CLOS SAM Systems

[Rhino]

Today we would like to introduce you to a brand new gameplay feature coming in v1.4, Command to Line-Of-Sight Guidance for Surface-to-Air Missiles, or CLOS SAMs for short.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mW-a6vstsQ

The Definition of Command to Line-Of-Sight (CLOS) is a type of Missile (or Bomb) Guidance where a ground station (or aircraft) relay signals to a guided missile via radio control (or possibly through a wire connecting the missile to the launcher) and tells the missile where to steer in order to intercept its target.

Command to Line-Of-Sight (CLOS) Guidance is the oldest and original form of precision guidance for a weapon, first developed and used (with successes) during World War II on the Fritz X Guided Anti-Ship Glide Bomb and forms of this guidance are still used widely today.

Many of you will be familiar with the Command to Line-Of-Sight (CLOS) Guidance Concept on many of our Guided Anti-Tank Missiles ingame such as the TOW, MILAN, HJ-8, ERYX, etc. But as of yet, none of our Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) have had CLOS Guidance ingame, and instead have only used the standard Infrared/Radar Homing Guidance, where you lock onto the target, fire, and the missile does the rest, as best it can.

While Command to Line-Of-Sight (CLOS) Guidance for Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) on the face of it may sound like a really bad idea, there are quite a few advantages to it, as well as some of the obvious disadvantages.

CLOS Advantages

1. No "Lock-On" Delay until you can fire the missile at the target.
2. No Missile Tracking/Locked Warning given to the aircraft, the only sign that you're being engaged is of the possible sighting of the missile being launched and/or it flying towards you.
3. Flares and most other countermeasures have no affect on the missiles guidance. However in reality their are special radio wave jammers that can jam the signal to some CLOS weapons, but there is nothing ingame that can affect them.
4. You can potentially use the weapon against ground targets as an AT weapon with veritable damage rates depending on the missile.

CLOS Disadvantages

1. Battlefield obscurants, such as smoke, can degrade the ability of the missile operator to see the target and as such, engage it.
2. The "skill level" of the operator is critical since, unlike infra-red guided missiles, the operator has to track the target exactly with the sighting unit. If the aircraft detects or predicts the missile launch, it has the whole period of the missile flight time to engage in avoidance manoeuvres, which adds additional challenge to the missile operator's target-tracking task.

One of the main reasons why CLOS Guidance for SAMs hasn't been seen in PR yet, is largely because only a few Modern SAM Systems still use it. This is mainly down to it being out of favour for years with most countries, but stubbornly a few European Countries have stuck with CLOS SAM Systems, mainly the British, despite their pretty poor combat record. As such we only actually have had two SAM Systems ingame that use CLOS Guidance in real life (the Alvis Stormer HVM and the 2K22 Tunguska), till now that is!

One of the main conflicts CLOS SAM Systems were used was in the 1982 Falklands (/Malvinas) War, where they were largely fielded by both sides throughout the conflict on a number of different platforms. With the upcoming v1.4 update, including the full integration of PR:Falklands we have managed to create three (3) of these CLOS SAM Systems used during the war, complete with ingame CLOS Guidance! These include the Tigercat SAM, the GWS-24 Sea Cat SAM and the Blowpipe Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS). Although we are only going to be showing you the Tigercat and Blowpipe Systems today (along with the Stormer and Tunguska being updated with CLOS), the GWS-24 Sea Cat we will be showing off in a few days time so keep your eyes open for that!



Tigercat SAM

(Click to Enlarge)

Design & Info

The Tigercat SAM System is a land-based, mobile version of the Sea Cat (the original Naval version used on ships), developed by Shorts in the mid 1960's. Based on a three-round, trailer-mounted launcher towed by a Land Rover, and a second trailer carrying the fire control equipment. Once in position, the launcher and director are set up, levelled on jacks and connected to each other by cable links. The director consists of a control officers console and a pedestal director, which has a powerful binocular sight. Once a target has been acquired and identified, the operator launches a missile and guides it along the line of site to the target by means of a joystick, command inputs being passed by radio link.

