How to Defeat Decoys

[peterc100248]

After doing a bit of testing, I discovered a curious phenomena when using TIALD (of any flavor) against a ship. Setting weapons to "TIGHT" keeps the target ship from launching a single missile or firing a single round at decoys. At first I was really puzzled by this strange behavior, so I started switching sides to see what the target was seeing.

It seems that a decoy is always "yellow" and is never marked as hostile by the AI - and since yellow means an "unknown" it isn't classified as a threat under weapons TIGHT or better. The very same target perfectly picks out the real threats and marks them "hostile" and starts firing, letting all the decoys pass in perfect safety under weapons TIGHT. I have no idea how CMANO determines a real threat from a decoy that mimics a real threat with great fidelity, but it does.

I think, were I programming CMANO, I'd take a closer look at this. In the real world, the whole idea behind decoys is that the target cannot decide which is a real threat and which is not, and is faced with a Hobson's Choice of shooting or risking destruction. Decoys render "WEAPONS TIGHT" suicide in the real world. It shouldn't be too much of a programming issue since decoys are designed to imitate a real weapon for sensors - even down to the Mk-1 eyeball.

Edit: I should add that firing decoys is, in and of itself, a hostile act since nobody just shoots off a couple million bucks worth of exotic decoys just to watch the fireworks.

[DWReese]

Others will probably join in, but I brought up a similar issue concerning the recognition of decoys (such as ITALDs, etc., a few weeks ago. Ragnar researched the topic, and said that he found some issues and he has made some changes to the new database and/or the game engine. Those have not been published as of yet.

Others have alluded to new changes that will be coming in version 1.12 which will address some of these issues. My advice would be to wait until the new version comes out to see if it actually addresses your issue. Hopefully, it will. There is nothing worse than wasting a bunch of missiles, or not firing at a bunch of suspected missiles because something is perceived, or not perceived, to be something else.

[ComDev]

I see...

Setting weapons tight also means you don't fire until you have a visual ID, at which time you would also determine it is a decoy?

[peterc100248]

emsoy

Without going into any really technical or classified stuff (that I can't talk about), no. In the real world weapons tight means you don't shoot until your entire sensor suite determines that a target is foe and not friend. Going back to Vietnam and the advent of BVR air-to-air missiles, there was quickly perceived to be a need to identify threats particularly beyond visual range. At that time the solution was basically the same device still used on commercial airliners - the radar transponder, albeit more sophisticated, which added an ever changing code to radar reflections to alert the interrogator that he was tracking a friend. The F-14 Tomcat had a powerful visual (TV) system that could identify targets BVR. Ships have even more efficient systems. This was called "IFF" and, by definition, relies on visual ID as an absolute last safeguard to prevent blue on blue events.

It isn't 100%, as evidenced by the doctrine of warning everyone within "earshot" that intruding on a particular zone risked getting shot at by all parties involved. Iran Air 655 comes to mind as an example.

The advent of very efficient IRST has raised the issue to a new level since there are no emissions involved. The burden of IFF is greater because today decoys bear a striking resemblance to actual weapons visually. The ground based system used in Gulf War II called "Blue Force Tracker" is one answer.

The bottom line is determined by numbers. One or two questionable targets is one issue. Twenty or thirty unidentified targets is quite another. I don't envy the task of trying to implement this in CMANO. Maybe the best answer is set up an exclusion zone around your units and set all your units inside to weapons free? However. you'd also need a no-navigation zone ring around the outside of the exclusion zone.

[Dysta]

"TARGET #targetname DOES NOT FIRE, MOVE OR EMITTING ANY ACTIVE SIGNATURE FOR OVER [desired time length]. ASSUMED AS A DECOY."

Maybe the update should implement the "mark as decoy when target(s) has no response" (and the duration before the marking)?