Naval combat and its basic premise of layer defense ?

[tkobo]

Okay im assuming we can stack different units types together.
On land this would mean tank ,infantry units,recon and art all in one stack.

At sea this would mean carriers,battleships,cruisers,destroyers ,subs,etc.. all in one stack.

Now on land its rare that a combined force will protect itself in all four directions with a layered defense.This is because there is generally a "front" in land combat.

But in Naval combat there often is no defined front.This means that a layered defense is required on all sides.Kinda like putting the wagons in a circle with the most important wagons in the center.
Or in a naval sense,the most important elements in the center.These commonly being the carriers,supply vessels,battleships,etc..
With the defense of these crucial/important elements performed jointly by all the other ships in the force.

Now with the game mechanics as they are,will this kind of defense be possible for a stack ?
or will a layered defense require units to be deployed in individual hexs surrounding the hex they are supposed to protect with only the hexs directly inbetween attacker and target having any measureable defense effect.

Or is there some group defense bonus that adds to the defense of single units in a stack according to the possible defense properties of the other units in said stack?

Sorry if that was hard to follow.

[Balthagor]

At the moment, our design calls for the attacker to be able to target a specific unit in the stack so yes, It would require units to be deployed in individual hexs surrounding the hex they are supposed to protect with only the hexs directly inbetween attacker and target having any measureable defense effect. The number of hexes in an area generally allows plenty of maneovering room. How this will affect naval combat will need to be play tested.

[Juergen]

If have got another question about naval combat.

Todays ships usually attack each other by launching a volley of missles while trying to defend(SAM) against missles launched by the enemy.
How will this be reflected in the combat system? Will there be speciefic values that apply there?
If ships are capable of launching missles (like the AGM-86 Tomahawk) I take it that they can target ground units as well?
How will the combat between ships and submarines work?Will there be helicopters(launched by the ship) to help the ships against the submarines?

[Balthagor]

If you check our combat Model thread, you'll notice that we have seperate Ground attack, Naval Surface attack and Naval Submerged attack values. So a Destroyer might have Ground:25, Surface:60 and Submerged:35 so that it properly reflects it's role and capabilities against different targets. We also attach a range in km to each unit and during Map creation set the #km/hex value to match the actual map scale.

[Juergen]

So the scale systems works like the one used in TOAW?On every map the km/hex is different so no matter how the map is build the ranges of the units stay realistic.
Thats very good!Im already looking forward to design new maps.What is the max/min value for the km/hex?

Oh and speaking about subs..I take it that submarines can attack land targets(with cruise missles) as
well?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2002-07-11 13:06 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2002-07-11 13:07 ]</font>

[George Geczy]

So the scale systems works like the one used in TOAW?On every map the km/hex is different so no matter how the map is build the ranges of the units stay realistic.
Thats very good!Im already looking forward to design new maps.What is the max/min value for the km/hex?

Oh and speaking about subs..I take it that submarines can attack land targets(with cruise missles) as well?

I don't actually recall what the min/max for km/hex value is. I imagine on the top-level (world) scenario it will be between 50 and 100 km/hex. In the low end it will be about 10 km/hex.

Such a wide range creates some very interesting design and gameplay difficulties, of course. At the top range even big artillery could only fire into the next hex, creating a very different tactical gameplay then a scenario where artillery can bombard from 5 hexes away.

This also combines with the fact that units can always be on the move, so they don't just "pop" from hex to hex.
Regarding Subs: As appropriate by sub type they will be armed with land attack missiles.

-- George.

[Juergen]

This sounds really interesting since the tactics and strategys employed by the player sound to be affected heavily by the scale of the map.That will allow a far greater diversity in kinds of scenarios,strategys and tactics.It will be also be a huge bonus for the replay value of the game and really make it GREAT

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2002-07-20 04:04 ]</font>

[Balthagor]

As usual, we have a new issue that we hope some feedback will help us sort out. We’ve discussed naval units a number of times but there is an issue surrounding naval that we have been putting off and it’s time to nail it down.

I’ll start with a quick re-cap for those that are newer to the forum or to our game. In the game, the smallest unit a player can control is a battalion size (land, sea or air.). This avoids micromanagement of units by putting them into a manageable size. We also support attaching units to regimental or divisional leaders so large scale orders can be issued easily. Now, if we take this model and apply it to naval, one battalion of ground forces would be at about the same level as a single ship. The only problem we encounter is in the unit strength value. If a battalion of Leopards has 38 tanks, the Leopard “unit” in the game would have a strength value of 38. If they take 2 points of damage in combat, then strength would fall to 36 to represent 2 tanks killed. This means ships would sink the first time they are successfully damaged if we translate that directly. Stength of 1 has some inherent problems.

