Jamming Effects

Take command of air and naval assets from post-WW2 to the near future in tactical and operational scale, complete with historical and hypothetical scenarios and an integrated scenario editor.

Moderator: MOD_Command

DWReese
Posts: 2294
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:40 am
Location: Miami, Florida

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by DWReese »

Kevin,

Thanks for the education concerning the term.

I suppose the term does apply to me.

At least now you may have a better understanding as to where I am coming from when I pose questions. I am never looking for a strategy to WIN the game. I am only seeking to make something as realistic as it can be, even if it is just a game.

As long as it provides enjoyment in whatever manner that it is being used, CMANO is serving its purpose.

Take care.

Doug
mikmykWS
Posts: 7185
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:34 pm

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by mikmykWS »

Holy crazy.

Mike
DWReese
Posts: 2294
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2014 11:40 am
Location: Miami, Florida

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by DWReese »

Kevin,

I know that your message was to Kevin, but I read it, as well.

Do YOU see CMANO as a wargame or a simulation? Or, is it a combination of both?

I ask this question because I have always treated it more as a simulation than as a wargame. Perhaps, I have looking at it in the wrong perspective all of these years. But, I get great joy at looking a some occurrence, trying to decide if that occurrence is working the way that it should, and then trying to test it to make sure. Usually, after much testing, I find that the existing circumstances consisted of other variables, and the program was functioning as it should have been, and that what I was seeing was simply an anomaly. On other occasions, I have been lucky enough to discover some little trinkets that could use a tweak, or so.

My guess is that the CMANO community obviously needs players, more than tinkerers, but it's the tinkerers who do a lot of the grunt work to keep this great game/simulation going. Perhaps some of these pursuits are overkill, and I accept that. But, at the same time, these guys have put so much work and effort into this project and I am certain that if someone found the slightest deviation from how something "is working", compared to how something "should be" working, then they would put it on the board to fix it as soon as possible.

Someone on the forum asked the other day if CMANO is dead? Well, as long as you have developers who continue to look into these small type of issues, then you have your answer. If a piece of software was DEAD, then no one would care anymore. These guys care immensely.

I've said this before, but these guys are great. They are the most diligent group of software developers that I have ever been around!

Doug

mikmykWS
Posts: 7185
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:34 pm

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by mikmykWS »

I don't think Kevin or anybody else has said half of what you're responding too. Nobody has said anything bad about the developers etc.

Please just have fun with the game.

Mike
ComDev
Posts: 3116
Joined: Fri May 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Contact:

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by ComDev »

The radar model is pretty good. You can even see how we simulate sidelobe jamming.

Add a fixed (ground-based radar). Switch side. Add an EA-6B with jammer on. Plot course so that it stays on the same bearing, traveling towards the target. Then add a fighter, flying in a circle around the radar, ca 50-100nm depending on the radar. Switch to the radar side, press play, and watch the contact fade out as the jamming aircraft hits sidelobes. The same is true for F-14 vs jammer escort and bombers. You see the bombers intermittently, in-between blank displays.

http://www.warfaresims.com/?page_id=2920#1010
Image

Developer "Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations" project!
thewood1
Posts: 9107
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:24 pm
Location: Boston

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by thewood1 »

There are games that are very good at both sandboxing/sims and as wargames. Any game that has a comprehensive list of units, unlimited geographical areas, and solid editors, can easily be both.

One thing I don't do is play to break it. No game is perfect and people who play games to find flaws suck the fun and life out a company and the community.
mikmykWS
Posts: 7185
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:34 pm

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by mikmykWS »

Exactly wood although all these ticks ended up on my block list never to be read again.

Mike
thewood1
Posts: 9107
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:24 pm
Location: Boston

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by thewood1 »

OK, if that helps you get through life.
VIF2NE
Posts: 82
Joined: Fri Jul 12, 2013 9:41 am

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by VIF2NE »

In my observation, the jamming effect is too big. Modern radars (Soviet - after Tin Shield (ST-68U)) are immune to simple methods of interference. In the game, one jammer can interfere with all stations. In RL, a simple tactical jammer can suppress 1-2 radars.

