NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

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davedashftw
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by davedashftw »

SeaQueen wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:17 pm
SchDerGrosse wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 5:08 pm (caveat: if I have no other radar/ELINT assets on the map, although the F-22 is detected at 21 nm, the Mig is unable to determine what aircraft it is, therefore the target though "certain", will remain yellow on the radar and I had to manually turn it to hostile for the Mig to engage it.)
Suggestion: If the F-22 is detected at 21NM, then it would be stupid for an F-22 to give up its stealth advantage by getting any closer than that. You want to shoot before the no escape zone at say 25-30NM. Will you miss more shots? Maybe, but if he can't shoot you then it's a good trade off.

It's a mistake to think of the tactical problem as "missile v. missile." It's more like, "missile, radar, and aircraft versus missile, radar and aircraft." Good tactics is a matter of understanding the whole family of systems in play and their interactions. The F-22, in the above example, has the potential to dominate the fight not so much because of the missile, but by denying its oppponent the opportunity for a shot. Your bad tactics (closing within 21NM) undermined that advantage, allowing the MiG to defeat the F-22. There's a tendency in the community to resolve warfare into purely system v. system duels. This is an incorrect understanding of warfare.

You're right, though, scenarios will in general require much more tweaking than just setting the AI to shoot at the no escape zone. Generally speaking, shooting at the no escape zone, is both overly conservative and unwise. It will force scenario designers to consider the threat, set the AI to behave reasonably according to that threat. A blanket, "no escape zone is the answer," is not the correct solution.
I agree with what you have said, but the whole tactical advantage of stealth is undermined when units have a 100% chance to spot enemy objects - back to my point of WHEN over IF.

A2A missiles are *extremely* hard to spot. Even the massive SAM missiles are very hard to spot unless you’re watching the contrails.

If a stealth plane like a F-22 fires an AMRAAM and guides it using someone else’s radar, the target shouldn’t even know until the active seeker engages, and by then it’s FAR too late for even the most skilled pilot.

Pilots I have spoken too who fought in Vietnam even with older A2A missiles have said there’s nearly no time to react when combat is WVR, about the range an AMRAAM seeker will switch on.

F-16 drivers from Red Flag that I have spoken to basically claim of you sneak up on the enemy, it’s basically impossible for them to avoid being killed with modern missiles.

In CMO shooting at 21nm basically guarantees the enemy plane will see and take evasive action, giving you a very low PK. Even novice pilots seem to have super super OODA loops and reaction times in this game.

In my experience using the F-22 and F-35 in game, you can keep them alive, but only with a heck of a lot of micro (this game is meant to be strategic right? Not a 2D flight sim?). They also burn through a lot of missiles, and completely sneaking up on the enemy and taking them by surprise simply doesn’t exist.

Getting kill ratios that we have seen come out of Red Flag between stealth and non stealth simply doesn’t happen in game. Inevitably your F-22 or F-35 will run out of missiles or end up in visual range and get shot down. Not unless you intensively micro every fighter you have. I don’t want to do that, I want the engine to be a bit better.
thewood1
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by thewood1 »

Again, I'll come back to it. Lets find a scenario where it makes a difference going from WRA default at 100% range to NEZ. Other than a slight change in tactics, I have found very little impact. There's a lot of hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth, but little actual work being done to prove the impact is non-negligible in the context of a full scenario.
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SeaQueen
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by SeaQueen »