Second problem we’ve had is in how the combat model works. In it’s most basic for, it works as (attack x str.) vs. (defense x str.). This works great for most things. If you take a jet with str. 30, att. 20, def. 15 as an example. If two of these jets attack each other at full strength, the equation is [20 x 30 / 15 x 30] = 1.3 or 1 jet lost on each side per combat slice. But that means the jet squadron attacks with a total value of 600. If they attacked a boat with a defense of 250 but a strength of only 1, it would be sunk immediately. Also, it’s attack value would need to be through the roof to even touch one plane.

Of first solution has been to treat all ships as strength of 10 based on 10 sections on a ship. When it reaches 3, the unit is destroyed (sunk) due to too much damage. The other question is if even small frigates should be put on the map one boat at a time. The argument for it is that even small boats are expensive and take a long time to build.

Anyway… hopefully someone will manage to make heads or tails of this post…

[tkobo]

I'm not a fan of the idea I'm about to propose but it COULD work.

Allow ships to be built single but only let into service in groups,call them task forces.

Create 3 (or 4) basic task force groups:
Escort:Consisting of destroyers and frigate or less ships whith the primary duty of escorting
Capital:Consisting of Cruisers or higher,meant to engage naval or land target.
Carrier:Consisting of at least one carrier+ 1 capital tf + 1 escort tf.

In order for a ship to be called into service it must join or form with others into a task force.

Now the stats of each ship should be added together to give the TF a unit stat ,with modifiers of course.
I would lessen the total def stats by say 25 % for the final stat to reflect that not all the ships in a tf unit could provide defense to all the ships in the tf unit.

Any losses by the unit should come from the outer layers of the TF,this would result in the lesser ships being lost first.

Now a ship becuase of its size and design can sustain serious damage and still limp back to port.This should be relfected in its defense because the game system has no other way that I know of to show it.
With this in mind ships should have seriously high defenses just based on this and should be able to lose stats wihtout being destroyed.

Now if a TF takes a hit it should simply lower the stats of the unit without an automatic loss of some of its ships.

Loss of ships from the unit should be decided by the damage done in an attack + the damage already sustained equaling the ship lost.
This could be done by simply having a scale based on a fraction of the units str with each determined interval reached causing the loss of a type (could be more than one) of ship in the unit.

Now because ships are basically toast without a layered defense and the layers shift due to attack there should be some way to show it.

Opening attack on a TF should work against a the def stat with a facing bonus.The average task force when not expecting attack will be front strong.
After the initial attack the TF shifts as needed to strengthen the facing being attacked.Now since this often means a tightening of the task force - ie the ships moving closer together to better overlay thier defensive abilities ,facing bonus should not have an effect after the initial attack.

Now as for deciding which ships are lost in a given attack if any.

Thats work with the meanest TF first.The Carrier task force.
Now you need to pick a number for the minimum size of a carrir task force.
I would say 12 ships + carrier.
This would allow a escort tf to have 4 ships and a captital tf to have 8 ships.

So if we go with 12 ships for the carrier TF
than you have to make a quess on how many ships would be able to react to an incoming attack.
Initail attack should be calculated on the minimum of ships able to provide thier layer defense to the carrier,say 6 ships+carrier.
Sustained attacks should be against the majority of ships in the TF providing their layer to the defense ,say 9+ carrier.

Now the amount of damage taken should be measured agaisnt the amount of layer provided with the result telling how many and which ships are lost.

Lets say;
a destroyer has a def of 5.
a cruiser a def of 10
a carrier a def of 25

Now lets say the carrier tf has ;
2 cruisers 20pts
10 destroyers 50pts
1 carrier 25pts
total def = 95
Now lets say the attacker scores 4
points,this isnt enough to cause the loss of a ship but should lower the def stat of the tf by siad amount of points.
When the def stat has been lowered an amount of points equal to the def value of a ship it is lost.
So going from the outside in 6 def points would have to be lost from the tf in order to lose a destroyer from the outer layer.

With these figures (which are based on quess work mostly)
The 30 strike fighters attacking this Carrier task force would score roughly 6 points of damage on the first strike ,BEFORE the applicable facing mods are applied.
I would quess there is at least a 25% (higher would be better)decrease in def for a flank attack on a unit.
This would increase the loss to the tf accodingly.