The Tigercat Missile is identical with the Sea Cat Missile with only the firing platforms being unique. The Tigercat (/ Sea Cat) missile, is a stumpy, sub-sonic missile powered by a two-stage solid fuel rocket motor. It is steered in flight by four swept, cruciformly arranged wings and is stabilised by four small tail fins.

Highly successful firing trials by the RAF Regiment began on November 16, 1967. Tigercat was used exclusively within the British Armed Forces by the 48th Squadron RAF Regiment between 1967 and 1978 with 12 Launcher Units. But by the 1980's the Tigercat was seen as obsolete due to increasing speed of high flying, supersonic aircraft. In these cases, the manually guided subsonic missile was totally unsuited to all but head-on interceptions and then only with adequate warning and all were eventually replaced in British service by the new Rapier SAM.

Tigercat SAM Systems were (and some still are), also operated by India, Iran, Jordan, South Africa, Qatar and Argentina.

Argentina deployed the Tigercat operationally during the Falklands conflict. No kills or any kind of success were initially believed to have been achieved by the marine-manned Tigercats, but according to a more recent report, a Tigercat missile scored a near-miss on the 12th of June, which scored substantial damage to RAF Harrier GR.3 (XW 919), and spraying the local powerhouse roof with shrapnel, leaving the aircraft with category 4 damage while attacking Argentinian artillery positions on Sapper Hill. But nevertheless, with the plane's aft fuselage on fire, the pilot succeeded in landing her safely back on the deck of HMS Hermes. A Tigercat missile is also somewhat believed to have defeated the first British attempt to use laser-guided Paveway II bombs on 31 May 1982, apparently destroying one of the recently delivered 'smart bombs' launched, while in mid-flight. But there is no solid evidence for this claim has been found and it is also thought that the ground based designator, turned on his laser designator too soon, making the bomb fall short of its target instead. A total of 7 launchers were captured by the British by the end of the conflict, some being ex-RAF units bought by Argentina only a few years before the conflict began.

In-Game

This weapons system will be used by both the Argentina and British, 1980's era Factions. Although the British didn't deploy the Tigercat in the 1982 Falklands (/Malvinas) War, they did deploy the Rapier FSA/B SAM system, which was pretty similar to the Tigercat in many ways with both using CLOS Guidance etc, and they had only recently replaced the Tigercat with it with-in the British Armed Forces. So since we don't have a Rapier SAM yet, the Tigercat will be serving as a place holder for it for the time being. You may also see it being used in small numbers by the Modern MEC Faction, since a few Middle Eastern countries still have a few of these systems in service.

While the Tigercat SAM during the Falklands (/Malvinas) War was seriously obsolete and too slow to engage supersonic aircraft other than with head-on interceptions, in-game its combat performance will not be anything like as bad as it was in real life. This is down to a few factors.
Firstly, when engaging the jets flying at low-level, they are not at their top speed, and the missile can, although very slowly, catch up to a Mirage or Dagger flying away. Although if they really floor it, they can sometimes escape out of the view distance before the missile has fully caught up but this all depends on how far away the jet was from the launcher when the missile was launched and what speed they are going. This also makes for awesome moments where the pilot watches this missile slowly creeping up on him from behind as he tries to accelerate away as fast as he can from this swirling terror just behind him!
Secondly, technically speaking in-game this weapon will be using Semi-Automatic Command to Line-Of-Sight (SACLOS) Guidance, where in real life, this weapon only had the most basic Manual Command to Line-Of-Sight (MCLOS) Guidance. The big difference being MCLOS means you have to both visually track, and manually steer the missile with a separate controller onto the target, where SACLOS means you just visually track the target and a computer calculates what moves the missile needs to make to get to where you are aiming it to go. This is party for gameplay reasons, but also because the BF2 Engine has no decent method of simulating MCLOS Guidance.
Thirdly, you will also not have to compensate for things like wind or other factors in-game like you would need to in real life to keep the missile on course, especially for a MCLOS weapon like this.
All in all While this missile system is hard to use, with a bit of practice you can find that in some cases, its easier to score a kill with this than normal IR Missiles due to the advantages listed above. Not to mention you get three missiles to fire off in one go before having to reload

