assaulting major cities the first month and cracking down on your bases the second month.

Xeno is incomplete, but X-COM made it very clear that direct military action is not aliens' priority, or even something they do at all. All guns blazing invasions take enormous resources. Instead they are trying to manipulate humankind into voluntary submission, through mind control, possibly cloned dopplegangers, and an act of terror here and there.

That takes more than raw muscle. It could even be all-military, but even human military isn't just raw muscle, we have all sorts of departments involved in research, computer hacking, satellites, other clever things.

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.

Isn't the point to make you deploy new missiles?

Though anti-radiation missiles have a limitation that they can't be as accurate as ARH/SARH ones. Since they don't have target range and speed, they have to go straight for it, usually limiting them to use against buildings, ground vehicles or vessels. An aircraft or a UFO will have much better chances evading them (plus you can turn the jammer off). So jamming still does its job of reducing risk to the platform.

[HWP]

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.

Soviets were consistently behind in missile radar performance, but did better with IR, both on aircraft and on missile seekers. AA-11 entered service later than AIM-9L (the one with 80% hit rate) and about on par with AIM-9M, but it's got better sensitivity, off-boresight angle operation, thrust vectoring, some extra range, wider field of view, and is considerably quicker to launch. For Sidewinder's strengths, it's a little lighter.

In terms of kill rate, it's hard to improve on 80%, and we don't have real combat statistics for it. What it would more likely do is bring that 80% kill rate to 20-mile range, rather than the 10-mile range of sidewinders. AA-11 had everyone concerned pretty worried until the end of the Cold War. For this reason Soviet and Russian fighters mounted FLIR systems even before the stealth threat, to realize their edge in IR missiles.

The newer AIM-9X however largely matches it, and all-new 2000s missiles like IRIS-T are better still.

As for Foxbat and the AA-13 missiles it uses, that's an interceptor system mostly designed to take down cruise missiles and bombers, presumably nuclear. These missiles would still have some effectiveness against fighters due to their large kill radius, but once you get into AIM-120 range, they have nothing on it.

Back to the Cold war, that's why US was so interested in a proper stealth fighter - it can stay undetected to avoid AA-13 at long range, then get straight into AMRAAM range, shoot first, and, if it's maneuverable enough, not let the enemy lure him into AA-11 range. There are particular combat tactics for maintaining specifically medium range, coming in high, then making gravity-assisted loops, so that you can force the opponent to trade mid-BVR RF missiles with you, ensuring an advantage, these are pretty standard in the West.

Soviet tactics were of course different, since they had to exploit their strengths at shorter ranges. Foxbat could play a role in forcing the opponent to either close in or keep evading long-range missiles, in which case other fighters can close in to him, and it has a serious radar, but other than that it isn't meant for all-fighter air combat.

[Chris]

Trashman - heavy missile slots can carry normal missiles in them, but not vice versa, so just make all the missile slots Heavy and you're golden. It's just that you're limited to 4 weapon slots and a cannon fills two of them.

AFIAK, you can also set missile weapons to have multiple ammo in aircraftweapons.xml too, if you want to create a Sidewinder "pod" for example. I've not tried it but I was under the impression it worked fine.

[TrashMan]

It did, I just thought it should be standard for a game. Makes aircraft more survivable and usefull in long-term.

[goodoldxelos]

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.

Missiles have low hit probabilities (which missiles are you specifically referring to)? Please inform me what airforce or missile/radar designer do you work for because I'm unsure where you are getting this information. In fact the true detailed accuracy information of most missile systems is publicly unavailable.

You stated many misfacts and there are many factors that go into whether a missile hits or misses. Plane, radar, pilot, weather conditions, type of missile tracking system. I don't recall any missile relying on contact fuzes as their primary fuze.

[HWP]

On that subject, we could also all use our real names, like on Usenet, and maybe photos in place of avatars. I think a site called Citizendium, competing with Wikipedia, even requires people to send scans of their credentials if they want to edit articles on particular topics. But in-depth discussion really wouldn't do much here. Let me just assure you that I'm not holding an orange folder in my lap and not posting anything you couldn't find publicly.

In fact the true detailed accuracy information of most missile systems is publicly unavailable.

Not only is it publicly unavailable, it's unavailable altogether, because there simply wasn't any real combat involving them, or enough of it to produce a statistically significant sample.

But for those that such information exists for, it tends to be quite public.

You stated many misfacts and there are many factors that go into whether a missile hits or misses. Plane, radar, pilot, weather conditions, type of missile tracking system.

I believe we've discussed that point with StellarRat above and elaborated on it. As for mistakes you see, feel free to correct me, although, if it's something in-depth, a separate thread in off-topic might be a better place since it's no longer pertaining to the game.

I don't recall any missile relying on contact fuzes as their primary fuze.

Well, I suppose it's fortunate then that I do, as otherwise we could have missed out on it. Out of missiles currently in service, FIM-92 uses a delayed impact fuse to let it penetrate an aircraft and detonate inside, and it relies entirely on one. SA-16, SA-18 and SA-24 use impact fuses as primary, with secondary fusing options for proximity in later versions.

Now, these are all smaller missiles, and they need impact fusing to be destructive enough. For larger missiles proximity fusing, again of several kinds, like radar, laser, infrared, formerly magnetic, is more effective. But the possibility of a direct hit and impact detonation capability are still there, which is why I mentioned the destructiveness of a direct hit. One could argue further that, given that UFOs seem to have thicker skins, impact fusing could play a greater role in weapons designed against them.

Edited October 11, 2012 by HWP

[Gauddlike]

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 weapons don't have a hit chance.

They rely on you getting in to position and the enemy not evading.

If the missiles fly close to the enemy they do damage, if they don't fly close they keep trying.

They also don't currently have any effects on the craft so that would have to be coded as well.

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...

Goldhawk is a small company, I don't know exactly how many coders they have but I am guessing two or three maximum.

There will be no trainees, interns, or people with time on their hands to do this kind of additional work unfortunately.

I imagine if Chris finds anyone with spare time he has plenty for them to help with

Chris has changed or added a few things that will help modders though so if you can persuade him that it would be useful enough tot he game to take someone away from another job to add it then I imagine he will try to fit it in somewhere.

[ooey]

The mig 25 and its missiles were primarily designed to combat this magnificent mach3 beast which, unfortunately, wasn't put into production.