Missiles

[Balthagor]

Information can be submitted to me a few ways. One is here, in an appropriate section. Second is to e-mail me the data directly. Some users have already submitted spreadsheets with units that I had missed with only the fields they know filled in. Any of these ways will get me the info.

You are right that there aren’t any freefall nukes yet. For simplicity sake, we will be making some generic free fall nuclear bombs but I’ll probably add them last. Not nearly as exciting as the rest. Simple chemical bombs will be done the same way but I want to balance some missiles first. We’ll only add where there seems to be a need or gap that isn’t covered by other missile units.

On the Harpoon, here is some of the data I found;

“The Harpoon was conceived as an air-to-surface missile to attack surfaced Soviet Echo-class cruise missile submarines. It has since been deployed on surface ships and submarines as well as aircraft and is the principal U.S. tactical anti-ship missile. Along with the French Exocet, Harpoon is the one of the most widely used anti-ship missile in Western navies.”

This made me think that it could target submerged units… it can’t?

And finally, to Tkobo, no we have not made a decision on this one but I’m working on balancing missiles this week and in fact fired my first nuclear missile last night so once the damage values are working and intercepting the missiles is working a decision will have to be made. It was fun taking out in 20 seconds a base it took my opponent 60 days to build

[Juergen]

"You are right that there aren’t any freefall nukes yet. For simplicity sake, we will be making some generic free fall nuclear bombs"

I agree with you,a 15kt bomb is simply a 15kt bomb whether it was made in France or the US.

"We’ll only add where there seems to be a need or gap that isn’t covered by other missile units."

Bombs are very generic and that is also a big advantage.
Anyone can have any kind of bomb,technology provided of course.
Missiles usually are tied to as specific region and certain payloads.
And as far as I can see there already is a gap,I cant spot many low yield nukes.
Especially ones that would be available for the whole world.

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"The Harpoon was conceived as an air-to-surface missile to attack surfaced Soviet Echo-class cruise missile submarines"

As far as I know the harpoon cannot attack a submarine that is submerged.
The harpoon just doesnt have a kind of sensor which would tell where the submarine it,so essentially it is "blind".

The only way for the harpoon to attack a submarine is when it surfaced,in this case the harpoons radar should have a big juicy target.

But the problem is:
A submarine remains under the water for a long as it can.
The Echo which is mentioned in the data was completed about 1960...at that time most submarines had to surface to launch missles.
Times have changed and I think we can safely assume that all submarines are capable of launching missiles while staying under water.

Dont get me wrong,of course the missile launch might very likely give their position away but they would still be under a layer of water.
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"And finally, to Tkobo, no we have not made a decision on this one but I’m working on balancing missiles this week and in fact fired my first nuclear missile last night "


Id like to hear more about it,Im interested how the "nuclear explosion" acually works because this it part of my next question:
How to treat missiles that will have nuclear warheads,what do their attack values mean in their case?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2003-12-10 15:13 ]</font>

[Balthagor]

Don’t worry, I will get some simple freefall nuclear bombs that any country could get and there will be some variety of missile units that are available to all.

I will also remove the naval submerged attack value from the Harpoon. Thanks for the additional details.

As for the attack values, they are just like anything else. The difference will be that they are much higher (or will be when balanced), will be indirect (damages all units in the hex) and will also have a radiation effect that will be handled separately.

Will we’re on it; I’m actually doing balancing this morning on a number of missiles. I’ve been running some tests of missiles and I’m starting to get some ideas and will be setting some “benchmark” values. I’ve noticed that we have about 4 types of missiles in the list (outside of ballistic). They are Anti-Ship, Standoff, Building-killers and Saturation;

Anti ship would include Exocet, Harpoon, RBS-15, Kormoran, Sea Eagle and others
- No Soft, Hard or Fortification (used for buildings) attack value
- Cheap and quick to build (About 4 game days to build)
Standoff would be missiles like JSOW, SLAM, and Raptor
- Intended to attack units, low Fortification attack
- Quick to build (About 4 game days to build)
Building killer would be similar to Tomahawk or Scalp/Apache AI missiles
- Intended to attack buildings, moderate soft attack very low hard attack
- Indirect damage (all units in hex take damage)
- Moderate build time (About 10 game days to build)
Saturation would be your freefall bombs, Scuds and Lances
- Moderate attack values Soft, Hard, Fortification and Naval Surface
- Indirect damage (all units in hex take damage)
- Quick to build (About 4 game days to build)

Now, this assumes only conventional missiles. Obviously nuclear are higher damage all around. We also made all nuclear missiles 60 days to build. We where thinking that Chemical would be around 30 days.

