Problem with ARMs

[MikeSinn]

I have been playing the DB2000 version of Midway Revisited and have encountered a problem with using anti-radiation missiles.

After sighting the Russian SAG, I thought I would send a flight of A-7s armed with Shrikes to blind the enemy taskforce. I launched 6 A-7s and an E-6 and sent them on their way to towards the enemy.

According to the database, the Shrike missile has a range of about 20 miles. Once the A-7s were within 15 miles of the first few any ships, I sent them to medium altitude and ordered them to fire their Shrikes. Even though the flight was less than 15 miles to the target, I recieved a pop-up window indicating that the units were not within range. I flew my A-7s to within 10 miles and tried firing again. Yet once again, I received a message that my units were not within range. After that, my A-7s were shot out of the sky...

I then ran an test using a single A-7. The results were the same as before. I flew the A-7 to within 12 miles of the first ship and was still not able to fire. I have attached a zip file which contains the scenario at three different stages:

Inbound.Sav - 1 A-7 and 1 A-6 Prowler are inbound towards the enemy SAG
In-Range.Sav - The A-7 is in range to fire a Shrike at the Adm Tributs
Close-In.Sav - The A-7 is within 15 miles of the Adm Tributs and still can not fire a ShrikeDoes anyone have any thoughts on why this would occur or how to better employ Shrikes? Oh and before anyone asks, Yes I verified that the target was radiating before I tried to fire http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/image/s2.gif

[Herman Hum]

Thanks for putting up the saved games. I've opened them up and taken a look and have a possible explanation for the behaviour.

I confirm what you are seeing with the following image. The Radar of the SAG is definitely ON as you can see in the first image.

I wanted to find out exactly what was happening so I made up a test file with just a Radar and a Corsair. The file is attached.

The Corsair has been ordered to attack the radar. It closes on the target. Instead of firing at maximum range, it fires at about 6nm. Now, in the SAVED game that you posted, the Corsair is shot down well before it reaches 6nm so you cannot see the Shrikes launch. Previously, in 3.6.3 and in 3.7.0, the ARMs would fire at maximum range.

As a lark, I also put in a E/A-18 Growler armed with HARM. When it was ordered to fire on the Radar facility, it showed a "Weapon Cannot Acquire Target" message. The plane kept closing and only fired at the same 6nm range.

This behaviour is definitely problematic. The HARM and Shrike have ranges of 70nm and 20nm, respectively. To force them to close to 6nm before firing is definitely unacceptable. I am not a programmer, but I strongly suspect that this behaviour is created by the new 'feature' added by AGSI:

Changes to non-BOL capable non-Datalinked weapons

Weapons that don't have the BOL flag set and that don't have a Datalink to the launching platform will now have to be able to see their target before they are launched. These weapons are assumed to require their own sensors to lock on to the target (think Sidewinder) before they are launched. DB authors will probably want to set the BOL flag or add datalinks to most SSMs as most of those weapons are able to fly part of the way without direct lockon to their target.

Now, this might mean that all third-party Databases now have to change in order to accommodate this new code. I hope that this helps.

[MikeSinn]

Herman,

Thanks for the follow-up. I believe that I can confirm your assumption. In further testing, I was able to sneak an A-7 to within 5 miles of the Adm. Tributs. At that point I was able to fire to Shrikes before being blown out of the sky.

While this may not be a bug, it certainly is a great example of the "Law of unintended consequences" :laugh:

I am going to run a similar test using the default database and see if the issue exists there as well. I will post my results later tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks,
Mike

[Herman Hum]

Herman,

Thanks for the follow-up. I believe that I can confirm your assumption. In further testing, I was able to sneak an A-7 to within 5 miles of the Adm. Tributs. At that point I was able to fire to Shrikes before being blown out of the sky.

While this may not be a bug, it certainly is a great example of the "Law of unintended consequences" :laugh:
Okay, I did a bit more investigating. The DB2k sensor for the HARM / Shrike missile is listed with a range of 5nm. I suspect that this reason why the missiles did not fire before that point. They simply could not 'see' the target. :crosseye:

Now, the PlayersDB (http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forums/downloads.php?do=cat&id=119) has apparently already accounted for this new 'feature'. The sensor for the HARM missiles in the PlayersDB (http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forums/downloads.php?do=cat&id=119) have a range of 80nm set for it and thus launch at the maximum range as specified. Looks like the DB editors are going to have to modify their databases to reflect this new reality.

Great to see a novice player digging into the guts of the game in this manner. You wouldn't believe all the great things you can discover with testing like you are doing. :smoke:

[emsoy]

Hi MikeSinn, thanks for pointing out this one. The database has been updated and the missiles should work fine now. You can get the updated database here:

http://www.harpoonhq.com/harpoon3/scenarios/db2000v6532beta.zip

Strangely enough, this problem only affected a handful of the missiles in the database. Weapons such as the ALARM, ARMIGER, ARMAT works fine in the old datbase. So I've gone through all ARM missiles and made sure they have the right flags set to work around certain new bugs in 3.7. The weapons work fine in 3.6 of course.

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