Realism Issues Center: Lets make this game make more sense

[GizmoGomez]

Alright, cool.

Because the player is the pilot (pretty much) could we say that the range has been artificially limited? I mean, if the fighter's out of "optimal range" you still can't fire the missile, even if you're still inside of the missile's "real max range".

[Elydo]

Heh, I've haven't logged in here for a very long time. So much is different. I remember there used to be a park over there, with trees.

Anyway, as has already been noted Chris does all the fluff text by himself, including any research necessary to make it sound plausible, so anything particularly significant only makes more work for him. Which is not a good thing. That said, anything we can hash out that isn't more work might be worth his time, so let's try and not skyball too much. We'll only be destroying our own aims.

Of the four points currently in the OP, the lack of ground armour has been explained well, through an inability to mitigate alien weapon damage. Armouring aircraft is only a bad idea because it cuts down on their maneuverability and responsiveness, and increases fuel consumption. But the xenonauts have obviously developed something that allows their aircraft to survive an engagement at all. Given the conversion of existing aircraft and the aforementioned lack of armour for ground forces, it's likely a combination of things but predominately some sort of ablative or mitigating coating that can be applied, but that is likely toxic to personnel.

The air combat engagement range again can be explained with a plausible reason that any attempt to engage at longer ranges simply doesn't succeed. So pilots have to close to knife-range or else go home. If necessary, that's all that really needs to be said. Should a reason be wanted, it can be active countermeasures that use the time to defeat the incoming munition (programmable 'smart' decoys tailored to the missile, targeted EM emissions that fry the electronics but take time, counter-munitions etc), the alien craft having enough time to shake the lock, whatever. But any explanation we come up with has to be as applicable to subsequently developed weapons and also need to be something that a workaround couldn't just be researched.

The Anti-graviton thing is an issue, but finding a solution will require coming up with a more plausible explanation of levitating heavy machinery and then convincing Chris that it won't be a hassle to include it. Some options might be focused sonic wavelengths to provide lift (See: Appleseed) or perhaps even alien technology allowing for highly refined applications of diamagnetic levitation against the planet's own magnetic field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamagnetic

I like the second option, but the problem is that people playing the game might not have heard of diamagnitism, and so could lose immersion or even end up confused. Which would be the opposite of what we're working towards.

Edit: Actually, the aircraft issue could be early development of some type of electric armour, reactive armour that disrupts incoming projectiles with massive electric charges through the armour itself as the projectile breaches the hull. (I'm trying to be brief with my explanation) It's currently being developed, particularly by the British and probably the US. Only works against certain types of munitions (that can be disrupted by electromagnetic fields) but plasma packets would be one.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Elydo
Additional point of interest

[EchoFourDelta]

But the xenonauts have obviously developed something that allows their aircraft to survive an engagement at all.

Yeah; it's called "redundancy." Airplanes survive being hit not by being tough, or physically resilient to damage; they survive by having several parts that do the same thing. Airplanes are sensitive, high-performance machines, but most combat craft can suffer considerable subsystem damage and have quite a few holes before they get to the point where they're actually unflyable. Unless they're hit by something that straight-up removes a control surface, or damages the wings to the point they can't produce lift, there's a pretty good chance they can bring it home. There's no amount of "armor" that you can stick on an actual fightercraft that would actually protect it and still have it be flyable. Until, of course, we back-engineer our alien materials when the UFOs show up.

The simplest explanations to each of these things (and most logical bits, considering how aircraft and armor actually work) is that we simply didn't have anything that would actually stop the weapons fire, and the aircraft are simply dodge-duck-dip-dive-dodging and taking hits on nonessential parts of the plane (this gets rid of the "why don't the armor the ground troops and systems, too), and that the missiles are launched from closer-than-normal ranges so they have a better chance of hitting before the UFOs zip out of the way.

Edited August 30, 2013 by EchoFourDelta

[GizmoGomez]

So, how would you explain the difference between the Xenonaut craft and the normal aircraft?

I would say:

Xenonaut aircraft have additional redundant systems in place so we can remain flyable even with heavy damage.