With these numbers it would take about 4 strike fighters with the mentioned stats to elminate 1 destroyer, this seems about right to me.
The fighters should also lose about 2 to 3 of those 4 aircraft in the attack.But that's a str question I'm not going to try to work out right now.

A TF thats losses have reduced it below its given designation should be "broken" and return to port at its fastest possible speed OR be reformed into another TF designation if possible.

Just a draft of a thought.Might help,might not.

Subs would have to be dealt with in another way of course.

[Juergen]

Difficult problem...combat on sea is simply different than combat on land.

Basically I think Balthagors idea ist just fine because it is an accurate solution to the problem that ships are to weak.A plain and simple solution with no further trouble.

However I might suggest some improvements that would depict the situation more accurate:
A new value named "Hitpoints" may be introduced for the ships (and maybe other "bigger units) they would show how much damage a ship may sustain and might be a replacement for the unit size.It would not be used to calculate combat results expect damage to the individual ships.
To calculate combat the ship might use a kind of fixed size points (they may degrade when the ship takes critical damage).
This way a ship may be damaged but can still dish out a hefty punches (as it is the case in RL).
I know that this improvement means the introduction of an additional value but I think that it would also mean more realism.

Speaking of realism I have a few questions:

Is the long attack range of ships (200km+) reflected in the game?

Can they attack land targets with that range?
(Tomahawks are easily modified)

Is there a kind of "defense range"?
Moderm SAMs have a range of over 100kms and it would make sense that ships begin to fire at incoming aircrafts before they get a chance to damage the ships.

[Hellfish6]

Hi guys

I have an idea, inspired in part by Tkobo. If you consider a tank battalion of 38 tanks to not be made up of 38 individual units, but instead of a single unit with 38 hit points, then it won't be hard (hopefully) to understand my idea for modelling ship damage.

Think of each ship as a single unit with multiple hit points, instead of a unit with several ships as their parts, each of which is considered a hit point.

To begin, we should assign each ship a base value for it's armor rating (it's hit points). A good starting point for a base value is the ship's hull size, as it makes sense that a larger a ship is, the harder it is to sink.

So, let's assign base hit points to each ship type:

5 HP for a Frigate or smaller ship.
7 HP for a destroyer
10 HP for a cruiser or small carrier (like HMS Invincible)
12 HP for a battlecruiser or medium carrier (like the Kirov or Forrestal classes)
15 HP for a super carrier (Nimitz class)

Now, to ensure that each vessel is not simply a base number, but is actually modelled individually, we should assign Hit Points to major components of the ship. This way, a Russian Udaloy-class destoryer won't be exactly the same in damage terms as an American Kidd-class destroyer.

Let's assign the following values to major ship components (this is all for the sake of discussion and open for debate).

1 HP - for each main gun
1 HP - for all point defense systems (all systems, to include CIWS, Sea Sparrow, Goalkeeper, RAM, etc.)
1 HP - for each ASW weapon system (ASROC, torpedo tubes, hedgehog, etc.)
1 HP - for each missile launcher (including single/double SAM launchers, quad-Harpoon/Tomahawk packs, VLS cells, etc.)
1 HP - for each aircraft carried (aircraft carriers only)
1 HP - all radar systems
1 HP - all sonar systems
1 HP - extra armor (kevlar, etc.)
2 HP - for helicopter hangar(frigates/destroyers/cruisers only)
2 HP - for each nuclear reactor
3 HP - for each engine (boiler, turbine, includes fuel storage)
10 HP - for a docking well
15 HP - for small flight deck
20 HP - for medium flight deck
25 HP - for large flight deck

With this system, an O.H. Perry-class frigate would have the following HP value:

5 - base hull size (frigate)
1 - main gun (1 x 76mm)
1 - point defense system (CIWS)
2 - ASW weapons (2 x triple torpedo tubes)
3 - missile launchers (1 x Mk13 launcher, 2 x quad Harpoon box)
6 - engines (2 x turbines)
2 - helicopter hangar (2 x SH-60)
1 - radar
1 - sonar
___
= 22 Hit Points

An Invincible-class light carrier would have the following hit points:

10 - base hull value (cruiser)
1 - point defense systems (Sea Dart, CIWS, Goalkeeper)
1 - radar
12 - engines (4 x turbines)
21 - aircraft (may vary)
15 - small flight deck
___
= 80 Hit Points

A Russian Udaloy I-class destroyer has the following value:

