MOD: Modern Naval/Air Combat Fix

[knott]

Originally posted by Barnacle Bill
In real life, with modern as opposed to WWII submarines, the only truely effective offensive anti-submarine system is another submarine. I know from personal experience in naval excercises that, even with unrealistic handicaps on the sub, destroyers & ASW aircraft are pretty helpless against a well-handled modern submarine. The problem is that submarines can't perform all naval missions, so you still need other ships to do what the subs can't. So it is a matter of teamwork, unless your entire naval strategy is to deny the seas to your enemy. ASW surface ships should not really have any significant ability to attack submarines, just to defend themselves and anything stacked with them if the submarine attacks (even then, the sub should win more often than the skimmer). If you want to go sub-hunting, you need another sub. In a Civ3 mod, I'd model that by giving nuclear (i.e. modern as opposed to WWII) subs a significantly higher attack & defense factor than any other ship. However, since they can't carry troops, launch aircraft, bombard coastal squares, etc... you still need the skimmers for that stuff.

Sound logic, but you should make them very expensive.

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by knott


Sound logic, but you should make them very expensive.

Well, here are some real-world costs:

Nuclear Aircraft Carrier = $7 billion
Seawolf class SSN = $2 billion (they only build like 2 of these)
Michigan ("Trident") class SSBN = $1.3 billion
Ticonderoga ("Aegis") class Cruiser = $1 billion
Los Angeles class SSN = $800 million (they built wads of these)
Arleigh Burke ("Aegis junior") class destroyer = $750 million

By contrast, to raise & equip a US mechanized infantry division costs about $4.5 billion.

[Leonidas]

Well, here are some real-world costs:

Nuclear Aircraft Carrier = $7 billion
Seawolf class SSN = $2 billion (they only build like 2 of these)
Michigan ("Trident") class SSBN = $1.3 billion
Ticonderoga ("Aegis") class Cruiser = $1 billion
Los Angeles class SSN = $800 million (they built wads of these)
Arleigh Burke ("Aegis junior") class destroyer = $750 million



So true, and now conventional submarines such as the U212A (built by Germany for about $300 million) can be armed with the right ordanace to sink all of the above ships and subs, plus any ASW helicopters that happen to be lurking nearby. . .

I've played a little Harpoon - still waiting for Harpoon 4. I do play Silent Hunter (great subsim) and 688 (I).

I'm also waiting to hear about Silent Hunter II - anybody got that subsim yet?

[mrbilll]

The combat in CivIII is abstracted, of course. But even so, I found the air and naval combat to be disappointing. The naval combat in particular bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality. But IMHO this has always been a shortcoming of the Civ series.

An exposed sub is relatively easy to kill, but for either deisel or nuke subs, finding them in the first place is the whole trick. Unless they are damaged or exposed by combat ops such as a missile launch, they're nearly impossible to detect- though there's always human error to figure on, too.

It's true that deisel boats enjoy a tactical advantage in terms of sound silencing, but I think Leonidas vastly overstates that advantage. Especially on the operational level, those expensive nuke boats perform their intended tasks exceptionally well. The trouble now is, who are they going to fight? The navy of Afghanistan?

My credentials- U.S.N., 1985-1993, Nine patrols aboard the U.S.S. Von Steuben, SSBN 632, and the U.S.S. James Madison, SSBN 627.

[Pyrodrew]

I would be very interested what you Naval experts here feel would be more accurate (as well as game balanced) stats for all the naval ships... if you don't mind posting your opinions here.

[mrbilll]

Ooh, naval experts. I never claimed to be that.

I can't speak for all kinds of vessels, but I can tell you, you don't want an accurate missile sub in the game. A modern Ohio class has 24 tubes, each of which can carry a missile with mulitple warheads. Even with the unrealistically weak CivIII rules for nukes, the payload of a single sub could devastate a continent.

As for combat rules, I'd make it very weak in conventional terms- give it a defense strength of 1, with the attack only a bit better. The catch would be, it would be extremely difficult to find the thing in the first place- only detectable by certain units, and even then, maybe a 20% chance tops.