They have massive fuel tanks that allow for a much larger range.

They have massively enhanced radar packages to allow them to track UFOs when within a certain range.

Because of the added weight of the fuel, redundant systems, and radar, the plane was too heavy with all of the ordinance to be able to fly to it's max potential, so they cut down the payload to the minimum to give the pilots a chance to survive (because extra weight would lead to them not being able to dodge the incoming enemy attacks quick enough).

[Ishantil]

There is no way that the power plant on a fighter would be able to produce the amount of energy needed to create a diamagnetic field. While it's theoretically possible to maybe polarize the hull or charge it up to disrupt the plasma bolt, by the time it was that close, I think the point would be moot. The magnetic envelope would probably discharge close enough to the aircraft.

A lot of the other technology you are describing certainly wouldn't be available to the science of 1979. Maybe some of it after the alien invasion.

Redundant systems and pilots trained specifically in UFO engagement tactics (those who have survived from local forces assaulting UFOs, for example). That's what I think makes them survivable.

No amount of handwavery is going to satisfy E4D and me with the "only enough room for two missiles!" argument. It's absurd. NEVERTHELESS. I'll try to stay on topic.

The best explanation is the enlarged fuel tanks and redundant systems like in an A-10 Thunderbolt II. Perhaps specially designed conformal fuel tanks would eliminate the hardpoints near the fuselage, but would not preclude the other 6 or so hard points (a missile rails on each wing tip, two under each wing, I think) from carrying ordnance.

There is no need to put a bigger radar in the plane, they are already engaging at about three to five kilometers. You'd have E-2C Hawkeyes or something similar at standoff range tracking the UFO and zeroing the fighters in, plus painting it for targeting. The radar arrays on those are something else. Not to mention that a lot of countries would suddenly be very interested in building radar stations all of the sudden. Can't imagine why...

Please don't call the in-game fiction "fluff", as that's an insulting term.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Ishantil

[GizmoGomez]

Well, the Xenonauts don't have Hawkeyes, do they? Also, the planes do actually have some pretty nice radars for the geoscape. I mean, they can track the UFOs all by themselves for quite a distance, and they can detect alien bases. That's pretty hard to do with a standard package, I'd guess.

[DNK]

What is the actual entry that we're discussing here with the missile range? I'm not aware of the claims.

Regarding countermeasures, what is it claiming there?

[Ishantil]

The nosecone of a fighter simply isn't large enough for a radar like you are talking about. That's why they put a big frickin radar array on top of a trash hauler. I'm assuming again, realism, so that they would have the help of the local military.

You simply wouldn't have the range or accuracy with ground stations for some of the stuff that would be required.

I know I'm quibbling here, but the logistics of a successful mission like the one we're talking about would require more aircraft to vector in and box the target, then you'd hit it from multiple sides. You can't do it with three, heh.

Sure you can argue for enhanced electronics. But if you were going to do that, you'd make a jet version of the E-2 type plane. Basically a similar concept, but streamlined to be able to generally keep up with the fighters. What we usually do is make it so they can loiter a long time and have long range and accurate radar so they don't need to get anywhere near the action.

@DNK: We're assuming (in the previous posts) that the engagement envelope is close because the aliens will shoot down missiles if you give them enough distance. So 3-5 kilometers is the chosen effective engagement range. The missiles have far more range than that, of course.

[GizmoGomez]

The explanation given in the game for the short missile range is that the UFO emits a certain kind of radiation that we can't detect unless we're really close. It's kinda an odd, immersion breaking reason though because we can track the UFO with radar from much longer than 15km (max range of the avalanche).

Thus, we've decided that an artificial max range would most likely be implemented to avoid giving the UFOs too much time to react. After all, if we fire them from a hundred clicks away they've got ample time to either shoot the missile down, out maneuver it, or otherwise avoid being shot.

[GizmoGomez]

@Ishantil

Alright, fair enough.

