Re: [GZG] FT: Modern Naval

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Harpoon handles this by putting everything on the same scale more or
less.
A ship in tactical turns may be moving 0.25" while a missle moves 4+" a
turn
depending on the missle in question.  Some can just STREAK out there but
are
mostly used to knock other missiles and aircraft out of the air.  I'd
have
no problem giving surface ships a "thrust" of 1-4 depending on how fast
it
can go with the vast majority doing 2-3.  Missiles would be doing 12" at
least per turn."

Hmmm. Colour me skeptical. Harpoon 855 kph. Ship... 60 kph maybe? That
seems
to me more like 1" for the ship and 14" for the missile. It's not 2-3
times,
it's more like 15x.

And as to the comment about guns and the nature of naval encounters:

Guns get more use than you would think. Yes, they can serve in the role
of
point defense, but they also serve in the role of close in defense
against
things like MTB, hydrofoils, and various high speed attack boats. The
kinds
of things which *can* do damage to your ship. They can also be of some
use
if you come under engagement (god forbid) in a harbour, some sort of
inside
passage, or in any sort of landing support operations.

The problem most Harpoon scenarios have is they assume an all out open
shooting war. In most cases in our world, you have piles of civilian
ships
plying the world's waterways. You often have to obtain *visual* target
identification. So your wonderous OTH missile is no good if your ROE
says
no-go. If you have to get into visual range, guns can be quite useful.

Also, note that most naval ECM systems can spoof. You may think a target
is
something and find out it is something else - they can spoof up or down
or
off into other classes. ESM is only so good at pulling out what a
contact
really is. If you get two separated in time, is it the same ship? Maybe,
maybe a second ship. If it had some positional or course uncertainty,
doubly
possible. Oh, and maybe it has changed characteristics....

There is still a lot of space for things like visual recognition and
gunfighting from ships. It isn't usually in open-war fleet battles
(those
will boil down to big missiles, aircraft, and subsurface threats). But
in
many other situations other than open war or not open see situations,
you
just can't blast away at an enemy contact without being darn sure of
what it
is.

I remember playing Harpoon long ago, double blind, and only making
passing
contact with the enemy (never getting into engagement range) - enemy
sub. I
also remember playing some sort of plane (PC-3?) with harpoons against a
pair of Sovs... Krivak and Sovremny or something? Anyway, one was a
missile
cruiser. I came in low from about 10:30 as it turned out. I detectd them
before they picked me up. I was able to dump an entire missile salvo ( 4
missiles ) the bank away and fly off board. The enemy players never saw
me.
The 4 harpoons badly savaged both enemy surface craft, in part because
they
could not get pivoted fast enough to bring their CIWS into line. They
tried
intercepts with countermissiles and failed (part of it was they didn't
see
the harpoons sea-skimming until quite late or something like that).

Harpoon is probably a pretty good simulation, but it can make for a
sucky
game at times.

TomB

-- 
"Now, I go to spread happiness to the rest of the station. It is a
terrible
responsibility but I have learned to live with it."
Londo, A Voice in the Wilderness, Part I

"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like
administering medicine to the dead." -- Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine