|
Post by amimai on Nov 21, 2016 23:39:20 GMT
In the Royal Navy alone, I've already counted 6 sunk by naval gunfire ... ECM and ECCM is something that would require a lot more in depth simulation of the sensors and command and control of remote objects than what we currently have. Would be awesome if we could get better fidelity in those areas in the future though ... I have 10 fingers... and in total the RN lost over 300 shipsabout drones, missiles, AI, and hacking: lets put it this way, answer me this : 1. can you make an AI smart enough discriminate between the only large objects in a very large volume of space? (remember in space there is only you and the missile, no pesky terain to confuse targeting AI with... 2. if you can not discriminate between decoys and target, but you have 10 possible targets and 50 missiles, well can you do division? 3. if you can make a missile/drone AI that smart, why would you fly by wire? 4. if the missiles are only using short range tight beam laser comm to communicate with each other, how do you jam? 5. how do you dodge an AI that is smarter then you in the art of hitting its target? because it is smarter, its faster, and it has better reflexes, don't deceive yourself once it locks on you ded... reason I ask these relevant questions : I once wrote a smart missile AI for a game, it took me about 2 weeks with 1 week spent actualy learning to code in java from scratch... then I abandoned the project upon realising that the missile Ai I made turned the worst stock missile in the game into the most deadly weapon in the game (thus making the game no fun)
|
|
|
Post by Easy on Nov 22, 2016 0:19:16 GMT
I don't think anyone is arguing that missiles and equivalent drones aren't highly effective as a dominant strategy.
I don't think we need to get into anti-missile missiles or drones or counter counters. It gets awful close to sub-capital munitions carriers with bells and whistles.
Just that missiles do have limitations and counters. Most importantly, eventually that armored troop transport has to land at the objective.
|
|
|
Post by beta on Nov 22, 2016 0:47:53 GMT
In the Royal Navy alone, I've already counted 6 sunk by naval gunfire ... ECM and ECCM is something that would require a lot more in depth simulation of the sensors and command and control of remote objects than what we currently have. Would be awesome if we could get better fidelity in those areas in the future though ... I have 10 fingers... and in total the RN lost over 300 shipsabout drones, missiles, AI, and hacking: lets put it this way, answer me this : 1. can you make an AI smart enough discriminate between the only large objects in a very large volume of space? (remember in space there is only you and the missile, no pesky terain to confuse targeting AI with... 2. if you can not discriminate between decoys and target, but you have 10 possible targets and 50 missiles, well can you do division? 3. if you can make a missile/drone AI that smart, why would you fly by wire? 4. if the missiles are only using short range tight beam laser comm to communicate with each other, how do you jam? 5. how do you dodge an AI that is smarter then you in the art of hitting its target? because it is smarter, its faster, and it has better reflexes, don't deceive yourself once it locks on you ded... reason I ask these relevant questions : I once wrote a smart missile AI for a game, it took me about 2 weeks with 1 week spent actualy learning to code in java from scratch... then I abandoned the project upon realising that the missile Ai I made turned the worst stock missile in the game into the most deadly weapon in the game (thus making the game no fun) 10 fingered-hand, huh? Neat. Destruction of sensors on the missiles themselves would be a quick and easy way to mission kill them. If the missile cannot see the target any longer, it must rely on inter-communication or hope the target hasn't changed velocity. Destroying the communications systems on the missile would render it blind and deaf. With lasers, destruction of sensors and comms is not difficult to achieve. If you can decoy missiles as you implied, and cut the number of missiles inbound by a fifth, that is a seriously significant amount reduced. Intercepting the remaining with your own missiles, lasers, and point defense is now that much easier. Intercepting missiles with your own missiles will always be a situation where the defender has the advantage. You want to hit the defending ship with your missiles, right? (or get a proximity impact). The defender knows this, so they can launch missiles with less required dV meaning they can have more missiles than you to intercept your own missiles. It is a stalemate that the winner is decided by who can bring more missiles to effect their goal. If their goal is to close with your launching ships to fry you with lasers or punch holes with guns, they can be purely defensive with their missile armaments. Missiles are not the alpha and the omega for weaponry. They are an indispensable tool to affect your plan, but if you rely only on missiles, an adversary can exploit that weakness and accomplish their mission more easily than if you had a more broad range of weaponry.