Actually, one explanation I had for the missing ordinance was that it was all replaced by radar and other sensors under the wings of the aircraft, enabling it to actually do what it does in game, that is, have an extremely long radar range (for a fighter) and be able to detect alien bases.

[Ishantil]

You might be able to make the argument for a sensor pod or something. But for engaging UFOs (the whole point of a fighter), I don't think you'd need more than the on-board radar. E4D may know more about this particular topic.

You'd leave alien base detection to the bigger birds. Easiest way to find them would be the UFOs that land there, of course.

[EchoFourDelta]

If you're picking up any signature from the UFOs on a ground station in the bases from the distances we see, the aircraft would have almost zero trouble detecting and engaging with comparable equipment, especially inside the envelope we see in-game; part of the problem is that there's crazy justifications for things that are de rigeur and make sense without the crazy justifications.

The planes don't survive because they're massively reinforced; they do better than the ones in Iceland because surprise surprise, a jet from the late 70s could crap watery diarrhea all over the stuff we flew in the 50s. Faster, with more redundant systems, and much more advanced avionics.

UFOs dodge/shoot down missiles when you fire from too far away; too long of a travel time to nail them before they're simply outside of the missile's engagement range.

We don't have armor that'll stop it early on because there's literally nothing that'll stop the weapons fire (ties into the aircraft).

On the oddly small weapons payloads... if the fighter's not being weighed down by thousands and thousands of pounds more fuel, then it's not going to mind an extra pair of missiles; like Ishantil said, though, that's not really here or there; that's game mechanics, not background. That said, I could almost buy the enhanced sensor package or fuel tanks bit.

[Newfr]

The explanation given in the game for the short missile range is that the UFO emits a certain kind of radiation that we can't detect unless we're really close. It's kinda an odd, immersion breaking reason though because we can track the UFO with radar from much longer than 15km (max range of the avalanche).

Another thing that UFOs designed as space crafts with no regards to aerodynamic (they compensate that by some magical directional thruster arrays). But now think about it. If our planes flying with 3 Mach speed have to deal with heating over 300-400 degrease Celsius what will be with this flying "bricks" (max normal speed of Foxtrot is 2 Mach and some UFOs flying faster than that)? So you can pay no attention to radar in dogfights because you have such a wonderful fireball flying across the sky. So you can shoot em with IR missiles. Another thing that unlike active-radar homing systems infrared homing systems don't emit any kind of signals (they just "look" at heat signatures) so you less likely detect it launch. You can say that UFOs are so advanced that they can see all missiles no matter what. Then they can see your plane with even less problems. So if they can shoot down incoming missile from far away why they can't do the same thing with incoming airplane? Or at least prepare to fight and meet your planes head on (because almost all heavy weapons have a forward looking arcs of fire on UFOs)?

And another thing if missiles launch range was reduced that much why there is a fuel limit there? I mean some times my plasma torpedoes fall short because they ran out of fuel (happens if you fire em from max range at min speed against carrier UFO). While IRL AIM-9X have about 18 km range and AIM-54 Phoenix have about 180 km range (exact numbers are classified).

Also i can point out that Sidewinder shown as a short range fast missile, while Avalanche (Phoenix) is a long range slow missile. And that contradicts reality. AIM-9X top speed is 2,56 Mach while AIM-54 top speed is 4 Mach.

Edited August 30, 2013 by Newfr

[Elydo]

Please don't call the in-game fiction "fluff", as that's an insulting term.

Really? Most of the communities I've encountered before use it as the accepted term. My apologies.

There is no way that the power plant on a fighter would be able to produce the amount of energy needed to create a diamagnetic field. While it's theoretically possible to maybe polarize the hull or charge it up to disrupt the plasma bolt, by the time it was that close, I think the point would be moot. The magnetic envelope would probably discharge close enough to the aircraft.

Two different points. The diamagnetic field was to replace the anti-graviton explanation. Electric armour is something completely different, and would work by disrupting the magnetic field of the plasma packet, but only at close range to the fuselage so a significant amount of damage would still be inflicted. Or else our aircraft would be entirely immune to plasma weapons. A mention of external fuel pods probably should be mentioned, both as an explanation for the near global range and the lack of hardpoints.