In Civ terms, I've got no problem with the movement rates of modern units. You'll notice in real life that if a carrier group leaves port in California or Virginian, it doesn't turn up in the Med or the Indian sea the next day! Sure, they're much faster and more reliable that a galleon, but the world is still a might big place.

As for the combat, I don't know if you can do better with the Civ engine. It's always going to be very abstract, and give you weird results. The biggest thing is that I would vastly expand both the range of cruise missiles, and the amount that a sub can carry and launch. I guess it's a game balance issue. But in general, I find the naval units so worthless, I don't even bother with them, except for transportation and exploration.

Why bother with large campaign against an enemy on another continent? The corruption will eat you alive!

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by mrbilll

As for combat rules, I'd make it very weak in conventional terms- give it a defense strength of 1, with the attack only a bit better. The catch would be, it would be extremely difficult to find the thing in the first place- only detectable by certain units, and even then, maybe a 20% chance tops.

I have to disagree with this. A modern SSN can easily sink anything afloat - that says high attack strength. In Civ, there is no way to make it sometimes detected and sometimes not, so the overall difficulty of attacking a sub (finding it then killing it) has to be abstracted into a single high defense factor. In my experience, both surface ASW ships and ASW patrol craft are pretty worthless at sub hunting - their only chance is if the sub comes to them and attacks whatever they are protecting, and then they are pretty lame (I can tell sea stories to illustrate). Subs do hunt other subs, though, and do it quite well. Ergo, my proposal for a Civ3 naval mod is that nothing can see submarines except "Nuclear Subs" (i.e. modern SSN's). If the sub attacks a surface ship, the defense factor of surface warships would give them a chance to survive and win (unescorted transports would be toast) and that would represent the real-life ability of ASW ships to defend task forces/convoys when a sub reveals itself by attacking. I would assume that carrier, battleship & cruiser units actually include their escorts, since there is no way in Civ3 to give a unit different defense factors against surface ships and subs.

Originally posted by mrbilll

I can't speak for all kinds of vessels, but I can tell you, you don't want an accurate missile sub in the game. A modern Ohio class has 24 tubes, each of which can carry a missile with mulitple warheads. Even with the unrealistically weak CivIII rules for nukes, the payload of a single sub could devastate a continent.

On the scale of the Civ games, you have to think more abstractly. In real life there are a lot more targets that don't exist in Civ because everything is abstracted into cities. So, figure one civ nuke represents a wad of real-life nukes and 24 on a Civ sub is excessive - I'd say no more than 4, maybe just 2. I don't know if it can be done in the editor, but the ideal thing would be a seperate SSBN unit that has the same defense as an SSN, weaker attack, and carries not "tactical nukes" but "ICBM'S".

Originally posted by mrbilll

My credentials- U.S.N., 1985-1993, Nine patrols aboard the U.S.S. Von Steuben, SSBN 632, and the U.S.S. James Madison, SSBN 627.

USN 1978-1986, USNR 1987-2000, Med run & Northern Run on USS Sunfish (SSN-649), plank-owner on USS Olympia (SSN-717).

[Plutarck]

Nothing can actually carry an ICBM...or at least, you don't need anything to. In the game the ICBM can attack any point on earth without moving around. It has unlimited range

[mrbilll]

I pretty much agree with everything you say, Barnacle Bill. I think I said something similar somewhere else. Civ is so abstract that it's very difficult to do more than approximate unit performance. But it's fun to speculate- "OK, you REALLY wanna know what one missile boat could do to a continent?" Not in a game of Civ, you don't. Two words- game balance.

On the other hand, you could make separate units for fast attacks and missile boats. I'd give the fast attacks a higher speed and attack rating, with the ability to carry cruise missiles only. The missile boats would be slower, with a lower attack rating, but a much larger carrying capacity of both nukes and cruise missiles.

The missile boats DO have teeth, and you wouldn't want to tangle with them. But the fast attacks are much more suited for ship to ship, and the boomers are slugs by comparison.