So here’s the question for balancing;

How many building killer missiles should it take to destroy an airport? Our airport represents a very large airbase with multiple runways, hangers and construction facilities.

How many building killers should it take to destroy the largest land base?

How many building killers to destroy a 100% (highest level) farm facility?

How many Standoff missiles to kill a battalion of 54 Leopard 2A3 tanks?

I’ve already got some ideas but would like to see what our forum members have to say on it.

[Juergen]

Your assumptions about the 4 types of missiles seem very good to me so far,although not all building killer missiles inflict indirect damage.
Tomahawks and other cruise missiles of that type are precision weapons.

What I was planning to do to balance the missile numbers a bit was a kind of "missile ranking" system which tells which missile is the best for a certain task.
But starting with subtypes of missiles is a pretty good idea too and I might add a few things if I have an idea.

I will check if I can find some data for your questions.

Until then Im curious about some other missile related questions:
1)How many missiles (the actual number) do you estimate are in one unit?
2)I assume cities will be the treated as a fortified target but on what will determine how many people get killed in the attack?
3)Does the "nuclear explosion" of the nukes only depend on the attack values?
Where does the affected area come from?
Where are the MIRVs?
On what does the resulting fallout depend?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2003-12-11 09:58 ]</font>

[Balthagor]

Q: How many missiles (the actual number) do you estimate are in one unit?
A: One. Each missile is built individually. At 5 days to build and an average of 6-9 missiles simultaneously it doesn't take long to fill up one squadron.

Q: I assume cities will be the treated as a fortified target but on what will determine how many people get killed in the attack?
A: It's sort of a combination of the fortification and soft attack values. I fired a nuke (300kt) on Paris and killed 1.6 million people in one shot..sorry to anyone who lives there It does still need some balance checking though, I'll get back to you on that

Q: Does the "nuclear explosion" of the nukes only depend on the attack values?
A: Yes

Q: Where does the affected area come from?
A: The Attack range is used to calculate the areaof effect. I'll be doing some updates to that next week. I've been looking at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Nuke.html

Q: Where are the MIRVs?
A: Which ones? I've just been updated some of the Trident entry, but haven't noticed which other missiles are MIRVs. I still think we're going ot have to say the MIRVs just have a larger area of effect.

Q: On what does the resulting fallout depend?
A: I think it will be tied to the yeild, but I don't know yet.

I'm making changes to the missile section of the spreadsheet at such a high rate right now I'll try to update the spreadsheet available for download next week so you can see the differences. A ranking of weakest to strongest missile in each class would be very helpful if you have the time. I'd suggest sending that to me in e-mail though.

[Juergen]

"It's sort of a combination of the fortification and soft attack values"

Great ,thats exactly the solution that I would have suggested.

"I fired a nuke (300kt)"

How strong is 300kt currently in game terms (attack values)?

"Which ones? I've just been updated some of the Trident entry, but haven't noticed which other missiles are MIRVs"

Do you mean MIRVED,a missile containing MIRVs?
In fact most moderm ICBMs and SLMBMs do not deploy a single warhead but many MIRVs (usually around 100-500kt).
Tactical nuclear weapons like the Tomahawk and the Pluton are usually single warheaded.
If you are unsure look at:
http://fas.org/nuke/guide/index.html

"The Attack range is used to calculate the areaof effect. I'll be doing some updates to that next week"
You could check out,it has interestin sections on the effects of WMD:
http://fas.org/nuke/intro/index.html

"Q: How many missiles (the actual number) do you estimate are in one unit?
A: One."