Yeah; it's called "redundancy." Airplanes survive being hit not by being tough, or physically resilient to damage; they survive by having several parts that do the same thing.

To a greater or lesser degree, based on design. An aircraft is a glorious compromise of several different priorities, and each design is a different blend. But yes, you cannot armour an fighter enough to protect it and still have it able to perform. It's first and best defence is not being hit, the second is being able to endure being hit whilst remaining in the air (Is why Navy fighters have two engines whilst regular Air Force have one. There's also a glorious tale of an F-15 losing an entire wing and still landing safely back at base, due to the low wing load of the design) But that only applies if protective armour detracts from the performance of the aircraft. Current armouring technology still relies of solid elements, but that is changing. I'm aware that if it's only changing now it probably wasn't even theoretical four and a half decades ago, but that's what the Iceland Incident allows us to asspull from.

We need to keep in mind that the Xenonauts have something unique to them that makes them the only force capable of successful engagement. If it was something relatively straightforward that would occur to (and be available to) any comparable organisation, the rest of the worlds militaries would be able to handle the threat themselves.

[DNK]

Cliffs: wiki "range" estimates overblow the missiles' actualy abilities by a large factor. "Effective ranges" are usually much shorter, around 10nm for the latest, and even then they only carry coin-flip odds of successful hits. Advanced counter-measures and jamming would also likely limit both the missiles' effectiveness AND the ability of xenonaut craft to actually obtain a lock. The in-game range is quite realistic, if not far higher than expected in such an asymmetrical scenario (probably the missiles would be useless).

@DNK: We're assuming (in the previous posts) that the engagement envelope is close because the aliens will shoot down missiles if you give them enough distance. So 3-5 kilometers is the chosen effective engagement range. The missiles have far more range than that, of course.

Eh, not really. Against a highly maneuverable opponent like a UFO (that let's assume can pull more Gs than a jet fighter and do all sorts of thrust-vectoring and beyond what we have in the 21st century), the effective range for even the most modern medium-range missiles (AIM-120D) would likely be no more than 10nm. Against the larger UFOs, they likely contain ECW systems to jam radars effectively at a similar range. In reality, a modern MiG has a jammer that's fairly effective against typical US AESA radars (last-gen at least) up to about 25-20nm. And that's in a relatively small bird.

You need to remember that the stated "max ranges" on wikipedia are just that. That's the maximum theoretical range of the missile. The actual range it would be used at in combat is much less, as pilots would need to wait to get closer in order to assure a higher percent-kill chance. Certainly, there are situations where a missile will be shot beyond this high-PK point, but those sorts of situations (putting the opponent into a defensive maneuver to maintain the initiative, etc) aren't modeled in game by the AI, so it's pointless to also model the ability to pull such shots. You need to be looking at the "effective range", not just the "range". Same is true for firearms and other weapons: max range means little, effective range is what you want to model in a game.

For example, you can point to the 54 Phoenix as an example of a missile that could hit them from 100nm away, but the fact is that such shots would have an extremely, extremely low chance of success against a maneuvering target with countermeasures (basically 0%). Additionally, the Phoenix was totally unproven as a weapon system. It's old as hell, basically untested in combat (and DoD tests are notoriously biased towards success in unrealistic non-combat situations, eg vs straight and slow drone planes and such) and given the low PK odds of successive weapons systems, any long-range shot (>20nm) would've been extremely low-odds. As I said before, the current AIM-120D really only has a good chance of success around 10nm (on average, and it's in the 50% PK range, I think, but maybe that's the C version), and that's against 4th and 4.5th generation fighters. Only the DoD can guess at the effective range against 5th-gen stealth fighters, but it's certainly lower, assuming you have a craft actually capable of obtaining a lock before hitting the missile's effective range.

