Re: Re: Re: [GZG] Revised Salvo Missiles Update

John Tailby wrote:

>Why would range of engagement with a missile affect it's chance of a 
>hit?  I can see situations where missiles have a harder chance locking
on 
>up close than they do at a distance. Missile chance to hit would likely
be 
>a function of sensor lock from parent ship - ECM with distance a
neutral 
>factor.

In reality, you mean? The longer the missile has to fly to reach its
target 
the more time the target's ECM has to break its target lock and/or
simply 
outmanoeuvre the missile; and the farther away the the missile's parent 
ship is from the target, the greater the time lag on its sensor returns 
becomes and the less up-to-date the targetting data the parent ship can 
send to the missile will be. Distance is far from neutral for missile 
engagements.

>What feel do you want with your missiles?
>If you use a couple of 20 century models as examples.
>If you want the game to feel like 20C naval warfare then your missile 
>speed / engagement envelope needs to be much larger than the speed of
the 
>ships. Missiles lauched today are thousands of times faster than the
speed 
>of a warship

Er... if you used a little less hyperbole and shaved a zero or two off
from 
that "thousands", your example would probably be more convincing.

A missile "thousands of times faster" than the warship it is targetting 
would fly at speeds of Mach 50+ (at sea level, since that's where most
of 
today's warships tend to be located). Not even solid anti-tank
projectiles 
can fly that fast without melting within a fraction of a second...

Actual anti-ship missile speeds today are generally in the Mach 0.5 - 3 
range; the fastest Russian supersonic ship-killers might go up to Mach
5, 
but that's *really* extreme.

IOW, typical missiles today fly 10-50 times faster than the ships they
are 
targetting. Still a big difference compared to the anti-air situation
where 
missiles could even be *slower* than their would-be targets on occasion,

but the gap to direct-fire weapons is even larger.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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