Credits

Model: [R-CON]lucky.BOY & [R-DEV]Rhino
Texture: [R-DEV]CTRifle & [R-DEV]Rhino
Export: [R-DEV]Rhino
Coding: [R-DEV]Rhino, [R-DEV]Mats391 & [R-CON]Arab
Public Development Topic: [Model] Tigercat SAM (PR:F) [WIP]



Blowpipe MANPADS

(Click to Enlarge)

We actually showed off our Shorts Blowpipe MANPADS almost two years ago now here:
[Weapon] Shooting Pheasants with a Drainpipe - Project Reality Forums

Spoiler for Shooting Pheasants with a Drainpipe - Highlight Post:

As a little special Easter gift from us here at Project Reality:BF2, here's a little something I've been working on for PR:Falklands; the Shorts Blowpipe - Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS).

Based off this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M78gadYbQNs

Design & Info

The Shorts Blowpipe is a Manual Command to Line Of Sight (MCLOS), man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) developed in 1975 for the British Army and Royal Marines.

The missile is shipped as a single round in a storage cylinder/firing tube. The aiming unit is clipped to the launch tube and fired from the operator's shoulder. To reduce the overall size of the container, the rear fins of the missile are stored in the larger diameter cylinder at the front of the tube (this also contains the Yagi antenna for transmitting guidance signals); during firing the fins slip onto the rear of the missile as it flies through and are held there by heat-activated adhesive tapes. This gives the launch container a unique shape, seemingly oversized at the front and extremely thin at the rear. The missile is powered by a short duration solid rocket for launch, then by a main sustainer rocket once it is well clear of the launch tube.

Guidance of the Blowpipe is initially semi-automatic with the missile gathered to the centre of the sight's crosshairs by the infrared optic atop the aiming unit. Two to three seconds after launch, missile guidance is switched to fully MCLOS mode, and the operator regains full control of the missile. The operator has to steer the missile all the way to its target manually via a small thumb joystick.

Detonation is either by proximity or contact fuse. In emergencies, the operator can end an engagement by the operator shutting off the power to the transmitter with the system switch, after which the missile will immediately self-destruct. The aiming unit can then be removed from the empty missile container and fitted to a new round.

Blowpipe was also developed as a SAM for submarines, fitted as a cluster of four missiles into a mast that could be raised from the submarine's conning tower under the name Submarine Launched Airflight Missile (SLAM) trialled on HMS Aeneas (P427) in 1972. These were for a time installed on Israeli Gal class submarines.


Combat performance

Blowpipe was used by both the British and Argentina during the Falklands War in 1982. With the targets being mostly fast, low flying aircraft using the terrain to hide their approach the Blowpipe operator had about 20 seconds to spot the target, align the unit and fire. Brigadier Julian Thompson, initial British land commander during the Falklands War, compared using the weapon to "trying to shoot pheasants with a drainpipe."

The official report stated that of the 95 missiles fired by the British, only 9 managed to destroy their targets and all of these were slow flying planes and helicopters. A later report determined that only two kills could be attributed to Blowpipe: A British Harrier GR3 (XZ972) attacked by Argentine Army special forces (Commandos Company), and an Argentine Aermacchi MB-339 (0766 (4-A-114)) during the Battle of Goose Green.

Blowpipe was found to be particularly ineffective when used to engage a crossing target or to chase a target moving rapidly away from the operator. The poor performance led to it being withdrawn from UK service and replaced by its updated design designated "Javelin" (Not to be confused with the FGM-148 Javelin) in-between 1983 and 1985.