|
|
|
Post by cuddlefish on Nov 22, 2016 1:01:00 GMT
Lol "more or less" eh? Last time I checked Aurora's sensor model consists of drawing a circle around a point "maneuvering" on a 2d plane, there are aliens and fantasy tech, and there's no real attempt to do any kind of physical simulation at all. It's the CMANO of space sims, except where CMANO is a glorified Harpoon database made by people with security clearances, Aurora appears to be an inventory management database that has been hacked to "simulate" some bored software engineer's science-fantasy headcanon universe . Neither one contains a genuine systems-level simulation of the platforms being represented. CoaDE does. Both CMANO and Aurora resolve events with hard-threshold die rolls, where the thresholds are chosen by the designer's intuition. CoaDE resolves events with models from IEEE papers, cited in game. I really find no value in looking to Aurora for lessons on what CoaDE should be doing. If we're going to compare CoaDE to "playing" database-sims, we should really be comparing it to Rule the Waves (RtW), which is a FAR more playable sim than either CMANO or Aurora and FAR more accurately represents the actual challenges involved in implementing the kinds of strategies you're talking about. For those of you who haven't played RtW, the player is basically the Fleet Admiral of one of the major powers of the turn-of-the-20th-century world, who starts with an (optionally) historically-informed budget, research base, and legacy fleet, and proceeds through a career from ~1900-1930, if you don't get fired before then. The period is therefore the golden age of battleships and the craft you'll be dealing with range from early submarines and torpedo motorboats to super-dreadnoughts- here's the ship design dialog to give an idea of how it works: -snip- So, the "all missile fleet" idea is conceptually equivalent in RtW to going after a torpedo-heavy fleet that performs hit-and-run torpedo barrages, and is probably trained to do so at night (otherwise your fleet is going to get gunned to death by someone who's trained in night gunnery and has a BC or two to blockade you with). The player might choose Japan as an appropriate starting power, as they have slight advantages in night attack training and torpedo research. If you go ahead and pursue such a strategy, what you very quickly find is the following: ahh historyteaches us that 90% of all naval losses during WW2 were caused by torpedoes, aircraft and mines... also Behold! The ignominious deaths of the battleships! I think you can literally count the number of ships destroyed by enemy cannon fire during WW2 on one hand if your simulation does not match reality, its obviously not a good simulation Point of order: Rule the Waves simulates the naval races of the 1900-1925 period. I leave counting the gunfire to torpedo, mines and air-power ratio of losses in WW1 or the Russo-Japanese War as an exercise for the reader.
|
|
|
Post by amimai on Nov 22, 2016 1:35:12 GMT
So your point is that cannons were once effective way back when in the age of sail? Not surprised there, self guiding torpedoes did not really exist till ww2 and what did exist in ww1 was... quaint.
Less said about the aircraft made 10 years after the Wright brothers first flight the better.
Now days war is a battle of computers trying to outsmart computer with the occasional meat bag caught in the crossfire. I wonder if a modern naval weapons officer even knows how to do a manual ballistics calculation for one of the few guns found on modern warships.
