AA missiles after 1.4.17

[CAS_ual_TY]

3 Things that could be done for now, in my opinion, which would already increase this situation a lot:

- Fix missiles exploding on flares. Yes I am aware that this might be hardcoded and impossible to fix. This fix alone would already make a huge difference in terms of survivability.

- Make it impossible to lock a jet that is literally directly behind a flare -> Missile should go for the flare in this case (unless the flare was popped after the missile fire, that is something to discuss still).

- Nerf Air-to-Air missiles to make dogfights more interesting. One way would be increasing the time it takes to lock, as a jet. If the warning pops up after 1 second and the lock takes 2.5 seconds (or longer; also with long range missiles), it would already make dogfights more interesting and change things to be more gun focused.

In my opinion, if you are able to implement these 3 points, we would have a really good base to work with and further tweak AA and give feedback.

You could call this a nerf, but Ground-to-Air doesnt get nerfed here, really. Except for that redirek bug of course. These changes would shift CAS more back into a skill based environment, which I think everyone would like to see.

[DogACTUAL]

Wouldn't the best balance be achieved by making sure the missile almost always goes to the closest heat source (unless the vehicle was locked)?

So CAS attacking a position with AA will most likely be shot down (even when preflaring) and a good AA operator will make sure to quickly spot and shoot the incoming CAS before it turns away, therefore there would be a skill element to AA again.

But CAS flying away from the AA and preflaring properly will be very safe in turn. If the CAS itself was locked while flying away there should be a decent chance of the missile ignoring any subsequently deployed flares, even as closest heat object, though.

This would depend on finding a solution to the unreliable nature of the flares and missiles right now and make them behave predictively.

[DogACTUAL]

WATCH CLOSELY:

Is this proportional navigation?! Really looks like it the way the missile aligns itself towards the target.

[Danesh_italiano]

Sooooo... when everything will be back to 1.3.9 less missile spam?!?!??!

[FFG]

Sooooo... when everything will be back to 1.3.9 less missile spam?!?!??!

We have an ongoing issue for AA atm trying to figure it out. which you, yourself you can see.

[Jacksonez__]

WATCH CLOSELY:

Is this proportional navigation?! Really looks like it the way the missile aligns itself towards the target.

Looks like the missile blew up on flare AND got re-directed to the jet

[Fastjack]

Looks like the missile blew up on flare AND got re-directed to the jet

Exactly that's the thing.

I really asking me why we can see here in the clip 2 Damagesources.
I would say lets remove the Direct-Hit damage from the missiles and look if the missile can still kill secondary targets.

I would also like to know how many Damage both jets getting when this Bug occurs.
The explosion damage is higher as the direct hit damage but i dont know how many damage get lost over distance for radial damage but atleast the secondary damage would bring more light into that drama.

The Starstreak uses this tweak to blow up the missile when its close to an airvehicle.
ObjectTemplate.detonation.radiusDetonateWithAirVehicles

Why the other AA missiles doesn't use this codeline? Generally, both kind of missiles explode at a distance to it's target.

[DogACTUAL]

Just to put things into perspective, a notorious CHEATER pretty much gave up on CAS, because even with the best cheats available he found himself not capable to avoid or get rid of AA he knew the exact positions of.

So even with cheats all he could do in most rounds was loiter at high altitude and sometimes get targets of opportunity.

That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the current AA system, let's see if there is going to be a good fix in the next update.

[CAS_ual_TY]

Just to put things into perspective, a notorious CHEATER pretty much gave up on CAS, because even with the best cheats available he found himself not capable to avoid or get rid of AA he knew the exact positions of.

So even with cheats all he could do in most rounds was loiter at high altitude and sometimes get targets of opportunity.

That pretty much tells you all you need to know about the current AA system, let's see if there is going to be a good fix in the next update.

Doesnt. Hacks dont really give you that much of an advantage when it comes to A2A fighting. The reason for that is simple: The server doesnt notify you of enemies that are too far away (like BVR + extra steps) so even hacks cant give you intel of people that are 1500m away, which is common in jets. A2G yes, but even when knowing where the AA is, it can fire at you.

Not saying that I like the current AA, tho.

[DogACTUAL]

Yeah, i meant A2G. Thanks for the insight on the distance thing, although a map cheat should still show those positions on the map no matter the distance. I think A2A you would still get quite an edge with cheats though when checking the map for jet positions and getting notified once there is a jet in range.

[Murphy]

Not saying AA isn't borked, but using a cheater being lazy and not wanting to actually play the game as a way to further bring up AA need a nerf takes us down a slippery slope. Let's just balance the game based on actual players who use their skills and awareness to play, not some ********* who is used to being all knowing and all seeing.