Against modern radars are effective jammers of equal generation.



Demetrious
Posts: 51
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2016 5:05 am

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by Demetrious »

ORIGINAL: thewood1
One thing I don't do is play to break it. No game is perfect and people who play games to find flaws suck the fun and life out a company and the community.

I wouldn't call them flaws - just the limits of the simulation. And every simulation has limits. That's never stopped simulations/wargames from being useful tools for military strategists and officers because the goal of a wargame is to accurately derive results. Usually, the more accurately you can simulate reality, the more accurate the results will be - but not always. When you come up against the hard limits of the simulation for whatever reason (practical limits of development time, information availability, and even the limit of available processing power,) oftentimes an intelligent abstraction produces more realistic results than the best attempt at simulation can manage. Classic tabletop games, with pen-and-paper rules-sets, tables of values, and physical dice-rolling for random number generation were more than good enough to be highly useful tools for actual combat commanders in the age before digital computing - such games accurately predicted the defeat of Graf Spee at the river Pate, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and even foreshadowed the catastrophe that'd befall the Japanese at Midway. And since everything had to be kept track of by human beings, even the most complex of those wargames, with many staff aides helping with paperwork, was less complex than most simulator/wargames anyone can buy and play for a few bucks! Considering how useful those highly-abstracted rules-sets were - as borne out by actual battles - you can just imagine how useful something like CMANO is. The professional customers certainly understand it. [:)]

So finding the limits of simulation is fine - as long as one also understands just how difficult designing a good abstraction can be. One has to take a dizzying array of factors into account, and boil them down into one simple, yet elegant formula that produces accurate approximate results over a wide range of circumstances. Moreover, you also have to decide where the baseline is, the "average," and oftentimes determining that takes a lot of research! This is the kind of things that military professionals and analysts write entire papers on. The most obvious examples of this in-game are the ready times of aircraft and the repair times of runways - the end result seems simple, but deriving those numbers with assurance they were accurate took someone - or several someones - a lot of research time.

In my personal opinion - and limited experience trying to design simple tabletop games - the abstractions are the most difficult and elegant challenges of game design. The quality of those abstractions often dictates the quality of the game itself - for all its detailed simulation of jamming and such, CMANO wouldn't be nearly as challenging as a game - or useful as a tool (and I strongly feel we should respect CMANO, even the commercial version, for its value as a tool,) if not for the turnaround times of aircraft. Or consider Harpoon, which had a beautiful weather simulation, complete with storm fronts and changing weather, etc; but CMANO's current one-weather-for-all-the-globe is better because it actually affects air ops, spotting, weapon employment and other stuff.

When you play games to "break them," you usually end up finding the dev's best work. Thus it's quite ironic that the loudest gripers (just as you say) focus their gripes on features that deserve the most praise.
thewood1
Posts: 9107
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:24 pm
Location: Boston

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by thewood1 »

The people I am talking about are the people that won't accept the concept that something is good enough. While continuous improvement is commendable business philosophy, so isn't understanding priorities and picking your battles. The devs are fairly clear about trade offs and priorities, there are just some people that will continue to drag them down a rat hole.
Demetrious
Posts: 51
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2016 5:05 am

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by Demetrious »

ORIGINAL: thewood1
The people I am talking about are the people that won't accept the concept that something is good enough. While continuous improvement is commendable business philosophy, so isn't understanding priorities and picking your battles. The devs are fairly clear about trade offs and priorities, there are just some people that will continue to drag them down a rat hole.

Precisely. I think it's exacerbated by how many people don't understand that the abstractions of a simulation are, by definition, the point at which which it's practically impossible to improve it more. It's especially baffling via a vis Command, because I've never seen a program that had fewer abstractions than this one does. Abstractions are such an integral part of game and program design that I simply assume they're in play anywhere they'd make sense, with Command, and several times I've had someone say "oh no, that's fully modeled." It's honestly rather uncanny.

