Homing-Indirect improvements

[Giani]

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In the late stages of the game, a base can withstand a fair amount of arty and even ripple hits, and it's fairly easy to rebuild or repair the damage, or fight back using CB. The real problem comes when someone has herds of archangels and their opponent isn't able to build sufficient archs of their own for their CB to be effective, so they end up being a sitting duck. The C-RAM would increase chances of the victim being able to research and build their own cluster of archs so that they can start fighting back using CB.
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And what if the player doesn't want to use artillery? He could use the C-RAM to protect from archangels/ripple rockets while he atacks with units. A C-RAM turret for tanks would be useful for that.

[aubergine]

Yup, a C-RAM turret would be useful to accompany tank groups, so long as it's main role is to protect against missiles (homing-indirect weapons specifically). There still needs to be a way to defend bases though, eg. with arty and rockets, so the C-RAM can't be too overpowered. Maybe if it's mounted on a unit it's effectiveness could be reduced slightly?

[Avestron]

One could take inspiration from WWII ships with regards to targeting systems. What if we focus less on dedicated turrets and more on target acquisition systems?

I am thinking of something along the lines of a commander turret on a hardpoint (or emplacement or even the 2x1 radar dome structure mentioned - though trickier) The turret has a range of command whereby existing turrets with AA capabilities 'may' be assigned as appropriate. A counter missile specific weapon or three would be nice to spice up certain ranges.

It then comes down to effectiveness. Some types of defenses would be more effective against missiles while others would have some more effect against mortar/ howitzer shots.

Missiles would be relatively easy to counter but would pack the biggest punch and would pose problems in mass salvos.

Mortars would be harder to completely negate - and would pack a lower punch

Howitzers would hit hard and would be difficult to negate but whose individual shells can be completely negated through kinetic and thermal countermeasures. Its just very difficult.

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Hence a whirlwind can trace incoming indirect fire missiles in the hope for a lucky hit or three, and a Flak cannon can reduce the effectiveness of an incoming mortar shell - but it'll be tough stopping a salvo of howiters shooting in on a position - the firepower necessary as well as the processing speed would need to far outweigh the unit's own cost so as to be very effective.

Furthermore - effectively protecting a base from all TYPES of artillery would be practically impossible, although a degree of artillary reduction would be feasible.

[Lord Apocalypse]

AA - Only good against air. This is due to the speed of the target and the factt hat its target has a much greater radar blip than the targets for a C-RAM system.

C-RAM - Could possibly be pressed into AA service but its normal target size is a tenth of an aircraft so if it did try to attack and aircraft it would probably shutdown trying to figure out which part of the aircraft it should target and fire at.

In the book red storm rising (Tom Clancy, should be the correct title) one of the phalanx systems gets forced to choose between 2 incoming missiles. If the system can not choose and continues to cycle through the loop the system will crash.

As I stated on page one a C-RAM system should have a very low accuracy rating to kill incoming rocket, arty, or mortar shells.

Another problem with this is the arc for most types of artillery. Any type of homing missile (ie cruise missile) would not follow a traditional target trac and would be near impossible to kill since they should mostly follow a low level flight path rather than an arc. Homing = point blank shots only. Indirect non-homing fired on an arc could very easily be hit at a much greater distance.

[aubergine]

I imagine that early game mortar/arty shells would be about the size of a baseball, growing to the size of a football in later game as they get more gadgetry and explosives packed in to them. Rockets would be about the length of your arm, growing to the length of your leg as they get more advanced. Missiles would be about the length of a leg (seraph) growing to the size of a civilian-killing predator drone (archangel) and likely trade speed for accuracy. I've not checked how such things work in real life, so these are all just assumptions that could be wrong.

So, the key factors affecting success:

* size of target
* speed of target
* ease at which path of target can be predicted
* speed at which C-RAM can hose zillions of projectiles in that direction

Perhaps the C-RAM's focus (and thus effectiveness for specific types of indirect projectile) could change throughout the game?