|
|
|
Post by subunit on Nov 22, 2016 4:18:48 GMT
So your point is that cannons were once effective way back when in the age of sail? Not surprised there, self guiding torpedoes did not really exist till ww2 and what did exist in ww1 was... quaint. Less said about the aircraft made 10 years after the Wright brothers first flight the better. Now days war is a battle of computers trying to outsmart computer with the occasional meat bag caught in the crossfire. I wonder if a modern naval weapons officer even knows how to do a manual ballistics calculation for one of the few guns found on modern warships. This is not correct. The computers on eg. the Zumwalt are 1-board embedded systems that the computer you're running CoaDE on probably outperform by a significant margin. Computerisation and automation have significantly reduced crewing requirements for specific systems (while probably making damage control signicantly more difficult), but they have in no way reduced the expertise of the officers aboard- I mean, of course the surface naval warfare officers know how to lay guns manually, they practice this kind of thing all the time. The crew is in no way "along for the ride"- the Zumwalt's computers can't autonomously run or fight the ship. In any case, all of my points were organisational and logistical, not about specific technologies (torpedos are an analogy, not a specific argument against missiles in CoaDE). RtW is a passable sim of the pre-WW2 dreadnought era. It elegantly simulates many of the actually-existing problems associated with polities designing and building particular types of fleets composed primarily of capital combatants, which is the same general type of problem modelled by CoaDE. Aurora doesn't do these things because it's a science-fantasy 4X that gives the player total control over their faction. There isn't really an argument to be had here- actually-existing militaries experience the kind of problems modelled by RtW. Aurora is less good at showing those problems up, because Aurora is not actually trying to model actually-existing (or plausibily-existing) militaries. "Missiles are good in Aurora" doesn't tell you about anything other than Aurora.
|
|
|
Post by subunit on Nov 22, 2016 4:32:05 GMT
if the enemy is using a more conventional laser guidance option then diffusing the beam off of your ship/damaging the enemies guidance beam or blocking it, you could potentially hijack entire formations of enemy warheads. You won't hack them. The missiles/drones will use cryptography. Jamming is possible but there are antijamming techniques such as nulling the antenna in the direction of the jammer. What if you get a jammer between the missile fleet and the controller? Like if your "jammer missile" was just a really high acceleration drone that passed through the missiles toward the controller and then jammed "back" down the same axis the controller is emitting along?
|
|
|
Post by Easy on Nov 22, 2016 4:50:21 GMT
ahh historyteaches us that 90% of all naval losses during WW2 were caused by torpedoes, aircraft and mines... also Behold! The ignominious deaths of the battleships! I think you can literally count the number of ships destroyed by enemy cannon fire during WW2 on one hand if your simulation does not match reality, its obviously not a good simulation Scrolling down your first link: - Surface ships caused the loss of 61 warships (21.9%)
- submarines sank 56 warships (20.1%)
- aircraft sank 77 warships (27.7%)
- Mines caused the loss of 54 warships (19.4%)
- Shore defenses sank two destroyers (0.7%)
- one carrier, three cruisers, 15 destroyers and nine submarines were lost to accidents or unknown causes. (10.1%)
61 / 278 = 21.9% lost to surface ships
The large percentage of mine kills was surprising. 1/5th of surface ship losses were to other surface ships. I wouldn't call that rare.
|
|
|
Post by Easy on Nov 22, 2016 5:01:38 GMT
You won't hack them. The missiles/drones will use cryptography. Jamming is possible but there are antijamming techniques such as nulling the antenna in the direction of the jammer. What if you get a jammer between the missile fleet and the controller? Like if your "jammer missile" was just a really high acceleration drone that passed through the missiles toward the controller and then jammed "back" down the same axis the controller is emitting along? I'm sure there are plenty of methods that would work. But how reliable or realistic do you think your method is? You're interrupting communications and distracting sensors, you're not hacking encrypted communications and likely aren't causing permanent damage to any of the missile's subsystems. The weapons probably have enough instructions to continue mission without further orders. It could work, but it might fail to jam or cause meaningful interference the majority of the time, because that midpoint you're seeking is constantly changing. You have two friends, one shines a laser pointer on the other from long distance, both are free to move about. Try and stand between them to block the laser. (The good news is you don't have to actually block the laser, because you can spoof it from a near enough angle, but even that isn't a guarantee of effective jamming).