I like your idea of nuke subs only being visible to other subs. When the bragging stops and the fit hits the shan, an ASW force actually has pretty slim odds of finding a sub before it attacks.

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Plutarck
Nothing can actually carry an ICBM...or at least, you don't need anything to. In the game the ICBM can attack any point on earth without moving around. It has unlimited range

Yes, and a Trident missile can hit anyplace in the former USSR while the boat is tied up to the pier in King's Bay, too. The point of a SSBN is to hide where your nukes are, so the other guy can't take 'em out with a pre-emptive strike. You can't hide a missile silo from space/air recon. Nukes in Civ3 could and should be modelled so the same logic applies.

[sachmo71]

While I understand that the Aegis is mainly used for anti-aircraft/missle fleet protection, I believe that they are meant to represent the modern sensor suite avaliable on modern warships, which far outclass the sensors avaliable on earlier class ships. Those include passive/active sonar as well as radar, among others. So they should have a better defense, plus a better offense which would include missles and ASW helicoptors.

[mrbilll]

You're right in Civ terms, Sachmo, but again, there are limits to how much you can represent in Civ. Generally speaking, yes, modern AEGIS ships are state of the art at this time. But if this were more of a pure operational level military simulator, there'd be a world of difference between finding an air unit, a surface unit, and a sub.

[Temujin69]

detection needs to be fixed first.

In the mod, the detection needs to be fixed. In my first game, playing chieftain to get a feeling for the game, I had subs and nuke subs all over the place... no other civ had the ability to build anything better than an ironclad, and yet, everytime my sub or nuke sub entered enemy territory, I would get a request to "remove my troops". My question is: How the hell did they know my sub was there? I thought only another sub or destroy could detect it and there was another naval unit for miles! Those ancient cities must have some kind of really advanced sonar or something...

And the cruise missile needs to be fixed as well... the AI's cruise missile sank my nuke sub... in my territory. Since when did cruise missiles become surface to surface and are convertable to torpedoes?

Oh yeah, no one else has talked about this, but when my subs attack, say, a frigate, they can still be destroyed rather easily... the commander of that sub must be an idiot to be taken out by cannon fire...

[Barnacle Bill]

These are problems in the Civ3 engine, not fixable in the mod. Basically, anything earlier than a destroyer should just die if it is attacked by a sub of any sort, unless stacked with a destoyer that would fight the sub. The same for modern transports. For carriers, battleships, & Aegis cruisers, I would be OK with having them work that so you'd have to stack them with destroyers, or with letting them defense normally against subs on the assumption that the unit is a task force (built around a ship of that type but including escorting destroyers). I guess that assumption could apply to transports as well. The problem is you would need either a special rule you could check in the editor ("can defend itself against submarines") or (better but more programming) seperate attack & defense values for ASW. That would have to be programmed in the executable. The fix for being them knowing a sub is lurking off their coast when they can't see it would also require programming.

[joseph1944]

Originally posted by mrbilll

My credentials- U.S.N., 1985-1993, Nine patrols aboard the U.S.S. Von Steuben, SSBN 632, and the U.S.S. James Madison, SSBN 627.

USN 1978-1986, USNR 1987-2000, Med run & Northern Run on USS Sunfish (SSN-649), plank-owner on USS Olympia (SSN-717).

Hi guys nice to see some more people from the Navy. My credentials are US Navy Feb 1962 to March 1965 USS Navarro APA-215, and then Mare Island Aug. 1965 to Nov. 1995. I help build the SSN 662, 665, 666, 672, 677. Did overhauls on a ton of boats. My last boat was Test Supervisor on the SSN 688. The only two boats that I have not worked on is Ohio and Seawolf Class.
BTW a few Diesel boats did carry cruise missile. It was called Regulus 1 & 2. The USS Tunny, Barbero, & Grayback. The Grayback was a Mare Island design and built at MI as a missile boat.
Spec on Regulus was 670 mph, 250 miles range, ceiling was 50,000 ft. w/either Nuc or Non Nuc warhead.