In 1986 some of the mothballed units were sent clandestinely to equip the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. The system again proved ineffective at engaging air targets and ended up mainly being used against ground targets. It was eventually supplanted by the US Stinger missile. Blowpipe missile systems are still being found in weapon caches as recently as May 2012 in Afghanistan.

The Canadian military took Blowpipe from storage to give some protection to their naval contribution to the 1991 Gulf war, although sheer age had degraded the weapons, and nine out of 27 missiles tested misfired in some way.

Blowpipe saw more effective use in the Cenepa War of 1995 between Ecuador and Peru, where it was deployed mainly against Mil Mi-17 and Mil Mi-18 Peruvian helicopters.


Ingame

The Blowpipe will be Project Reality's first Command to Line Of Sight (CLOS), Surface to Air Missile (SAM) weapon. Although technically we do have one SAM ingame that should be CLOS, the Stormer HVM, its currently coded with the normal heat seeking missile code.

Command to Line Of Sight (CLOS) basically means that the missiles goes where you visually tell it to go, much like many of our Guided Anti-Tank Missiles such as the SRAW, ERYX, TOW Missile, etc, by aiming towards the target while the missile is in flight. The biggest difference however between the Blowpipe and our Guided Anti-Tank Missiles, is that the Blowpipe missile has a proximity fuse like our other Anti-Aircraft Missiles, so it doesn't have to hit the target directly to destroy it.

While CLOS on the face of it may sound like a really bad way to go, there are quite a few advantages to it, as well as some of the obvious disadvantages.

CLOS Advantages

1. No "Lock-On" Delay until you can fire the missile at the target.
2. No Missile Tracking/Locked Warning given to the aircraft, the only sign that your being engaged is of the possible sighting of the missile being launched and/or, it flying towards you.
3. Flares or other countermeasures have no affect on the missile, other than possibly confuse/distracting the missile operator at best.
4. You can potentially use the weapon against ground targets as an AT weapon with veritable damage rates depending on the missile.

CLOS Disadvantages

1. Battlefield obscurants, such as smoke, can degrade the ability of the missile operator to see the target and as such, engage it.
2. The "skill level" of the operator is critical since, unlike infra-red guided missiles, the operator has to track the target exactly with the sighting unit. If the aircraft detects or predicts the missile launch, it has the whole period of the missile flight time to engage in avoidance manoeuvres, which adds additional challenge to the missile operator's target-tracking task.

While the Blowpipe was arguably one of the worst performing SAM weapons ever to be created, ingame its combat performance will not be anything like as bad as it was in real life. Technically speaking ingame the weapon will be using Semi-Automatic CLOS, where in r/l this weapon was Manual CLOS. The big difference being MCLOS means you have to both visually track, and manually steer the missile with a separate controller onto the target, where SACLOS means you just visually track the target and a computer dose the rest. You will also not have to compensate for things like wind or other factors ingame and while this missile system is hard to use, with a bit of practice you can find that in many cases, especially against helicopters, its easier to score a kill with this than normal IR Missiles.

The Blowpipe wasn't the only MANPAD used during the Falklands War however. The British SAS did deploy the FIM-92 Stinger and the Argentinians the SA-7 Grail, but both in very small numbers and they weren't used much during the war. However because of this and to also give the aircraft a bit more of a hard time each team will be getting a pickup kit of each on all the layers of the Falklands with jets on, to go on top of the normal AA, Blowpipe kits

Its also worth noting that while unrealistic and for the time being at least, the Deployable AAs will stay the same from previous versions with the Brits using the Deployable Stinger and the Argies the Deployable 9K38 Igla so aircraft still have lots of normal, heat seeking AA weapons still to fear from the ground as well as the air.


CLOS Guidance may be applied to other SAM Systems ingame in the future, with some like the Tigercat SAM still in development for PR:F but for the time being the Blowpipe will be the test bed for this new SAM guidance system, although initial testing has shown it to be a pretty decent weapon but we will have to see how it performance under battle conditions and under the stress of 100 player servers.