Given that this is the 70s, the old radars might simply be incapable of obtaining such a target lock before the "missile range" in-game. It's not the missiles' faults so much as the planes'. I think it's safe to say that any alien craft would be at least equal to a 5th generation fighter like the F-22. They do appear to be a bit larger, but advanced stealth technologies would hide most of their radar signature. And here you're firing 1st and 2nd gen missiles (which sucked, and rarely actually hit) against like 200th generation fighters. 5-8km ranges are being extremely, extremely nice to the xenonauts...

The explanation given in the game for the short missile range is that the UFO emits a certain kind of radiation that we can't detect unless we're really close. It's kinda an odd, immersion breaking reason though because we can track the UFO with radar from much longer than 15km (max range of the avalanche).

I will have to search down this entry. Is it in the xenopedia? Under what heading? That sounds iffy as hell, yes, although the in-game range is wholly expectable in terms of realism (for other reasons than stated perhaps).

And so long as the UFO emit radiation, you can track them passively without an actual radar lock. For example, the passive radars on 4th gen fighters can track signals (directionally) up to 60-80nm away, though the active radar can't really lock beyond 30-35nm (and far less against jammers, as mentioned).

Now, what about the counter-measures?

Another note: if this radar emission is consistent, it could be used for a home-on-signal targeting system, vastly increasing the possible range of the weapons. Could be a nice research tree, weapon targeting/radar advancements...

Edited August 30, 2013 by DNK

[Elydo]

I'm doubting that the team would be wanting to retool the tech tree at this point, but it might make for good mod fodder, heh.

[gshuford]

It's fine, I like it. A klick does seem a little short, but I can't remember off the top of my head what the engagement range in game actually is, so just alter the number to whatever that is and go with that explanation. Boom, problem solved, nerds can rest easy that their video game isn't too gamey.

Is the Crimson Dagger story to be considered canon? If so, I want to point out that the craft was shot down at long range.

I want to propose something:

In space, having eye's-on would be almost pointless. There's a lot of nothing out there, so spotting a ship in a relatively large emptiness (light years of space) would be near impossible for relatively close ranges (millions of miles). Therefore aliens would rely heavily on sensors. And a race of warrior aliens would rely heavily on cloaking from those types of sensors. But maybe their tech isn't perfect. Maybe to fully cloak from sensor detection, they have to shut down their main engines and work on secondaries. However, it doesn't work so well in atmo. Kill main engines = crash. So, they are detectable in atmo, but when shot down, their emergency protocol is to go ahead and start jamming. This technology would also help (to some degree) explain why alien bases are harder to locate. Since they start jamming as soon as they're shot down, it's damn near impossible to plot a crash trajectory. Remember, these craft are extremely durable and often still largely intact which means they can probably glide using their secondaries making triangulating with sensor-dar near impossible since the flight path is unpredictable without being able to track it with computers. So, the 'nauts don't want to lose an alien craft and certainly not let the crew have their way with the civvies. They need close-range engagements so the pilots can get an eyes-on of the crash location or at least to report a trajectory.

EDIT: Although this doesn't really keep pilots from engaging with long range and then doing a fly-over to spot the crash sight, the relative range of fighter to UFO engagement should remain the same. That is, if we can shoot at them with long range, they can shoot at us with long range. Making this aspect realistic would entail changing the numbers in the game to reflect actual ranges of missiles, but allowing the aliens the same ranges. In effect, the air combat would remain unchanged, really.

But to say we can't engage them at long ranges because they do X which prevents it doesn't really make sense. Remember that these things are designed for space combat. That means they should be nothing short of engaging at extreme ranges.

Alternate possibility. They have extreme long-range capability. Our fighters are equipped to jam that ability, but in so doing, they jam their own long range capability, putting us on par with them rather than way under par.

Edited August 30, 2013 by gshuford

[PsychoLandlord]

Is the Crimson Dagger story to be considered canon? If so, I want to point out that the craft was shot down at long range.

The ship in Crimson Dagger was also knocked out of the sky with an airbursting strategic warhead, which could have gone off literally anywhere in the surrounding 10-20 klicks and had the desired effect. Needless to say, the sidewinders and other such precision missiles we're discussing are wildly different beasts.