|
|
|
Post by subunit on Nov 22, 2016 5:07:39 GMT
I actually don't understand why the fact that battleships didn't pan out strategically in WW2 is supposed to mean that they were ineffective- American battleships pounded the shit out of the IJN Southern Force at Surigao Strait during Leyte gulf, and had no problem doing so in complete darkness with radar fixes only. They were devastatingly effective shore bombardment platforms as well, which is arguably the "real" purpose of a gun-armed capital combatant in any case. Speaking of the Leyte Gulf, the Americans almost had a CVE group sunk in the Taffy whatever# battle up North where the IJN battleship column ran into one with no BB cover. The only reason they didn't lose a bunch of CVEs was because the Japanese were convinced the Taffy escort (Fletcher and a couple of smaller guys, absurdly small craft) were cruisers and BCs lol. The idea that BBs didn't do anything is completely ahistorical.
Anyway, I don't know why we're talking about this at all because in my original post I specifically mentioned building a fleet of torpedo cruisers, not BBs. The picture has a BB in it I guess? All I'm saying is: CoaDE is a "realistic" simulator about being a fleet admiral and building a fleet of capships to go do things for your weird political masters, and so is RtW. There are things to be learned about the limits of pursuing strategies like "highly specialised high-performance missile/torpedo boats" in RtW that are nowhere to be found in the typical 4X formula.
|
|
|
Post by subunit on Nov 22, 2016 5:26:22 GMT
What if you get a jammer between the missile fleet and the controller? Like if your "jammer missile" was just a really high acceleration drone that passed through the missiles toward the controller and then jammed "back" down the same axis the controller is emitting along? I'm sure there are plenty of methods that would work. But how reliable or realistic do you think your method is? You're interrupting communications and distracting sensors, you're not hacking encrypted communications and likely aren't causing permanent damage to any of the missile's subsystems. The weapons probably have enough instructions to continue mission without further orders. It could work, but it might fail to jam or cause meaningful interference the majority of the time, because that midpoint you're seeking is constantly changing. You have two friends, one shines a laser pointer on the other from long distance, both are free to move about. Try and stand between them to block the laser. (The good news is you don't have to actually block the laser, because you can spoof it from a near enough angle, but even that isn't a guarantee of effective jamming). Yeah, I guess the question is, what kind of missile relies on a command-link anyway. I was kind of thinking along the lines of ATGMs but that's more like a drone, sort of. Maybe there would be a reasonable way of mucking with drone operators for long enough that you prevent them from sending the correction burns necessary to intercept your evading fleet? But then there's the microsat network- I dunno. Maybe it's all so redundant through that network there's no point in trying.
|
|
erik
New Member
Posts: 34
|
Post by erik on Nov 22, 2016 7:29:40 GMT
I actually don't understand why the fact that battleships didn't pan out strategically in WW2 is supposed to mean that they were ineffective- American battleships pounded the shit out of the IJN Southern Force at Surigao Strait during Leyte gulf, and had no problem doing so in complete darkness with radar fixes only. They were devastatingly effective shore bombardment platforms as well, which is arguably the "real" purpose of a gun-armed capital combatant in any case. Speaking of the Leyte Gulf, the Americans almost had a CVE group sunk in the Taffy whatever# battle up North where the IJN battleship column ran into one with no BB cover. The only reason they didn't lose a bunch of CVEs was because the Japanese were convinced the Taffy escort (Fletcher and a couple of smaller guys, absurdly small craft) were cruisers and BCs lol. The idea that BBs didn't do anything is completely ahistorical. Anyway, I don't know why we're talking about this at all because in my original post I specifically mentioned building a fleet of torpedo cruisers, not BBs. The picture has a BB in it I guess? All I'm saying is: CoaDE is a "realistic" simulator about being a fleet admiral and building a fleet of capships to go do things for your weird political masters, and so is RtW. There are things to be learned about the limits of pursuing strategies like "highly specialised high-performance missile/torpedo boats" in RtW that are nowhere to be found in the typical 4X formula. I wouldn't judge BBs' effectivity way or another just because of the turkey shoot that was the Battle of Surigao Strait. The vastly outgunned Japanese force never managed to fire a shot