Cheers for reading and hope you guys like this new weapon as we feel it brings a bit more skill into SAMs and is very fun and rewarding when you hit your target



Credits

Model: [R-DEV]Rhino
UVs: [R-DEV]Rhino
Texture: [R-DEV]Rhino
Export: [R-DEV]Rhino
Coding: [R-DEV]Rhino & [R-CON]Mats391
Video: [R-DEV]Rhino & [R-DEV]Dr Rank + Actors: Spyker, [R-CON]Mats391, DonDOOM, [R-DEV]Jafar Ironclad, [R-COM]Hulabi, Wicca & MaxBoZ[NL].

Nothing much has changed with the weapon itself since then, other than [R-DEV]KaB has done some amazing new animations for this weapon, where before in the video from two years ago, we were having to use the Stinger animations as a place holder. [R-DEV]M42 Zwilling also made a bunch of nice new sounds to fit the new animations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOJT8pV7uyI

Credits

Model: [R-DEV]Rhino
Texture: [R-DEV]Rhino
Export: [R-DEV]Rhino
Coding: [R-DEV]Rhino & [R-DEV]Mats391
Animations: [R-DEV]KaB
Sounds [R-DEV]M42 Zwilling & [R-DEV]-=anders=-



Alvis Stormer HVM

(Click to Enlarge)

Many of you will be familiar with the Alvis Stormer HVM (High Velocity Missile) which has been in PR since v0.8 released in 2008. But since its introduction into PR it has had the standard PR/BF2 Inferred Missile Guidance which was common to all Surface-to-Air Missiles. However in real life, the Starstreak Missile which this fires, uses Semi-Automatic Command to Line-Of-Sight (SACLOS) Guidance. Although unlike most CLOS weapons which receive their commands over either radio or though a connecting wire, the Starstreak is a "Laser Beam Riding" weapon, also known as Semi-Active Laser Homing (SALH), which means the missile is directed by laser beams from the launcher unit, aimed at the target it's engaging.

However the biggest advantage the Starstreak Missile has over any other missile in PR, is its speed. Most Surface-to-Air Missiles, of similar size, have a top speed of around Mach 2 (~700m/s / ~1,500mph). The Starstreak on the other hand has a top speed of "over" Match 4 (1,360m/s / 3,042mph), twice that of most other Surface-to-Air Missiles, also with "Rapid Acceleration", making the job of intercepting fast moving targets far easier. Although unlike real life, where this missile has an "Impact Delay Detonation Mechanism", meaning that at least one of the missile's sub munitions has to hit the target directly for it to cause it any damage, we will instead be giving it a Proximity Fuse. This is for a couple of reasons. Firstly because we simply can't simulate the type of Fire Control Systems the Stormer has in reality to help it get its missiles directly on target and secondly because "server latency" (lag), with fast moving aircraft, makes it incredibly hard to hit them directly since you may see the aircraft in a slightly different location on your screen, to where it actually is on the server. The proximity detonation is also, one of the only ways we can simulate the missile firing off its three sub munition darts at the target, in reality increasing the chances of the missile hitting three fold, which we can't properly simulate.

Another advantage of the weapons massive velocity, means that each sub munition of the missile has enough kinetic energy to penetrate the frontal armour of an IFV, making it a pretty effective weapon against ground vehicles as well as aircraft, although it lacks the armour penetration capabilities of a purpose-built anti-tank guided missile, so it is going to hardly scratch a main battle tank. But this allows the Stormer HVM to double up as both an Anti-Vehicle and Anti-Air, Platform, making it a pretty valuable and versatile asset on the battlefield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbS_y7LltDo

Please note that only two of the four missiles launched actually hit the target and we will be removing the recoil of the missile launch which lead to one of the missiles missing, the other was just aimed just in front of the target.

