Air Units Rules

Post by **George Geczy** » Dec 10 2002

We've been debating for a while on the attack and defense of air units that fly at various altitudes, with consideration also for the more realistic 'operating' altitudes used in real combat flying.

We think the following rules seem to cover most situations relatively well (all things considered), and we'd like to hear any comments/thoughts/etc you all may have:

AIR RULES

1) FLIGHT

There are three air altitude ranges used in the game:
CLOSE AIR (0 to 15,000ft)
MID AIR (15,000ft to 70,000ft)
HIGH AIR (70,000ft +)

All Helicopters are considered to fly & fight in the â€˜Close Airâ€™ range.

All Fighters and Bombers fly in the â€˜Mid Airâ€™ range.

SR-71 and U2 Spyplanes fly in the â€˜High Airâ€™ range.

All Tactical Bombers & Close Attack Aircraft attack in the â€˜Close Airâ€™ range.

All Strategic Bombers (carpet bombing) attack in the â€˜Mid Airâ€™ range.

2) ANTI-AIR ATACKS

Close Air Attack:
(Missiles and Guns with effective altitude of 5,000 to 15,000 feet)
Units such as shoulder-mounted (Stinger, SA-14), shorter range Surface to Air Missiles (Roland, Chapperal) and <75mm Anti-Air guns.

Mid Air Attack:
(Missiles and Guns with effective altitude of 30,000 feet or more)
Mid-range S-A Missiles such as the Hawk, Patriot Pac3, SA-11, and 75mm+ Anti Air guns.

High Air Attack:
(Missiles with effective altitude of 70,000 feet or more)
Very limited damage from high altitude missiles such as Patriot Pac3, SA-10 Grumble, SA-12.

-- George.
<Lead Programmer, BattleGoat Studios>

tkobo · Post by **tkobo** » Dec 10 2002

Looks good to me.
How will this effect aircraft to aircraft combat though ?
Fighters in mid would be able to attack spys in high and helos in low right ?
Would helos in low be able to attack spys in high ?

Empier4552 · Post by **Empier4552** » Dec 11 2002

would this factor into stealth? In terms of the lower you fly to the ground the harder it'd be to detect the unit and such.

Post by **George Geczy** » Dec 11 2002

With regard to air-to-air, mid-range units (ie fighters) will be able to attack mid and close range units.

They will NOT, however, be able to attack 'High' air unless someone can show us that this is possible. Since a SR-71 can fly 25,000 feet or more HIGHER than the ceiling on a fighter like the F/A-18 or F-22, it would seem that even the Air to Air missiles on those fighters would not be able to make up the difference to intercept. If this is not a correct assumption we would be happy to hear the details.

Regarding 'stealth vs altitude', we have to make some general assumptions here since it would be awkward to allow you to pick your unit's flying altitude individually. With an 'advanced order' you can lower the detection range of the unit which will reduce their speed and 'simulate' flying in low, but we don't get much more specific than that. We just assume that, to reduce detection, they'll be flying in at well under 30,000 feet (and so they will be able to be fired on by an anti-air missile such as the Hawk, which has a 30,000ft ceiling), and that the'll need to go below 10,000 feet to do a bombing attack (and so will be in range of Stingers and smaller gun AA fire).

-- George.

Post by **Balthagor** » Dec 11 2002

I've had a few more thoughts on this. Thanks to information researched/sent to me, I feel that ballistic anti-air units should have a low profile and SAM units will have a higher profile. A lot of the SAM units are using active radar systems that make them easy to spot from aircraft before the missiles are launched. I've been told that most time that aircraft encountered ballistic anti air where situations where the aircraft where given a â€œlow detection rangeâ€ order to get under things like SA-6 SAMs only to find ZSUs at low altitude. It seems that most of the ballistic anti air units use more conventional spotting methods that give them a lower delectability. This brings me to my second thought. If you give a aircraft a â€œlow detection rangeâ€ order, I think it moves to being a close target instead of medium. I would assume weâ€™ll also give them a bonus to profile as the benefit so that they are harder to be spotted
_________________
Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios

[ This Message was edited by: Balthagor on 2002-12-11 09:52 ]

tkobo · Post by **tkobo** » Dec 11 2002

I'm almost positive that your incorrect on the fighter not being able to intercept spyplanes.
I remember articles about how the mig25 foxbat was regularly sent up to intercept U-2s.
If i remember correctly the main reason it failed wasnt ceiling but speed.They simply couldnt match the speed of the spyplane.
The mig25 max speed was like mach2.83 (with VERY short spurts to mach3 under the right conditions)and the speed of the U2 was like mach 2.5 .Now although the mig25 was faster it had a shorter range and was almost always doing a tail chase which meant it simply could not ctach-up before it reached bingo or the spy had left its airspace.