musurca wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 1:57 am Choosing the "correct" range at which to shoot in a particular BVR situation would very much be a question of pilot experience and proficiency in general (i.e. across the eras that CMO covers. I couldn't say what kind of automation exists in cockpits right now).
You give pilots too much credit. This stuff is figured out in advance and briefed. It's really just a matter of reading the range cues.
I see what you're saying there, and I agree -- but what I'm suggesting is more doctrine-agnostic, I think?
Actually it's not, but that's all I can tell you.
To put it another way, right now the WRA window is currently all about "what YOU can do to THEM and when." But BVR tactics take into account "what THEY can do to YOU and when" and as far as I know, there's no way to handle this in your WRA right now without a lot of micromanagement. It would be great to be able to set your WRA to release your missiles "before a threat can shoot me and while I can still escape," without having to laboriously figure out what that range might be for any particular match-up.
It's not laborious. You just select what range you want to shoot at, and select "crank and drag," in the options menu. You can do everything you need there. Are there things they could do to make it better? You also make it sound like there's just one universal "BVR tactics," and there's not.
.. but it might be worth providing a more player-friendly option of delegating some of this to the pilot, under the assumption that they want to survive an encounter.
Ah... got it. You want to once again take player skill and knowledge out of the picture in favor of an imaginary superhuman "optimal" solution that makes the "best" decision in all cases.

Fiction at best, lame at worst.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by musurca »

SeaQueen wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 1:59 pm You want to once again take player skill and knowledge out of the picture in favor of an imaginary superhuman "optimal" solution that makes the "best" decision in all cases.
Yes, you’ve figured it out! I hate skill and knowledge! Once again I’ve come to this forum to destroy it for good!

You seem quite determined to have an argument over what is a very mild and reasonable suggestion—i.e. WRA might also allow you to account for MAR, aka some range related to the weapon range of the threat encountered, which is the sort of analysis and automation that CMO already does well elsewhere—so I’ll give up on being productive and just assume that this is one of those cursed forum threads that drives everyone insane.
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Gizzmoe
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by Gizzmoe »

SeaQueen wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 1:59 pm Ah... got it. You want to once again take player skill and knowledge out of the picture in favor of an imaginary superhuman "optimal" solution that makes the "best" decision in all cases.
As you know, player skills and knowledge won't help when we talk about how the enemy AI behaves when being set to NEZ. The enemy AI has no real ways to dynamically react to a threat when at NEZ, "except" for lua-solutions and such. To quote what you wrote earlier:
SeaQueen wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:17 pm You're right, though, scenarios will in general require much more tweaking than just setting the AI to shoot at the no escape zone. Generally speaking, shooting at the no escape zone, is both overly conservative and unwise. It will force scenario designers to consider the threat, set the AI to behave reasonably according to that threat. A blanket, "no escape zone is the answer," is not the correct solution.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by thewood1 »

"As you know, player skills and knowledge won't help when we talk about how the enemy AI behaves when being set to NEZ. The enemy AI has no real ways to dynamically react to a threat when at NEZ, "except" for lua-solutions and such."

Isn't that true of any WRA setting. As I have pointed out in previous posts. Almost all the scenarios I have played prior to Tiny, all WRAs were left at default max range. NEZ at least allows dynamic changes to engagement based on a target assessment. You could go even further by loading in a new WRA for certain locations and other parameters.
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Gizzmoe
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by Gizzmoe »

thewood1 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:25 pm NEZ at least allows dynamic changes to engagement based on a target assessment.
Yes, we, as the players, can dynamically assess that and micromanage our way through it. But the AI can't, only with the help of intricate scen design. Dimitris mentioned that all official scens including DLCs were changed to NEZ, do any of those scens use lua scripts for such target assessment and dynamic changes to the WRA?
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by thewood1 »

Not that I'm aware of because its only since tiny that you could efficiently do it. It has to be the scenario designer that does it.
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Gizzmoe
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by Gizzmoe »

thewood1 wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:57 pm Not that I'm aware of because its only since tiny that you could efficiently do it. It has to be the scenario designer that does it.
Of course :) Well, we will see what the future brings scenario design-wise, a lot of cool things I guess.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by maverick3320 »

thewood1 wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:35 pm I have no issues with anyone bringing forward scenarios that are supposedly broken by changes in the game and the db. It happens all the time. But nowhere near as aggressive as you came across. I'll also point out you are the first person I've seen on these boards actually asking for less realism. I have pushed back many times on some players wanting more realism to the point it hurts the ability to actually play.