back IIRC, so the USN ships may as well have been completely unarmoured. Or there could have been even more aircraft had the same money went into them, carriers and smaller but more flexible surface vessels. BBs were horribly cost-inefficient for what they did and very expensive to use, while both aircraft and torpedo had developed in the interwar years and would continue to do so at a massively increased rate during the war itself. BBs were still powerful but also almost irreplaceable and navies were justifiably reluctant to committ them, doubly so with the often lacking information on enemy and general situational awareness. Poor SA and delays in command chain lost many ships, most famous example is probably the Scharnhorst. Until the last year of the war in the Pacific, both sides could field BBs in just ones and twos at the ends of their supply chains and even then only the smallest ones, and for Japan that meant losing a ship they otherwise could maybe have rotated back and repaired had they been closer to home(the Hiei). Air power's ability to project effective firepower over great distances developed quicker than anti-aircraft weapons, that have since 40s and 50s caught up in the arms race between weapon and counter weapon somewhat. Not surprisingly only few BBs and BCs were built during or just prior to WW2, and with only few exceptions the ones that were built did not achieve much. However in the coming decade we will see proper introductions of both high power laser systems, ever more advanced radars and AMMs and perhaps even the railgun in both naval and aerial warfare, and I believe they will move the balance at least slightly from dispersed power projection of aircraft and missiles back towards protected capital vessels that can carry the means to produce power. Nevertheless, no matter how capable missiles there are, boots on the ground are and will likely always be needed in real world.
|
|
|
Post by amimai on Nov 22, 2016 8:19:24 GMT
ahh historyteaches us that 90% of all naval losses during WW2 were caused by torpedoes, aircraft and mines... also Behold! The ignominious deaths of the battleships! I think you can literally count the number of ships destroyed by enemy cannon fire during WW2 on one hand if your simulation does not match reality, its obviously not a good simulation Scrolling down your first link: - Surface ships caused the loss of 61 warships (21.9%)
- submarines sank 56 warships (20.1%)
- aircraft sank 77 warships (27.7%)
- Mines caused the loss of 54 warships (19.4%)
- Shore defenses sank two destroyers (0.7%)
- one carrier, three cruisers, 15 destroyers and nine submarines were lost to accidents or unknown causes. (10.1%)
61 / 278 = 21.9% lost to surface ships
The large percentage of mine kills was surprising. 1/5th of surface ship losses were to other surface ships. I wouldn't call that rare.
most of those 61 kills were done by torpedoes fired from cruisers/destroyers, surface ships firing torpedoes, go figure... and there are 2 or 3 kills by ramming, yes apparently ramming your enemies was a legit tactic in ww2 once you were out of torpedoes . on the subject why battleships failed, and will likely always suffer from issues: to hit something with a cannon, that cannon has to be phenomenal accurate, to put this in to perspective at 5km range (about as far as its possible to see) being off target by 1 degree is being off target by 80m. Conversely the weight of a weapon system that can launch an effective amount of ordinance that distance accurately is huge, as in 111 tones(for Bismark c/34) not counting propellant and munitions weight. to hit a 100m wide target with a cannon at range you need: 10km : accuracy to 0.57 degrees 20km : accuracy to 0.28 degrees 40km : accuracy to 0.14 degrees 80km : accuracy to 0.07 degrees 160km : accuracy to 0.036 degrees 320km : accuracy to 0.018 degrees (real values are smaller, because most targets are not giant spheres, and you generally want to hit the middle of the target) do you even understand how small that number is? on a boat that is swaying in the waves you would be very lucky to have just 5 degrees of inaccuracy, heck firing one gun will probably throw all the others aim off by a degree due to recoil... on the other hand self guided munitions are light and accurate, with longer range. All the while they probably carry the same if not more payload then the cannon will ever be able to fire, and conveniently you can fire them backwards, sideways, and upside down and they will still probably hit the target... VIVA GUIDANCE COMPUTERS! . on the dig about destroyers and computers... yea, no? a purpose built targeting computer needs a fraction of the complexity that a general purpose machine has, it only does one operation after all. Effectively its a glorified calculator, but its still 1000x faster and more accurate at calculating that specific task then any human will ever be.