[gshuford]

The ship in Crimson Dagger was also knocked out of the sky with an airbursting strategic warhead, which could have gone off literally anywhere in the surrounding 10-20 klicks and had the desired effect. Needless to say, the sidewinders and other such precision missiles we're discussing are wildly different beasts.

True. I just feel like the "they don't consider us a threat unless we come within a km of them" explanation sounds hokey to me. Maybe just because as I stated before, a space-fairing race should be immensely experienced in long-range combat and would prefer to do things that way. On the other hand, if we stopped and really thought about how a space race would REALLY conduct an invasion, we wouldn't be playing Xenonauts. Now that I've looked at it that way, the explanation doesn't sound so hokey.

[PsychoLandlord]

On the other hand, if we stopped and really thought about how a space race would REALLY conduct an invasion, we wouldn't be playing Xenonauts. Now that I've looked at it that way, the explanation doesn't sound so hokey.

And there's the punchline.

[TrashMan]

REGARDING AIRCRAFT DETECTION:

They are not invisible to radar - jut hard to detect. Xenonaut radar has 1% detection chance per minute.

Once they are detected however, every radar instalation in range in the world will focus on it - probably using a concetrated search, effectively illuminating it with a much narrower, focused wave. That method is highly effective, as a single target it hit from multiple angles and with a much greater densitiy, making it difficult to escape.

In other words, difficult to detect, but once detected, escape itself is difficult.

REGARDING MISSILE RANGE

The explenation of "alines shooting down our missles at long-range" is problematic, as it raises the question of why don't the aliens shoot down your aircraft from long range? An aircraft will generally be an easier target than a missile.

ANTI-GRAVITY:

It needs no viable scientific explanation. Wether it's manipulating Higgs bozons to anti-gravitrons, that ones falls in the same barrel as FTL.

No amount of handwavery is going to satisfy E4D and me with the "only enough room for two missiles!" argument. It's absurd. NEVERTHELESS. I'll try to stay on topic.

Personally, I'm gonna mod all of my missiles to twice the capacity. Alpha strike remains the same, since you have to wait to fire the second one, but aircraft can engage again without returning to base and have a more realistic payload.

[Elydo]

ANTI-GRAVITY:

It needs no viable scientific explanation. Wether it's manipulating Higgs bozons to anti-gravitrons, that ones falls in the same barrel as FTL.

The difficulty of that approach being: If you need no explanation, don't explain it. It'd be better to not offer any justification than one that makes people pause and go "Errrr..." But an explanation is needed as we make the floaty-tanks that operate by way of the principle, so it's harder to just circumvent the issue. But I'd really rather avoid the Star Trek level of technobabble explanation, or lack thereof.

Hell, maybe it'd be better to take the appallingly painful engineering stance of "Well, we've no idea how or why this works, but when we put these parts together like that, it does. So let's use it."

[grin]

[henri5]

As I pointed out in another thread, all this discussion is headed toward having a "balanced" air battle (measures and counter-measures), the result of which will be having 1-3 Xenonaut planes shot down in every engagement. This can only be alleviated without seriously unbalancing the ground war by giving the Xenonauts an unlimited number of planes.

So back to the fact that the only real purpose of the air war is to create targets for the ground war.

[4Aces]

Gravitons are spin-2 bosons, and bosons are their own anti-particles. If you can get two of them to interact with each other, they self-annihilate. Of course that would be a neat trick if they are truly massless, unlike the photon which has a virtual mass. Anyway, compared to other aspects of the game (e.g. lighting, AI, physics, transparencies, render order), this is not much of an issue.

As for how an Invasion would really be carried out: You obviously have not played the game until the end. The reason for the limited invasion is well explained, and is plausible (which was a very pleasant surprise in this type of game - especially compared to the Firaxis nonsensical ending). Since this is not the modding section I will not drop any spoilers.

[Ishantil]

I was mentioning E-2 Hawkeyes and other AWACS craft earlier in the thread. Those are good at steering missiles. Absolutely true about the Phoenix, it was a great idea that wasn't ever really tested in combat. The few times it was used, it missed.