You have yet to bring a specific scenario forward that you claimed was broken. You came up with a contrived and slanted scenario. As I already suggested. Put up a specific scenario thats broken and let people who can fix it, fix it. But claiming some portion of the game is so flawed as to break every scenario from past updates without any proof will generally get push back.

Stop doing tests with contrived scenarios that won't convince anyone. Play the game. If you find an issue, bring it forward.
TheWood1 is telling other people to mind their tone and aggressiveness on forums.

I think I've seen it all, folks...
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by thewood1 »

Thanks for the contribution. We are all in a better place for it.
Scorpion86
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by Scorpion86 »

thewood1 wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 8:02 pm These debates reminds me a lot of the discussions when the original Combat Mission game came out around 2000. The devs had done an immense amount of research around WW2 armored combat. The results in the game showed significant vulnerabilities in German Panther tanks. There was a large crowd of armchair historians that truly felt the Panther was so well designed and dominant that a single Sherman could never defeat a Panther. It took years to finally get some people to let that myth go. It was a shock to the wargaming ethos for some of those players. And there were players who harangued the devs to change the model, even knowing its not historical.

I think we are witnessing the same thing in these threads. It seems almost sacrilege to not hold the AMRAAM up as the pinnacle of BVR missile combat. It has shocked people that CMO has exposed the wargaming community to the gaps in the AIM-120 performance. There are other newer BVR missiles, like the Meteor, AA-12, or PL-15, that might equal or exceed the AMRAAM. But the biggest shock seems to be that the AMRAAM doesn't live up to the hype of the one-pager from Raytheon and its stable of in house and 3rd party marketers. And it might not just be the myth of the AMRAAM being exposed, but the myth of the PoK for BVR overall.
+1

Somehow, deep down in my heart, I always felt that the AMRAAM (or any other ARH BVR missile) was too good to be true. Having ARH missiles in an engagement with aircraft equiped with SARH missiles was practically a win button. It was such a qualitative leap that you'd wonder why the USAF just didn't hang a bunch of AMRAAMs on a C-130 with a radar bolted on to auto-win every air engagement. Now things are a bit more even. And more consistent with the (public) reports of low BVR engagement effectiveness.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by SeaQueen »

Gizzmoe wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:09 pm As you know, player skills and knowledge won't help when we talk about how the enemy AI behaves when being set to NEZ. The enemy AI has no real ways to dynamically react to a threat when at NEZ, "except" for lua-solutions and such. To quote what you wrote earlier:
SeaQueen wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:17 pm You're right, though, scenarios will in general require much more tweaking than just setting the AI to shoot at the no escape zone. Generally speaking, shooting at the no escape zone, is both overly conservative and unwise. It will force scenario designers to consider the threat, set the AI to behave reasonably according to that threat. A blanket, "no escape zone is the answer," is not the correct solution.
All no escape zone means is that if make a 180 degree turn and buster out the missile will still have enough energy to maneuver and probably hit you. It's purely kinematic. It specifically does not take into account factors like RCS, and electronic warfare. It's completely possible that you could turn 180 degrees, buster the opposite direction and have standoff jamming, for example, defeat the missile seeker. There's plenty of room for player skills and knowledge in there. It just requires more of it. I'm not advocating that as a tactic, mind you, but it's possible.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by SeaQueen »

It already does if you decide to use WRA that way. If, for a given threat, you decide that the MAR needs to be 15NM, for example, set the WRA to 20NM and the doctrine to "Shoot, crank and drag." Boom, you're done. MAR is taken into account. What else do you want to change?
musurca wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 5:14 pm Yes, you’ve figured it out! I hate skill and knowledge! Once again I’ve come to this forum to destroy it for good!