In case of any nuclear missiles that assumption (one missile per unit) would be correct,but as soon as we start talking about conventional ones that number might be too low.
I doubt that a single harpoon missile can do much harm to ship,at least one that can defend itself.
Ships usually fire this missiles like these in volleys.
And a single AGM-154 JSOW wont do much hurt to a infantry unit.
At least I would be surprised if that were the case.
And the "saturation" missile type depends on a large number of missiles.

"I fired a nuke (300kt) on Paris and killed 1.6 million people in one shot..sorry to anyone who lives there It does still need some balance checking though, I'll get back to you on that"

I think "Nukefix" can be very helpfull in this matter:
http://www.nukefix.org/



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2003-12-11 13:32 ]</font>

[Balthagor]

You seemed to have missed a step... just because you build one at a time doesn't mean you FIRE one at a time...

aircraft squadrons can fire as many missiles as there are pieces in the squadron. A Standard strength F-18 battalion can be loaded with 12 exocets(2pts per missile, 24 cap.) on each of 18 planes for a total of 216 and fires 18 missiles at once. Assuming 15 missiles every five days, it would take 72 days to produce enough weapons to sink about ... 15 to 20 ships? How many exocets should be needed to take down certain kinds of boats? Aicraft carrier? Destroyer w/anti air? without anti air? I'm talking catching one ship alone, obviously layered defense will change the odds...

[Ashbery76]

How much does having Missiles as Units improve gameplay and fun?, from my angle it seems unnesessary micro-management!, and most people dont like a chore when playing games.

Has anybody played Victoria? it has huge amounts of micro-management, i would'nt want 2010 to go the same way.

[Juergen]

I didnt assume that just one is fired at a time,I was just wondering if the values that can be found on the spreadsheets apply to a single missile or whole couple of missiles (especially in the case of "saturation class missiles"),after all 160 is more firepower than a whole unit of B52 has
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As to the question how many missiles are needed to sink a certain kind of ship...I have been looking for an answer to that question but couldnt find some usefull estimates on sites like FAS,I will keep looking of course.
I have also been firing up "harpoon" to do a little testing

In the simulation I needed about 15 exocet missiles just to penetrate the air defenses of a "Kitty Hawk" carrier.
4 missiles homed in and damaged the vessel,it received about 11% percent damage.
I dont know how close this to reality.

There are a lot of factors playing a role when it comes to ship vs missile combat but I think there are some "standard cases" and will try to give you some estimates of how these standard ships would do against standard missiles.

There are 4 types of ships regarding air defenses:

1)Undefended,unless it is protected by another ship every fired missile is almost certain to hit and damage the ship.
For comparison this ship will need 5 missiles to be sunk.

2)Slightly defended
Maybe an ASW ship with a small SAM system and a few guns.
It may be just a little more but these defenses mean that some missiles will be shot down.
And the more time there is (because the rate of fire of the attacker is low) the more missiles can be shot.
The air defences system will have to be overwhelmed to allow the missiles to damage the ship.
This ship might actually take 8-12 missiles.

3)Medium defenses
These are bigger ships like some cruiser and most carriers or some dedicated destroyer.
The major difference between these and lightly defended ships is that their air defenses are capable of tracking and attacking multiple targets.
This means that there have to be more missiles arriving during a time intervall to overwhelm the defenses.
These ships would take about 13-18 missiles.

4)Heavily defended
Aegis ships and some russian capital ships (Kirov).
Their air defenses can target and attack a multitude of incoming missiles meaning that it would be very difficult to overwhelm them.
These ships are made for that kind of action.
I would say about 24-30 missiles are needed.

So basically:
The more missiles arriving at a given time the higher the chance to overwhelm to ships defense system.
This of course does not only depend on the missile but also on the launcher.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2003-12-11 16:23 ]</font>

[Balthagor]

I’ll comment about the missiles first, then about the level of management required by the player;

The B52 attack value you see is the attack value of one B52 on one pass, using about 1/4 of its payload. I think four of most of those missiles would be more than what one B-52 can drop. But you’ll get your chance to try it before long.

Thanks for the tests with Harpoon, I’ll probably give their values a certain amount of weight but I’ll see if I can find some data myself as well.