Early game:

* Focus is mortar shells
* Mortar shells are fairly slow, small, and don't travel very far, their path is highly predictable

C-RAM tech required:

* CB is mandatory pre-req
* Probably want Hurricane / Sunburst research too, and MG research
* C-RAM sensor accuracy
* C-RAM gun ROF
* C-RAM gun damage

Mid game:

* Focus is moving to arty/rockets
* These are faster than mortars, bigger projectiles and longer range. Their path is still highly predictable.

C-RAM tech required:

* C-RAM sensor range
* C-RAM gun ROF
* C-RAM gun range
* C-RAM gun damage

Late game:

* Focus is on missiles - primarily archangel
* These are bigger than arty/rockets, so easier to spot
* They are slower, but follow a much less predictable path
* Their range is from that of a mortar to very long range

C-RAM tech required:

* C-RAM targeting computer upgrades
* C-RAM sensor upgrades
* C-RAM laser target tracking
* C-RAM flak ammo (this also helps against seraph swarms)
* C-RAM target acquisition ammo
* C-RAM gun ROF
* C-RAM gun range

Summary of C-RAM effectiveness stages

* Early game - better suited to small, slow, arc, short range mortar shells
* Mid game - better suited to medium, faster, arch, medium range arty/rocket shells
* Late game - better suited to large, slow, terrain hugging, long range archangel missiles

Various C-RAM tech topics would have pre-requisite techs from LOS weapon research (mg, cannon, hpv, laser, etc). So players focussing on LOS weapons would open up more C-RAM topics than players who are focussing on ranged weapons.

Thus, if you have a turtle that's focussed on arty/missiles, they will struggle to defend against those same weapons - they'd still get C-RAM techs, but unless they go back and research a bunch of LOS stuff they'd not be able to research some of the tastier C-RAM techs until much later compared to their LOS opponents.

And, with C-RAM area of effectiveness changing as research progresses, a player who gets major C-RAM tech for dealing with missiles will protect worse against arty and much worse against mortar...

[JakeGrey]

As a player with a bad habit of over-relying on artillery, I like this idea a lot. One thing I think would enhance the balance however is making C-RAMs visible to radar detector turrets/towers, so that a player smart enough to scout out the enemy base before going on the offensive didn't have to expose their guns to counter-battery fire for nothing.

[Per]

BTW, master now has ECM jammers. It will be interesting to see how that screws up... I mean, fixes... long range weapon balance.

[Lord Apocalypse]

It written properly if will give spotters a known location to fire on.

Arty really need to be able to designate a terrain location to fire at for AOE rather than a direct target.

[aubergine]

I'd completely forgotten about radar jammers! I imagine they won't affect CB though, as CB looks at the projectile to work out where the weapon that sent it is located? For that reason C-RAM might still be necessary (and would likely be available earlier in the game?) to protect against CB fire (or just normal fire if player doesn't yet have jammers).

[JakeGrey]

I hope jammers aren't going to affect commanders or sensor units that are in visual range of a target, though; you can't jam binoculars, a map and a compass.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, I wonder if the ECM code could be used for implementing camouflage...

[Lord Apocalypse]

I doubt think it would. ECM would or should show up on the minimap as static or just a black circle covering the range of the jammer. ECCM, if added, could be used to nullify this to some extent.. Also, at a close enough range (even out of visual contact) a standard sensor should still be able to burn through a jammer at some point. It depends on how powerful the jammers in the game are supposed to be. A sensor could be made to penetrate a jammer at any point between 25-75% of its normal operational range.

What i'm unsure of is how it would affect the uplink center. Would it be able to jam the uplink or not??

Another thought... is the ecm/jammer primarily used to jam homing missiles, sensors, or both?

[aubergine]

From what I understand of the implementation, the uplink isn't jammed - the satellite cameras see the whole map from space.

But the satellite images aren't accurate enough to provide targeting information for the indirect weapons so LOS weapons or other direct visual strikes are required to take out the jammer before ranged weapons can truly kick in.

The game shows jammed units/buildings as semi-transparent so that players get a sense of what their sensors can't "see". I'm not sure how this affects AIs yet - can an AI see jammed units/structures at all? *added to my to-do list of things to check*