7 - base hull value (destroyer)
2 - main guns (2 x 100mm)
1 - point defense system (AK 630)
3 - missile launchers (1 x 8-cell SA-N-9 VLS, 2 x quad SS-N-14 boxes)
4 - ASW systems (2 x RBU 6000, 2 x quad torpedo tubes)
1 - radar
1 - sonar
2 - helicopter hangar (2 x Ka-27)
6 - engines (2 x main turbines) **auxilliary engines not included**
___
= 27 Hit Points

BENEFITS OF THIS SYSTEM:

1. Can model entire individual ships accurately.

2. Individual ships can be assigned to formations just as you can assign ground units to brigades.

3. Allows for individual component damage (anti-radar missiles can single out the radar system for damage). Also, damage to embarked aircraft can be calculated (if a Nimitz-class ship is hit by a cruise missile, the number of aircraft lost can be calculated).

4. Provides a basis for computing time to construct and repair (2 weeks per component/Hit Point, for example)

PROBLEMS WITH THIS SYSTEM:

1. Not fully tested. There may be some ships out there when converted into this system may be totally unrealistic.

2. May not be compatible with Battle Goat's pre-existing parameters for the game.

[tkobo]

Ive been thinking on this since before it was asked and have yet to find a system that works within your already existing combat model and that I like.

A single vessel ,even a carrier(not counting its possible aircraft in the eqaution) stands no chance against 30 attack fighters.Thats just the way it is in real life.
This by itself is not the problem.
In real life people understand this and form ships into fleets with layered defenses so that a single ship does not have to face 30 fighters on its own.
Your system as it stands now has no way to add the defense of one or more units to another unit.
THIS is the problem.

Would it be possible to add into the combat system 2 new stats based on missile defense and missile offense ?
The defensive stat would have to be stackable with other units in the same hex to be effective though,so keep that in mind when you answer.

This new stat and additive system would only have to be applied to missile attacks/defs.
It would however have a serve positive effect on all forms of combat-land, sea and air.
It would allow you to keep the basic stats of naval vessels in line with the way the units stats work for other unit types.A str of 1 would NOT be a problem anymore becuase it would be harder to score that one hit when ships were grouped together as they should be.
The lone vessel would still be toast,but then it SHOULD be against 30 attacking aircraft.

This would also add more reason to have anti-missile systems in a players stack for land units as they would add their defensive stat to all in their hex.

Of course as stated attack stats would have to seperated into the 2 catagories of 1:every other attack type and 2: missile.

This would effectively solve the naval combat problem and add to land combat in a meaningful way at the same time.
It would also allow the logic of the way stats work with units to be uniform.
Lastly it would very realistic.

[Balthagor]

BTW, I am reading all these posts but want to wait a bit to post any replies. The level of complexity and quality of these posts needs a little more thought than usual. Also want to talk with our programmer about it. Please, keep the ideas coming!!!

[Juergen]

A carrier that would have to face 30 strike crafts alone would indeed have a tough time.
But I think it would be at least capable to take few planes with it.
The question is if its SAM systems can actually:

1)Reach out to the aircrafts and give them a reason to be carefull.
2)Defend against incoming missles

That is mostly a question of range and of accuracy.
And the next question would be:

Is a ship capable to attack an aircraft/missles from a distance in the game?

If that would be the case than a single AEGIS cruiser could easily protect the ships around.And it wouldnt have to be formation with other ships.And the attacking aircrafts might long be destroyed before they could damage the carrier.Unless of course the attackers are bombers capable of launching anti-ship missles form afar,in this case the cruiser would have to shoot down the missles.

The point is that ships,unlike tanks,have a more active "defense".Their best defense is a good offense from a distance.I think a bit like swimming artillery.

Actually I think its a bit unrealistic that ships GIVE abilities to others when in a kind of formation.Every ship should be capable to carry out its mission alone if necessary.And some ships are more survivable to certain dangers

This is especially true for submarines which prefer to work alone.Wolfpacks are out.

BTW Another example of "active defense" would be SAM sites,they also would have to engage aircrafts before they get to close.

[Hellfish6]

I think that before much more thought can be given to this, it is necessary to know if ships do have automatic defense systems (like ECM, chaff, flares, point defense weapons, etc.). If so, then it would be best to model each individual ship and then model the hex-range of weapon systems (so that an Aegis cruiser with a SAM range of 5 can protect a frigate or carrier 2 hexes away).

Otherwise something else will need to be worked out.