I'll find some links and post them.

http://www.danshistory.com/sr71.shtml

http://www.geocities.com/theultimatearrow/news.html
Never heard fo this one,but found it during search and it shows the cannucks and a few others could interecpt u-2s way back.

http://home.achilles.net/~rjl/aircraft_html/mig25.html

http://aeroweb.lucia.it/~agretch/RAFAQ/MiG-25.html

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/fi ... ndex.shtml

Lots of reading I know

Although the target the mig25 was "meant" to intercept varies with the writer all of them state high altitude spyplane or bombers.
If you want i'll look for some more fighters designed for high alt intercepts later tonight.

[ This Message was edited by: tkobo on 2002-12-11 11:44 ]

SeaMonkey · Post by **SeaMonkey** » Dec 11 2002

Will intercepting be optional for the non-phasing player? Will it be for each eligible unit?

Post by **Balthagor** » Dec 11 2002

Huh???

tkobo · Post by **tkobo** » Dec 12 2002

Okay, I spent some serious time looking for something I felt would be conclusive evidence that some fighters were capable of intercepting high altitude spyplanes.
I really thought I would find something.I however did not.
I found lots of articles about fighters launched to perform intercepts of spyplanes but not a single one in which even a claim of a successful intercept was made.
So I am changing my stance on this issue.
Game wise it really doesnt matter if the mig25 can fly above 70k' or if it can fly fast enough, it simply hasnt shown that it can indeed successfully perform an intercept in realife and thats what really matters if the game is shooting for realism.
So again,I drop my opposition to this working of the rules and agree with how they are set.

I could be wrong here but I think that SM is asking if an aircraft will perform an intercept even if its not that players turn-ie the plane will do it automactically.

I'd guess the answer is - as long as it has a standing order to do so OR a leader with a high enough ability.

[ This Message was edited by: tkobo on 2002-12-12 11:07 ]

Post by **George Geczy** » Dec 19 2002

>"if an aircraft will perform an intercept even if its not that players turn-ie the plane will do it automactically."

OK, that question I could understand

As you speculate, yes, aircraft will take certain intelligent actions without specifically having to be ordered to do so. All units will do this, in fact; even when playing in "turn based" mode all actions happen at once and simultaneously between players and units; as such, while you can give orders at the start of a turn, until your next opportunity for new orders the units must use their own initiative in cases when new threats or opportunities come up. In Real-Time mode, the situation exists that you can't be everywhere all the time, and again units will have to use some of their own initiative.

Regarding the question of high-air intercept, I would agree with the conclusion that this really hasn't shown itself to be reasonable to pull off in reality. (Though I did enjoy the fact that one of tkobo's links was to info on the 1950's Canadian Avro Arrow design as a possible high intercept unit.)

The bottom line seems to be that while it may be, theoretically, possible to fly certain fighters close to the altitide of a U-2, they would be doing so beyond their standard maximum ceilings. A U-2's rated ceiling is still about 10,000 feet higher than a Mig 25's, which is the highest-rated fighter I could locate info on. So it is quite questionable whether "high-altitude fighters" could truly, reliably intercept U-2 or SR-71 type aircraft.

-- George.

SeaMonkey · Post by **SeaMonkey** » Dec 19 2002

Thanks, George. I understand the intercept happens automatically if elligible. My concern (in turn base mode) is that I may have other missions of more importance than the intercept and I would like to save my air unit for it (no intercept order), but in the heat of battle especially with FOW there may be circumstances where I would countermand that order (during opponents phase). Will this be possible?

tkobo · Post by **tkobo** » Dec 19 2002

That would be really sweet to be able to have in effect a pre-order phase that was done with the game time unmoving,then simaltanious(sp) resolution of the given orders WITH the ability to give yet more orders while the resolution was occuring.

SeaMonkey · Post by **SeaMonkey** » Dec 19 2002

Scenario: The phasing player(my opponent) has ordered an airstrike on one of my assets. His air unit enters my detection zone and my intelligence/detection identifies to some degree his force size and possible target(s), the game pauses and pops up a box "Do you wish to intercept" if yes, right click on the highlighted elligible units(you wish to intercept with) and click "Yes" otherwise click "No". Simple?

tkobo · Post by **tkobo** » Dec 20 2002

I could be wrong ,but I dont think there is a "phasing player".
I believe the way it works is both players issue orders at the same time,then the orders are played out in "realtime" with the units and their npc leaders affecting how they react to things not covered by their orders.

Post by **Balthagor** » Dec 26 2002

Tkobo got it right on this one. When my opponent orders an air strike against me, assuming he isnâ€™t giving a delayed order (order to happen at a specific time) they aircraft would head to my territory. How fast I see them will depend on a number of factors, some of which are being discussed in the sam sites/Radars thread. If I have units that are on patrol they should move to engage the enemy units. If I have idle units whose leader has been set for â€œhigh offensive initiativeâ€ the leader should scramble more jets for me to intercept them. In theory, I could pause the game for a moment to issue a number of orders then let time roll and adjust my orders as they engage, but we are still working out how players will change game speed during play. Most multiplayer games force you to decide game speed before starting. Yet another thing we do differently.