Rocket are not flying ducks

In this thread you can discuss any thoughts you have about balance within the game. Does a particular unit need a specification changed? Is a stealth plane not stealthy enough? Do "Belli Bar" levels need to be changed? Let us know and discuss it all here.

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Sebastiaan
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Rocket are not flying ducks

Post by Sebastiaan »

I think the defence and stealth of rockets is way too low. It is far too easy to intercept a missle flying a the speed of sound. Units which are totaly unsuited to take them down (like stinger anti air unit) are very capable of shooting them down because of their high strength value. Also totaly unrealistic is it when interceptors act like an rocked defency system. How could they respont otherwise? for them they appear as lone helicopter flying at the speed of sound.

However, Currenly every ground- or air- unit which is capable of attacking helicopters can shoot down rockets as if they are flying ducks. Although the game tend to treat them this way, rockets are very easy to shoot down in real life. They require highly specialised dedicated systems. In order to intercept a incomming missle, you first need detect and then track the missle with a targeted radar meam. Then you need specialised guided missle or a very high rate of fire to intercept the missle.

Therefore I suggest to highly increase the stealth and (both air and ground) defence so it will be harder to detect them shoot them down
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Post by Balthagor »

We can't rebalance stuff like this on just blanket statements. Which missile did you see get shot down by what unit that you felt was wrong? We need controlled test cases so that we don't waste time "trying" a new balance only to find out it is about the same or worse.

There where a number of threads about this before, you may want to search for those threads.

Something important to remember, when you see "one missile" on screen, that is one pack of missiles and could be 1,2 or even 8 or 10 missiles so you need to be specific about how many missiles are launched when doing these tests.
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Post by Sebastiaan »

I have been thinking about this problem more and might have a solution. What we need is a seperate flag indicating if the unit is capabale of targeting and destroying rockets in flight. That way, we can exclude certain unit like stinger infantry and interceptors from acting as a middle defence screen.
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Post by red »

Missiles are intercepted by low-air attack. It's really easy.
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Post by Balthagor »

And with the fact that something like tomahawk flies at low altitude, there is no reason that a battlion of stingers can't launch to try and intercept it, especially since the missile must be flying almost directly overhead for them to be able to engage it and if the missile is headed for a facility in their one hex.
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Post by Sebastiaan »

You got any proof that stingers have ever shot down a cruise missle or have any proof that they are theoreticly capable of doing this? I don't think so. Cruise missles fly close at the speed of sound or faster. In order to shoot down a cruise missle with homing missle, the missle must at least be faster than the cruise missle. Stingers are capable of shotting helicopters, but shooting down cruise missles is a whole different ball game. Stingerr unit mainly rely on sound to detect their air target. Because cruise missles fly at the speed of sound, by the time you hear it, it is already gone or too late.
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Post by tkobo »

This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
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Post by Balthagor »

Thanks TK! :D

And you're incorrect on the speed of travel, as I posted in another thread, they don't even break Mach 0.8. Only ICBMs, SLBMs and some IRBMs/SRBMs travel at those speeds.

You're being vague again. You mentioned Stinger but not the cruise missile you're refering too. Please, include as much info as possible when presenting these arguments. Helps me find new sources of information ;)
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Post by Sebastiaan »

Taking about flying speed, it seems the rockets are not flying their maximum speed when traveling over the map. I might be wrong but it seems they fly at the speed of helicopters or even slower while they should be 3 times as fast.
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Post by Legend »

psst. your post is still a bit vague... as mentioned above.

What missile are you comparing and to which helicopter?
What map?
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Post by Sebastiaan »

Sorry about being vague. I only got the demo version so my experience might differ from the full version. When refering to slow missle speed I mean any missle that supposed to travel at about 1000 k/m. My observation were made on the paris map.
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Post by Balthagor »

What is the name of the missile you where firing?

(BTW Demo to retail version is the same for game play and how the missiles are handled)
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Post by Sebastiaan »

I think they were the MM-40 Block-3 Exocet rocket which supposed to fly at it maximum speed of 1300 k/m towards it target. Is it possible that rockets fly at normal speed (1/.2 speed) instead of their full speed?
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Post by Balthagor »

Thanks for providing the missile name, I'll look into and let you know what we find.
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Post by Balthagor »

I went back and spoke to George about this and looked up my notes (this stuff was set a while back now). It is true that the missiles to not fly at their "true" speed. This would be impossible, they are simply too fast. We move them across the screen at speeds that are relative to each other (A Mach 1.0 missile moves twice as fast as a Mach 2.0 missile) and we have done balancing of the attack values of AA and the defense of the missiles to get the outcomes desired. So the real questions become;

- how many missiles are being shot down now
- What kind of missile
- What shot it down
- How many units shot it down
- How many missiles SHOULD be shot down.

We did look into this during the development but I hear that a few ppl disagree with how it is currenlty done. Before we can make changes, we will need answers to all the above questions for various combinations of missiles and units and even then, the quesiton of how many should be shot down has few real answers. Not many modern day AA units and missiles have seen action. For example, it is impossible to know how many Tomahawks a Patriot can bring down, it is not something that has happened and any information from the US military is likely to be 50% fiction to satisfy congress...
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