|
|
erik
New Member
Posts: 34
|
Post by erik on Nov 22, 2016 8:29:55 GMT
most of those 61 kills were done by torpedoes fired from cruisers/destroyers, surface ships firing torpedoes, go figure... and there are 2 or 3 kills by ramming, yes apparently ramming your enemies was a legit tactic in ww2 once you were out of torpedoes . on the subject why battleships failed, and will likely always suffer from issues: to hit something with a cannon, that cannon has to be phenomenal accurate, to put this in to perspective at 5km range (about as far as its possible to see) being off target by 1 degree is being off target by 80m. Conversely the weight of a weapon system that can launch an effective amount of ordinance that distance accurately is huge, as in 111 tones(for Bismark c/34) not counting propellant and munitions weight. to hit a 100m long target with a cannon at range you need: 10km : accuracy to 0.57 degrees 20km : accuracy to 0.28 degrees 40km : accuracy to 0.14 degrees 80km : accuracy to 0.07 degrees 160km : accuracy to 0.036 degrees 320km : accuracy to 0.018 degrees do you even understand how small that number is? on a boat that is swaying in the waves you would be very lucky to have just 5 degrees of inaccuracy, heck firing one gun will probably throw all the others aim off by a degree due to recoil... on the other hand self guided munitions are light and accurate, with longer range. All the while they probably carry the same if not more payload then the cannon will ever be able to fire, and conveniently you can fire them backwards, sideways, and upside down and they will still probably hit the target... VIVA GUIDANCE COMPUTERS! . on the dig about destroyers and computers... yea, no? a purpose built targeting computer needs a fraction of the complexity that a general purpose machine has, it only does one operation after all. Effectively its a glorified calculator, but its still 1000x faster and more accurate at calculating that specific task then any human will ever be. You should notice that the Brits were on the winning side of the war, causes of loss were different to what Imperial Japanese Navy or Kriegsmarine had. Anyway, about that accuracy. 0.0018 degrees actually is not very accurate. My rifle, nitrocellulose powder, brass cases and copper-jacketed lead projectiles going through thick air at supersonic velocity that is, has mechanical accuracy much better than that, and it'd only get better with a thicker barrel and/or more consistent or higher quality ammunition than what I've used.
|
|
|
Post by amimai on Nov 22, 2016 8:41:22 GMT
accuracy of guns suck -snip- You should notice that the Brits were on the winning side of the war, causes of loss were different to what Imperial Japanese Navy or Kriegsmarine had. Anyway, about that accuracy. 0.0018 degrees actually is not very accurate. My rifle, nitrocellulose powder, brass cases and copper-jacketed lead projectiles going through thick air at supersonic velocity that is, has mechanical accuracy much better than that, and it'd only get better with a thicker barrel and/or more consistent or higher quality ammunition than what I've used. what about your accuracy? or are you some sort of super robot what about your accuracy while standing upright on a rocking boat? lets see how good your balance is what about your accuracy while standing on a rocking boat with the target 15km away (btw that is past the horizon, so you can not even see it)? YOU HAVE ESP DON'T YOU! and while I myself am a proud Brit, I as a occasional student of history have to say this:
what, where, when? seriously the only reason the world won against the Nazi's is because Hitler was phenomenally stupid and invaded Russia, that in tern eventually allowed D-day by spreading Germany too thin. Really Stalin was pretty cool with Hitler killing of the west cause you know, western nations were kinda dicks to the soviets? If Hitler did not invade Russia, and Pearl Harbour did not happen you would be proudly flying the Nazi flag and frog marching everywhere with a little Hitler tash... or we would have gundams, really depends what japan decided to do with its half of the planet.
|
|