Credits

Model: [R-DEV]Stigger
Texture: [R-DEV]Stigger
Export: [R-DEV]Guedoe
Coding: [R-DEV]Mats391





2K22 Tunguska

(Click to Enlarge)

The main firing mode on the 2K22 Tunguska for its 9M311 Missiles is a version of CLOS, known as Automatic Command to Line-Of-Sight (ACLOS), which vastly differs from other CLOS guidance systems, since instead of a person directing the missile, the missile is instead directed by a radar and guidance is totally "automatic", with the computer sending commands to the missile by radio, on where it needs to turn to intercept its radar lock and all the actual gunner has to do is require the lock with the radar and fire the missile. As such we will be still simulating this mode with the standard "lock target and fire" system you are all familiar with in PR and what most other SAM Systems use, which has the disadvantages of still being susceptible to counter measures the aircraft may deploy.

However the Tunguska also has a Semi-Automatic Command to Line-Of-Sight (SACLOS) Guidance Mode, normally used as a backup to the ACLOS Guidance Mode, where the gunner can track the target manually and the commands for the missile calculated by the computer and sent over the radio link to the missile.

As such, the Tunguska will have the option to either fire its 9M311 Missiles in either ACLOS, or SACLOS modes, as well as using its dual 2A38 30mm cannons, making it an extremely formidable adversary.

Credits

Model: DiCE
Texture: [R-DEV]Spush & DiCE
Export: DiCE
Coding: [R-DEV]Mats391



GWS-24 Sea Cat

Keep your eyes peeled for a dedicated update on this weapon and this segment of this update will be updated when it comes!

[Jacksonez__]

I was wondering when Tunguska would get that kind of system.

good job!

[MIA89]

whoa...

[ctbear1996]

oh yeah

[sweedensniiperr]

holy shit, next PR update the AA-update?

[simeon5541]

Really great update,awesome work people.
Can't wait to miss some aircraft with those rockets.

[Teewurst]

This will fuck up alot of helicopters

[dalianplant[x64]]

Does that mean the British AAV now fires missiles and they do not give a lock to the enemy aircraft?
If yes, then good job on yet again destroying another balance aspect over new useless features a sensible player wouldn't care about.

Imagine Burning Sands.Why would the Starstreak have the ability to:
A: Destroy enemy light/heavy vehicles with it's guided missiles and kill helis without even having to lock them
B:Why would MEC not have the same weaponary to counter it's enemy?

You keep adding stuff that is literally just there to probably make the game even lag more and the servers to crash, instead of fixing the broken shit and unbalance you've created in the last 5 patches...And then there's the guy with his original PR opressor joke [insert it here pls]

It's great the 5 devs that have left to introduce new stuff and in such a professional way aswell, but in-game this will probably be just as broken as everything else you've put/ex.: not thought about..
Deviation indicator: Half the weapons from vietnam mode dont even have it
Backup sights: Keep bugging and having the backup sight on even when its not enabled
The new Kashan: Horrible asset choice and barely any balance

Now you might ban me for this negative criticism since you don't accept any at all since 0.95 but the amount of shits I give is ZERO, you will never fix this shit anyway since you don't even play it yourself.And I like how u didn't say shit on my anti-air problem thread and then u deleted my post on the finnish guy thread about the MANPAD limitation.

[Jacksonez__]

;2116118']-snip-

e.g with Gopher you can kill light assets and infantry if you know how to aim.

a lot of hate towards free mod, geez. What gives?

[PricelineNegotiator]

Wow. I'm not sure what's going on here. Nerf helicopters and jets more and more each patch, then release mega AA? Holy shit. This isn't really adding anything here. The consensus has been if jets are absolutely demolishing the enemy team, then no one is trying to take them down with AA. Are these going to have 20 minute delayed spawn? Because if not, this is a serious middle finger to CAS and trans.

[SyriousT]

This is really cool especially the tunguska
ps: pr music is awesome

[piratepengu]

Zwilling is my favorite dev <33333333

[AnimalMother.]

Is there going to be a separate GB AA emplacement with this too to mimic the 3-missile starstreak launcher used, and the shoulder mounted variant, as a placeholder in the event that maybe one day we'd see these assets in game?