Your examples also seem to be close to some of the discussions we’ve had around here, which is encouraging. I’ll let you know how the next round of balancing goes.

Now, onto the issue of micromanagement. Right now I do feel that the missiles are the area of the game that offers the most micromanagement. Now, if you’d asked me when I was working on units I would have said the same thing about units. At the time, units did require a lot of micromanagement. This caused us to devote a chunk of time to refining the process and cleaning up the ways in which units where handled. The missiles interface is currently going through a similar cleanup. We’re going through every element to make everything as clean as possible. However, there are some things we cannot get around. Missile units play too big a role in current day warfare to just say that a plane can get as many tomahawk missiles as it likes. It’s also unrealistic to say that attacking a carrier is just as effective whether it is alone or surrounded by twenty ships. Remember that with missile units you can create events like the Falklands where a small nation bought some powerful weapons, strapped them to what airpower they had, and stood up to a much larger nation. Now I can say that using missiles is already easy. Find a unit loaded with missiles, right click the target instead of left click and chose “fire missile” from the advanced options. Or go to any unit and give it launch authority for the missiles it carries and the unit will find it’s own targets. The current difficulties is in building the missiles and sorting out where to deploy them. We’ve provided an option for “autodeploy” which finds a platform on it’s own but could send a missile to a unit other than what the player wants. With the fact we’ve managed to get the missiles into a game that already is at least a step above any other simulation out there and has not succumbed to micromanagement thus far, I can’t imagine we would let it get away from us. So far, any elements that could not be made simple and elegant have been cut or trimmed to an abstract. All remaining elements will be treated with the same critical approach.

I also spoke to George about this and he commented that in our last game, he did none of the micromanagement that missiles offer, and he won! So, clearly micromanagement of missiles, like any area of the game, is fully optional.

[Shutzen]

Just a note about missiles and the above post. Hitting a carrier will of course take a saturation attack, but taking out smaller ships might be a little easier than the above post suggests. (Not to take anything away from Juergen- you definitely know your missiles!) This refers to the Falklands War and specifically to the loss of the HMS Sheffield to a hit by only one Exocet missile. Here is one account-

Two days after the Belgrano sinking, on May 4, the British lost the Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield to fire following an Exocet missile strike. The Sheffield had been ordered forward with two other Type 42s in order to provide some sort of radar and missile "picket" far from the British carriers. After the ships were detected by an Argentinian Navy Air Force (CANA) P-2 Neptune patrol aircraft, two CANA Super Etendards were launched, each armed with a single Exocet. Refuelled by a C-130 Hercules shortly after launch, they went in at low altitude, popped up for a radar check and released the missiles from 20 to 30 miles away. One missed the HMS Yarmouth, due to her deployment of CHAFF, but the other hit the Sheffield and set her on fire, killing 22 sailors onboard.

Source- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War

Part of the Air-Naval Surface kill Summary from another site-

2nd Fighter and Attack Sqdn (2 Esc) Super Etendard flying from Rio Grande with no losses- Destroyer "SHEFFIELD" (4th May) and Support ship "ATLANTIC CONVEYOR" (25th May) hit by Exocet and both sunk

http://www.navalhistory.net/NAVAL1982FALKLANDS.htm

Granted, the missile defence technology was not overly advanced at that time but that was the reality of the situation then. That should also be the same in the game- if you have a very low tech level, your ships will show this. Most ships of a similar size and many much larger will not need 8 hits, 5 hits, or even 2 hits by anti-ship missiles to be destroyed. (whether they are sunk outright or lost to fire and then sunk isn't overly important in the long run).

WIth more modern technology, the type 42 has become much more effective (demonstrated by intercepting 2 Iraqi silkworm missiles during the first gulf war). But again, that comes with more advanced technology. The damage control systems are also improved. However, despite improved damage control systems, it still would probably not be able to take more than a couple of missile hits before being lost.

[tkobo]

It only takes one hit by many anti-ship missiles to sink a ship cruiser size or smaller.
As shutzen has pointed out in the Falklands war exocet missiles did just this (and these were very early models of the exocet)against destroyers and transports.
Also im sure if we look we can find test results for harpoon missiles against derelict ships in which it only took one hit.And there are much larger anti ship missiles than the harpoon.