You seem quite determined to have an argument over what is a very mild and reasonable suggestion—i.e. WRA might also allow you to account for MAR, aka some range related to the weapon range of the threat encountered, which is the sort of analysis and automation that CMO already does well elsewhere—so I’ll give up on being productive and just assume that this is one of those cursed forum threads that drives everyone insane.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by musurca »

SeaQueen wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 2:07 pm It already does if you decide to use WRA that way. If, for a given threat, you decide that the MAR needs to be 15NM, for example, set the WRA to 20NM and the doctrine to "Shoot, crank and drag." Boom, you're done. MAR is taken into account. What else do you want to change?
What I’m pointing out is that MAR changes depending on the threat, and it’s very likely that in the course of a scenario your unit will encounter different kinds of threats with different MARs. So as it is currently, your choices are to either:

1) babysit the unit and quickly change the WRA if you see it encountering a new type of threat. This kind of micromanagement (which it seems CMO is moving away from, given the increasing focus on missions and flight plans) isn’t really practical on huge scenarios where delegation is crucial.

2) Set ranges for distinct “generations” of fighters — okay, fine, but a bit of a crude tool and what if the different threats are all in the same generation?

(Beyond that, the available range choices are somewhat coarse but that’s a separate issue.)

What I’m saying is that, if in reality pilots tend to be briefed on different ranges for various threats on the ground, let CMO calculate some conservative choices for what those ranges would be (it could be as simple as the enemy’s static NEZ on you, i.e. if you were a non-maneuvering target) and allow a selection in the WRA that assumes the pilot has been trained on them already. You would still be able to override these choices by setting a manual range if you wanted to (and there would likely be advantages here if you know what you’re doing).

This would help ease players into the world of BVR combat with realistic missile energy modeling, as their units would tend to behave more “intelligently” (i.e. not suicidal) without a lot of fiddling. It would also ease workload when playing larger scenarios.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by Gizzmoe »

SeaQueen wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 2:00 pm
Gizzmoe wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 7:09 pm As you know, player skills and knowledge won't help when we talk about how the enemy AI behaves when being set to NEZ. The enemy AI has no real ways to dynamically react to a threat when at NEZ, "except" for lua-solutions and such. To quote what you wrote earlier:
SeaQueen wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 2:17 pm You're right, though, scenarios will in general require much more tweaking than just setting the AI to shoot at the no escape zone. Generally speaking, shooting at the no escape zone, is both overly conservative and unwise. It will force scenario designers to consider the threat, set the AI to behave reasonably according to that threat. A blanket, "no escape zone is the answer," is not the correct solution.
All no escape zone means is that if make a 180 degree turn and buster out the missile will still have enough energy to maneuver and probably hit you. It's purely kinematic. It specifically does not take into account factors like RCS, and electronic warfare. It's completely possible that you could turn 180 degrees, buster the opposite direction and have standoff jamming, for example, defeat the missile seeker. There's plenty of room for player skills and knowledge in there. It just requires more of it. I'm not advocating that as a tactic, mind you, but it's possible.
I understand the concept of NEZ and I think it's great that the devs included it, and yes, there's "plenty of room for player skills and knowledge there", all I was trying to say with my previous post is that the other side, the enemy AI, can't make such dynamic decision when being set to NEZ. It can't take early shots to keep me at bay, there's no "diverse" WRA for it. Yes, that's the case for every WRA range setting, but with certain AAW the NAZ is really fucking short. I'm not saying that this is wrong compared to real-life, only gameplay-wise it's weird when the opponent doesn't react with "defensive AAW" when fired upon, for example...
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by thewood1 »

So should it have left at Max? Where there is almost no chance against a fighter?
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Gizzmoe
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by Gizzmoe »

thewood1 wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:08 pm So should it have left at Max? Where there is almost no chance against a fighter?
Certainly not, and you know pretty well that I didn't imply that, you can't think I am THAT stupid :D I guess... :lol:
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by thewood1 »

Thats what I'm getting to. I saw you post looking for dev's response on roll backs. Thats sounds like you want it back to the way it used to be.
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Re: NEZ: a Mig-29 can and will shot down an F-22..

Post by Gizzmoe »

thewood1 wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:22 pm Thats what I'm getting to. I saw you post looking for dev's response on roll backs. Thats sounds like you want it back to the way it used to be.
I'll never go back, I am in total love with the new version, I play around with it since the first Tiny-beta.
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