I can't see how this is making AA overpowered, most of the stuff for the last few versions has been how useless AA is. I mean with this you can foil an emplacement with a smoke grenade...

[Outlawz7]

;2116118']Why would the Starstreak have the ability to:
A: Destroy enemy light/heavy vehicles with it's guided missiles and kill helis without even having to lock them

Because it does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak_(missile)

A demonstration was conducted in September 1999 that showed the missile being used against an FV432 armoured personnel carrier, showing the missile's effectiveness as a surface-to-surface weapon.[6] Each sub-munition dart travelling at 1,250 metres per second (4,100 ft/s; 2,800 mph) has comparable kinetic energy to a shell from a Bofors 40 mm gun and probably has sufficient energy to penetrate the front armour of an infantry fighting vehicle. However, it lacks the armour penetration capabilities of a purpose-built anti-tank guided missile or of a dual purpose missile (such as the Air Defence Anti-Tank System).

Starstreak has a number of advantages over infrared homing guided, radar homing guided, and radio command guidance MCLOS/SACLOS (Blowpipe or Javelin) missiles:

It cannot be jammed by infrared countermeasures or radar/radio countermeasures.[15]
It cannot be suppressed with anti-radar missiles.[15]

[Chefmoto1]

These seem really cool, I'm just worried they'll be a bit OP on PRF. Plus that Stormer is going to be nuts against armor, I'll probably primarily use it as an ATGM vehicle.

[Rhino]

This will fuck up alot of helicopters

It isn't so easy to kill choppers as one might think, since the proximity fuse only works on fast moving vehicles, so the chopper will need to be flying pretty fast in order for it to work, otherwise you need to get a direct hit on it.

[quote=""'dalianplant[x64"];2116118']Does that mean the British AAV now fires missiles and they do not give a lock to the enemy aircraft?
If yes, then good job on yet again destroying another balance aspect over new useless features a sensible player wouldn't care about.

Imagine Burning Sands.Why would the Starstreak have the ability to:
A: Destroy enemy light/heavy vehicles with it's guided missiles and kill helis without even having to lock them
B:Why would MEC not have the same weaponary to counter it's enemy?

...snip...[/quote]

I'm sorry but things do not need to be symmetrically balanced, to be balanced. One of thing things people love about PR is each side doen't always have the exact same kit facing off aginst each other and some of our asymmetrically balanced maps are the most popular maps in the mod.

As such the Stormer can be pretty easily balanced out by doing a few things, like increasing its spawn time, giving the other side more vehicles or other more powerful vehicles to counter it, etc.

It is also worth noting that it's a pretty weak Anit-Vehicle platform, taking two missiles to destroy an APC, which is more it takes in r/l even. On top of this, the British do not have any other ATGM Vehicles, where the MEC/Russians have both the Shturm and the Spandrel, the PLA have the WZ550, and the Americans have the TOW HMMWV. This is also not to forget that the British is also one of the few factions that has no ATGM Missile Launchers on their APCs or IFVs, and has one of the worst APC cannons ingame, where the MEC has things like the BMP-2M with four anti-tank missiles along side its cannon etc. As such it really isn't hard to balance out the Stormers new ability with just mixing up assets a bit.

;2116118']You keep adding stuff that is literally just there to probably make the game even lag more and the servers to crash, instead of fixing the broken shit and unbalance you've created in the last 5 patches

I'm sorry but first of all, this change isn't going to affect the performance or the server stability, no more than firing off a normal wire guided ATGM at a tank. If anything it will probably be easier for the server to deal with than normal IR Guided missiles, since the server will not have to process where the missile needs to go, all it needs to do is track where the missile is.