Normally id go out and get some links for this,but do to the basement flood of 2003 (today) im not sure if i will still have a working computer if i stay online or keep it in use for too long tonight.
All my power connections and surge protecters were roughly 5 inches under water earlier and this system has already failed to boot once tonight since i started to test it.I already have no system sound.Hoping its just the speakers,i didnt like them anyway.

One thing to keep in mind,in real life the damage done by a single missile can have a very broad range,mostly due to location of hit.
But in your game weapons will have a set/static damage amount and no hit locations,so you probably should figure it on some kind of "average".What that average should be, i dont know.

[Juergen]

"The B52 attack value you see is the attack value of one B52 on one pass, using about 1/4 of its payload. I think four of most of those missiles would be more than what one B-52 can drop."

So to avoid any further misunderstandings,the attack (and defense) values Im seeing on the list is meant to represent a SINGLE tank,plane or missile.
And in case of the bomber,the attack value represent a single strike with a quarter of its payload.
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Unless Im wrong this system is alike the system the TOAW series uses.
Did someone try these games BTW?
I happen to have TOAW2 which is meant to simulate moderm conflicts and has an extensive database with units.
And along with the database comes an equipment list,which hapens to be in the form of a word document...do you think you could put it into use Balthagor?

The game also handles nuclear weapons BTW,I will take a look at it how it works.
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Q:How many building killer missiles should it take to destroy an airport? Our airport represents a very large airbase with multiple runways, hangers and construction facilities?

A:Well,as long as we are talking nuclear I think I can help you.
Most "tactical" nuclear missiles (like the Tomahawk) have a payload of about 200-300kt.
I asume this has a good reason,this must be about the yield with ensures that the base will be completely destroyed or at the very least disabled and severly damaged.
I have also been playing a little with the nuclear conflict simulator "Bravo Romeo Delta" and it confirms that this yield is enough to wipe a base like Murmansk (and I think this qualifies for a big base) off the map.

But maybe I will find a conventional answer to the original question

I also happen to have question:
A few days ago I asked a question and got an answer:
Q: Where are the MIRVs?
A: Which ones? I've just been updated some of the Trident entry, but haven't noticed which other missiles are MIRVs. I still think we're going ot have to say the MIRVs just have a larger area of effect.

In my next post I mentioned that most moderm ICBMs and SLBMs are "MIRVED",so any update here?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Juergen on 2003-12-13 13:11 ]</font>

[Balthagor]

Sorry I didn’t get to this sooner, work on the beta and all that…

Yes, the attack value shown is for one shot from one unit. To know how many shots a unit gets, compare it’s supply cap to it’s supply use or check “combat hours” in the unit popup-up in game. Now supplies do include both ammo and regular supplies, but it’s assumed to round out evenly. I have seen TOAW a little (David and George played it) and have looked at its data already, but thanks for checking. I may review it for nuclear since I wasn’t anywhere near ready for that last time I looked.

The building killer missiles, I was talking conventional. We’ve also made a change to damage for missiles to structures. Missiles do more damage, the larger the structure. This means it’s easy to inflict heavy damage on structures, but it’s very hard to outright destroy them. Using missiles to take an industrial goods factory from 100% to 35% only takes about 8-10 tomahawks, but actually levelling it so there is nothing left but a memory would probably take another 50 missiles. It’s just hard to truly level these major complexes and every building they would include.

On the MIRV/MIRVed question, I’m afraid you lost me a little. Can you point out one of the missiles that is incorrectly modeled?

[Juergen]

"On the MIRV/MIRVed question, I’m afraid you lost me a little. Can you point out one of the missiles that is incorrectly modeled?"

Well Im not sure how MIRVs are working in the game,if they are units that fall from the sky or if a "MIRVed missile" just means a larger "Ground Attack" range.

In the "Decription" Field I have noticed that the Trident you mentioned is said to have MIRVs and I can see that its Ground Attack Range is 10.
Other missiles like the "Peacekeeper" have an GAR of 0 so I took it that you assumed that this missiles (and others) isnt MIRVed.