(Fix AA, for the love of God don't balance it based on cheaters being a shitty/lazy players)

[DogACTUAL]

From the new manual:

Countermeasures such as flares will prevent you from effectively destroying your target, so your angle of attack in relation to the vehicle’s travelling direction is paramount to achieve a hit. Enemy pilots will receive a warning sound a few seconds after they have been locked-on by a SAM giving them time to maneuver away from the threat.

Flares are triggered individually(X) and need to be rearmed after all of them have been dropped. Since the warning sound is only played once the enemy has already locked onto your aircraft for half a second, it is recommended to use them while on an attack run to reduce the chance of the enemy establishing a lock. Just like with helicopters you can hold the key down to deploy multiple.

Interesting... What's your take on this?

[Mineral]

You are aware those few items were in the old manual before? And likely even in the pre 0.8 manuals as well? The current manual is still 99% the same as before, just with a few new lines and updated number values.

[DogACTUAL]

Well... You said we could spot a few differences, so i tried.
Afaik holding X does not deploy any additional flares after the first set and as of right now two flares are deployed instead of a single one. If the info in the manual was the case in earlier versions i was not aware of it, so i reasonably assumed it was a new feature.

I also thought it was noteworthy to show the discrepancy of the two manual samples concerning the duration until the missile warning sound starts. One quote says it is half a second after lock. The other quote says a few seconds after lock.

And we all know the first sentence in the first of the manual samples is not accurate at all right now, don't we? XD

[FFG]

-snip-

hehe xd

If you spot anything that seems a bit off in the manual that could use a double check : https://github.com/realitymod/Manual/issues submit an issue here.

[winject]

You problem, the reason you get swatted out of the sky is because your spamming to many flares. The engine only renders 4 heat sigs. the 4 most recent ones will cause AA missile to be tracked, while older ones will cease to exist. So if you pop too many flares, you attract the AA missile away from the initial flares and towards your CAS.

Where did you find out the game engine would only render 4 heat signatures?
A flare is a game object which inherits the HeatObject template so as long as the flare did not hit the ground or collide with some random shit it will stay alive, meaning the heatsource can become a target at any time as long as the pointer to the flare is valid , in other words the flare still exists. Try it yourself, you can lock any flare falling down. There isn't a hardcoded limitation.

Jets in PR have one unique heat source and it's set to be on the afterburner. So according to your findings, you can only have 3 active flares which doesn't make any sense.

I'll do some research and try to find the culprit.

We did some testing last night on Test Airfield with flares. Surface-to-air-missile kill percentage was somewhere in the 80% range. Thus, shooting two AA missiles towards flying get is a guaranteed kill. Even with one AA missile (ie. MANPAD) kill percentage is incredible obviously. With AAV that has 4 or more missiles, it doesn't even leave a chance to enemy jet.

Even preflaring doesn't help at all, AA missile launched towards flares or infront of moving jet will score almost guaranteed kill with first shot. Only way to miss shot is to shoot the missile behind the flying aircraft. Also constant flaring every 1-2 seconds doesn't help as the missile will always abadon the last heat source that it's locked on, and find the next one, thus eventually hitting the escaping aircraft in the rear. Yet flares stay in the air for only such short period of time, that ONLY preflaring when doing a bombing run is not gonna work. Flares disappear in ~5 seconds which is not enough time for the jet to get out of range of AA, making the jet the only heatsource in the sky, thus making it sure kill for the AA.

The AA missile re-directing ability combined with pretty high AAV range (1200-1400 m) makes it also possible for AAV to blindly shoot bunch of missiles towards escaping enemy jet after losing visual sight, and the missiles will keep re-directing flare after flare, eventually hitting the jet and killing it. I've been killed in jet quite a few times by indiscriminatly fired re-direct AA missiles at altitudes up to 1700 m. This used to be impossible before.

Before, missiles usually locked on to the first flare, blew up on it, and if the aircraft was far away enough from the explosion, it survived. This way there was some kind of logic how to avoid getting killed by AA, thus giving room for tactics. Right now for jets it's nothing but russian roulette but with 5 rounds in the chambers.

This sums it up pretty well.

[FFG]

was told there was a hardcoded limitation, hmmm.

[Mats391]

This defines how many heat targets an AA will see.

Code: Select all

hudBuilder.setObjectMarkerNodeObjects int -> bool

It is set to 4 for most I think and there is some upper limit, but 4 is not the hardcoded value.

[DogACTUAL]

Is anyone still working on improving the AA system?

[Mostacho]

Is this intended?

https://youtu.be/Nvcxu3go9TE?t=25