We are also constantly fixing known bugs all the time. Here is just one screens worth of issues already fixed in v1.4 and there are two more pages of closed issues for v1.4 on top of this one:


We can also only fix the bugs we are aware about so if you want to help fix them, you can always help by reporting them at the very least

[quote="AnimalMother.""]Is there going to be a separate GB AA emplacement with this too to mimic the 3-missile starstreak launcher used, and the shoulder mounted variant, as a placeholder in the event that maybe one day we'd see these assets in game?[/quote]

Not until we at least get a proper Strastreak LML launcher model for the deployable, or a Strastreak MANPADS model for the AA kit. I have also hardly ever seen any Strastreak MANPADS in use in training etc, only really ever seen the LML versions so I'm not sure how many of them there really are or if they are really used at all and the Stinger is still somewhat used in the British Forces

[sweedensniiperr]

It isn't so easy to kill choppers as one might think, since the proximity fuse only works on fast moving vehicles, so the chopper will need to be flying pretty fast in order for it to work, otherwise you need to get a direct hit on it.

oh that's really interesting.

This means that if a chopper(say CAS)spots the missile he can slow down, and then dodge it? That's neat.

Also to all people saying that it will be an OP AT vehicle: on top what Rhino said, if it's being used as an AT vehicle it isn't used as an AA vehicle.

[Rhino]

This means that if a chopper(say CAS)spots the missile he can slow down, and then dodge it? That's neat.

Problem with slowing down thou is you make yourself an easier target to get a direct hit on, which will inflict more damage on yourself too than it exploding near you, but ye, means the missile may totally miss you too

Also to all people saying that it will be an OP AT vehicle: on top what Rhino said, if it's being used as an AT vehicle it isn't used as an AA vehicle.

Indeed, and its putting itself unnecessary, in harms way and it isn't very armoured itself so even an APC could take it out.

[[F|H]Zackyx]

It isn't so easy to kill choppers as one might think, since the proximity fuse only works on fast moving vehicles, so the chopper will need to be flying pretty fast in order for it to work, otherwise you need to get a direct hit on it.

I think the proximity fuse should be removed/not added since the realism argument is being used by other devs, because sometimes when something is added to the game and people complain about the impact that it might have the gameplay you reply by saying that its "Realistic", but at the same time you justify unrealistic features (proximity fuze) with the gameplay argument.
It doesn't make sense...

Outlawz7;2116135']

Why would the Starstreak have the ability to:
A: Destroy enemy light/heavy vehicles with it's guided missiles and kill helis without even having to lock them

Because it does.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starstreak_(missile)

Also its quite "easy" for someone skilled to direct hit helicopters with a HAT. So i really dont understand the need for the proximity features (maybe for high-speed target such as fast moving jets).

Watch this video to see that Hating helicopters is not that hard :



I also think all AA missile with realistic speed should have their speed reduced by 40/50% because engagement distance in PR are extremely short compare to real life (under 600m for most maps).
The second reason is that Physics dont apply to missile in PR they dont accelerate and they dont decelerate so having a missile leaving the "launching platform" at maximum speed and keeping that speed no matter how hard it maneuvers and how long it flies making the missiles look completely unrealistic.

For example the Vympel R-77 has stated range of 100 km. That is only true for a head-on, non-evading target at high altitude. At low altitude, the effective range is reduced by as much as 75%?80% to 20?25 km. If the target is taking evasive action, or in stern-chase position, the effective range is further reduced. See Air-to-Air missile non-comparison table for more information. The effective range of an air-to-air missile is known as the "no-escape zone", noting the range at which the target can not outrun the missile once launched.

Most modern jets/helicopters in PR are equipped with DIRCM, MAWS(optical & radio), ECM in real life capable of detecting missile launch (optic),radio command guidance and suppressing/jamming them.

Its already highly unrealistic for a HAT to be able to shoot down a fast moving helicopters with no warning what so ever for the pilot, by adding an "Anti-Air HAT" it might destroy the balance and game-play of air assets.

[Koskettelija]

lol stormer is good against ground vehicles already in PR, bet most of the complainers never even been in one. It already does shit ton of damage and launches missile pretty much where u aim it at. But no one complained about it before. Funny.

Nice work devs.