Usually with this stuff it's the trade-offs forced by simple business considerations that confuse people more, as the factors are more opaque to the average end-user... but in CMANO's case the devs are wonderfully blunt about such factors (as you say,) and the depth of simulation mechanics are far in excess of what most games like this invest in, so the usual dynamics are reversed.

But that's why we've got a forum to ask questions on. [:)]
mikmykWS
Posts: 7185
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:34 pm

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by mikmykWS »

Demetrius this might be what you'd like it to be and that's commendable but my impressions are different. Some people use the Internet as a punching bag of sorts targeting who they think is listening. There are some that are easy to see because they are overt while others are more passive aggressive and just slowly drain their targets until the targets validate them somehow. In some cases it's just feeling smarter, jealousy or could be some long-standing obsession or they're just crazy. Obviously, its part of the business that must be endured but there is solace in knowing most people aren't that [:)]

I'm now lucky enough to not have to anymore and I honestly say a prayer for all that have to put up with this nonsense still. It's not good

Mike
mikmykWS
Posts: 7185
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:34 pm

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by mikmykWS »

Here's an example of an awesome inspiring string.

tm.asp?m=4305274

Notice gameplay oriented, nice, collaborative, focused on getting something done. You see this pattern with these guys always.

Makes me want to play the game.

Mike
Scorpion86
Posts: 262
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:19 pm

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by Scorpion86 »

A tutorial mission explaining and demonstrating the effects of jamming, active vs. passive on detection would be nice...
Demetrious
Posts: 51
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2016 5:05 am

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by Demetrious »

ORIGINAL: mikmyk
Demetrius this might be what you'd like it to be and that's commendable but my impressions are different. Some people use the Internet as a punching bag of sorts targeting who they think is listening.

I'm glad you said it! I always try to be positive and polite so I didn't want to come out and say what we all know - that there's certain people in these more esoteric hobbies - hardcore simulation wargaming being one of them - whom are... special. In the social services sense of "special." And then there's others that are just, er, gibbering lunatics. Anticipating the screeching of these special specimens in order to dampen their impact is one of the biggest pains in the rear end any devteam has to deal with.
while others are more passive aggressive and just slowly drain their targets until the targets validate them somehow.

I know exactly the kind you're talking about. They're a uniquely slimy kind of individual who glories in stirring the pot, and the harm they do is easily seen in the OP's long posts trying to reassure everyone that he's not one of "those guys." They actually make it more difficult to communicate!
Here's an example of an awesome inspiring string.

The best part of that is how they're comfortable with one another and clearly enjoying the process - that's what you get from a good community. Ours here certainly seems to self-select for good folk.
A tutorial mission explaining and demonstrating the effects of jamming, active vs. passive on detection would be nice...

I might have a crack at that. You can turn god's eye view on and off via scripting, right?
Scorpion86
Posts: 262
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:19 pm

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by Scorpion86 »

ORIGINAL: Demetrious
A tutorial mission explaining and demonstrating the effects of jamming, active vs. passive on detection would be nice...

I might have a crack at that. You can turn god's eye view on and off via scripting, right?

I have no idea. I tried making a mission for that (my first contact with the editor ever) using portuguese assets, but they are grossly innacurate or missing, so I've delved into research so the devs could update the DB...
Demetrious
Posts: 51
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2016 5:05 am

RE: Jamming Effects

Post by Demetrious »

ORIGINAL: Scorpion86
I have no idea. I tried making a mission for that (my first contact with the editor ever) using portuguese assets, but they are grossly innacurate or missing, so I've delved into research so the devs could update the DB...

It's no great issue - I can just specify in the briefing that the mission should be played from the editor, and send messages to the player to press ctrl-V at appropriate times so they can see real aircraft location versus what their sensors can see.
Post Reply

Return to “Command: Modern Operations series”